Philipp Spitta (musicologist)

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Philipp Spitta
Memorial plaque in Berlin-Tiergarten
Honor grave , Wer Duration Weg 5, in Berlin-Schöneberg

Julius August Philipp Spitta (born December 27, 1841 in Wechold near Hoya , today Hilgermissen , † April 13, 1894 in Berlin ) was a musicologist and Bach biographer.

Life

Spitta was a son of the theologian and poet Philipp Spitta and Johanna Maria Hotzen; his younger brother was the theologian Friedrich Spitta . After Philipp Spitta had initially been tutored by private tutors, he moved to the Lyceum in Hanover in 1856 , and two years later to the grammar school in Celle , where he graduated from high school in the spring of 1860. On April 20, 1860, according to his parents' wishes, he enrolled as studiosus theologiae at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen , but from the first semester on he attended lectures exclusively at the Philosophical Faculty. At the beginning of the summer semester of 1861, he formally switched to classical philology.

Soon after his arrival in Göttingen, Spitta began to establish private relationships, especially those that gave him access to Göttingen's musical life. One of the earliest acquaintances was with Julius Otto Grimm , through whom he also made the acquaintance of Hermann Sauppe and the Göttingen gynecologist Eduard von Siebold , whose daughter Agathe von Siebold was in close acquaintance with Johannes Brahms . Due to his commitment and his expertise in musical issues, Spitta gained a certain recognition in Göttingen and in September 1861 became a member and conductor of the "Student Choral Society of Georgia-Augusta" (today the Student Music Association of Blue Singers Göttingen in the SV ) and joined this in the following time successfully. He finally gave up the office of conductor at the end of 1863 in order to prepare for his exam in 1864, but remained associated with the association as an old man until his death. He completed his studies on July 23, 1864 in Göttingen with a dissertation on sentence structure in Tacitus ("De Taciti in componendis enuntiatis ratione. Pars prior.").

In August 1864, Spitta moved to Reval ( Estonia ) to take up the position of senior teacher for Greek and Latin at the local knight and cathedral school . From there, in a letter to Sauppe, he repeated the wish previously expressed to take the Hanoverian senior teacher state examination in Göttingen in order - as he wrote - "to gain secure ground in all cases", which happened in early January 1865. In 1865 he married Mathilde Grupen (1841–1928) in Göttingen. They had two children, Marie Elisabeth (1866–1896) and Oscar (1870–1950) (later professor of medicine in Berlin). In 1867 he was transferred from Reval to the secondary school in Sondershausen as a senior teacher .

In Reval he had already begun extensive research on the life and work of Johann Sebastian Bach , the results of which he presented in the first volume of his Bach biography in 1873. This raised "the hitherto unknown to the highest honors in science" ( Julius Rodenberg ) and in April 1874 led to Spitta's appointment as senior teacher at the Leipzig Nikolaischule . Together with Heinrich von Herzogenberg , Franz von Holstein and Alfred Volkland , he founded the Leipzig Bach Society there .

On April 6, 1875, Spitta took over the position of the second permanent secretary of the Royal Academy of the Arts in Berlin and on April 14, 1875, he was appointed as a part-time university professor and teacher of music at the Royal Academy of Music , of which he was deputy director on It was October 1, 1882. From June 15, 1882 he belonged to the directorate as “head of the entire administration of the Royal. University ”. At the same time he followed a call from the Royal Friedrich Wilhelms University to an extraordinary professorship in musicology.

In addition to his Bach biography, he became known through a complete edition of Dietrich Buxtehude's organ works and the works of Heinrich Schütz . Together with Friedrich Chrysander and Guido Adler , he edited the quarterly journal for musicology from 1885 , published in Leipzig. Today Philipp Spitta is considered one of the founders of modern musicology.

He died at the age of 52 and was given a grave of honor by the City of Berlin in the Protestant New Cemetery of the Twelve Apostles Cemetery at Wer Duration Weg 5 in Tempelhof-Schöneberg (Berlin). The Spittastraße in Berlin-Lichtenberg and the Philipp-Spitta-Straße in Sondershausen are named after him.

Works

  • Quaestiones Vergilianae. Deuerlich, Göttingen 1867.
  • Johann Sebastian Bach. Vol. 1. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1873, and Johann Sebastian Bach. Vol. 2. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1880
  • Johann Sebastian Bach. (3rd, unchanged edition, Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1921, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 ).
    • English translation by Clara Bell, John Alexander Fuller Maitland: Johann Sebastian Bach. His Work and Influence on the Music of Germany, 1685-1750. 3 vol. Novello, London 1884/85 (digitized version of vol. 1 , vol. 2 and vol. 3 ; further editions).
  • About Johann Sebastian Bach. Leipzig 1879.
  • A picture of Robert Schumann's life. In: Paul Graf Waldersee (Ed.): Collection of musical lectures. Fourth row, No. 37/38. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1882, pp. 1–103.
  • Musical works of Frederick the Great. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1889.
  • To the music. Sixteen essays. Paetel, Berlin 1892.
  • Essays on the history of music. Paetel, Berlin 1894.

literature

Web links

Commons : Philipp Spitta (musicologist)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Philipp Spitta  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Digitized version of the font from 1866 in the Internet Archive .
  2. ↑ Quoted from Ulrike Schilling: Philipp Spitta , p. 17.
  3. ^ Julius Rodenberg: Philipp Spitta. In: Deutsche Rundschau . Vol. 79, 1894, pp. 468-470, here p. 469 .
  4. ^ About this association Peter Schmitz: Johannes Brahms and the Leipziger Musikverlag Breitkopf & Härtel (= treatises on music history. Vol. 20). V & R Unipress, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-89971-728-0 , p. 30, note 18 .
  5. ^ State Institute for Music Research , Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation : Paths to Music. Berlin 1984. pp. 12f.
  6. ↑ Ulrike Schilling: Philipp Spitta , p. 1.
personal data
SURNAME Spitta, Philipp
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spitta, Julius August Philipp
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musicologist and Bach biographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 27, 1841
PLACE OF BIRTH Wechold at Hoya , today Hilgermissen
DATE OF DEATH April 13, 1894
Place of death Berlin