Richard Petzoldt

Richard Johannes Petzoldt (born November 12, 1907 in Plauen ; † January 14, 1974 in Leipzig ) was a German musicologist and music critic .

Life

Petzoldt was born in 1907 as the son of a businessman in Vogtland and grew up in Berlin . After graduating from high school , he studied musicology at the Friedrich Wilhelms University there with Johannes Wolf , Hermann Abert , Arnold Schering , Hans Joachim Moser , Friedrich Blume , Erich Maria von Hornbostel , Curt Sachs and Georg Schünemann . In 1933 he was at Arnold Schering with the dissertation The church compositions and secular cantatas Reinhard Keizer (1674-1739) for Dr. phil. PhD.

From 1934 he worked as an editor for the Allgemeine Musikzeitung in Berlin, later Leipzig. In 1939 he became its editor-in-chief . He also wrote for the Berliner Tageblatt . From 1940 to 1945 he did military service . After the Second World War he worked as a music critic for various newspapers and magazines and as an employee of the cultural office of the city of Leipzig. In 1945 he was briefly head of the municipal music library in Leipzig. He took over the rebuilding and acting management of the musicological institute and the musical instrument museum . From 1946 to 1952 he taught music history at the Leipzig University of Music . In addition, from 1949 he was dramaturge at the Leipzig Opera House and editor-in-chief of the magazine Musik im Schule .

In 1952 he was appointed professor for music history and director of the Institute for Music Education and deputy director of the Institute for Musicology at the University of Leipzig. In 1967 he became director of the musical instrument museum and in 1969 professor of musicology in the cultural studies and German studies section. In 1973 he retired .

Petzoldt's first marriage (from 1933) to the writer and translator Marianne Petzoldt , b. Graefe (1904–1984), married. Her two daughters also became musicologists. In 1968 he married the singer and singing teacher Eleonore , b. Herrmann (* 1931). He is buried in the south cemetery in Leipzig .

Publications (selection)

• Ludwig van Beethoven (1938)
• Johann Sebastian Bach (new edition, 1950)
• Franz Schubert - His Life in Pictures (1953)
• Peter Tchaikovsky - His Life in Pictures (1953)
• The Opera in its Time (1956)
• Giuseppe Verdi (new edition, 1959)
• History of Music Education (1962)
• The Leipzig Thomanerchor (1962)
• Guide to Music (1962)

literature

• Gabriele Baumgartner: Petzoldt, Richard . In: Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR. 1945–1990. Volume 2: Maassen - Zylla. KG Saur, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-598-11177-0 , pp. 639-640.

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Petzoldt in the catalog of the German National Library
• Dieter Härtwig : Petzoldt Richard Johannes . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
• Richard Petzoldt in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig