Wilhelm Altenburg

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Wilhelm Altenburg (born April 27, 1835 in Bonn ; † November 24, 1914 in Würzburg ) was a German high school teacher and specialist in musical instrument making who wrote many articles for the Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau (ZfI).

Altenburg studied at the University of Bonn : first law with Friedrich Dahlmann , then German (with Karl Simrock ), Romance studies (with Friedrich Diez , Charles Monnard ), as well as art history (with Anton Springer ) and archeology (with Otto Jahn ).

He then taught at secondary schools and grammar schools in the Rhineland, played the flute in the city orchestra in Essen and learned other woodwind instruments (including oboe and clarinet). It was not until 1889 that his publications on instrument science appeared; the subject of the first article was the saxophones and sarrusophones . He deepened his knowledge while traveling by visiting the manufacturers (manufacturers or factories) of string and wind instruments. After his retirement in 1899, Altenburg moved from Eupen to Würzburg .

Title page of Wilhelm Altenburg's book "The Clarinet" (1904)

According to Albert R. Rice, Altenburg's book “The Clarinet” was the first scientific description of the clarinet family, but it contains many errors.

Many innovations in woodwind instruments were announced by Wilhelm Altenburg in the Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau, he reported on the Heckelphone and the Schmidt-Kolbe clarinet. In total, he wrote almost 100 articles for this magazine.

Fonts (selection)

Music history:

  • The clarinet. Their origin and development up to the present time, in acoustic, technical and musical relation , Verlag CF Schmidt, Heilbronn, 1904
  • To the knowledge of the saxophone and the Sarrusophone , ZfI, Volume 9, 1888/89, pp. 417-420 online
  • Schreiber's Boehm flute with G sharp action, ZfI, Volume 23, 1902/03, pp. 86–87
  • The "Heckelphone", a new wind instrument , ZfI, Volume 28, 1907/08, pp. 554–557
  • New advances in clarinet making, ZfI, Volume 28, 1907/08, pp. 324–326
  • Material and sound for wind instruments; the so-called “blowing in” and “blowing out” , ZfI, Volume 31, 1910/11, pp. 458–461 and pp. 491–494

Philology and Geography:

  • Kursaal Maloja in the Upper Engadine and its surroundings , Orell-Füssli, Zurich, 1890
  • (with August Tonnar and Wilhelm Evers): Dictionary of the Eupen language, with comparative language explanations by Wilhelm Altenburg, Carl Braselmann, Eupen, 1899

literature

  • Wilhelm Altenburg † (obituary), ZfI, Volume 35, 1914/15, pp. 84–85 online
  • Albert R. Rice: The Baroque Clarinet , Oxford University Press (Early Music Series, Volume 13), 1992
  • Gunther Joppig: Wilhelm Altenburg on his 175th birthday , 'rohrblatt, 2010, pp. 70–73

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rice (see literature), foreword: “The first scholarly investigation, by Wilhelm Altenburg, appeared in 1904. Many statements from his book, which were later shown to be erroneous, continue to reappear in some of the most recent studies. Altenburg also wrote several specialized articles concerning the clarinet in the Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau which are still valuable in their content. "
  2. ↑ A list of the contributions is contained in the article by Gunther Joppig.
personal data
SURNAME Altenburg, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German music historian
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1835
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1914
Place of death Wurzburg