Sophia Maria Westenholz

Eleonore Sophia Maria Westenholz (born July 10, 1759 in Neubrandenburg as Eleonore Sophia Maria Fritsch , † October 4, 1838 in Ludwigslust ) was a German singer , pianist and composer .

Life

Sophia Maria Westenholz, b. Fritsch , was the daughter of the Neubrandenburg organist Ferdinand Fritsch and his wife Christina Sophia, b. Lily.

When her father died in 1764, Sophie was almost five years old. Her further life path, which apparently led her to Schwerin, initially remains in the dark. As a child, her talent attracted the attention of the Hereditary Prince Ludwig of Mecklenburg-Schwerin . This took care of her training by his court conductor Johann Wilhelm Hertel . At the age of 17 she was accepted into the court chapel of the Hereditary Prince in Ludwigslust in 1775. On September 12, 1777 she became the second wife of the conductor and tenor of the Ludwigsluster court orchestra Carl August Friedrich Westenholz (1736–1789). His first wife, the Italian singer Lucietta Affabili , had died a year earlier. During the twelve years of their marriage, she had eight children. Her husband bought a glass harmonica for her so that she would have a job in the court chapel even after her voice had dropped.

In 1779 Sophie Westenholz was appointed court singer. In Schwerin and Ludwigslust she had significant successes as a stage and concert singer. At the same time she became a widely acclaimed pianist and glass harmonica player. In 1783 her piano playing “in the Bach style” was highlighted in the Magazin der Musik . After the death of her husband, she continued her career at the court of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. She gave music lessons to the daughters of the ducal family. The Weimar court conductor Ernst Wilhelm Wolf dedicated six sonatinas to her .

Concert tours took her to Berlin (1791, 1804), Lübeck (1793), Rostock (1798), Copenhagen (before 1799), Leipzig (1799), Hamburg (1802, 1803) and Stettin (1804). At least temporarily, and regularly since Antonio Rosetti's death in 1792, she conducted concerts in the court orchestra from the piano as Kapellmeisterin until Louis Massonneau insisted in disparaging fashion in 1811 that she should conduct from the lectern. In 1821 she retired with a pension.

Her son Friedrich (1778–1840) became an oboist at the Berlin court orchestra and composed concert symphonies , songs and piano music. The son Carl Ludwig Cornelius (1788-1854) became a violinist in the Schwerin court orchestra , pianist and composer.

In 2019, Schwerin-based music publisher Edition Masonneau published all of its preserved piano works for the first time, with the support of the Mecklenburg Foundation in cooperation with the Ludwigslust Castle Association.

Works

• Rondo pour le Piano-forte: Oeuvre 1. Werckmeister, Berlin 1806
• Thème avec X Variations pour le Pinao-forte. op. 2. Werckmeister, Berlin undated

Digital copy , Bavarian State Library

• 12 German songs for piano. Op. 4. Werckmeister, Berlin 1806.

Digital copy , Bavarian State Library

• I was lying on green mats. (Text: Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten )
• Works for piano. 2 volumes. Edition Masonneau, Schwerin 2019 ( preface digitized )

literature

• Westenholz, Eleonore Sophie Marie. In: Karl-Josef Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singer lexicon . 4th edition. Volume 7: Suvanny – Zysset. Saur, Munich 2003, ISBN 978-3-598-44088-5 , p. 5026 (accessed online from De Gruyter ).
• Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania. The dictionary of persons . Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-3-356-01301-6 , p. 10762 .
• Matthew Head: Sovereign Feminine: Music and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Germany. 2013, ISBN 978-0-52027384-9 , online: doi : 10.1525 / california / 9780520273849.001.0001 (With a list of the compositions she has survived, pp. 164–167.)
• Ruth Heckmann: Sound composers: On the reception of women composers in Germany around 1800. Springer, Wiesbaden 2016 ISBN 978-3-658-13839-4 , ebook ISBN 9783658138400 , chapter Sophie Westenholz , pp. 223-260

Web links

• Literature about Sophia Maria Westenholz in the state bibliography MV
• Entry to Sophia Maria Westenholz in Kalliope
• Sheet music and audio files by Sophia Maria Westenholz in the International Music Score Library Project
• Entry in the bio-bibliographical database of European female instrumentalists of the 18th and 19th centuries , Sophie Drinker Institute

Individual evidence

1. ↑ in alternating orders and forms Eleonore / a, Sophia / e, Maria / e; the form Sophie Westenholz is the main form of the name she uses most often, also for autographs
2. ↑ Contemporary sources also name forms such as Fritscher , Fritsche or Fritschen for them.
3. ↑ The father, who is said to have also played the organ in Schwerin, was buried on June 24, 1764 in Neubrandenburg. The father's surname can be found in recent church book entries, typically in changing forms. At the baptism on July 13, 1759, Sophie was notarized as H. Organist Fritschen, daughter . If Fritschen is interpreted there as a genitive , the surname could have been Fritsch or Fritsche . Whether a genitive form was actually used in the entry in the church register cannot be determined with certainty. Her death entry names Sophie as born Fritscher . The death entry of the father on June 26, 1764 in the church book in Neubrandenburg reads organist H [err] Fritsche .
4. ↑ The parents had married a few months earlier, on February 26th, 1759 in the St. Marien parish in Neubrandenburg.
5. ↑ Julie Anne Sadie, Rhian Samuel: The Norton / Grove dictionary of women composers (Digitized online by GoogleBooks) 1994 (accessed July 7, 2019).
6. ↑ Quoted from the preface to the 2019 edition, accessed July 7, 2019.
7. ↑ See the discussion The Kapellmeisterin: Title by marriage or also function? in Heckmann (lit.), p. 239ff.
8. ↑ See Matthew Head: Sophie Westenholz and the Eclipse of the Female Sign. Doi : 10.1525 / california / 9780520273849.003.0006
9. ↑ The forgotten musician. In: Schweriner Volkszeitung from July 6, 2019, accessed on July 7, 2019.