WEIMAR and THURINGIA – Travel guide for opera, classical music and culture
WEIMAR and THURINGIA: a travel guide for music fans
Visit destinations for classical music and opera art with a historical connection. Get to know exciting ideas and background information
MAP OF THE DESTINATIONS OF THE TRAVEL GUIDE REGION WEIMAR AND THURINGIA
Zoom in for destinations in the THURINGIA region:
Johann Sebastian Bach
Thuringia was, next to Saxony / Leipzig, the central site of his work
Bach lived and worked in various places in Thuringia
Erfurt: ancestral home of the Bach family
Johann Sebastian Bach never lived in Erfurt, but often visited the place for family celebrations.
However, Erfurt can justifiably be called the cradle of the Bach family. More than 150 baptisms, weddings and funerals are recorded in the Kaufmannskirche, where Luther, among others, had preached. Johann Sebastian Bach’s parents were also married in this church. After their marriage they moved to Eisenach.
Youth and first professional years in Eisenach and surroundings
Bach’s parents moved from Erfurt to EISENSTADT, where his father was the town piper and responsible for church music, among other things. Bach was born here and was the youngest of 8 children. The family’s home on what is now Lutherstrasse no longer stands. Bach came into contact with music at an early age and was encouraged. When he was 8 years old, his mother died. His father married a widow, but soon after he too died. Johann Sebastian had become an orphan at the age of 8 and he moved with one of his brothers to his older brother Johann Christian in Orhdruf.
The latter was an organist there and had acquired his craft from Johann Pachelbel, among others. Thus Johann Sebastian received sound instruction from him. The small town of OHRDRUF had an excellent lyceum, where Bach, thanks to his tireless diligence, graduated with outstanding grades that entitled him to study at university. Because his brother’s household had grown, he now had to stand on his own two feet. Together with his school friend Georg Erdmann, who was two years his senior, the 15-year-old decided to make the 300-kilometer journey to Arnstadt.
3 years later Bach returns to the area. In ARNSTADT he becomes organist of the new Bonifatius Church. He is well paid and composes many of his works for organ here. He begins to build his reputation as an organist, once even being called to Weimar to test an organ. Bach’s reputation for not being an easy man becomes apparent in Arnstadt. He is constantly in conflict with the city council, which accuses him of neglecting his duties. In addition, he is often involved in fights with musicians and choir singers. He undertakes a trip to Lübeck to visit Buxtehude. The stay is a revelation for Bach. Bach is dissatisfied with the ability of the singers in the small town and so he decides to apply for the well-paid position of cathedral organist in Mulhouse. He passes the audition and in 1707 moves to Mühlhausen, 80 km to the north.
In MÜHLHAUSEN he rises in the hierarchy and becomes Kapellmeister of the church St. Blasii. The position is well paid and he can even supplement his salary by serving in secondary churches. Now he marries his love from Arnstadt Maria Barbara Bach, who will give birth to seven children, including the important composer Carl Philipp Emanuel. In 1707 a catastrophic town fire occurred in Mulhouse, destroying 300 houses, the fourth in 50 years. The city government was forced to raise taxes and the cost of living increased for Bach. When he traveled to Weimar for the completion of a renovation of the organ there, the prince offered him a job with a high salary. Bach accepted and announced his resignation from Mühlhausen after only one year.
Private happiness in Weimar – but Bach finally ends up in jail
Bach found his private happiness in Weimar, and six children were born, including Carl Philip Emanuel and Christian Friedemann, both of whom became famous musicians in their own right. However, two of the children, the twins Maria and Johann, died shortly after birth.
When Bach came to Weimar from Mulhouse in 1708, it was a reunion, for he had been acquainted with the city five years earlier. It was ruled by two princes, Wilhelm and Johann, both of whom were music lovers. Wilhelm was strictly Catholic and promoted church music to the best of his ability. For the first time, Bach had access to a professional orchestra and he composed 20 cantatas. Johann played music himself and promoted secular concert music, so Bach was able to work both styles of music.
Bach met Paul von Westhoff, who was also employed at court and lived in the same house as Bach. Bach improved his violin playing with the help of the violin virtuoso and wrote many of his works for violin here, including the Partita in D minor. Likewise, many of his harpsichord works were written here.
Much to Bach’s chagrin, he was subordinate to both the directors of concert music and court music. His position as court organist and concertmaster was very well paid, earning more than his two superiors, but he was an employee of the court and thus, as a lackey, not a free man, which was to be his undoing. When the Kapellmeister died, Bach was passed over and subsequently accepted an offer from the prince in Köthen without asking permission from the Weimar princes. When the Weimar prince Wilhelm was informed of this, he summarily had his lackey Bach stewed in his own juice in the dungeon (for more see the destination Torbau). In 1707, after a month in jail, Bach left Weimar for Köthen as a man with a criminal record.
TO THE COMPLETE BACH BIOGRAPHY
Johannes Brahms
Connection to the Prince and the Meiningen Orchestra
The Meiningen orchestra was one of the best in Europe at the end of the 19th century. The arts-minded sovereign George II, known as the “Theater Duke,” promoted the arts and Hans von Bülow led it to its greatest flowering from 1880. The two passionately championed Brahms’ work and the composer conducted the orchestra several times in Meiningen and on tours. In all, Brahms spent about 100 days in Meiningen.
The Duke made the orchestra available for so-called workshops and thus Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto had its non-public premiere here. As the culmination of the Meiningen connection to Brahms, the court theater was the premiere site of his 4th Symphony, conducted by the composer himself. This symphony, composed in Mürzzuschlag, has a prominent significance in music history; it was Brahms’ last symphony and perhaps the last of the Classical symphonies of the type founded more than 100 years earlier by Haydn.
Interestingly, Brahms’ potential successor was present in Meiningen, for it was during these years that Brahms met Richard Strauss in Meiningen, who would become Kapellmeister in Meiningen in 1885 as von Bulow’s successor. Brahms is also said to have conceded to Strauss a ” Quite pretty, young man” to his F minor symphony (which, from Brahms’ mouth, was a compliment). Strauss until then a Brahmsian became in that year under the influence of the concertmaster Ritter Wagnerian and switched from the symphony to the form of the symphonic poem.
Brahms later wrote four works for clarinet for the brilliant clarinetist of the Meiningen Orchestra, Richard Mühlfeld.
ZU DER VOLLSTÄNDIGEN BIOGRAFIE VON BRAHMS
Franz Liszt
Liszt found time for composing here
Weimar was one of the most important stations in Liszt’s life. From 1842 until his death in 1886, Weimar was his temporary and partial center of life. Liszt’s connection to Weimar began in 1841 with a concert at which the music-loving Princess Anna Pavlova was able to recruit Liszt for an extraordinary position as Kapellmeister at the court theater. In a side trip to Dresden, he heard Wagner’s Rienzi and got to know the composer. The visits to Weimar remained sporadic, however, and only after Liszt met Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein in 1847 did Liszt settle with her in Weimar as a regular Kapellmeister and they moved to the Altenburg, where his most productive composing activity began, which lasted for 12 years in relative seclusion and culminated in his Piano Sonata in B Minor. It was here that Richard Wagner visited him in 1849 on his flight from Dresden, during which Liszt helped him to escape on to Zurich. A year later, the premiere of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” took place at the court theater in Weimar, conducted by Liszt, with the composer absent, stuck in exile in Zurich.
He made Weimar an artistic center with international appeal
Liszt became involved with many composers at the court theater, the most frequently performed remaining Wagner with 36 performances, whom he also privately supported financially. Liszt worked in Weimar as a piano padägoge later famous musicians. Hans von Bülow, Emil von Sauer, Carl Tausig, Peter Cornelius and many others were often in Weimar with Liszt. Because his wife had inherited richly, Liszt was able to forgo a fee, and many of the students became a conspiratorial group that formed the core of the New Germans (in later rivalry with the traditionalists around Brahms and Hanslick). In 1859 Liszt left the Kapellmeister post when the performance of the “Barber of Bagdad” was hissed out.
Beginning in 1869, he returned to Weimar during the summer months, where the prince made a floor available to him in the residential building of the court nursery. Here Liszt devoted his time to the many students who visited him.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Goethe connection
In 1821, 12-year-old Felix Mendelssohn and his patron Zelter visited the poet prince at his home in Weimar. Zelter had been a friend of Goethe’s since 1802 and one of his few close friends. He had already announced the young Felix by letter (the text of which had an anti-Semitic tone that was probably common at the time). Ludwig Rellstab witnessed the meeting and reported how Mendelssohn enraptured the old Goethe.
First, Mendelssohn played a piano quartet of his own composition with three other musicians. Then he had to solve various tasks with improvisations and from sight-reading, which the young boy solved with bravura. And at the end he took out of a pack an autograph of a Beethoven composition with the almost illegible scrawl of the composer, which Mendelssohn played flawlessly from the sheet.
The child prodigy Mendelssohn reminded Goethe of Mozart
Goethe, then 12 years old, had heard the 9-year-old Mozart 58 years earlier on the latter’s Wunderkind Reise in Frankfurt and compared Mendelssohn to Mozart. Goethe was so enthusiastic that he invited Mendelssohn to stay for a while, and this turned into 16 days until Mendelssohn returned to Berlin. The two disparate people remained on friendly terms until Goethe’s death, three further meetings took place and a lively correspondence testifies to the warm affection of the two.
TO THE COMPLETE MENDELSSOHN BIOGRAPHY
The young Felix Mendelssohn:
Richard Wagner
Wagner’s reference to Thuringia is only fragmentary. Flight and premiere in Weimar, as well as Wartburg Castle as the setting of his Tannhäuser are the reference points to Wagner’s biography.
Franz Liszt becomes an important supporter in Weimar
Wagner fled to Liszt in Weimar in 1849 when he was wanted by a warrant. Liszt generously helped him with shelter and money for the journey to Zurich and promised him to perform his “Lohengrin” planned for Dresden. Thus, in 1850, the Weimar Court Theater became the premiere venue for this romantic opera by the wanted Wagner.
Wartburg – place of longing
Richard Wagner was in Eisenach several times. The first time in 1842 and the second time in 1849 on his escape from Dresden. He always visited Wartburg Castle, even involuntarily in 1872, because he briefly got off on transit and then the train left without him. Naturally, because of Luther’s Wartburg Castle, which became the setting for his Tannhäuser, the city took on an important significance for Wagner, and he showed it to Cosima and Siegfried in 1879 on the occasion of his last visit to Eisenach.
LINK TO THE COMPLETE WAGNER BIOGRAPHY
Johann Sebastian Bach
Thuringia was, next to Saxony / Leipzig, the central site of his work
Bach lived and worked in various places in Thuringia
Erfurt: ancestral home of the Bach family
Johann Sebastian Bach never lived in Erfurt, but often visited the place for family celebrations.
However, Erfurt can justifiably be called the cradle of the Bach family. More than 150 baptisms, weddings and funerals are recorded in the Kaufmannskirche, where Luther, among others, had preached. Johann Sebastian Bach’s parents were also married in this church. After their marriage they moved to Eisenach.
Youth and first professional years in Eisenach and surroundings
Bach’s parents moved from Erfurt to EISENSTADT, where his father was the town piper and responsible for church music, among other things. Bach was born here and was the youngest of 8 children. The family’s home on what is now Lutherstrasse no longer stands. Bach came into contact with music at an early age and was encouraged. When he was 8 years old, his mother died. His father married a widow, but soon after he too died. Johann Sebastian had become an orphan at the age of 8 and he moved with one of his brothers to his older brother Johann Christian in Orhdruf.
The latter was an organist there and had acquired his craft from Johann Pachelbel, among others. Thus Johann Sebastian received sound instruction from him. The small town of OHRDRUF had an excellent lyceum, where Bach, thanks to his tireless diligence, graduated with outstanding grades that entitled him to study at university. Because his brother’s household had grown, he now had to stand on his own two feet. Together with his school friend Georg Erdmann, who was two years his senior, the 15-year-old decided to make the 300-kilometer journey to Arnstadt.
3 years later Bach returns to the area. In ARNSTADT he becomes organist of the new Bonifatius Church. He is well paid and composes many of his works for organ here. He begins to build his reputation as an organist, once even being called to Weimar to test an organ. Bach’s reputation for not being an easy man becomes apparent in Arnstadt. He is constantly in conflict with the city council, which accuses him of neglecting his duties. In addition, he is often involved in fights with musicians and choir singers. He undertakes a trip to Lübeck to visit Buxtehude. The stay is a revelation for Bach. Bach is dissatisfied with the ability of the singers in the small town and so he decides to apply for the well-paid position of cathedral organist in Mulhouse. He passes the audition and in 1707 moves to Mühlhausen, 80 km to the north.
In MÜHLHAUSEN he rises in the hierarchy and becomes Kapellmeister of the church St. Blasii. The position is well paid and he can even supplement his salary by serving in secondary churches. Now he marries his love from Arnstadt Maria Barbara Bach, who will give birth to seven children, including the important composer Carl Philipp Emanuel. In 1707 a catastrophic town fire occurred in Mulhouse, destroying 300 houses, the fourth in 50 years. The city government was forced to raise taxes and the cost of living increased for Bach. When he traveled to Weimar for the completion of a renovation of the organ there, the prince offered him a job with a high salary. Bach accepted and announced his resignation from Mühlhausen after only one year.
Private happiness in Weimar – but Bach finally ends up in jail
Bach found his private happiness in Weimar, and six children were born, including Carl Philip Emanuel and Christian Friedemann, both of whom became famous musicians in their own right. However, two of the children, the twins Maria and Johann, died shortly after birth.
When Bach came to Weimar from Mulhouse in 1708, it was a reunion, for he had been acquainted with the city five years earlier. It was ruled by two princes, Wilhelm and Johann, both of whom were music lovers. Wilhelm was strictly Catholic and promoted church music to the best of his ability. For the first time, Bach had access to a professional orchestra and he composed 20 cantatas. Johann played music himself and promoted secular concert music, so Bach was able to work both styles of music.
Bach met Paul von Westhoff, who was also employed at court and lived in the same house as Bach. Bach improved his violin playing with the help of the violin virtuoso and wrote many of his works for violin here, including the Partita in D minor. Likewise, many of his harpsichord works were written here.
Much to Bach’s chagrin, he was subordinate to both the directors of concert music and court music. His position as court organist and concertmaster was very well paid, earning more than his two superiors, but he was an employee of the court and thus, as a lackey, not a free man, which was to be his undoing. When the Kapellmeister died, Bach was passed over and subsequently accepted an offer from the prince in Köthen without asking permission from the Weimar princes. When the Weimar prince Wilhelm was informed of this, he summarily had his lackey Bach stewed in his own juice in the dungeon (for more see the destination Torbau). In 1707, after a month in jail, Bach left Weimar for Köthen as a man with a criminal record.
TO THE COMPLETE BACH BIOGRAPHY
Johannes Brahms
Connection to the Prince and the Meiningen Orchestra
The Meiningen orchestra was one of the best in Europe at the end of the 19th century. The arts-minded sovereign George II, known as the “Theater Duke,” promoted the arts and Hans von Bülow led it to its greatest flowering from 1880. The two passionately championed Brahms’ work and the composer conducted the orchestra several times in Meiningen and on tours. In all, Brahms spent about 100 days in Meiningen.
The Duke made the orchestra available for so-called workshops and thus Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto had its non-public premiere here. As the culmination of the Meiningen connection to Brahms, the court theater was the premiere site of his 4th Symphony, conducted by the composer himself. This symphony, composed in Mürzzuschlag, has a prominent significance in music history; it was Brahms’ last symphony and perhaps the last of the Classical symphonies of the type founded more than 100 years earlier by Haydn.
Interestingly, Brahms’ potential successor was present in Meiningen, for it was during these years that Brahms met Richard Strauss in Meiningen, who would become Kapellmeister in Meiningen in 1885 as von Bulow’s successor. Brahms is also said to have conceded to Strauss a ” Quite pretty, young man” to his F minor symphony (which, from Brahms’ mouth, was a compliment). Strauss until then a Brahmsian became in that year under the influence of the concertmaster Ritter Wagnerian and switched from the symphony to the form of the symphonic poem.
Brahms later wrote four works for clarinet for the brilliant clarinetist of the Meiningen Orchestra, Richard Mühlfeld.
ZU DER VOLLSTÄNDIGEN BIOGRAFIE VON BRAHMS
Franz Liszt
Liszt found time for composing here
Weimar was one of the most important stations in Liszt’s life. From 1842 until his death in 1886, Weimar was his temporary and partial center of life. Liszt’s connection to Weimar began in 1841 with a concert at which the music-loving Princess Anna Pavlova was able to recruit Liszt for an extraordinary position as Kapellmeister at the court theater. In a side trip to Dresden, he heard Wagner’s Rienzi and got to know the composer. The visits to Weimar remained sporadic, however, and only after Liszt met Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein in 1847 did Liszt settle with her in Weimar as a regular Kapellmeister and they moved to the Altenburg, where his most productive composing activity began, which lasted for 12 years in relative seclusion and culminated in his Piano Sonata in B Minor. It was here that Richard Wagner visited him in 1849 on his flight from Dresden, during which Liszt helped him to escape on to Zurich. A year later, the premiere of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” took place at the court theater in Weimar, conducted by Liszt, with the composer absent, stuck in exile in Zurich.
He made Weimar an artistic center with international appeal
Liszt became involved with many composers at the court theater, the most frequently performed remaining Wagner with 36 performances, whom he also privately supported financially. Liszt worked in Weimar as a piano padägoge later famous musicians. Hans von Bülow, Emil von Sauer, Carl Tausig, Peter Cornelius and many others were often in Weimar with Liszt. Because his wife had inherited richly, Liszt was able to forgo a fee, and many of the students became a conspiratorial group that formed the core of the New Germans (in later rivalry with the traditionalists around Brahms and Hanslick). In 1859 Liszt left the Kapellmeister post when the performance of the “Barber of Bagdad” was hissed out.
Beginning in 1869, he returned to Weimar during the summer months, where the prince made a floor available to him in the residential building of the court nursery. Here Liszt devoted his time to the many students who visited him.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Goethe connection
In 1821, 12-year-old Felix Mendelssohn and his patron Zelter visited the poet prince at his home in Weimar. Zelter had been a friend of Goethe’s since 1802 and one of his few close friends. He had already announced the young Felix by letter (the text of which had an anti-Semitic tone that was probably common at the time). Ludwig Rellstab witnessed the meeting and reported how Mendelssohn enraptured the old Goethe.
First, Mendelssohn played a piano quartet of his own composition with three other musicians. Then he had to solve various tasks with improvisations and from sight-reading, which the young boy solved with bravura. And at the end he took out of a pack an autograph of a Beethoven composition with the almost illegible scrawl of the composer, which Mendelssohn played flawlessly from the sheet.
The child prodigy Mendelssohn reminded Goethe of Mozart
Goethe, then 12 years old, had heard the 9-year-old Mozart 58 years earlier on the latter’s Wunderkind Reise in Frankfurt and compared Mendelssohn to Mozart. Goethe was so enthusiastic that he invited Mendelssohn to stay for a while, and this turned into 16 days until Mendelssohn returned to Berlin. The two disparate people remained on friendly terms until Goethe’s death, three further meetings took place and a lively correspondence testifies to the warm affection of the two.
TO THE COMPLETE MENDELSSOHN BIOGRAPHY
The young Felix Mendelssohn:
Richard Wagner
Wagner’s reference to Thuringia is only fragmentary. Flight and premiere in Weimar, as well as Wartburg Castle as the setting of his Tannhäuser are the reference points to Wagner’s biography.
Franz Liszt becomes an important supporter in Weimar
Wagner fled to Liszt in Weimar in 1849 when he was wanted by a warrant. Liszt generously helped him with shelter and money for the journey to Zurich and promised him to perform his “Lohengrin” planned for Dresden. Thus, in 1850, the Weimar Court Theater became the premiere venue for this romantic opera by the wanted Wagner.
Wartburg – place of longing
Richard Wagner was in Eisenach several times. The first time in 1842 and the second time in 1849 on his escape from Dresden. He always visited Wartburg Castle, even involuntarily in 1872, because he briefly got off on transit and then the train left without him. Naturally, because of Luther’s Wartburg Castle, which became the setting for his Tannhäuser, the city took on an important significance for Wagner, and he showed it to Cosima and Siegfried in 1879 on the occasion of his last visit to Eisenach.
LINK TO THE COMPLETE WAGNER BIOGRAPHY
Johann Sebastian Bach
Thuringia was, next to Saxony / Leipzig, the central site of his work
Bach lived and worked in various places in Thuringia
Erfurt: ancestral home of the Bach family
Johann Sebastian Bach never lived in Erfurt, but often visited the place for family celebrations.
However, Erfurt can justifiably be called the cradle of the Bach family. More than 150 baptisms, weddings and funerals are recorded in the Kaufmannskirche, where Luther, among others, had preached. Johann Sebastian Bach’s parents were also married in this church. After their marriage they moved to Eisenach.
Youth and first professional years in Eisenach and surroundings
Bach’s parents moved from Erfurt to EISENSTADT, where his father was the town piper and responsible for church music, among other things. Bach was born here and was the youngest of 8 children. The family’s home on what is now Lutherstrasse no longer stands. Bach came into contact with music at an early age and was encouraged. When he was 8 years old, his mother died. His father married a widow, but soon after he too died. Johann Sebastian had become an orphan at the age of 8 and he moved with one of his brothers to his older brother Johann Christian in Orhdruf.
The latter was an organist there and had acquired his craft from Johann Pachelbel, among others. Thus Johann Sebastian received sound instruction from him. The small town of OHRDRUF had an excellent lyceum, where Bach, thanks to his tireless diligence, graduated with outstanding grades that entitled him to study at university. Because his brother’s household had grown, he now had to stand on his own two feet. Together with his school friend Georg Erdmann, who was two years his senior, the 15-year-old decided to make the 300-kilometer journey to Arnstadt.
3 years later Bach returns to the area. In ARNSTADT he becomes organist of the new Bonifatius Church. He is well paid and composes many of his works for organ here. He begins to build his reputation as an organist, once even being called to Weimar to test an organ. Bach’s reputation for not being an easy man becomes apparent in Arnstadt. He is constantly in conflict with the city council, which accuses him of neglecting his duties. In addition, he is often involved in fights with musicians and choir singers. He undertakes a trip to Lübeck to visit Buxtehude. The stay is a revelation for Bach. Bach is dissatisfied with the ability of the singers in the small town and so he decides to apply for the well-paid position of cathedral organist in Mulhouse. He passes the audition and in 1707 moves to Mühlhausen, 80 km to the north.
In MÜHLHAUSEN he rises in the hierarchy and becomes Kapellmeister of the church St. Blasii. The position is well paid and he can even supplement his salary by serving in secondary churches. Now he marries his love from Arnstadt Maria Barbara Bach, who will give birth to seven children, including the important composer Carl Philipp Emanuel. In 1707 a catastrophic town fire occurred in Mulhouse, destroying 300 houses, the fourth in 50 years. The city government was forced to raise taxes and the cost of living increased for Bach. When he traveled to Weimar for the completion of a renovation of the organ there, the prince offered him a job with a high salary. Bach accepted and announced his resignation from Mühlhausen after only one year.
Private happiness in Weimar – but Bach finally ends up in jail
Bach found his private happiness in Weimar, and six children were born, including Carl Philip Emanuel and Christian Friedemann, both of whom became famous musicians in their own right. However, two of the children, the twins Maria and Johann, died shortly after birth.
When Bach came to Weimar from Mulhouse in 1708, it was a reunion, for he had been acquainted with the city five years earlier. It was ruled by two princes, Wilhelm and Johann, both of whom were music lovers. Wilhelm was strictly Catholic and promoted church music to the best of his ability. For the first time, Bach had access to a professional orchestra and he composed 20 cantatas. Johann played music himself and promoted secular concert music, so Bach was able to work both styles of music.
Bach met Paul von Westhoff, who was also employed at court and lived in the same house as Bach. Bach improved his violin playing with the help of the violin virtuoso and wrote many of his works for violin here, including the Partita in D minor. Likewise, many of his harpsichord works were written here.
Much to Bach’s chagrin, he was subordinate to both the directors of concert music and court music. His position as court organist and concertmaster was very well paid, earning more than his two superiors, but he was an employee of the court and thus, as a lackey, not a free man, which was to be his undoing. When the Kapellmeister died, Bach was passed over and subsequently accepted an offer from the prince in Köthen without asking permission from the Weimar princes. When the Weimar prince Wilhelm was informed of this, he summarily had his lackey Bach stewed in his own juice in the dungeon (for more see the destination Torbau). In 1707, after a month in jail, Bach left Weimar for Köthen as a man with a criminal record.
TO THE COMPLETE BACH BIOGRAPHY
Johannes Brahms
Connection to the Prince and the Meiningen Orchestra
The Meiningen orchestra was one of the best in Europe at the end of the 19th century. The arts-minded sovereign George II, known as the “Theater Duke,” promoted the arts and Hans von Bülow led it to its greatest flowering from 1880. The two passionately championed Brahms’ work and the composer conducted the orchestra several times in Meiningen and on tours. In all, Brahms spent about 100 days in Meiningen.
The Duke made the orchestra available for so-called workshops and thus Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto had its non-public premiere here. As the culmination of the Meiningen connection to Brahms, the court theater was the premiere site of his 4th Symphony, conducted by the composer himself. This symphony, composed in Mürzzuschlag, has a prominent significance in music history; it was Brahms’ last symphony and perhaps the last of the Classical symphonies of the type founded more than 100 years earlier by Haydn.
Interestingly, Brahms’ potential successor was present in Meiningen, for it was during these years that Brahms met Richard Strauss in Meiningen, who would become Kapellmeister in Meiningen in 1885 as von Bulow’s successor. Brahms is also said to have conceded to Strauss a ” Quite pretty, young man” to his F minor symphony (which, from Brahms’ mouth, was a compliment). Strauss until then a Brahmsian became in that year under the influence of the concertmaster Ritter Wagnerian and switched from the symphony to the form of the symphonic poem.
Brahms later wrote four works for clarinet for the brilliant clarinetist of the Meiningen Orchestra, Richard Mühlfeld.
ZU DER VOLLSTÄNDIGEN BIOGRAFIE VON BRAHMS
Franz Liszt
Liszt found time for composing here
Weimar was one of the most important stations in Liszt’s life. From 1842 until his death in 1886, Weimar was his temporary and partial center of life. Liszt’s connection to Weimar began in 1841 with a concert at which the music-loving Princess Anna Pavlova was able to recruit Liszt for an extraordinary position as Kapellmeister at the court theater. In a side trip to Dresden, he heard Wagner’s Rienzi and got to know the composer. The visits to Weimar remained sporadic, however, and only after Liszt met Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein in 1847 did Liszt settle with her in Weimar as a regular Kapellmeister and they moved to the Altenburg, where his most productive composing activity began, which lasted for 12 years in relative seclusion and culminated in his Piano Sonata in B Minor. It was here that Richard Wagner visited him in 1849 on his flight from Dresden, during which Liszt helped him to escape on to Zurich. A year later, the premiere of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” took place at the court theater in Weimar, conducted by Liszt, with the composer absent, stuck in exile in Zurich.
He made Weimar an artistic center with international appeal
Liszt became involved with many composers at the court theater, the most frequently performed remaining Wagner with 36 performances, whom he also privately supported financially. Liszt worked in Weimar as a piano padägoge later famous musicians. Hans von Bülow, Emil von Sauer, Carl Tausig, Peter Cornelius and many others were often in Weimar with Liszt. Because his wife had inherited richly, Liszt was able to forgo a fee, and many of the students became a conspiratorial group that formed the core of the New Germans (in later rivalry with the traditionalists around Brahms and Hanslick). In 1859 Liszt left the Kapellmeister post when the performance of the “Barber of Bagdad” was hissed out.
Beginning in 1869, he returned to Weimar during the summer months, where the prince made a floor available to him in the residential building of the court nursery. Here Liszt devoted his time to the many students who visited him.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Goethe connection
In 1821, 12-year-old Felix Mendelssohn and his patron Zelter visited the poet prince at his home in Weimar. Zelter had been a friend of Goethe’s since 1802 and one of his few close friends. He had already announced the young Felix by letter (the text of which had an anti-Semitic tone that was probably common at the time). Ludwig Rellstab witnessed the meeting and reported how Mendelssohn enraptured the old Goethe.
First, Mendelssohn played a piano quartet of his own composition with three other musicians. Then he had to solve various tasks with improvisations and from sight-reading, which the young boy solved with bravura. And at the end he took out of a pack an autograph of a Beethoven composition with the almost illegible scrawl of the composer, which Mendelssohn played flawlessly from the sheet.
The child prodigy Mendelssohn reminded Goethe of Mozart
Goethe, then 12 years old, had heard the 9-year-old Mozart 58 years earlier on the latter’s Wunderkind Reise in Frankfurt and compared Mendelssohn to Mozart. Goethe was so enthusiastic that he invited Mendelssohn to stay for a while, and this turned into 16 days until Mendelssohn returned to Berlin. The two disparate people remained on friendly terms until Goethe’s death, three further meetings took place and a lively correspondence testifies to the warm affection of the two.
TO THE COMPLETE MENDELSSOHN BIOGRAPHY
The young Felix Mendelssohn:
Richard Wagner
Wagner’s reference to Thuringia is only fragmentary. Flight and premiere in Weimar, as well as Wartburg Castle as the setting of his Tannhäuser are the reference points to Wagner’s biography.
Franz Liszt becomes an important supporter in Weimar
Wagner fled to Liszt in Weimar in 1849 when he was wanted by a warrant. Liszt generously helped him with shelter and money for the journey to Zurich and promised him to perform his “Lohengrin” planned for Dresden. Thus, in 1850, the Weimar Court Theater became the premiere venue for this romantic opera by the wanted Wagner.
Wartburg – place of longing
Richard Wagner was in Eisenach several times. The first time in 1842 and the second time in 1849 on his escape from Dresden. He always visited Wartburg Castle, even involuntarily in 1872, because he briefly got off on transit and then the train left without him. Naturally, because of Luther’s Wartburg Castle, which became the setting for his Tannhäuser, the city took on an important significance for Wagner, and he showed it to Cosima and Siegfried in 1879 on the occasion of his last visit to Eisenach.
LINK TO THE COMPLETE WAGNER BIOGRAPHY
MUSEUMS
Johann Sebastian Bach
Thuringia was, next to Saxony / Leipzig, the central site of his work
Bach lived and worked in various places in Thuringia
Erfurt: ancestral home of the Bach family
Johann Sebastian Bach never lived in Erfurt, but often visited the place for family celebrations.
However, Erfurt can justifiably be called the cradle of the Bach family. More than 150 baptisms, weddings and funerals are recorded in the Kaufmannskirche, where Luther, among others, had preached. Johann Sebastian Bach’s parents were also married in this church. After their marriage they moved to Eisenach.
Youth and first professional years in Eisenach and surroundings
Bach’s parents moved from Erfurt to EISENSTADT, where his father was the town piper and responsible for church music, among other things. Bach was born here and was the youngest of 8 children. The family’s home on what is now Lutherstrasse no longer stands. Bach came into contact with music at an early age and was encouraged. When he was 8 years old, his mother died. His father married a widow, but soon after he too died. Johann Sebastian had become an orphan at the age of 8 and he moved with one of his brothers to his older brother Johann Christian in Orhdruf.
The latter was an organist there and had acquired his craft from Johann Pachelbel, among others. Thus Johann Sebastian received sound instruction from him. The small town of OHRDRUF had an excellent lyceum, where Bach, thanks to his tireless diligence, graduated with outstanding grades that entitled him to study at university. Because his brother’s household had grown, he now had to stand on his own two feet. Together with his school friend Georg Erdmann, who was two years his senior, the 15-year-old decided to make the 300-kilometer journey to Arnstadt.
3 years later Bach returns to the area. In ARNSTADT he becomes organist of the new Bonifatius Church. He is well paid and composes many of his works for organ here. He begins to build his reputation as an organist, once even being called to Weimar to test an organ. Bach’s reputation for not being an easy man becomes apparent in Arnstadt. He is constantly in conflict with the city council, which accuses him of neglecting his duties. In addition, he is often involved in fights with musicians and choir singers. He undertakes a trip to Lübeck to visit Buxtehude. The stay is a revelation for Bach. Bach is dissatisfied with the ability of the singers in the small town and so he decides to apply for the well-paid position of cathedral organist in Mulhouse. He passes the audition and in 1707 moves to Mühlhausen, 80 km to the north.
In MÜHLHAUSEN he rises in the hierarchy and becomes Kapellmeister of the church St. Blasii. The position is well paid and he can even supplement his salary by serving in secondary churches. Now he marries his love from Arnstadt Maria Barbara Bach, who will give birth to seven children, including the important composer Carl Philipp Emanuel. In 1707 a catastrophic town fire occurred in Mulhouse, destroying 300 houses, the fourth in 50 years. The city government was forced to raise taxes and the cost of living increased for Bach. When he traveled to Weimar for the completion of a renovation of the organ there, the prince offered him a job with a high salary. Bach accepted and announced his resignation from Mühlhausen after only one year.
Private happiness in Weimar – but Bach finally ends up in jail
Bach found his private happiness in Weimar, and six children were born, including Carl Philip Emanuel and Christian Friedemann, both of whom became famous musicians in their own right. However, two of the children, the twins Maria and Johann, died shortly after birth.
When Bach came to Weimar from Mulhouse in 1708, it was a reunion, for he had been acquainted with the city five years earlier. It was ruled by two princes, Wilhelm and Johann, both of whom were music lovers. Wilhelm was strictly Catholic and promoted church music to the best of his ability. For the first time, Bach had access to a professional orchestra and he composed 20 cantatas. Johann played music himself and promoted secular concert music, so Bach was able to work both styles of music.
Bach met Paul von Westhoff, who was also employed at court and lived in the same house as Bach. Bach improved his violin playing with the help of the violin virtuoso and wrote many of his works for violin here, including the Partita in D minor. Likewise, many of his harpsichord works were written here.
Much to Bach’s chagrin, he was subordinate to both the directors of concert music and court music. His position as court organist and concertmaster was very well paid, earning more than his two superiors, but he was an employee of the court and thus, as a lackey, not a free man, which was to be his undoing. When the Kapellmeister died, Bach was passed over and subsequently accepted an offer from the prince in Köthen without asking permission from the Weimar princes. When the Weimar prince Wilhelm was informed of this, he summarily had his lackey Bach stewed in his own juice in the dungeon (for more see the destination Torbau). In 1707, after a month in jail, Bach left Weimar for Köthen as a man with a criminal record.
TO THE COMPLETE BACH BIOGRAPHY
Johannes Brahms
Connection to the Prince and the Meiningen Orchestra
The Meiningen orchestra was one of the best in Europe at the end of the 19th century. The arts-minded sovereign George II, known as the “Theater Duke,” promoted the arts and Hans von Bülow led it to its greatest flowering from 1880. The two passionately championed Brahms’ work and the composer conducted the orchestra several times in Meiningen and on tours. In all, Brahms spent about 100 days in Meiningen.
The Duke made the orchestra available for so-called workshops and thus Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto had its non-public premiere here. As the culmination of the Meiningen connection to Brahms, the court theater was the premiere site of his 4th Symphony, conducted by the composer himself. This symphony, composed in Mürzzuschlag, has a prominent significance in music history; it was Brahms’ last symphony and perhaps the last of the Classical symphonies of the type founded more than 100 years earlier by Haydn.
Interestingly, Brahms’ potential successor was present in Meiningen, for it was during these years that Brahms met Richard Strauss in Meiningen, who would become Kapellmeister in Meiningen in 1885 as von Bulow’s successor. Brahms is also said to have conceded to Strauss a ” Quite pretty, young man” to his F minor symphony (which, from Brahms’ mouth, was a compliment). Strauss until then a Brahmsian became in that year under the influence of the concertmaster Ritter Wagnerian and switched from the symphony to the form of the symphonic poem.
Brahms later wrote four works for clarinet for the brilliant clarinetist of the Meiningen Orchestra, Richard Mühlfeld.
ZU DER VOLLSTÄNDIGEN BIOGRAFIE VON BRAHMS
Franz Liszt
Liszt found time for composing here
Weimar was one of the most important stations in Liszt’s life. From 1842 until his death in 1886, Weimar was his temporary and partial center of life. Liszt’s connection to Weimar began in 1841 with a concert at which the music-loving Princess Anna Pavlova was able to recruit Liszt for an extraordinary position as Kapellmeister at the court theater. In a side trip to Dresden, he heard Wagner’s Rienzi and got to know the composer. The visits to Weimar remained sporadic, however, and only after Liszt met Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein in 1847 did Liszt settle with her in Weimar as a regular Kapellmeister and they moved to the Altenburg, where his most productive composing activity began, which lasted for 12 years in relative seclusion and culminated in his Piano Sonata in B Minor. It was here that Richard Wagner visited him in 1849 on his flight from Dresden, during which Liszt helped him to escape on to Zurich. A year later, the premiere of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” took place at the court theater in Weimar, conducted by Liszt, with the composer absent, stuck in exile in Zurich.
He made Weimar an artistic center with international appeal
Liszt became involved with many composers at the court theater, the most frequently performed remaining Wagner with 36 performances, whom he also privately supported financially. Liszt worked in Weimar as a piano padägoge later famous musicians. Hans von Bülow, Emil von Sauer, Carl Tausig, Peter Cornelius and many others were often in Weimar with Liszt. Because his wife had inherited richly, Liszt was able to forgo a fee, and many of the students became a conspiratorial group that formed the core of the New Germans (in later rivalry with the traditionalists around Brahms and Hanslick). In 1859 Liszt left the Kapellmeister post when the performance of the “Barber of Bagdad” was hissed out.
Beginning in 1869, he returned to Weimar during the summer months, where the prince made a floor available to him in the residential building of the court nursery. Here Liszt devoted his time to the many students who visited him.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Goethe connection
In 1821, 12-year-old Felix Mendelssohn and his patron Zelter visited the poet prince at his home in Weimar. Zelter had been a friend of Goethe’s since 1802 and one of his few close friends. He had already announced the young Felix by letter (the text of which had an anti-Semitic tone that was probably common at the time). Ludwig Rellstab witnessed the meeting and reported how Mendelssohn enraptured the old Goethe.
First, Mendelssohn played a piano quartet of his own composition with three other musicians. Then he had to solve various tasks with improvisations and from sight-reading, which the young boy solved with bravura. And at the end he took out of a pack an autograph of a Beethoven composition with the almost illegible scrawl of the composer, which Mendelssohn played flawlessly from the sheet.
The child prodigy Mendelssohn reminded Goethe of Mozart
Goethe, then 12 years old, had heard the 9-year-old Mozart 58 years earlier on the latter’s Wunderkind Reise in Frankfurt and compared Mendelssohn to Mozart. Goethe was so enthusiastic that he invited Mendelssohn to stay for a while, and this turned into 16 days until Mendelssohn returned to Berlin. The two disparate people remained on friendly terms until Goethe’s death, three further meetings took place and a lively correspondence testifies to the warm affection of the two.
TO THE COMPLETE MENDELSSOHN BIOGRAPHY
The young Felix Mendelssohn:
Richard Wagner
Wagner’s reference to Thuringia is only fragmentary. Flight and premiere in Weimar, as well as Wartburg Castle as the setting of his Tannhäuser are the reference points to Wagner’s biography.
Franz Liszt becomes an important supporter in Weimar
Wagner fled to Liszt in Weimar in 1849 when he was wanted by a warrant. Liszt generously helped him with shelter and money for the journey to Zurich and promised him to perform his “Lohengrin” planned for Dresden. Thus, in 1850, the Weimar Court Theater became the premiere venue for this romantic opera by the wanted Wagner.
Wartburg – place of longing
Richard Wagner was in Eisenach several times. The first time in 1842 and the second time in 1849 on his escape from Dresden. He always visited Wartburg Castle, even involuntarily in 1872, because he briefly got off on transit and then the train left without him. Naturally, because of Luther’s Wartburg Castle, which became the setting for his Tannhäuser, the city took on an important significance for Wagner, and he showed it to Cosima and Siegfried in 1879 on the occasion of his last visit to Eisenach.
LINK TO THE COMPLETE WAGNER BIOGRAPHY
HOUSES AND APARTMENTS OF ARTISTS
Johann Sebastian Bach
Thuringia was, next to Saxony / Leipzig, the central site of his work
Bach lived and worked in various places in Thuringia
Erfurt: ancestral home of the Bach family
Johann Sebastian Bach never lived in Erfurt, but often visited the place for family celebrations.
However, Erfurt can justifiably be called the cradle of the Bach family. More than 150 baptisms, weddings and funerals are recorded in the Kaufmannskirche, where Luther, among others, had preached. Johann Sebastian Bach’s parents were also married in this church. After their marriage they moved to Eisenach.
Youth and first professional years in Eisenach and surroundings
Bach’s parents moved from Erfurt to EISENSTADT, where his father was the town piper and responsible for church music, among other things. Bach was born here and was the youngest of 8 children. The family’s home on what is now Lutherstrasse no longer stands. Bach came into contact with music at an early age and was encouraged. When he was 8 years old, his mother died. His father married a widow, but soon after he too died. Johann Sebastian had become an orphan at the age of 8 and he moved with one of his brothers to his older brother Johann Christian in Orhdruf.
The latter was an organist there and had acquired his craft from Johann Pachelbel, among others. Thus Johann Sebastian received sound instruction from him. The small town of OHRDRUF had an excellent lyceum, where Bach, thanks to his tireless diligence, graduated with outstanding grades that entitled him to study at university. Because his brother’s household had grown, he now had to stand on his own two feet. Together with his school friend Georg Erdmann, who was two years his senior, the 15-year-old decided to make the 300-kilometer journey to Arnstadt.
3 years later Bach returns to the area. In ARNSTADT he becomes organist of the new Bonifatius Church. He is well paid and composes many of his works for organ here. He begins to build his reputation as an organist, once even being called to Weimar to test an organ. Bach’s reputation for not being an easy man becomes apparent in Arnstadt. He is constantly in conflict with the city council, which accuses him of neglecting his duties. In addition, he is often involved in fights with musicians and choir singers. He undertakes a trip to Lübeck to visit Buxtehude. The stay is a revelation for Bach. Bach is dissatisfied with the ability of the singers in the small town and so he decides to apply for the well-paid position of cathedral organist in Mulhouse. He passes the audition and in 1707 moves to Mühlhausen, 80 km to the north.
In MÜHLHAUSEN he rises in the hierarchy and becomes Kapellmeister of the church St. Blasii. The position is well paid and he can even supplement his salary by serving in secondary churches. Now he marries his love from Arnstadt Maria Barbara Bach, who will give birth to seven children, including the important composer Carl Philipp Emanuel. In 1707 a catastrophic town fire occurred in Mulhouse, destroying 300 houses, the fourth in 50 years. The city government was forced to raise taxes and the cost of living increased for Bach. When he traveled to Weimar for the completion of a renovation of the organ there, the prince offered him a job with a high salary. Bach accepted and announced his resignation from Mühlhausen after only one year.
Private happiness in Weimar – but Bach finally ends up in jail
Bach found his private happiness in Weimar, and six children were born, including Carl Philip Emanuel and Christian Friedemann, both of whom became famous musicians in their own right. However, two of the children, the twins Maria and Johann, died shortly after birth.
When Bach came to Weimar from Mulhouse in 1708, it was a reunion, for he had been acquainted with the city five years earlier. It was ruled by two princes, Wilhelm and Johann, both of whom were music lovers. Wilhelm was strictly Catholic and promoted church music to the best of his ability. For the first time, Bach had access to a professional orchestra and he composed 20 cantatas. Johann played music himself and promoted secular concert music, so Bach was able to work both styles of music.
Bach met Paul von Westhoff, who was also employed at court and lived in the same house as Bach. Bach improved his violin playing with the help of the violin virtuoso and wrote many of his works for violin here, including the Partita in D minor. Likewise, many of his harpsichord works were written here.
Much to Bach’s chagrin, he was subordinate to both the directors of concert music and court music. His position as court organist and concertmaster was very well paid, earning more than his two superiors, but he was an employee of the court and thus, as a lackey, not a free man, which was to be his undoing. When the Kapellmeister died, Bach was passed over and subsequently accepted an offer from the prince in Köthen without asking permission from the Weimar princes. When the Weimar prince Wilhelm was informed of this, he summarily had his lackey Bach stewed in his own juice in the dungeon (for more see the destination Torbau). In 1707, after a month in jail, Bach left Weimar for Köthen as a man with a criminal record.
TO THE COMPLETE BACH BIOGRAPHY
Johannes Brahms
Connection to the Prince and the Meiningen Orchestra
The Meiningen orchestra was one of the best in Europe at the end of the 19th century. The arts-minded sovereign George II, known as the “Theater Duke,” promoted the arts and Hans von Bülow led it to its greatest flowering from 1880. The two passionately championed Brahms’ work and the composer conducted the orchestra several times in Meiningen and on tours. In all, Brahms spent about 100 days in Meiningen.
The Duke made the orchestra available for so-called workshops and thus Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto had its non-public premiere here. As the culmination of the Meiningen connection to Brahms, the court theater was the premiere site of his 4th Symphony, conducted by the composer himself. This symphony, composed in Mürzzuschlag, has a prominent significance in music history; it was Brahms’ last symphony and perhaps the last of the Classical symphonies of the type founded more than 100 years earlier by Haydn.
Interestingly, Brahms’ potential successor was present in Meiningen, for it was during these years that Brahms met Richard Strauss in Meiningen, who would become Kapellmeister in Meiningen in 1885 as von Bulow’s successor. Brahms is also said to have conceded to Strauss a ” Quite pretty, young man” to his F minor symphony (which, from Brahms’ mouth, was a compliment). Strauss until then a Brahmsian became in that year under the influence of the concertmaster Ritter Wagnerian and switched from the symphony to the form of the symphonic poem.
Brahms later wrote four works for clarinet for the brilliant clarinetist of the Meiningen Orchestra, Richard Mühlfeld.
ZU DER VOLLSTÄNDIGEN BIOGRAFIE VON BRAHMS
Franz Liszt
Liszt found time for composing here
Weimar was one of the most important stations in Liszt’s life. From 1842 until his death in 1886, Weimar was his temporary and partial center of life. Liszt’s connection to Weimar began in 1841 with a concert at which the music-loving Princess Anna Pavlova was able to recruit Liszt for an extraordinary position as Kapellmeister at the court theater. In a side trip to Dresden, he heard Wagner’s Rienzi and got to know the composer. The visits to Weimar remained sporadic, however, and only after Liszt met Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein in 1847 did Liszt settle with her in Weimar as a regular Kapellmeister and they moved to the Altenburg, where his most productive composing activity began, which lasted for 12 years in relative seclusion and culminated in his Piano Sonata in B Minor. It was here that Richard Wagner visited him in 1849 on his flight from Dresden, during which Liszt helped him to escape on to Zurich. A year later, the premiere of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” took place at the court theater in Weimar, conducted by Liszt, with the composer absent, stuck in exile in Zurich.
He made Weimar an artistic center with international appeal
Liszt became involved with many composers at the court theater, the most frequently performed remaining Wagner with 36 performances, whom he also privately supported financially. Liszt worked in Weimar as a piano padägoge later famous musicians. Hans von Bülow, Emil von Sauer, Carl Tausig, Peter Cornelius and many others were often in Weimar with Liszt. Because his wife had inherited richly, Liszt was able to forgo a fee, and many of the students became a conspiratorial group that formed the core of the New Germans (in later rivalry with the traditionalists around Brahms and Hanslick). In 1859 Liszt left the Kapellmeister post when the performance of the “Barber of Bagdad” was hissed out.
Beginning in 1869, he returned to Weimar during the summer months, where the prince made a floor available to him in the residential building of the court nursery. Here Liszt devoted his time to the many students who visited him.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Goethe connection
In 1821, 12-year-old Felix Mendelssohn and his patron Zelter visited the poet prince at his home in Weimar. Zelter had been a friend of Goethe’s since 1802 and one of his few close friends. He had already announced the young Felix by letter (the text of which had an anti-Semitic tone that was probably common at the time). Ludwig Rellstab witnessed the meeting and reported how Mendelssohn enraptured the old Goethe.
First, Mendelssohn played a piano quartet of his own composition with three other musicians. Then he had to solve various tasks with improvisations and from sight-reading, which the young boy solved with bravura. And at the end he took out of a pack an autograph of a Beethoven composition with the almost illegible scrawl of the composer, which Mendelssohn played flawlessly from the sheet.
The child prodigy Mendelssohn reminded Goethe of Mozart
Goethe, then 12 years old, had heard the 9-year-old Mozart 58 years earlier on the latter’s Wunderkind Reise in Frankfurt and compared Mendelssohn to Mozart. Goethe was so enthusiastic that he invited Mendelssohn to stay for a while, and this turned into 16 days until Mendelssohn returned to Berlin. The two disparate people remained on friendly terms until Goethe’s death, three further meetings took place and a lively correspondence testifies to the warm affection of the two.
TO THE COMPLETE MENDELSSOHN BIOGRAPHY
The young Felix Mendelssohn:
Richard Wagner
Wagner’s reference to Thuringia is only fragmentary. Flight and premiere in Weimar, as well as Wartburg Castle as the setting of his Tannhäuser are the reference points to Wagner’s biography.
Franz Liszt becomes an important supporter in Weimar
Wagner fled to Liszt in Weimar in 1849 when he was wanted by a warrant. Liszt generously helped him with shelter and money for the journey to Zurich and promised him to perform his “Lohengrin” planned for Dresden. Thus, in 1850, the Weimar Court Theater became the premiere venue for this romantic opera by the wanted Wagner.
Wartburg – place of longing
Richard Wagner was in Eisenach several times. The first time in 1842 and the second time in 1849 on his escape from Dresden. He always visited Wartburg Castle, even involuntarily in 1872, because he briefly got off on transit and then the train left without him. Naturally, because of Luther’s Wartburg Castle, which became the setting for his Tannhäuser, the city took on an important significance for Wagner, and he showed it to Cosima and Siegfried in 1879 on the occasion of his last visit to Eisenach.
LINK TO THE COMPLETE WAGNER BIOGRAPHY
CASTLES
Johann Sebastian Bach
Thuringia was, next to Saxony / Leipzig, the central site of his work
Bach lived and worked in various places in Thuringia
Erfurt: ancestral home of the Bach family
Johann Sebastian Bach never lived in Erfurt, but often visited the place for family celebrations.
However, Erfurt can justifiably be called the cradle of the Bach family. More than 150 baptisms, weddings and funerals are recorded in the Kaufmannskirche, where Luther, among others, had preached. Johann Sebastian Bach’s parents were also married in this church. After their marriage they moved to Eisenach.
Youth and first professional years in Eisenach and surroundings
Bach’s parents moved from Erfurt to EISENSTADT, where his father was the town piper and responsible for church music, among other things. Bach was born here and was the youngest of 8 children. The family’s home on what is now Lutherstrasse no longer stands. Bach came into contact with music at an early age and was encouraged. When he was 8 years old, his mother died. His father married a widow, but soon after he too died. Johann Sebastian had become an orphan at the age of 8 and he moved with one of his brothers to his older brother Johann Christian in Orhdruf.
The latter was an organist there and had acquired his craft from Johann Pachelbel, among others. Thus Johann Sebastian received sound instruction from him. The small town of OHRDRUF had an excellent lyceum, where Bach, thanks to his tireless diligence, graduated with outstanding grades that entitled him to study at university. Because his brother’s household had grown, he now had to stand on his own two feet. Together with his school friend Georg Erdmann, who was two years his senior, the 15-year-old decided to make the 300-kilometer journey to Arnstadt.
3 years later Bach returns to the area. In ARNSTADT he becomes organist of the new Bonifatius Church. He is well paid and composes many of his works for organ here. He begins to build his reputation as an organist, once even being called to Weimar to test an organ. Bach’s reputation for not being an easy man becomes apparent in Arnstadt. He is constantly in conflict with the city council, which accuses him of neglecting his duties. In addition, he is often involved in fights with musicians and choir singers. He undertakes a trip to Lübeck to visit Buxtehude. The stay is a revelation for Bach. Bach is dissatisfied with the ability of the singers in the small town and so he decides to apply for the well-paid position of cathedral organist in Mulhouse. He passes the audition and in 1707 moves to Mühlhausen, 80 km to the north.
In MÜHLHAUSEN he rises in the hierarchy and becomes Kapellmeister of the church St. Blasii. The position is well paid and he can even supplement his salary by serving in secondary churches. Now he marries his love from Arnstadt Maria Barbara Bach, who will give birth to seven children, including the important composer Carl Philipp Emanuel. In 1707 a catastrophic town fire occurred in Mulhouse, destroying 300 houses, the fourth in 50 years. The city government was forced to raise taxes and the cost of living increased for Bach. When he traveled to Weimar for the completion of a renovation of the organ there, the prince offered him a job with a high salary. Bach accepted and announced his resignation from Mühlhausen after only one year.
Private happiness in Weimar – but Bach finally ends up in jail
Bach found his private happiness in Weimar, and six children were born, including Carl Philip Emanuel and Christian Friedemann, both of whom became famous musicians in their own right. However, two of the children, the twins Maria and Johann, died shortly after birth.
When Bach came to Weimar from Mulhouse in 1708, it was a reunion, for he had been acquainted with the city five years earlier. It was ruled by two princes, Wilhelm and Johann, both of whom were music lovers. Wilhelm was strictly Catholic and promoted church music to the best of his ability. For the first time, Bach had access to a professional orchestra and he composed 20 cantatas. Johann played music himself and promoted secular concert music, so Bach was able to work both styles of music.
Bach met Paul von Westhoff, who was also employed at court and lived in the same house as Bach. Bach improved his violin playing with the help of the violin virtuoso and wrote many of his works for violin here, including the Partita in D minor. Likewise, many of his harpsichord works were written here.
Much to Bach’s chagrin, he was subordinate to both the directors of concert music and court music. His position as court organist and concertmaster was very well paid, earning more than his two superiors, but he was an employee of the court and thus, as a lackey, not a free man, which was to be his undoing. When the Kapellmeister died, Bach was passed over and subsequently accepted an offer from the prince in Köthen without asking permission from the Weimar princes. When the Weimar prince Wilhelm was informed of this, he summarily had his lackey Bach stewed in his own juice in the dungeon (for more see the destination Torbau). In 1707, after a month in jail, Bach left Weimar for Köthen as a man with a criminal record.
TO THE COMPLETE BACH BIOGRAPHY
Johannes Brahms
Connection to the Prince and the Meiningen Orchestra
The Meiningen orchestra was one of the best in Europe at the end of the 19th century. The arts-minded sovereign George II, known as the “Theater Duke,” promoted the arts and Hans von Bülow led it to its greatest flowering from 1880. The two passionately championed Brahms’ work and the composer conducted the orchestra several times in Meiningen and on tours. In all, Brahms spent about 100 days in Meiningen.
The Duke made the orchestra available for so-called workshops and thus Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto had its non-public premiere here. As the culmination of the Meiningen connection to Brahms, the court theater was the premiere site of his 4th Symphony, conducted by the composer himself. This symphony, composed in Mürzzuschlag, has a prominent significance in music history; it was Brahms’ last symphony and perhaps the last of the Classical symphonies of the type founded more than 100 years earlier by Haydn.
Interestingly, Brahms’ potential successor was present in Meiningen, for it was during these years that Brahms met Richard Strauss in Meiningen, who would become Kapellmeister in Meiningen in 1885 as von Bulow’s successor. Brahms is also said to have conceded to Strauss a ” Quite pretty, young man” to his F minor symphony (which, from Brahms’ mouth, was a compliment). Strauss until then a Brahmsian became in that year under the influence of the concertmaster Ritter Wagnerian and switched from the symphony to the form of the symphonic poem.
Brahms later wrote four works for clarinet for the brilliant clarinetist of the Meiningen Orchestra, Richard Mühlfeld.
ZU DER VOLLSTÄNDIGEN BIOGRAFIE VON BRAHMS
Franz Liszt
Liszt found time for composing here
Weimar was one of the most important stations in Liszt’s life. From 1842 until his death in 1886, Weimar was his temporary and partial center of life. Liszt’s connection to Weimar began in 1841 with a concert at which the music-loving Princess Anna Pavlova was able to recruit Liszt for an extraordinary position as Kapellmeister at the court theater. In a side trip to Dresden, he heard Wagner’s Rienzi and got to know the composer. The visits to Weimar remained sporadic, however, and only after Liszt met Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein in 1847 did Liszt settle with her in Weimar as a regular Kapellmeister and they moved to the Altenburg, where his most productive composing activity began, which lasted for 12 years in relative seclusion and culminated in his Piano Sonata in B Minor. It was here that Richard Wagner visited him in 1849 on his flight from Dresden, during which Liszt helped him to escape on to Zurich. A year later, the premiere of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” took place at the court theater in Weimar, conducted by Liszt, with the composer absent, stuck in exile in Zurich.
He made Weimar an artistic center with international appeal
Liszt became involved with many composers at the court theater, the most frequently performed remaining Wagner with 36 performances, whom he also privately supported financially. Liszt worked in Weimar as a piano padägoge later famous musicians. Hans von Bülow, Emil von Sauer, Carl Tausig, Peter Cornelius and many others were often in Weimar with Liszt. Because his wife had inherited richly, Liszt was able to forgo a fee, and many of the students became a conspiratorial group that formed the core of the New Germans (in later rivalry with the traditionalists around Brahms and Hanslick). In 1859 Liszt left the Kapellmeister post when the performance of the “Barber of Bagdad” was hissed out.
Beginning in 1869, he returned to Weimar during the summer months, where the prince made a floor available to him in the residential building of the court nursery. Here Liszt devoted his time to the many students who visited him.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Goethe connection
In 1821, 12-year-old Felix Mendelssohn and his patron Zelter visited the poet prince at his home in Weimar. Zelter had been a friend of Goethe’s since 1802 and one of his few close friends. He had already announced the young Felix by letter (the text of which had an anti-Semitic tone that was probably common at the time). Ludwig Rellstab witnessed the meeting and reported how Mendelssohn enraptured the old Goethe.
First, Mendelssohn played a piano quartet of his own composition with three other musicians. Then he had to solve various tasks with improvisations and from sight-reading, which the young boy solved with bravura. And at the end he took out of a pack an autograph of a Beethoven composition with the almost illegible scrawl of the composer, which Mendelssohn played flawlessly from the sheet.
The child prodigy Mendelssohn reminded Goethe of Mozart
Goethe, then 12 years old, had heard the 9-year-old Mozart 58 years earlier on the latter’s Wunderkind Reise in Frankfurt and compared Mendelssohn to Mozart. Goethe was so enthusiastic that he invited Mendelssohn to stay for a while, and this turned into 16 days until Mendelssohn returned to Berlin. The two disparate people remained on friendly terms until Goethe’s death, three further meetings took place and a lively correspondence testifies to the warm affection of the two.
TO THE COMPLETE MENDELSSOHN BIOGRAPHY
The young Felix Mendelssohn:
Richard Wagner
Wagner’s reference to Thuringia is only fragmentary. Flight and premiere in Weimar, as well as Wartburg Castle as the setting of his Tannhäuser are the reference points to Wagner’s biography.
Franz Liszt becomes an important supporter in Weimar
Wagner fled to Liszt in Weimar in 1849 when he was wanted by a warrant. Liszt generously helped him with shelter and money for the journey to Zurich and promised him to perform his “Lohengrin” planned for Dresden. Thus, in 1850, the Weimar Court Theater became the premiere venue for this romantic opera by the wanted Wagner.
Wartburg – place of longing
Richard Wagner was in Eisenach several times. The first time in 1842 and the second time in 1849 on his escape from Dresden. He always visited Wartburg Castle, even involuntarily in 1872, because he briefly got off on transit and then the train left without him. Naturally, because of Luther’s Wartburg Castle, which became the setting for his Tannhäuser, the city took on an important significance for Wagner, and he showed it to Cosima and Siegfried in 1879 on the occasion of his last visit to Eisenach.
LINK TO THE COMPLETE WAGNER BIOGRAPHY
MONUMENTS
Johann Sebastian Bach
Thuringia was, next to Saxony / Leipzig, the central site of his work
Bach lived and worked in various places in Thuringia
Erfurt: ancestral home of the Bach family
Johann Sebastian Bach never lived in Erfurt, but often visited the place for family celebrations.
However, Erfurt can justifiably be called the cradle of the Bach family. More than 150 baptisms, weddings and funerals are recorded in the Kaufmannskirche, where Luther, among others, had preached. Johann Sebastian Bach’s parents were also married in this church. After their marriage they moved to Eisenach.
Youth and first professional years in Eisenach and surroundings
Bach’s parents moved from Erfurt to EISENSTADT, where his father was the town piper and responsible for church music, among other things. Bach was born here and was the youngest of 8 children. The family’s home on what is now Lutherstrasse no longer stands. Bach came into contact with music at an early age and was encouraged. When he was 8 years old, his mother died. His father married a widow, but soon after he too died. Johann Sebastian had become an orphan at the age of 8 and he moved with one of his brothers to his older brother Johann Christian in Orhdruf.
The latter was an organist there and had acquired his craft from Johann Pachelbel, among others. Thus Johann Sebastian received sound instruction from him. The small town of OHRDRUF had an excellent lyceum, where Bach, thanks to his tireless diligence, graduated with outstanding grades that entitled him to study at university. Because his brother’s household had grown, he now had to stand on his own two feet. Together with his school friend Georg Erdmann, who was two years his senior, the 15-year-old decided to make the 300-kilometer journey to Arnstadt.
3 years later Bach returns to the area. In ARNSTADT he becomes organist of the new Bonifatius Church. He is well paid and composes many of his works for organ here. He begins to build his reputation as an organist, once even being called to Weimar to test an organ. Bach’s reputation for not being an easy man becomes apparent in Arnstadt. He is constantly in conflict with the city council, which accuses him of neglecting his duties. In addition, he is often involved in fights with musicians and choir singers. He undertakes a trip to Lübeck to visit Buxtehude. The stay is a revelation for Bach. Bach is dissatisfied with the ability of the singers in the small town and so he decides to apply for the well-paid position of cathedral organist in Mulhouse. He passes the audition and in 1707 moves to Mühlhausen, 80 km to the north.
In MÜHLHAUSEN he rises in the hierarchy and becomes Kapellmeister of the church St. Blasii. The position is well paid and he can even supplement his salary by serving in secondary churches. Now he marries his love from Arnstadt Maria Barbara Bach, who will give birth to seven children, including the important composer Carl Philipp Emanuel. In 1707 a catastrophic town fire occurred in Mulhouse, destroying 300 houses, the fourth in 50 years. The city government was forced to raise taxes and the cost of living increased for Bach. When he traveled to Weimar for the completion of a renovation of the organ there, the prince offered him a job with a high salary. Bach accepted and announced his resignation from Mühlhausen after only one year.
Private happiness in Weimar – but Bach finally ends up in jail
Bach found his private happiness in Weimar, and six children were born, including Carl Philip Emanuel and Christian Friedemann, both of whom became famous musicians in their own right. However, two of the children, the twins Maria and Johann, died shortly after birth.
When Bach came to Weimar from Mulhouse in 1708, it was a reunion, for he had been acquainted with the city five years earlier. It was ruled by two princes, Wilhelm and Johann, both of whom were music lovers. Wilhelm was strictly Catholic and promoted church music to the best of his ability. For the first time, Bach had access to a professional orchestra and he composed 20 cantatas. Johann played music himself and promoted secular concert music, so Bach was able to work both styles of music.
Bach met Paul von Westhoff, who was also employed at court and lived in the same house as Bach. Bach improved his violin playing with the help of the violin virtuoso and wrote many of his works for violin here, including the Partita in D minor. Likewise, many of his harpsichord works were written here.
Much to Bach’s chagrin, he was subordinate to both the directors of concert music and court music. His position as court organist and concertmaster was very well paid, earning more than his two superiors, but he was an employee of the court and thus, as a lackey, not a free man, which was to be his undoing. When the Kapellmeister died, Bach was passed over and subsequently accepted an offer from the prince in Köthen without asking permission from the Weimar princes. When the Weimar prince Wilhelm was informed of this, he summarily had his lackey Bach stewed in his own juice in the dungeon (for more see the destination Torbau). In 1707, after a month in jail, Bach left Weimar for Köthen as a man with a criminal record.
TO THE COMPLETE BACH BIOGRAPHY
Johannes Brahms
Connection to the Prince and the Meiningen Orchestra
The Meiningen orchestra was one of the best in Europe at the end of the 19th century. The arts-minded sovereign George II, known as the “Theater Duke,” promoted the arts and Hans von Bülow led it to its greatest flowering from 1880. The two passionately championed Brahms’ work and the composer conducted the orchestra several times in Meiningen and on tours. In all, Brahms spent about 100 days in Meiningen.
The Duke made the orchestra available for so-called workshops and thus Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto had its non-public premiere here. As the culmination of the Meiningen connection to Brahms, the court theater was the premiere site of his 4th Symphony, conducted by the composer himself. This symphony, composed in Mürzzuschlag, has a prominent significance in music history; it was Brahms’ last symphony and perhaps the last of the Classical symphonies of the type founded more than 100 years earlier by Haydn.
Interestingly, Brahms’ potential successor was present in Meiningen, for it was during these years that Brahms met Richard Strauss in Meiningen, who would become Kapellmeister in Meiningen in 1885 as von Bulow’s successor. Brahms is also said to have conceded to Strauss a ” Quite pretty, young man” to his F minor symphony (which, from Brahms’ mouth, was a compliment). Strauss until then a Brahmsian became in that year under the influence of the concertmaster Ritter Wagnerian and switched from the symphony to the form of the symphonic poem.
Brahms later wrote four works for clarinet for the brilliant clarinetist of the Meiningen Orchestra, Richard Mühlfeld.
ZU DER VOLLSTÄNDIGEN BIOGRAFIE VON BRAHMS
Franz Liszt
Liszt found time for composing here
Weimar was one of the most important stations in Liszt’s life. From 1842 until his death in 1886, Weimar was his temporary and partial center of life. Liszt’s connection to Weimar began in 1841 with a concert at which the music-loving Princess Anna Pavlova was able to recruit Liszt for an extraordinary position as Kapellmeister at the court theater. In a side trip to Dresden, he heard Wagner’s Rienzi and got to know the composer. The visits to Weimar remained sporadic, however, and only after Liszt met Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein in 1847 did Liszt settle with her in Weimar as a regular Kapellmeister and they moved to the Altenburg, where his most productive composing activity began, which lasted for 12 years in relative seclusion and culminated in his Piano Sonata in B Minor. It was here that Richard Wagner visited him in 1849 on his flight from Dresden, during which Liszt helped him to escape on to Zurich. A year later, the premiere of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” took place at the court theater in Weimar, conducted by Liszt, with the composer absent, stuck in exile in Zurich.
He made Weimar an artistic center with international appeal
Liszt became involved with many composers at the court theater, the most frequently performed remaining Wagner with 36 performances, whom he also privately supported financially. Liszt worked in Weimar as a piano padägoge later famous musicians. Hans von Bülow, Emil von Sauer, Carl Tausig, Peter Cornelius and many others were often in Weimar with Liszt. Because his wife had inherited richly, Liszt was able to forgo a fee, and many of the students became a conspiratorial group that formed the core of the New Germans (in later rivalry with the traditionalists around Brahms and Hanslick). In 1859 Liszt left the Kapellmeister post when the performance of the “Barber of Bagdad” was hissed out.
Beginning in 1869, he returned to Weimar during the summer months, where the prince made a floor available to him in the residential building of the court nursery. Here Liszt devoted his time to the many students who visited him.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Goethe connection
In 1821, 12-year-old Felix Mendelssohn and his patron Zelter visited the poet prince at his home in Weimar. Zelter had been a friend of Goethe’s since 1802 and one of his few close friends. He had already announced the young Felix by letter (the text of which had an anti-Semitic tone that was probably common at the time). Ludwig Rellstab witnessed the meeting and reported how Mendelssohn enraptured the old Goethe.
First, Mendelssohn played a piano quartet of his own composition with three other musicians. Then he had to solve various tasks with improvisations and from sight-reading, which the young boy solved with bravura. And at the end he took out of a pack an autograph of a Beethoven composition with the almost illegible scrawl of the composer, which Mendelssohn played flawlessly from the sheet.
The child prodigy Mendelssohn reminded Goethe of Mozart
Goethe, then 12 years old, had heard the 9-year-old Mozart 58 years earlier on the latter’s Wunderkind Reise in Frankfurt and compared Mendelssohn to Mozart. Goethe was so enthusiastic that he invited Mendelssohn to stay for a while, and this turned into 16 days until Mendelssohn returned to Berlin. The two disparate people remained on friendly terms until Goethe’s death, three further meetings took place and a lively correspondence testifies to the warm affection of the two.
TO THE COMPLETE MENDELSSOHN BIOGRAPHY
The young Felix Mendelssohn:
Richard Wagner
Wagner’s reference to Thuringia is only fragmentary. Flight and premiere in Weimar, as well as Wartburg Castle as the setting of his Tannhäuser are the reference points to Wagner’s biography.
Franz Liszt becomes an important supporter in Weimar
Wagner fled to Liszt in Weimar in 1849 when he was wanted by a warrant. Liszt generously helped him with shelter and money for the journey to Zurich and promised him to perform his “Lohengrin” planned for Dresden. Thus, in 1850, the Weimar Court Theater became the premiere venue for this romantic opera by the wanted Wagner.
Wartburg – place of longing
Richard Wagner was in Eisenach several times. The first time in 1842 and the second time in 1849 on his escape from Dresden. He always visited Wartburg Castle, even involuntarily in 1872, because he briefly got off on transit and then the train left without him. Naturally, because of Luther’s Wartburg Castle, which became the setting for his Tannhäuser, the city took on an important significance for Wagner, and he showed it to Cosima and Siegfried in 1879 on the occasion of his last visit to Eisenach.
LINK TO THE COMPLETE WAGNER BIOGRAPHY
WORKS WITH A RELATION TO WEIMAR AND THURINGIA
Johann Sebastian Bach
Thuringia was, next to Saxony / Leipzig, the central site of his work
Bach lived and worked in various places in Thuringia
Erfurt: ancestral home of the Bach family
Johann Sebastian Bach never lived in Erfurt, but often visited the place for family celebrations.
However, Erfurt can justifiably be called the cradle of the Bach family. More than 150 baptisms, weddings and funerals are recorded in the Kaufmannskirche, where Luther, among others, had preached. Johann Sebastian Bach’s parents were also married in this church. After their marriage they moved to Eisenach.
Youth and first professional years in Eisenach and surroundings
Bach’s parents moved from Erfurt to EISENSTADT, where his father was the town piper and responsible for church music, among other things. Bach was born here and was the youngest of 8 children. The family’s home on what is now Lutherstrasse no longer stands. Bach came into contact with music at an early age and was encouraged. When he was 8 years old, his mother died. His father married a widow, but soon after he too died. Johann Sebastian had become an orphan at the age of 8 and he moved with one of his brothers to his older brother Johann Christian in Orhdruf.
The latter was an organist there and had acquired his craft from Johann Pachelbel, among others. Thus Johann Sebastian received sound instruction from him. The small town of OHRDRUF had an excellent lyceum, where Bach, thanks to his tireless diligence, graduated with outstanding grades that entitled him to study at university. Because his brother’s household had grown, he now had to stand on his own two feet. Together with his school friend Georg Erdmann, who was two years his senior, the 15-year-old decided to make the 300-kilometer journey to Arnstadt.
3 years later Bach returns to the area. In ARNSTADT he becomes organist of the new Bonifatius Church. He is well paid and composes many of his works for organ here. He begins to build his reputation as an organist, once even being called to Weimar to test an organ. Bach’s reputation for not being an easy man becomes apparent in Arnstadt. He is constantly in conflict with the city council, which accuses him of neglecting his duties. In addition, he is often involved in fights with musicians and choir singers. He undertakes a trip to Lübeck to visit Buxtehude. The stay is a revelation for Bach. Bach is dissatisfied with the ability of the singers in the small town and so he decides to apply for the well-paid position of cathedral organist in Mulhouse. He passes the audition and in 1707 moves to Mühlhausen, 80 km to the north.
In MÜHLHAUSEN he rises in the hierarchy and becomes Kapellmeister of the church St. Blasii. The position is well paid and he can even supplement his salary by serving in secondary churches. Now he marries his love from Arnstadt Maria Barbara Bach, who will give birth to seven children, including the important composer Carl Philipp Emanuel. In 1707 a catastrophic town fire occurred in Mulhouse, destroying 300 houses, the fourth in 50 years. The city government was forced to raise taxes and the cost of living increased for Bach. When he traveled to Weimar for the completion of a renovation of the organ there, the prince offered him a job with a high salary. Bach accepted and announced his resignation from Mühlhausen after only one year.
Private happiness in Weimar – but Bach finally ends up in jail
Bach found his private happiness in Weimar, and six children were born, including Carl Philip Emanuel and Christian Friedemann, both of whom became famous musicians in their own right. However, two of the children, the twins Maria and Johann, died shortly after birth.
When Bach came to Weimar from Mulhouse in 1708, it was a reunion, for he had been acquainted with the city five years earlier. It was ruled by two princes, Wilhelm and Johann, both of whom were music lovers. Wilhelm was strictly Catholic and promoted church music to the best of his ability. For the first time, Bach had access to a professional orchestra and he composed 20 cantatas. Johann played music himself and promoted secular concert music, so Bach was able to work both styles of music.
Bach met Paul von Westhoff, who was also employed at court and lived in the same house as Bach. Bach improved his violin playing with the help of the violin virtuoso and wrote many of his works for violin here, including the Partita in D minor. Likewise, many of his harpsichord works were written here.
Much to Bach’s chagrin, he was subordinate to both the directors of concert music and court music. His position as court organist and concertmaster was very well paid, earning more than his two superiors, but he was an employee of the court and thus, as a lackey, not a free man, which was to be his undoing. When the Kapellmeister died, Bach was passed over and subsequently accepted an offer from the prince in Köthen without asking permission from the Weimar princes. When the Weimar prince Wilhelm was informed of this, he summarily had his lackey Bach stewed in his own juice in the dungeon (for more see the destination Torbau). In 1707, after a month in jail, Bach left Weimar for Köthen as a man with a criminal record.
TO THE COMPLETE BACH BIOGRAPHY
Johannes Brahms
Connection to the Prince and the Meiningen Orchestra
The Meiningen orchestra was one of the best in Europe at the end of the 19th century. The arts-minded sovereign George II, known as the “Theater Duke,” promoted the arts and Hans von Bülow led it to its greatest flowering from 1880. The two passionately championed Brahms’ work and the composer conducted the orchestra several times in Meiningen and on tours. In all, Brahms spent about 100 days in Meiningen.
The Duke made the orchestra available for so-called workshops and thus Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto had its non-public premiere here. As the culmination of the Meiningen connection to Brahms, the court theater was the premiere site of his 4th Symphony, conducted by the composer himself. This symphony, composed in Mürzzuschlag, has a prominent significance in music history; it was Brahms’ last symphony and perhaps the last of the Classical symphonies of the type founded more than 100 years earlier by Haydn.
Interestingly, Brahms’ potential successor was present in Meiningen, for it was during these years that Brahms met Richard Strauss in Meiningen, who would become Kapellmeister in Meiningen in 1885 as von Bulow’s successor. Brahms is also said to have conceded to Strauss a ” Quite pretty, young man” to his F minor symphony (which, from Brahms’ mouth, was a compliment). Strauss until then a Brahmsian became in that year under the influence of the concertmaster Ritter Wagnerian and switched from the symphony to the form of the symphonic poem.
Brahms later wrote four works for clarinet for the brilliant clarinetist of the Meiningen Orchestra, Richard Mühlfeld.
ZU DER VOLLSTÄNDIGEN BIOGRAFIE VON BRAHMS
Franz Liszt
Liszt found time for composing here
Weimar was one of the most important stations in Liszt’s life. From 1842 until his death in 1886, Weimar was his temporary and partial center of life. Liszt’s connection to Weimar began in 1841 with a concert at which the music-loving Princess Anna Pavlova was able to recruit Liszt for an extraordinary position as Kapellmeister at the court theater. In a side trip to Dresden, he heard Wagner’s Rienzi and got to know the composer. The visits to Weimar remained sporadic, however, and only after Liszt met Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein in 1847 did Liszt settle with her in Weimar as a regular Kapellmeister and they moved to the Altenburg, where his most productive composing activity began, which lasted for 12 years in relative seclusion and culminated in his Piano Sonata in B Minor. It was here that Richard Wagner visited him in 1849 on his flight from Dresden, during which Liszt helped him to escape on to Zurich. A year later, the premiere of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” took place at the court theater in Weimar, conducted by Liszt, with the composer absent, stuck in exile in Zurich.
He made Weimar an artistic center with international appeal
Liszt became involved with many composers at the court theater, the most frequently performed remaining Wagner with 36 performances, whom he also privately supported financially. Liszt worked in Weimar as a piano padägoge later famous musicians. Hans von Bülow, Emil von Sauer, Carl Tausig, Peter Cornelius and many others were often in Weimar with Liszt. Because his wife had inherited richly, Liszt was able to forgo a fee, and many of the students became a conspiratorial group that formed the core of the New Germans (in later rivalry with the traditionalists around Brahms and Hanslick). In 1859 Liszt left the Kapellmeister post when the performance of the “Barber of Bagdad” was hissed out.
Beginning in 1869, he returned to Weimar during the summer months, where the prince made a floor available to him in the residential building of the court nursery. Here Liszt devoted his time to the many students who visited him.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Goethe connection
In 1821, 12-year-old Felix Mendelssohn and his patron Zelter visited the poet prince at his home in Weimar. Zelter had been a friend of Goethe’s since 1802 and one of his few close friends. He had already announced the young Felix by letter (the text of which had an anti-Semitic tone that was probably common at the time). Ludwig Rellstab witnessed the meeting and reported how Mendelssohn enraptured the old Goethe.
First, Mendelssohn played a piano quartet of his own composition with three other musicians. Then he had to solve various tasks with improvisations and from sight-reading, which the young boy solved with bravura. And at the end he took out of a pack an autograph of a Beethoven composition with the almost illegible scrawl of the composer, which Mendelssohn played flawlessly from the sheet.
The child prodigy Mendelssohn reminded Goethe of Mozart
Goethe, then 12 years old, had heard the 9-year-old Mozart 58 years earlier on the latter’s Wunderkind Reise in Frankfurt and compared Mendelssohn to Mozart. Goethe was so enthusiastic that he invited Mendelssohn to stay for a while, and this turned into 16 days until Mendelssohn returned to Berlin. The two disparate people remained on friendly terms until Goethe’s death, three further meetings took place and a lively correspondence testifies to the warm affection of the two.
TO THE COMPLETE MENDELSSOHN BIOGRAPHY
The young Felix Mendelssohn:
Richard Wagner
Wagner’s reference to Thuringia is only fragmentary. Flight and premiere in Weimar, as well as Wartburg Castle as the setting of his Tannhäuser are the reference points to Wagner’s biography.
Franz Liszt becomes an important supporter in Weimar
Wagner fled to Liszt in Weimar in 1849 when he was wanted by a warrant. Liszt generously helped him with shelter and money for the journey to Zurich and promised him to perform his “Lohengrin” planned for Dresden. Thus, in 1850, the Weimar Court Theater became the premiere venue for this romantic opera by the wanted Wagner.
Wartburg – place of longing
Richard Wagner was in Eisenach several times. The first time in 1842 and the second time in 1849 on his escape from Dresden. He always visited Wartburg Castle, even involuntarily in 1872, because he briefly got off on transit and then the train left without him. Naturally, because of Luther’s Wartburg Castle, which became the setting for his Tannhäuser, the city took on an important significance for Wagner, and he showed it to Cosima and Siegfried in 1879 on the occasion of his last visit to Eisenach.
LINK TO THE COMPLETE WAGNER BIOGRAPHY
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!