- Adolf Bernhard Marx
Friedrich Heinrich Adolf Bernhard Marx (Halle,
Germany ,15 March 1795 –Berlin ,17 May ,1866 ) was a Germancomposer , musical theorist and critic.Life
Marx was the son of a
Jew ish doctor in Halle who, though a member of the congregation, was according to his son a convinced atheist. Marx was given the names 'Samuel Moses' at birth, but changed these at his baptism in 1819.He began his career studying law at Halle, but also learned musical composition there - a fellow student was the composer
Carl Loewe . In 1821 he went to Berlin, where in 1825Adolf Martin Schlesinger appointed him editor of the music journal he had founded , the "Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung". Marx's intellectual critiques were appreciated by, amongst others,Beethoven , although they often offended the Berlin establishment, includingCarl Friedrich Zelter .Marx became an intimate of the family of
Felix Mendelssohn , who was greatly influenced by Marx's ideas about the representational qualities of music - Marx's influence in the revision of Mendelssohn's overture to 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (1826) was noted by their mutual friendEduard Devrient in his memoirs. After Mendelssohn's revival ofJ. S. Bach 's "St. Matthew Passion" in 1829, Marx persuaded Schlesinger to undertake the publication of this work, making Bach's masterpiece accessible to scholars for the first time. As Mendelssohn matured however the two drifted apart. At one time each agreed to write thelibretto for anoratorio to be composed by the other. Mendelssohn wrote a text on the subject of "Moses ", while Marx wrote one on the subject of "St. Paul". However Mendelssohn's later oratorio on St. Paul used an extensively revised text; and when Marx asked Mendelssohn to perform his "Moses" in 1841 inLeipzig , Mendelssohn refused because of its poor quality. The enraged Marx thereupon threw his extensive correspondence with Mendelssohn into the river, and it has therefore been lost forever. ' "Moses" ' was eventually given a performance byLiszt atWeimar in 1853.In 1830 Mendelssohn had recommended Marx for the new post of Professor of Music at Berlin University, and from this time until his death Marx's main influence was as a writer and teacher. In 1850 he was one of the founders of the Berlin
Stern conservatory . His four-volume textbook on compositional theory, "Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition", was one of the most influential of the nineteenth century. It demonstrated a new approach to musical pedagogics, and presented a logically ordered system of the musical forms then in use, concluding withsonata form , which Marx exemplified usingBeethoven 's piano sonatas. Toward the end of his life Marx completed a biography of the composer. He wrote extensively about the music of his time and also published a two-volume autobiography.Bibliography
Works by Marx
* "Über Malerei in der Tonkunst: ein Maigruss an die Kunstphilosophien". Berlin, 1826.
* "Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition, praktisch-theoretisch". Leipzig, 1837/38/45/47.
* "Die Musik des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts und ihre Pflege: Methode der Musik". Leipzig, 1855.
* "Ludwig van Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen". Berlin, 1859.
* "Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben". Berlin, 1865.
* "Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven: Selected Writings on Theory and Method". Edited and Translated by Scott Burnham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Others
* Burnham, Scott. "Aesthetics, Theory, and History in the Works of Adolf Bernhard Marx." Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, 1988.
External links
* [http://hdl.handle.net/1802/5484 Introduction to the Interpretation of the Beethoven Piano Works (1895)] by Marx, translated by Fannie Louise Gwinner. From Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection
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