Michael Mietke

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The “white” harpsichord in Charlottenburg Palace
Charlottenburg Palace, antechamber with Mietke harpsichord

Michael Mietke (* between 1656 and 1671 ; † 1719 ), also Miedtke , was a northern German harpsichord and harp maker .

Life

Nothing is known about Michael Mietke's birthplace. The father is assumed to be Georg Mietke, who temporarily lived in Cölln (Old Berlin), and the mother is a Mrs. Hofglaser Anna Mietke or Miedtke with connections to court musicians. Perhaps he received his training from Martin Vater, the respected court organ builder and instrument maker in Hanover , whose sons Christian and Antoine were also to become well-known instrument makers.

Apparently, Mietke spent the rest of his life in Berlin . From 1695 at the latest he was building instruments there. On February 8, 1697 he married Maria Wagenführer; between 1698 and 1715 two children were baptized in Friedrichswerder and nine in Cölln . In 1707 Mietke succeeded Christoph Werner as purveyor to the Prussian court . In 1718/1719 he built a harpsichord for the Köthener Hof - perhaps the instrument for which Johann Sebastian Bach composed the 5th Brandenburg Concerto . Bach personally commissioned the harpsichord in 1718 and traveled to Berlin again in 1719 to pick it up.

The only student Michael Mietke known by name is Johann Rost (around 1670 – around 1747). Johann Christoph Oesterlein (1727–1792) is considered a possible grandchildren .

Descendants

Three descendants of Michael Mietke have also made a name for themselves as instrument makers.

  • The son Michael Mietke (1702–1754) was baptized on March 5, 1702 in Berlin. In 1728 he was appointed court instrument maker for stringed keyboard instruments in Königsberg ; between April and August 1754 he died there.
  • The son Georg or George Mietke (1704–1770) was baptized on January 31, 1704 in Berlin, left Berlin in 1729, married in Danzig in 1736 and went to Königsberg in 1739. There he received the license in 1747 to build "pianos" (keyboard instruments) and other musical instruments; Königsberg is also assumed to be the place of death.
  • The grandson Georg Friedrich Mietke (1746 – after 1805) was born in Königsberg and was apprenticed to his father George until 1765. In 1770 he became a court instrument maker in Königsberg; The year and place of death (probably Königsberg) are uncertain.

Harpsichords

Three instruments have survived from Michael Mietke's workshop:

The two harpsichords in Charlottenburg Palace - the one-manual “white” and the two-manual “black” - are now generally awarded to Mietke. They were decorated with chinoiserie by the Belgian Gérard Dagly (around 1660–1715), "the most famous lacquer artist of his time" , the white more opulent, the black more restrained. “On the white harpsichord you can see Chinese men, women and children doing various activities in the open air: They play music and dance, feed peacocks, present gifts to each other or serve tea - an ideal world that Europe longed for.” As Johann Sebastian Bach visited Margrave Christian Ludwig von Brandenburg in the Berlin Palace in 1719 , he probably played the black instrument.

The Mietke harpsichord in the Hälsinglands Museum in the Swedish city of Hudiksvall only became known in 1991, although it had been there for over 60 years. The single-manual instrument is largely in its original condition; on the back key of the last treble key it bears the signature "Michael Mietke Instrumentenmacher in Berlin Anno 1710".

At the City Museum Gera is one for fortepiano converted harpsichord, perhaps back in the ground substance on Mietke.

The musicologist Dieter Krickeberg, and with him the musicologist Günther Wagner, consider it plausible that the (lost) harpsichord that Mietke had built for Köthen had a 16-foot register . Because the line-up of a “strong concert” requires a double bass or a violone and then also a figured bass instrument with a 16-foot register, and because the line-up of the 5th Brandenburg Concerto calls for a violone, a harpsichord with a 16-foot To think registers - such harpsichords were by no means rare. A (also lost) Mietke harpsichord with a 16-foot register, which was offered for resale in Berlin in 1778, can be assigned to one of the sons.

Harpsichord replicas after Mietke

To this day, the harpsichord after Mietke serves as a model for replicas in various workshops, u. a. in the workshop of Jan Bečička & Stanislav Hüttl & Petr Šefl in Hradec Králové / Czech Republic. and at the Dutch instrument maker Jan Kalsbeek.

Information base

literature

  • Herbert Heyde: Musical instrument manufacture in Prussia . Schneider, Tutzing 1994, ISBN 978-3-7952-0720-5 . Heyde's book offers over 30 sources on the work of Michael Mietke and his descendants.
  • Dieter Krickeberg: Michael Mietke - a harpsichord maker from the circle of JS Bach . In: Cöthener Bach Hefte 3/1985, pp. 47–56. This essay is found in Edward L. Kottick: A History of the Harpsichord . Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis 2003, ISBN 978-0-253-02347-6 , p. 510, end note 79 as reference literature on Michael Mietke.
  • Konstantin Restle: Attempt to classify the "Bach harpsichord" historically . In: The Berlin "Bach Harpsichord". A myth and its consequences. State Institute for Music Research Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin 1995, pp. 29–40 ( PDF file of the reprint in the yearbook of the State Institute for Music Research Prussian Cultural Heritage ). Restle gives an overview of 16-foot harpsichords from the 17th and 18th centuries and comes to the conclusion that "Harpsichords with sixteen-foot registers were by no means uncommon, especially in the English, Italian and German harpsichord construction of the 17th and 18th centuries."
  • Günther Wagner: The special features of the 16-foot register using the example of the Berlin “Bach harpsichord” . In: The Berlin "Bach Harpsichord". A myth and its consequences. State Institute for Music Research in Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin 1995, pp. 41–54 ( PDF file of the reprint in the yearbook of the State Institute for Music Research in Prussian Cultural Heritage ). Wagner thinks it is extremely plausible that “Bach's Köthener instrument, which he had Michael Mietke built in Berlin, had a 16-foot register”.

Web links

  • Gérard Dagly and the Berlin court workshop . Press release from the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg on an exhibition in 2015/2016 in Charlottenburg Palace with two pictures of the one-manual harpsichord built by Michael Mietke and decorated by Gérard Dagly, which is in Charlottenburg Palace (as of March 21, 2018).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life dates according to Stanley Sadie (ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Macmillan, London 2001, entry “Mietke” and Ludwig Finscher (eds.): Music in the past and present . Volume of persons, Bärenreiter and Metzler, Kassel and Stuttgart 1999–2007, entry “Mietke”.
  2. ↑ The spelling "Mietke" can be found in Curt Sachs : Music and Opera at the Kurbrandenburgischer Hof . Bard, Berlin 1910, p. 186, in Paul Badura-Skoda : Bach Interpretation. The piano works of Johann Sebastian Bach . Laaber, Laaber 1990, pp. 150–152 and in the two large lexicons The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and The Music in Past and Present . A large number of spellings - primarily "Miedtke", but also "Mietke", "Miedecke", "Midecke", "Medicke" and "Mietcke" - are cited in Werner Renkewitz and Jan Janca: History of Organ Building Art in East and East West Prussia from 1333 to 1944 . Volume 1, Weidlich, Würzburg 1984, pp. 219 and 232.
  3. ↑ Dieter Krickeberg: Michael Mietke - a harpsichord maker from the circle of JS Bach . In: Cöthener Bach-Hefte 3/1985, pp. 47–56, here p. 49. Regarding Anna Mietke's connections to court musicians, Krickeberg refers to the sponsorships entered in the Cölln baptismal register of St. Petri.
  4. ↑ Igor Kipnis (ed.): The Harpsichord and Clavichord. To Encyclopedia . Volume 2 of the Encyclopedia of Keyboard Instruments . Routledge, New York and Abingdon 2007, ISBN 0-415-93765-5 , p. 205.
  5. ↑ Winfried Schlepphorst (Ed.): Organ art and organ research. Commemorative publication Rudolf Reuter . Bärenreiter, Kassel 1990, p. 211.
  6. ↑ Kiel pianos. Harpsichords - spinets - virginals. Inventory catalog with contributions by John Henry van der Meer, Martin Elste and Günther Wagner. State Institute for Music Research Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-922378-11-0 , p. 402.
  7. ^ Paul Badura-Skoda : Bach interpretation. The piano works of Johann Sebastian Bach . Laaber, Laaber 1990, p. 151.
  8. ↑ Bach Bach towns and cities: Berlin . Short text on bachueberbach.de (as of March 21, 2018).
  9. ↑ Edward L. Kottick: A History of the Harpsichord . Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis 2003, ISBN 978-0-253-02347-6 , p. 510, endnote 87.
  10. ↑ Kiel pianos. Harpsichords - spinets - virginals. Inventory catalog with contributions by John Henry van der Meer, Martin Elste and Günther Wagner. State Institute for Music Research Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-922378-11-0 , p. 403.
  11. ↑ All information according to Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Macmillan, London 2001, entry “Mietke” and Ludwig Finscher (eds.): Music in the past and present . Volume of persons, Bärenreiter and Metzler, Kassel and Stuttgart 1999–2007, entry “Mietke”.
  12. ^ Paul Badura-Skoda: Bach interpretation. The piano works of Johann Sebastian Bach . Laaber, Laaber 1990, p. 150.
  13. ↑ a b Gérard Dagly and the Berlin court workshop . Exhibition information on www.fresko-magazin.de (as of March 21, 2018).
  14. ^ Paul Badura-Skoda: Bach interpretation. The piano works of Johann Sebastian Bach . Laaber, Laaber 1990, p. 502, end note 86. Badura-Skoda refers to the following contributions by Dieter Krickeberg: Michael Mietke - a harpsichord maker from the circle of JS Bach . In: Cöthener Bach books 3 (1985) and the Berlin harpsichord maker Michael Mietke, the Hohenzollern and Bach . In: Program book of the Berlin Bachtage (1986).
  15. ↑ Andreas Kilström: A Signed Mietke Harpsichord . In: Fellowship of Makers and Restorers of Historical Instruments Quarterly 64 (July 1991), pp. 59-62.
  16. ^ Martin-Christian Schmidt: Rediscovered: Harpsichords from Silbermann and Mietke? In: Concerto 135 (July / August 1998), pp. 34-38.
  17. ^ Günther Wagner: The special features of the 16-foot register using the example of the Berlin "Bach harpsichord" . In: The Berlin "Bach Harpsichord". A myth and its consequences. State Institute for Music Research Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin 1995, pp. 41–54, especially p. 46.
  18. ^ Stanley Sadie (ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Macmillan, London 2001, entry “Mietke”.
  19. ↑ http://www.orgelbits.de/mietkecemb.html , last accessed on June 13, 2019
  20. ↑ https://www.pnn.de/kultur/bach-geburtstag-in-sanssouci/22265864.html , last accessed on November 4, 2019
  21. ↑ http://www.jankalsbeek.nl/german , last accessed on November 4, 2019 /
personal data
SURNAME Mietke, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Miedtke, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Northern German harpsichord maker
DATE OF BIRTH between 1656 and 1671
DATE OF DEATH 1719