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Andreas Moser: Gedächtnisrede anläßlich der Trauerfeier für Joseph Joachim, am 27. Oktober 1907

29 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by Joachim in Uncategorized

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Siebenter Bericht des Mozart-Vereins zu Dresden 1906-1908, Dresden: Hansa-Druckerei, pp. 35-40.

Gedächtnisrede
anläßlich der Trauerfeier für Joseph Joachim
am 27. Oktober 1907
gehalten von Andreas Moser aus Berlin.

,,Der Mensch erfährt,
Er sei auch wer er mag,
Ein letztes Glück
Und einen letzten Tag!

            Die hehren Klänge Beethovens [Cavatina from String Quartet no. 13 in B-flat Major, op. 130], die soeben an uns vorübergezogen sind, dieselben, mit denen vor 21/2 Jahren Joachim in der Berliner Sing-Akademie den Manen Adolf Menzel’s gehuldigt hat, sind so recht dazu angetan, die bittere Wahrheit des Goetheschen Spruches, den ich vorausgeschickt habe, zu deuten und zu mildern. Mit ihrem Wechsel zwischen andachtsvollem Beten und schmerzlicher Beklommenheit, die schließlich in die demütige Ergebung vor dem Unbegreiflichen ausklingt, gemahnten sie uns daran, daß wir zwar einen unersetzlichen Verlust erlitten haben, einen Verlust aber, der zugleich etwas Versöhnendes in sich trägt. Wir wollen trauern um den großen Toten, dessen Gedenken diese Weihestunde gewidmet ist, aber wir dürfen nicht wehklagen! Denn er hat ein Leben gelebt, so lang und schön und reich, wie es nur wenigen Auserwählten beschieden ist, und alles, was uns Menschen begehrenswert scheint, ward ihm zuteil in überströmender Fülle. Generationen haben zu ihm aufgeschaut als zu dem geweihtesten Hüter seiner Kunst, und auch kommende Geschlechter noch warden in Ehrfurcht seinen Namen nennen, da mit reineren Händen nie ein Amt verwaltet ward al smit den seinen! Einem Patriarchen gleich ragte er in die Gegenwart herein als das lebendige Bindeglied zwischen uns und längst vergangenen Zeiten; eine Rieseneiche, um die so mancher Sturm gebraust, und die doch grünte bis ans Ende, da die tötliche Axt sie fällte.

36

Einem Patriarchen gleich! Denn wie die sanfte Morgenröte den jungen Tag küßt, der, traumverloren und taubeschwert, noch nicht weiß, daß ihn in wenigen Stunden schon der leuchtende Sonnenball am Firmament in vollem Glanz bestrahlen wird, so grüßt in Joachims Kindheit der hehre Name “Beethoven” hinein. Hat er doch “die unsterbliche Geliebte” des Tongewaltigen noch gekannt, in Joseph Böhm einen Lehrer besessen, dem als Leiter eines Streichquartetts Beethoven und Schubert ihren künstlerischen Odem eingehaucht hatten, und schon als 13jähriger Knabe das Violinkonzert von Beethoven öffentlich gespielt!

Nachdem er in der Schule Mendelsohns [sic] den Schlüssel gefunden hatte, der ihm das Zauberland Joh. Seb. Bachs erschloß, fan der sich alsbald zo heimisch darin, daß Schumann den damals 22jährigen “den besten Dolmetsch dieser Wundermusik” nennen konnte. Als ihm der Tod diesen Führer entrissen hatte, der ihm zugleich ein Freund für’s Leben zu warden versprach, hat er sich mit seinem “Kriegskameraden” Johannes Brahms weitergebildet in allen Zweigen seiner Kunst und teilgenommen an allem, was schön und edel ist auch außerhalb seines engeren Berufskreises. Und als man ihm die Götter rauben wollte, die er anbetete, um an deren Stelle andere zu setzen, ist er männlich eingetreten für seine Überzeugung und hat nicht gewankt, wie heftig auch die Wellenschläge der Zeit und Mode seinen Standpunkt zu gefährden schienen.

In dieser Weise im Strom der Welt und im Kampf der Meinungen ein Charakter geworden, hat sich bei ihm zugleich jenes universelle Stilgefühl ausgebildet, das ihn, den urdeutsch empfindenden Künstler, die Brücke finden ließ, die zu den französischen und italienischen Klassikern des Violinspiels hinüberführt. Andererseits hat er sich bis ins Greisenalter jenen kindlichen Frohsinn und schalkhaften Humor bewahrt, der die unerläßliche Voraussetzung für die lebendige Wiedergabe der Werke Haydns und Mozarts bildet.

Mozarts! Es ist kein Zufall, daß wir uns heute gerade im Rahmen des Vereins zusammengefunden haben, der sich die Pflege dieses göttlichen Meisters zur Aufgabe gestellt

37

hat. Wir haben es vielmehr getan, um an den Manen Joachim seine Dankesschuld abzutragen. Denn vom Tag der Gründung bis zu seinem Hinscheiden hat Joachim den Bestrebungen dieses Vereins nicht nur Sympathien entgegengebracht, sondern durch wiederholte Mitwirkung bei Aufführungen bewiesen, daß ihm die Verherrlichung Mozart seine Herzensangelegenheit war. Niemals werde ich den Augenblick vergessen, als ich vor drei Jahren auf einer gemeinschaftlichen Sommerreise mit ihm entblössten Hauptes vor dem Standbild Mozarts in Salzburg stand und er mir sagte: “Weißt Du, Moser, wenn wahre Schönheit oder schöne Wahrheit den Wert eines Kunstwerkes bestimmt, dann war der da droben doch der größte Künstler von allen!” —

Leider haben wir die traurige Pflicht, heute nicht nur des Meisters zu gedenken, der seine Sendung hienieden erfüllt hat, sondern noch eines zweiten Ehrenmitgliedes des Mozartvereins, den der Tod in der Blüte seiner Jahre dahingerafft hat. Am 3. dieses Monat sist Alfred Reisenauer in Libau an einem Herzschlag plötzlich verstorben. Wenn ich bedenke, was dieser feinsinnige Künstler in den 25 Jahren seines Wirkens in der Öffentlichkeit geleistet hat und was von ihm noch zu erwarten stand, so bin ich sicher, daß nicht nur die Mitglieder des Mozartvereins, sondern weiteste Kreise das frühe Hinscheiden des reichbegabten “Musikers am Klavier” und liebenswürdigen Menschen auf das innigste bedauern warden. Sein Andenke wird bei allen, die ihn gehört und gekannt haben, unvergessen bleiben. —

Muß bei der Würdigung eines Künstlers der Nachdruck ganz naturgemäß auf seine Kunstleistungen gelegt warden, so überkommt uns doch auch wieder ein wohltuendes Gefühl der Befriedigung, wenn wir erfahren, daß der betreffende Künstler nicht nur Bewunderung ausgelöst, sonder nob seiner menschlich schönen Eigenschaften auch Liebe verdient hat. Als Joachims langjähriger Freund und Mitarbeiter habe ich einen solchen Einblick in sein Innenleben gewonnen, daß ich sagen darf: nur Wenige haben, wie er, das Goethesche Wort erfüllt: “Hilfreich sei der Mensch, edel und gut!” Man braucht nr die Briefe Mendelssohns und Schumanns an

38

und über Joachim zu lessen, um sich sofort darüber klar zu sein. Die freudigste Genugtuung aber warden Sie empfinden, wenn erst der von mir vorbereitete Briefwechsel zwischen Brahms und Joachim zur Ausgabe gelangt sein wird. Ein Charakterbild wird sich Ihnen daraus erschließen, in seiner schlichten Einfalt zo rührend groß, daß es mich unwillkürlich an den Vers erinnert, in dem Franz Grillparzer das Wesen des Instrumentes besungen, mit dessen meisterlicher Beherrschung sich Joachim so oft in unsere Seelen hineingespielt hat:

“Vier arme Saiten — es klingt wie ein Scherz —
Für alle Wunder des Schalles;
Hat doch der Mensch nu rein einziges Herz,
Und reicht doch hin für alles!”

            In seiner edelsten Gestalt tritt uns das Menschentum Joachims namentlich in seiner Eigenschaft als Lehrer und Bildner der Jugend entgegen. Er war seinen nach vielen Hunderten zählenden Schülern nicht nu rein künstlerischer Berater, sondern zugleich ein väterlicher Freund und Helfer, von dem keener ungetröstet fortging. So manche Geige, die da klingt und singt an dem verschiedensten Orten der Welt, ist ein Geschenk von ihm, der ihrem gegenwärtigen Besitzer damit den Weg geebnet hat zur Ausbildung und zum weiteren Fortkommen. Und dann seine Geige, seine Finger und sein Bogen! Wie viel Tränen haben sie getrocknet, wie viel Sorge verscheucht und Not gelindert durch ihre stete Bereitschaft einzutreten für die Armen und Mühseligen! Aus all’ dem erkennen wir, daß Joachim nicht nur einer der größten Künstler aller Zeiten gewesen ist, sondern zugleich ein Mann, den die edelsten Eigenschaften des Herzens geziert haben.

Er hat aber auch den schönsten Lohn dafür geerntet. Wie seine ganze Künstlerlaufbahn vom hellsten Sonnenschein bestrahlt wurde, so hat auch über seinem Sterbebette ein gutter Stern geleuchtet. In Schönheit dürfte er sanft entschlummern, ohne von dem Kuß des Todesengels auch nur die leiseste Ahnung gehabt zu haben.

39

Sein Name gehört der Geschichte an; sein Menschentum aber ist eingegraben in unsere Herzen, unauslöschich, tief und treu! —

Die Weihestunde, die mich heute nach Dresden geführt hat, um mit Ihnen vereint den Manen des größten ausübenden Tonkünstlers unserer Zeit zu huldigen, ruft in mir die Erinnerung an eine Totenfeier wach, die vor über zweihundert Jahren dem größten schaffenden Musiker seiner Zeit gegolten hat. Als 1672 Heinrich Schütz gestorben war, richtete der Magister Herzog vor der Beisetzung der Leiche in der Vorhalle der hiesigen alten Frauenkirche die folgenden Wrote an die versammelten Mitglieder der Chors und Orchesters:

“Nun, ihr edlen Musici, ihr Virtuosi und treue Clienten eures eisgrauen Senioris, umfanget und begleitet mit Thränen den Cörper des seeligen Herrn Capellmeisters zu seiner Grabstätte. Machet und haltet anitzo ihm nach Churfürstlicher gnädiger Anordnung die angestellte Kirchenmusik bei der Bestattung auf das Beweglichste, und wisest, daß ihm seine letzte Ehre zwar hiedurch erwiesen, die eurige aber hiedurch wachsen und euch bei Hohen und Niedrigen noch mehr beliebt machen. wird.

Hiermit trägt man Schützens Kunst
samt seiner Hand zu Grabe,
Die unserer Hofcapell den besten
Zierrath gabe;
Ein Mann, der seinen Gott und
Fürsten true geliebt;
Dieß ist die Grabeschrift, die ihm
Chursachsen giebt.” —

So bitte ich nun auch Dich, lieber Freund und Genosse Petri, den unser heimgegangener Meister stets “eines seiner liebsten Kinder” genannt hat: Nimm Geig’ und Bogen in die Hand und ehre Dich, uns und den großen Toten mit den Klängen, die er seinerzeit erdacht, um das Andenken seiner Freundin Gisela von Arnim festzuhalten [Joachim, Violin Concerto no. 3 in G Major, dedicated to the memory of Gisela von Arnim].Und wenn sich

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dann in der Mitte des zweiten Satzes allmählich der düstere Wolkenschleier zur Seite schiebt und sich wie aus klarblauem Himmel tröstend und mild eine Lichtgestalt herniedersenk, die uns zuflüstert, daß im Jenseits Ruh’ und Frieden, so wird dieses B ild auch in unseren Herzen nicht nur das Gefühl der Befreiung auslösen, sondern, versöhnt mit dem Schicksal, warden wir mit dankbarem Stolz sagen dürfen: Der herrliche Künstler und Mensch, zu dessen Ehrung wir uns heute zusammengefunden haben, er war unser!

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The Correspondence between Joseph Joachim and Herman Grimm

20 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by Joachim in Uncategorized

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Herman Grimm by Ludwig Emil Grimm 1848 copy.jpg

Herman Grimm by Ludwig Emil Grimm, 1848


The Correspondence between Joseph Joachim and Herman Grimm


Joachim/BRIEFE I: 36

An Herman Grimm

Weimar 10. Dez. 1852

Lieber Grimm!

Es hätte mir nach dem Durchlesen Ihres Armin (1) mit Ihrer Freundin (2) nichts Freudigeres begegnen können, als der Empfang Ihres Briefes, der mich berechtigt, mich Ihrer Freundschaft ganz, rückhaltlos zu erfreuen. Das kräftig geistige Leben, das alle Gestalten in Ihrem Armin athmen, der rhythmische Schwung der Sprache, die hohe Begeisterung darin, Alles hat mich mächtig erregt und ließ mir des Autors Bild recht lebendig vor die Seele treten, ganz so, wie es mir zuerst hier (3) „in Mitte göttlicher Bekannten” erschienen war, wie ich es seitdem so freudig in meinem Innern trug, aus dem ich es nur mit tiefstem Schmerz würde verbannt haben, hätte ich gemußt. Ihr Brief sagt mir, daß es mir bleiben darf; er enthält nichts, das mich befürchten ließe, es könnte je wieder eine unheimlich folternde Spannung eintreten, die (wie hier beim Quartett, als sonst klingende Saiten rissen) mit dem Zerstören innerer Harmonien aufhörte.

Dank Ihnen dafür!

Ich sehe nun meinem Besuch in Berlin mit großer Freude entgegen, wo ich am 13ten dieses zuerst einmal vor das Publikum treten soll. (4) Schon morgen reise ich dahin ab und werde also wenige Stunden nach diesem Brief bei Ihnen besuchend eintreffen, um Ihnen recht viel von unseren Weimaraner Freuden und Leiden seit Ihrer Abreise zu erzählen.

Auf ein fröhlich Wiedersehen

Joseph Joachim.

(1) Armin. Ein Drama in fünf Aufzügen. Leipzig 1851.
(2) Gisela von Arnim, später Herman Grimms Gattin.
(3) Über das erste Zusammentreffen Grimms mit Joachim bei Bettina von Arnim im “Elephanten” zu Weimar siehe Grimms Fünfzehn Essays 3 Folge S. 283; auch die Briefe Bülows an seine Mutter aus jener Zeit.
(4) In einem Konzert des Sternschen Gesangvereins; vgl. Moser I 128 f.

To Herman Grimm

Weimar Dec. 10, 1852

Dear Grimm!

After reading your Armin (1) with your girlfriend (2), I could have encountered nothing more joyful than receiving your letter, which permits me to enjoy your friendship completely and without reservation. The vigorous spiritual life that all the characters breathe in your Armin, the rhythmic energy of the language, the high enthusiasm in it — everything excited me powerfully and made the author’s image come alive to me, just as it first appeared to me here (3) “in the midst of divine acquaintances,” as I have since carried it so joyfully within me, from which I would only have banished it with the deepest pain, if I had had to. Your letter tells me that it may remain with me; it does not contain anything that should make me fear that there could ever again occur a sinister, tormenting tension that ceased [sic] with the destruction of inner harmonies (as here with the quartet, when otherwise-resounding strings break).

Thank you for that!

I am now looking forward with great pleasure to my visit to Berlin, where on the 13th of this month I shall for the first time appear in public. (4) I leave for there already tomorrow, and will arrive a few hours after this letter to tell you a great deal about our Weimaraner joys and sorrows since you left.

Looking forward to a joyous reunion,

Joseph Joachim.

(1) Armin. A drama in five acts. Leipzig 1851.
(2) Gisela von Arnim, later Herman Grimm’s wife.
(3) For Grimm’s first meeting with Joachim at Bettina von Arnim’s rooms at the Hotel Elephant in Weimar, see Grimm’s  Fifteen Essays  3 Series p. 283; also Bülow’s letters to his mother from that time.
(4) In a concert by the Stern Gesangverein; see. Moser I 128 f.


Unknown.jpeg

Joachim/BRIEFE I: 37-38

An Joseph Joachim

Berlin am 4. Februar 1853.

Lieber Joachim.

Es ist spät abends. ich saß vorhin bei der Bettine, es waren mehr leute da, unten im hause ward clavier gespielt und eine geige klang dazu, ich konnte nichts erhorchen, aber ich bekam einen ekel vor dem sprechen, das um mich herum war, ihre weimarsche stube fiel mir ein mit den reben vor dem Fenster und ich sehnte mich dahin, nach einer milden frühlingssonne durch die blätter und ein paar tönen von Ihrer geige. da wäre es eine lust nachzudenken. ich schriebe jetzt so gern vieles auf, das mir gewiß nie wieder so klar durch die seele geht, aber es ist ein solches geräusch von menschheit tagtäglich um mich her, daß wenn ich endlich allein bin, mir doch die ohren davon klingen, bis ich wieder hinein zurück muß. ich begreife nicht, daß ich es noch so aushalte und nicht verwirrt darüber werde.

warum schreiben Sie mir nicht? ich erinnere Sie nicht an das versprechen auf der wirthshaustreppe, denn dergleichen vergißt sich. Aber ich denke, wir kennen uns zu wenig um so lange zu schweigen und zuviel, um wieder abzubrechen. es soll dies keine mahnung sein, vielleicht aber (ich denke mir die möglichkeit) hätten Sie mir geschrieben und fanden keinen anfang zum briefe.

frau von Arnim und Giesela sind seit vorigen sontag hier, bis jetzt aber gelang es mir noch nicht völlig das netz zu durchbrechen, in das ich mich seit ihrer abwesenheit geworfen; die ansprüche vieler leute auf meine abende. bald hoffe ich kommen ruhigere zeiten. sie sind beide wohl. Armgard kommt erst in einer woche. die Giesel hat mir auch erzählt, Sie hätten während Ihrer anwesenheit hier so gern über manches mit mir gesprochen, der Bettina aber gelobt dies zu unterlassen. ich gestehe, daß ich begreife, wie Sie das versprechen konnten, aber nicht, daß Sie es hielten.

leben Sie wohl

Ihr

Herman Gr.

Lincksstraße 7.


Hotel Les Trois Rois in Basel

Joachim/BRIEFE I: 82-83

An Herman Grimm

Basel, am 7ten Oktbr. [1853]

Es ist vielleicht ein besonders günstiges Omen, daß ich Ihnen zuerst aus der Schweiz einmal einen schriftlichen Gruß sende; es mag aufrecht freien, aufrichtigen Verkehr deuten! Seit gestern Abend bin ich hier, in Basel, mit Liszt Wagnern zu besuchen. Der Rhein zieht gar majestätisch ruhig mit seinen blaugrünen Wogen vor den „Drei-Königs” Fenstern hinab zu Heben Freunden (1); es ist mir recht heiter in der Seele, nach allem Geräusch von dem eben beendeten Musikfest in Karlsruh mit dem bunten Menschen- und Töne-Wechsel mir selbst wieder einige Augenblicke anzugehören. Ich denke an gute Dinge und ernstlich daran, einen schon seit Monaten, in Göttingen, gefaßten Entschluß auszuführen, Sie in Berlin zu besuchen. Es ist mir, als müßten wir uns erst wieder sehen, um dann desto enger auch in der Ferne einander anzugehören, und ich freue mich, daß mir meine Zeit bald einen Ausflug nach der Links-Straße gestatten wird. Sie werden mich, glaube ich, verändert finden. Sie haben ein arbeitsames Jahr hinter sich, seit dem Weimar’schen Herbst! Wenn ich es Ihnen auch nicht schrieb, Sie haben doch hoffentlich nie einen Augenblick gezweifelt, mit welcher Theilnahme ich in mich aufnahm, was ich von Ihren Arbeiten erlangen konnte. Namentlich hat der Demetrius großen Eindruck auf mich gemacht, in seiner seelischen Wahrheit. Der Spur unserer innerlichen Erlebnisse nachzugehen bis auf ihren geheimsten Ursprung, scheint auch mir die edelste Aufgabe des Dichters, und, wenn ich auch nicht mit gleichem Erfolg in Tönen dasselbe versucht habe, freut mich doch die gleiche Neigung. — Nehmen Sie diesen flüchtigen Gruß einstweilen freundlich an !

Auf ein baldig Wiedersehen

Joseph Joachim.

(1) Arnims, die gerade in Bonn weilten.

Screenshot 2020-04-08 12.56.35.png

Hotel Les Trois Rois in Basel, Suite Napoleon

To Herman Grimm

Basel, 7 October 1853 [Friday]

It is perhaps a particularly auspicious omen that my first written greeting to you comes from Switzerland; it might foretell free, candid relations. I have been here in Basel since yesterday, with Liszt, to visit Wagner. The Rhein flows so majestically and peacefully, with its blue-green waves, before the “Three Kings’s” windows — down to dear friends; it puts me in quite a cheerful mood to belong to myself again for a few moments, after all the noise of the just-ended music festival in Carlsruhe, with its colorful diversity of people and sounds. I think on good things, and think seriously of carrying out a resolution that I made months ago in Göttingen to visit you in Berlin. It seems to me that we would need first to see one another again to belong more closely to one another at a distance, and I am glad that my schedule will soon allow me a foray to the Links-Strasse. I believe you will find me changed. You have a hard-working year behind you, since that Weimar Fall! Even if I haven’t written it to you, I hope you have never doubted for an instant the sympathetic interest with which I have assimilated what I could glean from your work. Your Demetrius has made an especially great impression on me, owing to its spiritual truth. To track our inner experiences to their most secret source also seems to me to be the noblest role of the poet, and if I have not had an equal success attempting the same thing in tones, I nevertheless rejoice in the same inclination. — In the meantime, kindly accept this passing greeting.

Goodbye until soon!

Joseph Joachim

(1) The Arnims, who were then in Bonn.


Joachim/BRIEFE I: 94-95

An Herman Grimm

[Oktober 1853.]

[Anfang fehlt].
. . . welches das Nachfühlen stört, so muß ich Ihnen Recht geben: es ist dies aber leider ein Fehler, der nicht nur an ihm, sondern an den meisten nach-Beethoven’schen Tondichtern zu finden wäre, ja in noch höherem Grade als bei Bargiel. Sie bemühen sich alle seit Beethoven (im besten Fall!), ihrer Seele eine charakteristische Seite abzulauschen, und ist diese glücklich erlauert, so bemühen sie sich dann diese auszubeuten: es wird die Zwangsjacke, mit der sie jeden Gedanken uniformiren — statt vielmehr ihr Sein frei und ungezwungen wie den Gang seiner Entwickelung zu geben. Beethoven, der trug oft wochenlang ein Thema in sich, bevor es ihm ganz Ausdruck seiner Stimmung geworden war: das merkt man aber auch dann bei der Durchführung seiner Gedanken! So ein Thema kömmt dann in den wunderbarsten Versetzungen wieder — aber es ist nicht Willkühr! man fühlt wirklich, daß es mit dem Meister all das erlebt hatte, daß es sein steter Freund und Begleiter gewesen war. Daher die Sympathische Wirkung — ich möchte eine Psychologie der Töne schreiben können ! . . .

[Schluß fehlt.]


Joachim/BRIEFE I: 122-124

An Herman Grimm

[Hannover] 11. Dez. [1853].

Lieber Grimm

Sei mir nicht böse, daß ich so lange nicht geschrieben, während Du mir so freundschaftlich wegen des Wohnens entgegenkamst. Ich “hasse” das Tintenfaß nicht, wenn es gilt Dir zu schreiben, aber es ist leider wahr — ich bin ein Geiger, wenn auch kein großer, und leider in diesem Moment auch Concertmeister, der vorgestern das erste seiner öffentlich unter seiner Leitung stehenden Concerte besorgte, und heute eins bei Hofe einzurichten hat. Das Übrige kannst Du Dir denken. Aber die Pein kennst Du nicht, eine beständige Musik im Innern zu haben, wie ich jetzt Deinen Demetrius, und dabei gezwungen zu sein, die durch andere fremde zu verdrängen, in Proben u. s. w. Das grenzt an Inquisitions-Tortur! So muß es einer Mutter zu Muth sein, der man ihr jüngstes, liebstes Kind von der Brust reißt um ihr eins aus Feindesland dran zu legen. Dabei verstehn die Leute nicht, wenn man nicht immer einer Tänzerin lachend Antlitz ihnen zuwendet!

Nun wegen Weihnachten und meines Kommens dazu: ich bin noch gar nicht gewiß, ob ich meinen Plan, die lockende Fahrt nach Berlin zu unternehmen, ausführen kann. Es wird alles davon abhängen, ob ich die ganze Demetrius-Ouverture, von der noch wenig auf dem Papier, aber fast das Ganze im Kopfe steht, in dieser Woche aufzeichnen kann oder nicht, denn vom 17ten an muß ich wieder 5 Tage einem vor langer Zeit gegebenen Versprechen opfern, in Köln und Elberfeld Violine zu spielen. Das ist schrecklich! Werde ich aber in dieser Woche nicht fertig, so würde ich dann Weihnachten mit dem Orchester in mir, das heraus auf Noten will, keine Freude und nur Unruhe haben und verbreiten, währenddem ich gerade hier um die Zeit köstlich ungestört schreiben könnte. Laß mich also noch ein paar Tage, ohne daß ich bestimmt zusagen muß. Herrliche Tage gab’ es freilich, wenn ich nach Berlin könnte — ein fortwährend Lichterbrennen in Kopf und Herz! Für alle Fälle danke Deinen Eltern in meinem Namen aufs herzlichste; es freut mich innig, daß sie mir theilnehmend gesinnt sein wollen, und ich bin wirklich stolz Euer Gastfreund zu sein.

Wegen der Ouvertüre bitte ich Dich noch nichts zu sagen, daß sie aufgeführt werden soll; bevor ich sie nicht gehört habe (was am 5ten Januar hier in einer Probe sein wird), gebe ich sie natürlich nicht zum Stück her. (1) Ich möchte nichts verderben. Aber fertig wird sie, und ich freue mich auf’s Aufschreiben, denn ich habe zum ersten Mal aus vollem Guß ein Werk entworfen. Zwei Motive treten auf und kreuzen sich, das eine im Blech (das war nicht zu vermeiden), das andere im Quartett: das letztere tritt eine Weile gedämpft zurück, wie aufhorchend — aber übel verstellt bricht es mit neuer Heftigkeit hervor, immer rascher, leidenschaftlich und beherrscht dann das Allegro. Es wird nur rhyth- misch schwierig auszuführen sein: den deutschen Orchestern gebricht es in der Regel an genauer Empfindung des Rhythmus. (2) Vielleicht klingt auch das ganze Ding, wenns fertig ist, gräulich. Dann muß der gute Wille, an den Du denken wirst, die ganze Dissonanz auflösen.

Adieu

Dein Joachim.

Grüße Fräulein Giesela.

(1) [Am Rand:] überhaupt nur, wenn die von Bargiel nicht besser ist. Ich hätte ihm geschrieben, daß ich auch eine Ouv. componire, wenn mich nicht die merkwürdige  Antwort, die er Dir gab, gestört hatte.

(2) Vgl. J.s Brief vom 16. Nov. 54 an Liszt.


Unknown.jpeg

Joachim/BRIEFE I: 127-128

An Joseph Joachim

Berlin, 13 Dec. 1853.

Lieber Joachim

. . . mit dem kommen halte es nach deinem belieben, das wenige, was wir dir anbieten, d. h. das bett und die Stube und der warme ofen, laufen dir nicht fort, aber etwas andres must du wissen, Arnims gehn vielleicht über das fest auf das land, und du fändest dann kaum 10 procent des erwarteten Vergnügens, verzeih die prosaische art mich auszudrücken, mir würde es sehr leid thun, wieder einsamlich hier umherzulaufen, allein die beschlüsse sind in dem hause so wandelbar, daß man sich auf nichts bestimmte rechnung machen kann.

Bülow ist wieder fort, er hat hier einen entschieden vortheilhaften eindruck gemacht und er thut unrecht ihn nicht auszubeuten, (da er ja doch einmal in dieser art und weise die dinge betreibt.) er war mit den Zeitungen unzufrieden, und wollte mir nicht glauben, daß es hier anders ist wie in kleinen Städten, in denen sich ohne Zeitungen keine öffent- liche meinung bildet: hier laufen sie ganz nebenher und kein mensch giebt etwas auf ihr lob oder tadel, und das ist auch gut.

auf die Ouvertüre freue ich mich und habe gar keinen zweifel, daß sie mir gefallen wird, instrumentire nur die grundmotive recht klar, mir kommt vor, als wäre es jetzt zu sehr mode, mit dem rein melodiösen gleich von vorn herein eine frappante Stellung der instrumente zueinander zu verbinden, doch ich verstehe nichts davon, und das sage ich in allem ernste, ich verstehe wirklich nichts davon, nur das weiß ich, daß überall der gedanke höher gilt als der ausdruck. das höchste ist freilich eine Vereinigung beider wie bei schön gewandeten Statuen, wo das verhüllende faltenwerk wie zu einem theile des durchleuchtenden körpers wird und beides getrennt gar nicht zu denken wäre.

deine grüße bringe ich der Giesel heute abend. Liszt hat ein buch geschickt von Hoplit (1) mit einem französischen briefe von sich darin, ich will zu seiner ehre glauben, daß er sich ohne die fürstin nie so weit verirrt haben würde, wie kann man so die achtung, die man doch unverletzlich vor sich selbst haben muß, dem publicum preisgeben, die allgemeine stimme war gegen das fest, er nennt diese meinung des publicums eine Schlafmütze und appellirt doch an dies selbe publicum, als wenn ich zu einem sagte: „du bist zwar ein schuft, aber du sollst diesmal über meine ehre urtheilen, ” es giebt nur ein mittel sich am publicum zu rächen, aber nicht indem man altes vertheidigt sondern mit neuem überrascht, doch sie urtheilen vielleicht anders in Weimar und ich bescheide mich mit meinem berliner Standpunkt.

verzeih meine Schmiererei, es ist ein langer mißlungener versuch, meiner feder eine zeile abzugewinnen, mit der ich sie zum gutschreiben zwänge, sie ist so hartnäckig als ich, und das resultat bleibt kein entzückendes.

lebwohl
Dein Herman Gr.

ich schreibe schon an einem neuen stück, das giebt wieder eine Ouvertüre für dich.

(1) Richard Pohl’s brochure about the Karlsruhe music festival.


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Andreas Moser, Joseph Joachim. A Biography (1831-1899), Lilla Durham, trans., London: Philip Wellby, 1901.

19 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by Joachim in Books About Joseph Joachim, Uncategorized

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The English translation of Moser’s classic biography:

Andreas Moser, Joseph Joachim. A Biography (1831-1899), Lilla Durham, trans., London: Philip Wellby, 1901

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Dwight’s Journal of Music — Joachim and Clara Schumann’s Singakademie Concerts in Berlin, 1855

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by Joachim in Concert Reviews & Criticism, Reminiscences & Encomia, Uncategorized

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Dwight’s Journal of Music, vol. 6, no. 25 (Boston, March 24 1855), 196-197.

It seems likely that this article is by Alexander Wheelock Thayer, the renowned Beethoven biographer, who was a regular Berlin correspondent for Dwight’s, and who came to know Joachim and the Arnims at that time.


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Adolph von Menzel
Joseph Joachim and Clara Schumann in the Singakademie, Berlin
December 20, 1854

Diary Abroad.—No. 12.

196

BERLIN. Feb. 5. — […]

“Im Saale der Sing-Akademie, Soirée von Clara Schumann und Joseph Joachim.”

I was at my thankless (almost hopeless, alas!) task, in the Royal Library, when a young man came in, somewhat above middle size, strongly built, face rather thin, though the leading features, nose, mouth, chin, are large, well-formed and noble; the forehead broad, but apparently not high, owing to the immense mass of black hair, which grows down low upon it; the eyes not very large and somewhat injured in their expression by near-sightedness, As he spoke with the Professor, the whisper passed round, “Joachim, Joachim!” In the afternoon I went to a distant part of the city to deliver a letter, and there upon the writing table were lying the original autograph scores of several of Beethoven’s works, among them that Quartet which contains the movement over which, in Beethoven’s own hand (in German), stands “Song of thanksgiving offered to the Deity by a convalescent, in the Lydian Mode.” While looking at this, Joachim entered. Of this unexpected interview I have nothing to relate, save that the love and reverence for the great master, which he exhibited, wrought upon me somewhat as Jenny Lind’s reverence for her Art seems to have operated upon so many among us, who generally think more of music than of executants.

Of the three concerts given by the two artists together I heard two. The programmes were: for Dec. 16th—

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At the first of these two concerts I had an excellent seat on the centre passage-way, and not far from the stage, and it was truly pleasant to the eye for once to see the Sing-Akademie’s hall full, the auditorium having no seat unfilled, and the eighty voices (about) of the Stern Society, with twenty or thirty auditors, filling the stage so far as to prevent a sense of emptiness. For a concert of this kind I know no hall finer. The audience, I saw at a glance, was of the chosen people of Berlin, musically speaking—not a few of them, also, biblically speaking— men and women to whom the styles and excellences of every great pianist and violinist for thirty years back were perfectly familiar. For novices, or second-rate performers, what an ordeal to pass! Sh! there they come. The first appearance of a virtuoso—I mean the manner in which he or she comes forward to the task—goes no small way with me in my feeling toward them. I could ask nothing better here. It was just as it should be. Clara Schumann and Joachim came forward together from behind the choir as calmly as if in their own room—as if every one knew them and they knew every one. There was no bowing and scraping, and fidgeting and fussing, and simpering and smirking, until every person of common sense was almost “sick unto death.” They came forward to the piano-forte, when she quietly took her seat, and he just as quietly took one of the unoccupied chairs near. When she finished her Sonata, she quietly sat down by him, and there they sat and listened, both quietly, to the Lieder by the choir. This air of quiet and repose was so refreshing! Then the audience sat and chatted a few minutes, and so did they; and then he rose up to give us the Prelude and Fugue for the violin alone. Well, he played it. There was no flourish about it, he laid his violin lovingly to his cheek, and his instrument sang old Bach’s music so clearly, distinctly, powerfully, gently, and with such perfect ease, that one felt as if that was no very difficult thing to do! You see in Joachim’s entire personal appearance that he thinks not of showing what he can do; he loves Bach and enters into the very soul of his music, and means that his hearers shall also. I do not believe that there is the slightest difference between his playing that piece when alone and here before the public—unless be happens to be more in the Bach mood, in one case than in the other. But to think of playing a regular fugue on the violin! When it was finished he sat down again by Frau Schumann and chatted away; he had done nothing extraordinary. Her appearance pleased me as much as his. I know not how, but somehow I had expected to see a woman at least of middle age, perhaps a little grey ready (think how many years we have been reading about Clara Wieck and Clara Schumann!) of course rather muscular, else whence the power for which she is so renowned ?—and could hardly believe my eyes when Joachim first came in with—as Mrs. —— always says—”the dearest little woman.” In her whole appearance is something most winning, and were she not the great artist she is, she could win all suffrages. The common medallion profile of her (with her husband) is excellent, though her face is now thinner than when it was taken, and it does not—cannot of course—do justice to her large, full, splendid dark eyes. At the second concert I had a seat on the stage hard by the piano-forte, and the impression made upon me by both artists was but strengthened. Each has so completely overcome all the technical difficulties of his or

197

her instrument, that you forget totally that virtuosos are before you—instead of thinking of them, you commune with Bach and Beethoven—you learn to appreciate Bach—his thoughts become yours, and a pure musical enjoyment is the result, instead of stupid wonder at “How can they do it?”

You never heard such a tone! One violinist of great display excels in imitating a flute; another can transform (in the “Carnival of Venice,” which Joachim did not play) his instrument into a hurdy-gurdy, and into a triangle and cymbals, for aught I know—Joachim always plays the violin—and that too, I guess, in passages in which our hurdy-gurdy friend would be right glad to do the same. One, who shall be nameless, rather prides himself upon being able to sing in falsetto just like his antique and venerable grandmother. His friends, though, consider Salvi’s or Perelli’s tenor as of much more value. I suppose the principal characteristics of Joachim’s playing may be summed up in—extraordinary purity and fullness of tone, the most perfect intonation, an un-rivalled (by any living violinist) mastery of all and singular, the difficulties of his instrument and a complete understanding of and sympathy with his author, be he Bach, Beethoven, Spohr, Paganini, Mendelssohn or David.

I do not suppose we shall ever hear him in America. He does not like the concert room. I am not aware that during my three winters in Germany he has been away from his post except by a special invitation to play for the Gustav Adolph Verein in Hamburg and for Clara Schumann and her sick husband here. I doubt whether he would make out well with our public. He would play no clap-trap; would cut no violin capers, which would make the angelic Cecilia with a fiddle (of Raphael) weep. He would not give the “Carnival” with variations, and then play to the encore Yankee Doodle bedevilled. He is an earnest, sincere, noble artist, in whom is no humbug. Would though, that that increasing class of true musical hearts and souls in Boston and New York could have Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim with them one winter! I declare I cannot forget the simple, unaffected ease of their appearance before that audience; how each sat down with the audience to listen to the other, and how they seemed to enjoy their music, as if it was all new. But then their music was music. So the other night magnificent JOHANNA WAGNER sang in the same place for HANS VON BULOW, and when she had sung stepped down to some friends in the audience; sat with them until her turn came again, and then stepped back and sung—O how gloriously!

It will be seen that several pieces by Robert Schumann were given. The more ambitious ones did not take; those of a simpler and gentler character pleased much. I have my doubts in relation to him. Some of the pillars of the musical world here seem to think that Joachim is injuring himself by the amount of study he bestows upon the works of Schumann and the school to which he belongs.

________

N. B. Since the above was written I have had the pleasure of an interview with an intimate friend of Joachim, and all hope of our ever hearing him in America has vanished. There is no longer any special satisfaction to him in his violin. All that has been done with the instrument he has done. Every difficulty he has conquered. All that has been written for the instrument he knows, and his thoughts now turn only to the grand orchestra. He has a positive dislike to playing in public, and I was right as to his recent appearances being merely for a charitable and friendly purpose. He is now Royal Concert-master In Hanover, and lives much as Haydn did with Esterhazy. When he wishes to try one of his orchestral compositions, a splendid orchestra is at his disposal; be cares nothing for money and his salary is sufficient for his wants. His ambition now lies only in the new path of composer, and I cherish strong hopes that Joachim, who has so captivated me, may prove an exception to the general rule that violinists remain violinists.

________

“Total forgetfulness of self will alone develop that which is most desirable in ourselves, either as Artist or Man; and by that humility and forgetfulness will many a feeble man leave a deeper mark on his time than the egotist or mightier power.” — Crayon


RWE: This quote is from an article entitled “Beauty and its Enemies” in the March 14, 1855 issue of The Crayon, (New York) vol. 1, no. 11, p. 161:

“The instant that pride or a desire for self-display enters into the composition of any work of Art, the perception of the Beautiful becomes clouded, and, in all things, we mingle our own imperfections and weaknesses with the purity and beauty of Nature. Perfect humility before nature will alone lead us to those perpetually opening mazes of new beauties and wonders which always exist for the Artist. Total forgetfulness of self will alone develop that which is most desirable in ourselves, either as Artist or Man; and by that humility and forgetfulness will many a feeble man leave a deeper mark on his time than the egotist of mightier power. Pride is indeed Beauty’s worst enemy, and more dangerous from being often her child; and from the very gift which should beget thankfulness and humility, arise arrogance and inordinate self-esteem.

It one of the problems for the moralist to study out—for us we have only to show to those who are, or would be, seekers of Beauty either as manifest in themselves—the noblest form of artistic action—or as shown in the works of creation, that the most extreme humility will develop in them the highest talent, while its opposite will chain them to a circle perpetually growing less. All that gives token of vanity in Art disfigures and weakens. All undue love of execution or of manifestations of mere power, or of any quality in fact, the root of whose preference lies in the fact of its belonging to one’s self, strikes at the root of the Artist’s greatness. There is a working out of one’s own mind in Art which is glorious; but this is unconscious always, and shown by necessity, because some rare faculty had been given, or some peculiarity of temperament bestowed, by which the conceptions of the Artist become tinged, as though seen through a beautifully colored glass, giving a sweeter harmony than we ourselves see; but this no man can render who does not equally forget himself, and represent Nature as he sees it entirely. The intrusion of self for Pride’s sake brings only deformity and darkness.

A less dangerous enemy is Sensuality, less dangerous, because more readily understood, and because it more rarely befalls great minds. While Pride stiffens and congeals the soul of the Artist, Sensuality clouds and chokes it; and he who is content to follow his sensual perceptions delighting in them for their own sake, stands ever in danger of having all that is noble buried by the material elements of his Art. Color, for instance, noble and essential in its place, becomes base and degrading, when cared for for itself alone.”

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“Dear Comrade-in-Arms”: Joseph Joachim, the Schumanns, and the ‘War of the Romantics’

31 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by Joachim in Uncategorized

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Plenary Address
American Liszt Society Festival
Tempe, Arizona
October 26, 2019

            On a dark evening in November, 1841, with the north wind whistling through the bare boughs of the trees, newly-wed Robert and Clara Schumann sat conversing with actor/singer Eduard Genast in the restaurant of Weimar’s Hotel Russischer Hof when they saw a tall, slim person enter the room, his long, light-brown hair swept back from his distinctive, chiseled face. “Bon Soir, Ihr Lieben!” the man called out to them. “Good evening, my dears!” “Liszt!” they replied with one voice. Soon, Liszt and Clara were deeply engrossed in conversation, as Genast and the characteristically taciturn Robert looked on. At one point, Clara admired Liszt’s blue enameled stick-pin, a globe sown with stars and held by a golden eagle’s claw. Liszt, with characteristic gallantry offered it to her as a gift, and would not take no for an answer.

Having just passed his thirtieth birthday, Franz Liszt was paying his first visit to Weimar, “to get to know the territory where the four greatest German poets lived and held sway,” he said — “the place that one gladly terms classical, and with pride calls the German Athens.” All Germany reverenced Weimar’s prestigious heritage as the town of Herder, Wieland, Goethe and Schiller. “This unique town,” Adolf Stahr had called it, “by whose name […] the German feels uplifted by a feeling of national solidarity. And this feeling is the more affecting, in that it rests on the awareness, that in it and in its originators the notion of a humanitarian ideal that embraces all mankind has come to its purest expression.

As every musician was aware, the capital of German letters was also once home to Johann Sebastian Bach, who for nine years had served Duke Wilhelm Ernst’s Capelle und Kammermusik as court organist, and later as Konzertmeister. There, too, Mozart’s protégé Johann Nepumuk Hummel had filled the role of Kapellmeister. After Hummel’s death in 1837, Liszt had considered offering his services to the Weimar court, and it is possible that the idea of an established position in Weimar had not left him. In any case, this small Thuringian town may well have seemed a promising arena for an artist such as Liszt, in whom “the reformation of the art of music through its more intimate union with the art of poetry” had become an artistic creed. On that turbulent night in 1841, Liszt and the Schumanns were still on good terms, and Weimar seemed ripe, in Liszt’s word, for “colonizing.” In the coming years, Liszt’s hillside home in Weimar would become the staging-ground for his audacious challenge to the German musical establishment centered a mere eighty miles away in Leipzig, and the “War of the Romantics” would begin.

In hindsight, Liszt and Weimar — Old-Weimar at least — would seem to have been a contradiction in terms, and, as we know, it didn’t work out as he planned. “The widow’s home of the muses,” as Heine called it, was certainly a strange place for a proudly independent, cosmopolitan virtuoso — a francophone futurist — a romantic of the Byronic persuasion — to set down roots and attempt to revolutionize the culture of a nation that did not yet exist, except as a culture. In its Classical heyday, Mme. de Stael had judged Weimar to be no town at all, but merely a “large château.” Half a century later, in 1854, George Eliot would similarly call it a “huge village rather than a town.” “How could Goethe live in this dull, lifeless village?” she asked. But Liszt was a man of enormous imagination and boundless energy, and what he saw there filled him with a sense of enormous potential. In 1841, the Athens on the Ilm was indeed a backward-looking parochial place, whose cultural and social life revolved around the court of Grand Duke Carl Friedrich and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna. But on this visit Liszt formed a sympathetic acquaintance with the Grand Duke’s twenty-three year old son, Carl Alexander, who had grown up under the tutorial spirit of Goethe, and who harbored similar ambitions to return Weimar to its former position as the seat of German culture. The young hereditary Grand Duke would later write that Liszt, “by his personality … joins together a power of intelligence, a vitality of thought, a breadth of education, an energy of will, a distinctiveness of individuality, the likes of which I have never seen.” “I enjoy him endlessly. He is my intellectual champagne.

Revisiting Weimar the next year, Liszt was bigger than the Beatles. His astounding feat earlier that year of giving twenty-one different programs in fewer than ten weeks had sent musical Germany into a full-blown case of what Heine called “Lisztomania.” Liszt accepted Carl Alexander’s appointment to the post of Court Kapellmeister in Extraordinary Service, a largely honorary post that committed him to annual visits, but otherwise left him free to pursue his extensive travels as a virtuoso. In January 1844, Liszt wrote to his partner Marie d’Agoult:

Under the late Grand Duke Carl-August, Weimar was a new Athens. Let us dream today of building a new Weimar. Let us renew openly and boldly the traditions of Carl-August. Let us allow talents to move more freely in their sphere. Let us colonize as much as possible.

In February 1847, while performing in Kiev, Liszt met the Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein — the beginning of a long-standing affair, which precipitated his retirement, at age 35, from the concert stage. The next year, Liszt abandoned what he called his “traveling-circus life,” and settled in the Athens on the Ilm to devote himself to composition, teaching, and the spiritual life, and to take up in earnest the project that he had contemplated in the seven years since that dark, stormy night’s conversation with the Schumanns in Weimar’s Hotel Russischer Hof.

Progressive/Pedantic

With Mendelssohn’s death in November, 1847, and with the ubiquitous revolutions of 1848, mid-19th century Germany would experience a caesura in its musical and cultural life. The times were imbued with the Hegelian concept of Fortschritt, progress, and, unavoidably, Parteistreit, partisanship.

“The word ‘Progress’ resounds in our time more and more often, louder and louder, more and more vehemently,” wrote J. C. Lobe in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung. “One can hardly pass a day without hearing that our time is the time of progress. In the fields of politics, religion, science and industry, and perhaps the most these days in the field of music, it is said to be so.

All who pronounce this phrase count themselves members of the progressive party. He who does not join in the daily incantation of this phrase […] will be summarily disposed of by the epithet: he is a pedant. Progressive party, then, and pedantic party! Who would gladly be counted among the latter; who would not rather belong to the former? In the beginning of this Year of Salvation 1848, I shout to the world as loudly as I can: I am for progress.”

Pedantic party. That would be the Leipzigers. Leipzig was, of course, associated with Mendelssohn and Schumann, Moscheles, Hauptmann and David, and a certain sober, didactic attitude toward music, encapsulated in Seneca’s motto which was emblazoned on the proscenium at the Gewandhaus: res severa est verum gaudium — “A serious matter is true joy,” or perhaps the other way around: “true joy is a serious matter.” Leipzig was also, of course, home to Germany’s first music conservatory, which seems constructive and innocuous enough, but the idea that music could be taught like any common trade was something of a hot potato in those days, and for some, like a certain “K. Freethought” the fact that the new musical institution seemed dominated by Jews — that is, the “people of the Book,” who reverenced the past and were perceived as slick imitators of an authentic tradition — was anathema.

Liszt, focused as he was on the future, and imbued with the concept progress, had little sympathy for the Leipzigers and what he called their “musical graveyard.”[xi] “If, at the time of my settling [in Weimar] in 48, I had wanted to attach myself to the posthumous party in music — to join in their hypocrisy, stroke their prejudices, etc.,” Liszt wrote in 1860, “given my previous connections with the principal bigwigs of that side, nothing would have been easier. […] My conviction was too sincere, my belief in the present and the future of art too keen, and at the same time too positive, for me to have been able to accept the vain formulaic rebukes of our pseudo-classicists, who attempt to say that art has lost its way, that art is lost. The waves of the spirit are not like those of the sea, and it is not said to them: ‘thus far and no farther!’ — on the contrary: ‘the spirit bloweth where it listeth,’ and the art of this century has as much right to speak its piece as that of previous times — and without fail it will do so.

“A Very Agitated Evening”

On June 9, 1848, on his way to settling in Weimar, Liszt arrived unexpectedly at the Schumanns’ home in Dresden. As they had not seen one another in nearly seven years, the Schumanns received Liszt with delight, though with no little consternation when he expressed his wish to hear some of Schumann’s chamber music later that evening. While Robert took Liszt to visit Wagner, Clara had but a few hours to gather the musicians and guests for the evening’s festivities. Liszt, for his part, made other plans for the early part of the evening.

The party started badly, with Liszt nowhere to be seen. After more than an hour of waiting, the disappointed guests began to make music without him. As they reached the last page of Beethoven’s “Ghost” trio, Liszt “stormed in the door,” two hours late. He seemed to enjoy the ensuing performance of Schumann’s trio, but his host’s quintet he belittled as too “Leipzigerisch.” “No, no, my dear Schumann, this is not the real thing,” he is reported to have said. “It is only Kapellmeister music.” After dinner, Liszt sat down to play Carnaval, in Clara’s words, “so disgracefully badly […] that I was really ashamed to have to stand there and listen, and not to be able to leave the room immediately, as Bendemann did.” When he finished playing, Liszt gave an after-dinner speech, declaring that new trails were being blazed for music everywhere, and even that which a few years before had evoked the admiration of the world was already Rococo. He tactlessly praised the music of Meyerbeer at the expense of the recently-deceased Mendelssohn, heedless of Schumann’s well-known aversion to Meyerbeer’s music and his esteem for his departed friend. Schumann flew into a rage, seizing Liszt by the shoulder and shouting: “And Mendelssohn? Is he also Rococo? Meyerbeer is a runt compared to Mendelssohn, who was an artist who made an effect, not only in Leipzig, but throughout the entire world, and Liszt should shut up.” After more similar abuse, Schumann retreated to his bedroom. Liszt made an attempt to downplay the event, but eventually gave up and left the party, saying to Clara as he departed “Tell your husband that there is only one man from whom I would so calmly accept words such has he has just said to me.” Liszt drove home with Wagner in a state of “amused embarrassment.” Wagner wrote: “I have seldom seen Liszt so boisterously cheerful as on this night, in which, clothed only in a thin tailcoat against the severe cold, he alternately accompanied me and concertmaster Schubert home.” Later, Liszt admitted to Lina Ramann that they had “suffered through a very agitated evening together — which was my fault.” “It wounded Robert too deeply for him ever to be able to forget it,” Clara wrote afterward, saying of Liszt: “I have broken with him for all eternity.”

Schumann and Liszt eventually re-established personal relations, though the former cordiality never returned. A year later, in May of 1849, Schumann was still smarting from Liszt’s assessment of his music when Liszt inquired through Carl Reineke whether he might perform Schumann’s Faust at Weimar’s upcoming Goethe celebration. Schumann replied, alluding to Faust: “But, dear friend, wouldn’t the composition perhaps be too Leipzigerisch for you? Or do you indeed hold Leipzig to be a miniature Paris, in which one can also accomplish something?” He then went on to defend himself and Leipzig against Liszt’s criticisms that Leipzigers were concerned only with perpetuating dead forms, and that their music consequently sounded too much alike. “Seriously — I might have expected something different from you, who knows so many of my compositions, than to lump them all together, expressing such a judgment of a whole life in art. […] And, truly, those who were together in Leipzig weren’t so bad after all, — Mendelssohn, Hiller, Bennet, et al. — we could hold our own with the Parisians, Viennese, and Berliners. […] So much for your comment, which was unjust and insulting. For the rest, let us forget the evening — a word is not an arrow — and the main thing is to strive forward.” Liszt replied: “Highly honored friend, above all, allow me to repeat to you what, after a long time, you should actually know best beside me: that no one admires and respects you more sincerely than my humble self. Certainly, we can find a time to have a friendly discussion about the meaning of a work, a man, or indeed a city […]”

Murls

Liszt once told August Göllerich: “Marschner, who was very undiplomatic, once said to me: ‘So, you are now in Weimar! I suppose there is not much there to do?’ ‘Oh,’ I replied, ‘I’ll make something for myself to do.’” Among the first things that he made for himself to do was to stage the premiere of Wagner’s Lohengrin, an event that drew the young assistant concertmaster from Leipzig — Mendelssohn’s former protégé and virtual stepchild — Joseph Joachim. Joachim was overwhelmed with Lohengrin, and delighted with Liszt. After a few days of making music together, he accepted Liszt’s proffer of the position of Konzertmeister of the Weimar Hofkapelle, making him the first person to hold that title since Johann Sebastian Bach.

Joachim would also become the first, and one of the most prominent, of Liszt’s avant-garde circle of young Turks, who, in the clubby anti-philistine youth culture of the day, came to call themselves the “Murls” — assuming aliases such as “Murl Ali Pascha” — Joachim’s nom de guerre. We read in Bülow’s letters of great festive dinners, lasting until well after midnight. There were endless speeches and toasts, many in verse — and because they were Germans, they kept all their receipts, which can be viewed in the Weimar Goethe-Schiller Archive. They would have a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape with dinner, and finish with a bottle of Veuve Cliquot — each. Fanny Lewald painted an unforgettable picture of Liszt’s musical mentorship and of the ambiance at the Altenburg, Liszt’s Weimar home:

At that time, he was surrounded by students and young musicians who have all become masters: the very youthful concertmaster Joseph Joachim, Hans von Bülow, Cossmann, Singer, Winterberger, Voss and a few others; and, quite aside from the great musical enjoyment provided by the collaboration of these young men, enthusiastically attached to Liszt, it was a joy to see with what love and devotion he observed and led them, how he took pleasure in their ability, how warmheartedly he praised them when they pleased him—I think I can still hear the tone of his voice, with which he called out to them: ‘Bravo, Joachim! Bravo, Hans! Je ne pourrais pas faire mieux!’—and how he then, turning to the listeners, asked: ‘Isn’t that so? You don’t find that everywhere.”

Indeed not — though such occasions did not occur regularly. For a host of reasons including the Princess’s ill health, Liszt was not often present in Weimar. He was often gone for months at a time, and a disappointed Joachim wrote to Hiller that it was only the intermittent association with Liszt that held him in the sleepy village. Joachim and Bülow filled their time with practicing, playing Beethoven sonatas, taking long walks in the Ilm park, and teaching each other Spanish. Together with Bernhard Cossmann, Peter Cornelius, and the other Joseph Joachim — Joseph Joachim Raff — among others, they formed a tight-knit group of Lisztian disciples — a brotherhood that would eventually step before the public as the “Musicians of the Future” and later, in journalist Franz Brendel’s fraught term the “New German School,” waging, in Bülow’s phrase “a war of extirpation against Mendelssohnism,” against “Mendelssohn preservation institutions,” and against what he called the “bastards of mercantilism and of musical Judaism.” We know that this was hurtful to Joachim, a Jew who had spent important formative years in Leipzig as a virtual member of Mendelssohn’s household, and who idolized Mendelssohn as a second father and mentor. The anti-Mendelssohnian and frequently anti-Semitic attitudes of the Murls and their associates would play a large part in Joachim’s eventual break from the group.

Because of their later inimical relationship, the details of Joachim’s time with Liszt in Weimar remain somewhat obscure. We know that, for Liszt, Joachim was both a pupil and a colleague. They often played together, and shared thoughts and criticisms on music. When, with Liszt’s help and blessing, Joachim left Weimar in January, 1853, and entered into a new position as Konzertmeister to the King of Hanover, Joseph was still a devoted Murl. His position in Hanover was subsidiary to Kapellmeister Heinrich Marschner, who, compared with Liszt, was a stodgy conservative in matters musical. In his early Hanover days, living apart and lonely, Joachim completed one of his most significant works: the Hamlet Overture, which Liszt admired, and which predates Liszt’s own Hamlet by five years. In sending the manuscript to Liszt, Joachim wrote:

I hope that the work will tell you […] that you, my Master, have been constantly present in my mind. […] I was very much alone. The contrast between the atmosphere that, through your activity, is ceaselessly filled with new sounds, and an air that has been made utterly tone-rigid by the rule of a phlegmatic northerner from the time of the Restoration [Marschner] is too barbaric! Wherever I looked, no one who shared my aspirations; no one except the Phalanx of like-minded friends in Weimar. The yawning gulf between the most intense desire and the impossibility of its fulfilment filled me with despair. I turned to Hamlet.

Ironically, it was this very work with which Joachim would introduce himself to Schumann as a composer, leading to his eventual split with Liszt. Liszt continued to encourage and advocate for Joachim, and when the Murls assembled for the famous music festival in Karlsruhe in October, 1853, Joachim, Murl Ali Pascha, was both a featured soloist and Liszt’s trusted assistant. In the lead-up to the festival, Joachim wrote to Liszt:

They will be, I think, beautiful days in Karlsruhe; to see the “Weimar School” assembled in full and joyful activity will be for me more than a merely musical festival, and I hope that we young comrades will take away with us a marvelous stimulus to new activity, as we certainly bring with us the warmest joy!

The Karlsruhe Musikfest was the second joint outing of the Lisztian school outside of the then relatively sympathetic environment of Weimar itself (the first occurred the previous year in Ballenstedt), and an early demonstration of Liszt’s conducting, and as such was seen as a pivotal event. Joachim played his own first violin concerto (not the second — “Hungarian” — as Alan Walker reports) — a rather Lisztian one-movement work — with the Bach Chaconne on the second festival day, lacking, as Richard Pohl noted in his review, the then-customary Mendelssohn accompaniment. He also functioned, without particular distinction, as Liszt’s assistant conductor. Liszt’s conducting was roundly castigated, and the festival itself received largely poor reviews.

From Karlsruhe, a company of Murls including Liszt, Joachim, Bülow, Peter Cornelius, Richard Pohl and Dionys Pruckner embarked on a pilgrimage to Basel to visit Wagner, whom they greeted in the restaurant of the Three Kings Hotel with a choral rendition of the King’s summons trumpet fanfare from Lohengrin. During their visit, Wagner read to them an early version of the Ring of the Nibelung poem, and Liszt performed the Hammerklavier Sonata. Before leaving Basel, the Murls and “Richard the Lion Heart” drank a toast and agreed to address one another with the familiar “Du.”

Afterward, Liszt wrote to Joachim: “Wagner said to me ‘I thank you most especially, that you brought Joachim to me in Basel’ — You can be assured that Wagner is very cordially disposed toward you.” “Wagner took a great fancy to me,” Joachim recalled later, “and I said to him, ‘whenever [the Ring] comes out, I must play in the orchestra.”

Though Joachim was then, by all evidence, a happy Murl, a letter from Schumann hints at the beginning of what Wagner later called Joachim’s “inimical attitude” with regard to himself and Liszt: In one of the most famous incidents in music history, Joachim had recently introduced Schumann to the young Brahms, and Schumann, like Joachim, was promptly smitten. Schumann wrote to Joachim: “Now, I believe that Johannes is the true Apostle, who shall write revelations, which the many Pharisees, like those of old, shall not decipher, even in centuries to come; only the other Apostles understand him, and perhaps Judas Iscariot, who may confidently lecture on the Ilm. All this is only for the Apostle Joseph.” “Judas,” of course, refers here to Liszt. The betrayed one was most likely not Schumann, however, but Schumann’s friend of hallowed memory, and Joachim’s beloved surrogate father, Felix Mendelssohn. These were the conditions under which Schumann came out of retirement as a critic to pen his incendiary “New Paths” article, introducing the previously unknown Brahms to the musical public.

“Dear Comrade-in-Arms,” Schumann wrote to Joachim shortly thereafter — “Since I sent a few 20-pound shells into the enemy’s camp a few days ago, peace has been more or less preserved. I heard only yesterday that another comrade-in-arms had been secretly approached by the enemy, who wished to blow me up by means of an underground mine…” Though outwardly relishing the fight, Schumann nevertheless seemed mostly glad to have found in this temporary peace the artistic stimulation and companionship that his young friends willingly provided.

In his last lucid months, Schumann was gathering a circle of his own — an actual Davidsbund, the members of which he named along with Brahms in his famous “New Paths” article — and girding for a righteous struggle against the Phalanx of the Musicians of the Future. The Apostle Joseph, hitherto the Murl Ali Pascha, was clearly an important ally in his defensive struggle. Given Schumann’s messianic attitude, it was inevitable that Joseph would soon find himself having to choose between two conflicting schools — and two powerful, conflicting mentors. Which was it to be?

Joachim was gradually seduced away from the Weimar circle by Schumann; Clara Schumann, Brahms, Bettina von Arnim and Bettina’s daughter Gisela, with whom Joseph was obsessively in love, unquestionably exercised an equally strong sway. Liszt was well aware of their collective influence, and wrote a rather pathetic letter to Joachim in July, 1856, even as Schumann lay dying:

Franz Liszt to Joseph Joachim

Weimar, July 10, 1856

“These few words should recall to you my true, heartfelt, and deeply respectful friendship, dearest Joachim. If others of your close friends should seek to call this friendship into question, then let their efforts be in vain — let us remain faithful and true, as befits a pair of fellows like us. Härtel has probably sent my things, or “unthings” to you in Hannover. If they do not appeal to you, this should not be an apple of discord in our friendship. Goethe says it is a great mistake when one thinks more of oneself than one is, or values oneself less than one is worth. I want to avoid this mistake; therefore I view my achievements, and those things that I might still achieve very objectively. […] Now, Sapperment, if you do not still know that you are dear to me, then the Devil take your fiddle!”

“Joachim found it difficult to believe that Schumann should have any enemies,” wrote Frederick Niecks, “and perhaps he had as few as any man can expect to have; but his ways were at times liable to give offence, and his friendships were not all free from friction.” Personal frictions aside, however, and even allowing for mental illness, Schumann clearly had legitimate artistic differences with Liszt. The dispute between Schumann and Liszt was much more than a personal flare-up. In the Hegelian philosophy of “progress” that characterized mid-nineteenth century attitudes and that played such a central role in Liszt’s Weimar project, the old — the historic — was not a repertoire to be kept alive and perpetuated — but something to be superceded — at best, a tradition to be built upon. This thinking ran directly counter to the attitude of the Leipzigers and the Leipzig Conservatory, where the masterworks of the past were regarded, in Spinoza’s term, sub specie aeternitatis — from the aspect of eternity, which is to say as timeless, immutable, distillations of musical truth. Shortly before his suicide attempt, Schumann wrote this apologia to Richard Pohl who, writing under the pseudonym ‘Hoplit’, was one of the principal advocates for the ‘progressive’ cause:

I had no idea that you were ‘Hoplit’. For I do not particularly harmonize with his and his party’s Liszt-Wagnerian enthusiasm. Those whom they take to be musicians of the future I consider musicians of the present, and those whom they take as musicians of the past (Bach, Handel, Beethoven) seem to me the best musicians of the future. I can never regard spiritual beauty in its most beautiful form as ‘a superseded standpoint’ [‘einen überwundenen Standpunkt’]. Does R. Wagner possess this [beauty]? And what of Liszt’s genial achievements—where are they hiding? In his desk, perhaps? Does he perhaps wish to wait for the future because he fears he is not understood now? I cannot harmonize with this Lisztian enthusiasm.

What Schumann was objecting to here (his use of the term ‘superseded standpoint’ is telling) was specifically the Hegelian notion of teleological progress as applied to the art of music. Schumann was not a well man, and his unstated fear, at this time of great personal and psychic distress, was surely that his own legacy—his music and his writings—would soon also be dismissed as expresssions of a ‘superseded standpoint’. In his defense, he wrote to Pohl: “My dear Mr. Hoplit! Humor is the main thing, and then, what you fail to see in my compositions… is love. I will use these two essentials in order to shrug off what you have done to me. … Do not seek answers in philosophical expressions or in subtle distinctions. The fellow with a free, sincere soul has understood more of music than did the shrewdly thoughtful Kant.”

In the end, the influence of Joachim’s new friends proved irresistible. Joachim’s famous 1857 letter to Liszt in which he permanently divorced himself from the Weimar circle, is a scathing expression of his distaste for Liszt’s music. “I am completely unresponsive [unzugänglich] to your music; it contradicts everything which from my early youth I have taken as mental nourishment from the spirit of our great masters. Were it possible to imagine that I could ever be robbed of, that I should ever have to relinquish, that which I have learned to love and honor in their creations, that which I feel to be music, your sounds would not fill for me any of the vast and annihilating desolation.”

Joachim’s harsh letter is hard to defend. Understandably, people commonly focus on his judgment of Liszt’s compositions. But what is overlooked by most readers is the actual basis of his argument, the reason he gives for wishing to separate himself from Liszt and his followers. This argument is the same as Schumann’s. It was not simply that he disliked the music; it was that the Music of the Future was being held up as a replacement for the masterworks of the past, which he regarded as expressions of timeless truth that could not be superceded — a kind of Torah and Talmud, if you will, to be cherished, contemplated and endlessly re-interpreted.

Read in its entirety, Joachim’s letter is not only brutally frank, but also upright and respectful; one hopes, for Liszt’s sake, that Joachim was sincere, and that Liszt believed him when he concluded: “whatever you think of these lines, believe one thing of me: that for everything that you were for me, for all the often undeserved warmth that you had for me in Weimar, for everything that I often sought to absorb and learn from your divine gifts, I shall never cease to carry deep in my heart the full, faithful memory of a grateful student.”

Still, it must have come to Liszt as a great defeat. It ended their friendship. Not long after Joachim’s letter, Clara Schumann wrote to her brother Woldemar Bargiel:

Clara Schumann to Woldemar Bargiel

Munich, 15 November 1857

            …I had beautiful days in Dresden with Joachim, who played more beautifully, more wonderfully than ever. His tones often sounded celestial! Indeed, I never hear the man without feeling uplifted…

            Liszt’s meeting with him shows clearly that the two of them cannot get along for one more minute, (artistically, that goes without saying) I mean personally…

            Once, when Schneider played glorious things on the organ, the most beautiful pieces of Bach, and Joachim exclaimed “what heavenly music,” Liszt replied: “Hm, bones!” Joachim to that: “Listen here, I prefer that to gelatin.” Liszt disappeared quickly thereafter.

In his maturity, Joachim became a powerful arbiter of 19th-century musical tastes, and he became famous for his hostile attitude toward the Weimar circle, which eventualy became known as the “New German School.” Nevertheless, even late in his life, Joachim found much to admire in the music of Wagner, whom he was said to despise, and he very much loved Berlioz — the music and the man. But the break with Liszt would take a long time to heal.

Liszt’s pupil Alexander Siloti writes, without giving a date, of a private meeting between the two at which he was present:

“It was a day on which there were no lessons, and I was standing with Liszt by the piano, talking, when a lacquey interrupted us to announce Joseph Joachim. I made a move to go away, but Liszt stopped me, saying: “Stay here. This will interest you because it is in a sense a historic meeting between us.” Liszt then explained to me in a few words that he had done a great deal for Joachim… and that Joachim had not behaved very well to him. A minute later the door opened and Joachim came in. He threw himself into Liszt’s arms saying: “How glad I am to see you!” Liszt, with the manner of one who is anxious to ward off apologies or explanations, said: “All right, all right! Never mind about all that. Tell me how you are getting on yourself, and what great things you have been doing.” Then began a conversation in which Joachim had only to reply while Liszt interrogated. It was so evident from Liszt’s manner what he meant that I as an onlooker almost pitied Joachim. The conversation lasted about fifteen minutes, and in this quarter-of-an-hour it became evident to Joachim — and to me — that Liszt was not offended, that he had forgiven everything, and only regarded Joachim with the esteem due to a great artist. Just as he was leaving Liszt said: “Now you are here, why not stop and see what our playing is like?” He then made me play. I realized in a half-conscious way that at that moment I stood to represent a school which Joachim would hardly recognise, and I played with special pleasure and Stimmung. It seemed to me that Joachim was glad of the music, if only that it enabled him to sit in silence beside the man to whom he owed so much.”

A handclasp

A public reconciliation between the two masters occurred very late — at a reception for Liszt at the Grosvenor Gallery in London in April, 1886 — captured in an illustration for The Graphic. It is an iconic tableau. The two great rivals — the aged Liszt and his virile, middle-aged former protégé, clasping hands before an assembly of luminary onlookers, in reality, some 400 in number. Liszt died three months later, after a long and historic life in music.

Joachim once wrote: “Only the meaningless passes away. That which is and was once deeply alive has the power to be for eternity.” In contrast, Liszt wrote: “The waves of the spirit are not like those of the sea, and it is not said to them: ‘thus far and no farther!’ — on the contrary: ‘the spirit bloweth where it listeth,’ and the art of this century has as much right to speak its piece as that of previous times.”

We, living in the 21st century, need no longer see a contradiction in these two assertions, and, happily, we can revel in this great festival of masterworks by Liszt, Schumann, and others, preserving, studying, and performing their inspirations, as we carry the art of music — our great art — into the future.

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Karl Storck, Joseph Joachim: Eine Studie

30 Monday Sep 2019

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Full text here of:

Storck, Karl. Joseph Joachim: Eine Studie. Hermann Seemann Nachfolger, 1902

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Jakab Marastoni (Jacopo Antonio Marastoni): The Young Joseph Joachim

20 Monday May 2019

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Jakab Marastoni (Jacopo Antonio Marastoni)
The Young Joseph Joachim
[Lost]

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Marastoni’s portrait as it appears in Andreas Moser’s 
Joseph Joachim. Ein Lebensbild.

This portrait of the 7-year-old Joseph Joachim was made at the time of his début in Pesth on March 17, 1839. Later in life, Joachim recalled how immensely proud he had been of his blue suit with the mother-of-pearl buttons. The artist was the Venetian-born painter and lithographer Jacopo Antonio Marastoni (*24 March 1804 — †11 July 1860), who, in Hungary, was known as Jakab Marastoni. It appears as an illustration (above) in the numerous editions of Andreas Moser’s Joseph Joachim. Ein Lebensbild.

The painting was sold at auction by Stair Galleries on September 13, 2008 in Hudson, NY — erroneously identified as “Joseph Joachim Guernier — The Young Violinist,” “Oil on panel, 8 3/4 x 6 3/4 in. Provenance: Property from the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.” It’s whereabouts are currently unknown. Stair Gallery has not answered my repeated requests for more information about the sale.

The confusion in naming (and, perhaps, in sale) may have come from the fact that Joseph was holding his Guarneri violin, and that there is, indeed, an artist named Joseph Joachim Guernier. My fear is that the current owner may not appreciate the painting’s true identity or historical significance.

I do not, as yet, know how or when the painting came into the possession of the New York Public Library, or the conditions under which it was sold. The NYPL documents it being in storage as early as January, 1949, and there is a conservation report from 1965 quoting a price to conserve it. The last mention of the painting in the NYPL records occurs in an internal letter dated September 27, 1988.

The NYPL files document it as:

“Portrait of Joseph Joachim ,” or as “Joseph Joachim, the violinist as a boy”
Artist: Marastoni
Oil on canvas
8 5/8 x 6 3/4

The existence of this portrait reinforces the notion that Joachim’s family was not, as has sometimes been maintained, of “modest means,” but, even the year after the devastating Budapest flood of 1838 could afford to hire Pest’s leading portrait painter to memorialize their son’s début recital. It also gives some indication of the seriousness with which this recital was treated. Marastoni created paintings and lithograph portraits of many of Hungary’s leading aristocrats.

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Jacopo Antonio Marastoni (*1804 — †1860)
Note the same drape behind Marastoni as 
behind young Joachim

According to Wikipedia, Marastoni began his studies in Rome. “He settled in Pest in 1836, having come by way of Vienna and Pressburg. He soon became a much sought-after portrait painter. In 1846, he created the Első Magyar Festészeti Akadémiát (First Hungarian Academy of Painting) which, as the name suggests, was the first school in Hungary devoted exclusively to painting. It was a private school, but numbered András Fáy, Gábor Döbrentei and Archduke Stephen, Palatine of Hungary among its patrons and supporters. The school also sold shares to the general public. Károly Lotz, Mihály Zichy, Soma Orlai Petrich and Mihály Kovács were some of the school’s best-known students. Shortly after the founding of the school, Marastoni was named an honorary citizen of Pest. In later years, he became Hungary’s first professional Daguerrotypist. In 1859, his health began to deteriorate rapidly and he had to give up teaching. He soon went blind, and died in a mental institution. The school was closed shortly thereafter.” [See also this article in Hungarian]

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Jakab Marastoni: Portrait of Ignáz Mayer

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Jakab Marastoni: Portrait of Ferencz Szaniszló

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Jakab Marastoni: Portrait of Karl Ludwig Leopold

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Jakab Marastoni: Portrait of Baron Simon Révay


Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon:

Marastoni Jakab (Jacopo), Maler. * Venedig, 24. 3. 1804; † Pest, 2. 7. 1860. Vater des Folgenden; nach Kunststud. in Venedig arbeitete er in Görz, Triest, Klagenfurt und Wien. Ab 1834 lebte er in Preßburg, dann in Pest, wo er eine private Malschule gründete. Neben Barabás (s. d.) war er der produktivste Porträtmaler seiner Zeit in Ungarn. M. beschäftigte sich auch mit der Herstellung von Porträts mittels der Daguerreotypie. 1846 gründete er die Erste Ungarische Malerakademie. Im selben Jahr wurde er Ehrenbürger der Stadt Pest. 1859 erblindet, starb er im Irrenhaus.

W.: Altarbilder, röm.-kath. Pfarrkirche, Budapest-Tabán und evang. Kirche, Harka; Schlafende Dame; Taubenpost; Die gute Mutter; Ein Philosoph; zahlreiche Porträts.
L.: Ung. Nachr. vom 2. 4. 1864; Vasárnapi Ujság, 1860, S. 202; A. Schoen, Pest-budai művészeti almanach, 1919, S. 111 ff.; K. Péter, M. J., 1936; Művészeti Lex., 1967; Thieme–Becker; Das geistige Ungarn; M. Életr. Lex.; Pallas; Révai; Új M. Lex; Ungarns Männer der Zeit, 1862, S. 129; Wurzbach; Enc. It.; D. Kremmer, Az első pesti festőiskola (Die erste Malschule in Pest), 1916; K. Lyka, A táblabírόvilág művészete (Die Kunst der Tafelrichterzeit), 1922, s. Reg.; T. Szana, Száz év a magyar művészet történetéből (100 Jahre Geschichte der ung. Kunst), 1900, S. 50, 57, 78; A magyarországi művészet története (Geschichte der Kunst in Ungarn), red. von A. Zádor, Bd. 2, 1962, s. Reg.
(Z. Fallenbüchl)

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Robert Imandt

10 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by Joachim in Uncategorized

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Robert Imandt
Photo: University of South Florida
Charles Ringling Family Collection

I’ve been thinking about this beautiful, artistic, photograph, so reminiscent of Julia Margaret Cameron, and thinking I had seen it before — which, of course, I have — in a celebrated painting of Joseph Joachim by Cameron’s friend George Frederic Watts. The photo is of Robert Imandt (1894-1969), a French-born American violinist and photographer who, in his youth, not only studied with Joachim, but lived with him in his Berlin home. It is clearly an hommage.

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Imandt had a burgeoning career that was interrupted by WWI: he served for a number of years in the French military, and was wounded twice — once receiving a shrapnel wound in the first two fingers of his left hand. He never fully recovered his ability to play, though he tried for some years. Eventually, he became a known photographer, and his photographs still sell on the market…

In any case, as I say, I find this photo to be extraordinarily beautiful and artistic — even far surpassing Watts’s painting, which I have never particularly liked. It captures the same gaze — the same “inwardness”  — which has always been mentioned as characteristic of Joachim’s playing, and of Watts’s painting of him, but also gives a wonderful impression of virtuosity (which the Watts painting does not, intentionally so) — the pronated bow hand, blurred in motion, the head thrown back instead of forward — the complete package of an artist. I would like to have heard Imandt in his prime. He was said to possess a perfect technique, including a sensational bow arm. Having been brought up by Joachim, I imagine he was also a superlative musician. He died in 1969 — late enough that I might have known him and been able to learn from him, had I been involved with Joachim at that time, and able to travel to speak with him. Alas, his son died in Springfield MA just a few years ago…

There is a very fine article on the Watts painting and the whole issue of ‘sentimentalism’ by Stephen Downes in a recent issue of 19th Century Music — much to be recommended: Stephen Downes, “Sentimentalism, Joseph Joachim, and the English,” 19th Century Music, XLII/2 (Fall, 2018): 123-154.

RWE 3.10.2019


The Owosso Times, Owosso, Michigan, 24 March, 1922, p. 5:

Robert Imandt, one of our most noted French artists. Imandt’s musical career began with Louis Beittinhofer, a disciple of the great Jules Garcin. Later he journeyed to Berlin and played before the great Hungarian Master, Joseph Joachim. He not only was taken in by Joachim as a pupil, but as one of the family. At the age of thirteen Robert made his formal Berlin debut and filled numerous engagements in Paris and Provinces of France as well.

At the age of fourteen he was received at the Paris conservatory carrying off the first prize of violin with more than one hundred competitors. Later after spending considerable time in Berlin and Poland, Robert was called into service, sacrificing six years of his artistic career for the need of his country. He enrolled as a simple private, was wounded twice and won croix de guerre with citations. He later took up radio work and was commissioned. His first two fingers being injured with sharpnel [sic], was [sic] restored to usefulness in a few weeks at Fort Sheridan, N. S.

Imandt also possesses a voice which is incomparable, it has been trained from infancy by his master Joachim to faithfully interpret the works he plays. Imandt has rare tone quality, absolute accuracy, marvelous technic and perfect control of the bow.


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Concert: London Philharmonic Debut, May, 1844 (Beethoven Concerto/Mendelssohn)

22 Tuesday Jan 2019

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Der Humorist, No. 137 (June 7, 1844), p. 548.


Musikalisches.

(Joseph Joachim) ist noch immer der musikalische Löwe in London. Sein Spiel hat die frostige Seele John Bull’s aufgethaut, und die Bewunderung für ihn wird desto größer, je mehr er gehört wird. Unlängst spielte er in einem Philharmonic=Concert Beethoven’s herrliches Violin=Concert, zu welchem er sich selbst Kadenzen komponierte, in denen sich ein so feiner Geschmack und so viel frische Fantasie bekundete, daß Mendelssohn beim Anblicke der Komposition Freudentränen vergoß. Diese Kadenzen sind so im Geiste und des Charakters des Concertes selbst gehalten, daß man die für einen integrirenden Theil desselben hält. Die “Morning Post” bemerkt dabei, daß moderne Fantasien=Macher von Joachim lernen können, sich den Ideen der Meister anzuschmiegen. Der “Morning herald” sagt Folgendes über des jungen Joachim’s, welches Jedermann mit Bewunderung erfüllt, das Beethoven‘sche Concert, vor welchem selbst die hochgespieltesten Künstler zurückfahren, wurde, so viel wir wissen, hier bloß von Mori, Blagrove und Eliasson, und zwar nicht mit vollständigem Erfolge exekutirt. Wir thun nicht zuviel, wenn wir sagen, daß Joachim sie alle Drei hierin übertraf, ja, selbst den Erstgenannten von ihnen, so groß und bewundernswert dieser auch war. Daß ein Knabe von 13 oder 14 Jahren mit viel Fertigkeit spielt, ist gegenwärtig keine so besondere Merkwürdigkeit; daß sich aber in dieser Fertigkeit eine seltene Vollkommenheit sowohl des Vortrages, als auch der Intonation offenbart, daß der Ton sich ebenso durch Reinheit als durch Fülle und Schönheit, daß die ausgedehntesten Distanzen, selbst in den schwierigsten Gängen mit unfehlbarer Präcision ausgeführt werden, daß zu dem Allen sich ausgezeichnetes Gefühl und tiefes Verständniß der erhabensten und idealsten Musik gesellt, daß diese Vorzüge alle bei einem Kinde vereinigt sein sollen, das ist’s was Einen ganz aus der Fassung bringt. Die Erscheinung des Jungen im Orchester, mit seinem lächelnden und klugen Angesichts, mit auf die Schulter zurückgeschlagenen Kragen, die Taschen wahrscheinlich noch mit Spielkugeln und Peitschenschnüren voll gestopft, ist gewiss ein Anblick, welcher die Greifköpfe stutzen macht. Da steht er, seine Violine mit der Leichtigkeit und Zuversicht eines Paganini greifend, die Leitung der Philharmonic=Professoren übernehmend, und ihnen ihre Zeichen gebend, als wäre das Ganze bloß ein Spaß — bloß ein kindischer Zeitvertreib. An Joachim‘s Leistungen kann jeder Maßstab angelegt werden. Sein Styl ist rein und ungeziert, seine Ausführung vollendet, sein Geschmack künstlerisch und gediegen. Die Leistung wurde mit Entzücken aufgenommen, die sogar das Orchester theilte; es waren gewiß wenige anwesend, welche nicht bekennen mußten, daß dies die außerordentlichste Erscheinung frühgereiften Talentes sei, welche ihnen noch vorgekommen ist. Die Wirkung wurde durch die gediegensten Mittel hervorgebracht: es war ein schönes, gediegenes Spiel — die Ausführung eines Meisters, das Verständnis eines Musikers! Jäckchen und Höschen wurden ganz vergessen! —


Humorist Masthead June 7 1844.jpg

Humorist London Concert June 7 1844.jpg


This story was most likely “planted” by Joachim’s family with clippings sent from London. 

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The house in which Joachim died, Berlin, Kurfürstendamm 217

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by Joachim in Uncategorized

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The house in which Joachim died
Berlin, Kurfürstendamm 217

Death house (The Sphere, 24 August 1907).png

Image: The Sphere, London (24 August, 1907) p. 176

The house today.png

The house today

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