Wilhelm Christian Müller

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Wilhelm Christian Muller

Wilhelm Christian Müller (born March  7, 1752 in Wasungen , Saxony - Meiningen , †  July 13, 1831 in Bremen ) was a German music writer, cantor and teacher .

biography

Letters to German friends from a trip through Italy, Saxony, Bohemia and Austria (1824)

Müller's father was a pastor in the Rhön . Müller was married to Anna Maria Müller. Both had two children; the pianist Elise Müller (1782–1849) and the musician Adolph Wilhelm Müller (* 1784).

He was very musical from a young age, but had to study theology at the request of his father. After studying in Göttingen, Müller initially worked as a private tutor in Altona, where he met Joachim Heinrich Campe , who recommended him to the Dessau Philanthropist in 1778 . However, Müller only stayed there for a few months.

In 1778 he moved to Bremen at the instigation of some Bremen merchants, where he initially worked as a private teacher. In 1781 he founded his private educational institute, with which he competed with the municipal high school illustrious in Bremen and the Lutheran Athenaeum at St. Petri Cathedral . In teaching, the traditional humanistic subjects took a back seat to the realities (natural sciences, applied languages). With a school fee of 75 to 80 Reichstalers , only students from better-off families could attend his institution. In 1784 he received the position of music director and cantor at the Athenaeum in Bremen , an upper level of the cathedral school, and after 1803 he was a teacher at the Lyceum that was founded from it. His private educational institute continued to exist, but from 1790 had to limit teaching.

Music played an important role in Müller's educational concept, which, by the way, was heavily influenced by the educational ideas of Joachim Heinrich Campes , Johann Bernhard Basedow and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzis . The regular house concerts at which the musical family played were well known.

In 1803 the Athaneum and the Latin School went to the city of Bremen. From 1805 Müller was cathedral cantor and lyceum teacher in the Bremen service. During his tenure, he prepared the unification of the two high schools in Bremen, which took place in 1817. The Lyceum became the secondary school in Bremen in 1817.

His diverse pedagogical writings show an interdisciplinary orientation of the lessons, which is very practice-oriented despite the appreciation of the theoretical penetration of the matter.

He cannot be classified in any particular educational direction of his time. He is said to have been very spirited, but also a little superficial. In 1807 he wrote the book Attempt at a general pragmatic elementary school about pragmatism . He is said to have had a lot of arguments with the authorities and the trade association. He dealt with Lavater's theory of physiognomics and the teachings of magnetism.

In 1814 he and his daughter Elise visited Goethe in Wiesbaden. He had to close his educational institute in 1814 after much criticism. In 1815 father and daughter as well as the composer and cathedral organist Wilhelm Friedrich Riem were involved in founding a Bremen Singing Academy. In 1817 he also gave up his office at the cathedral. He now devoted himself to music and took a trip to Austria and Italy (letters from Italy) . On this trip, which he undertook with his daughter Elise, he arrived in Vienna on October 3, 1820, where he met Ludwig van Beethoven several times . After the visit, the Müller and Beethoven wrote more often. In the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung on May 23, 1827 he published an essay with personal memories of Beethoven. During the trip in 1820/21 there were also encounters with Andreas Streicher , Nannette Streicher in Vienna and Gioachino Rossini in Naples.

Then he retired from public life. He was working on an introduction to the science of music .

Works

  • Message from my educational institute , Bremen 1787
  • Lecture on two important educational improvements , ibid. 1791
  • An attempt at a history of musical culture in Bremen. In: Hanseatisches Magazin 3, 1801, 111–168
  • Experiences with Pestalozzi's teaching method , ibid. 1804
  • Bremen Society Songbook , ibid. 1807/08
  • Attempt at a general pragmatic elementary school , 2 vol., Ibid. 1807 and 1809
  • Paris at its apex or a fleeting journey through hospitals and battlefields to the glories of France's ruling state in August 1815 , 2 vols., Ibid. 1816 a. 1818.
  • Letters from Italy to German friends ; 2 volumes, 1820
  • Flight from the North Sea to Montblanc, through Westphalia, Lower Rhine, Swabia, Switzerland, via Baiern, Franconia, Lower Saxony back: Sketch for the painting of our time , Altona 1821
  • Aesthetic-historical introduction to the science of music , Leipzig 1830,

literature

  • Friedrich Wellmann: The Bremen Cathedral Cantor Dr. Wilhelm Christian Müller. A contribution to the music and cultural history of Bremen . In: Bremisches Jahrbuch 25, Bremen 1914, pp. 1–137.
  • Klaus Blum: Music lovers and Musici. Musical life in Bremen since the Enlightenment ; Tutzing 1975.
  • Oliver Rosteck: Wilhelm Friedrich Riem , the Singakademie [Bremen] and the Bach reception in the first half of the 19th century ; In: Classicism in Bremen. Forms of bourgeois culture, Yearbook of Wittheit 1993/94, Bremen 1994, pp. 209–212.
  • Oliver Rosteck: A vain and dull art that is paired with idleness and doing nothing. In: Bremer Jb. Für Musikkultur 3, 1997, pp. 162–172.
  • Oliver Rosteck: Music history of Bremen from the Reformation to the middle of the 18th century. , Lilienthal 1999.
  • Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
  • Christian Kämpf: "The cantor, pedagogue and writer Wilhelm Christian Müller in the social networks of his time between the Late Enlightenment and Biedermeier", in: Yearbook of the Hennebergisch-Franconian History Association , vol. XXVIII, Leipzig a. Hildburghausen 2013, pp. 133-150.
  • Wilhelm Christian Müller. Contributions to the music and cultural history of Bremen around 1800 , ed. v. Christian Kämpf, Bremen 2016, ISBN 978-3944552880 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Klaus Martin Kopitz , Rainer Cadenbach (Ed.) And a .: Beethoven from the point of view of his contemporaries in diaries, letters, poems and memories. Volume 2: Lachner - Zmeskall. Edited by the Beethoven Research Center at the Berlin University of the Arts. Henle, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-87328-120-2 , pp. 600-613.
  2. ↑ online at the SuUB Bremen: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:gbv:46:1-1215
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Wilhelm Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German music writer, cantor and teacher
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1752
PLACE OF BIRTH Wasungen , Saxony-Meiningen
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1831
Place of death Bremen