Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832) - Cantata 'Johanna Sebus' (1810)

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Composer: Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832)
Work: Cantata 'Johanna Sebus' (1810)
Performers: Elisabeth Wilke (mezzo-soprano); Jürgen Freier (bariton); Karl-Heinz Schmieder (bass); Berliner Singakademie; Helmut Oertel (piano); Dietrich Knothe (dirigent)

Painting: Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1829) - Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1787)
Image in high resolution: https://flic.kr/p/ifv9L4

Further info: https://reciclassicat.blogspot.com/2013/12/zelter-carl-friedrich-1758-1832-goethe.html

Listen free: https://open.spotify.com/album/5hbID3sMPqIhlDLyY7t9Va

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Carl Friedrich Zelter
(Berlin, 11 December 1758 - Berlin, 15 May 1832)

German composer, conductor and teacher. His father George, a mason from Saxony, settled about 1750 in Berlin, where he worked as a building contractor and married Anna Dorothea Hintze, daughter of a cloth-worker; Carl Friedrich was the second of two sons of this marriage. Zelter was first taught at home and then attended the Joachimsthaler Gymnasium. At his father’s wish, he trained as a mason, becoming in 1783 a master mason and partner in his father’s business, which he took over in 1787; he remained a member of the Berlin masons’ guild until 1815. In 1787 Zelter married Sophie Eleonora Flöricke, née Kappel, who had three children by her first marriage and bore him eight more but died in 1795. A year later he married the singer Juliane Pappritz (?-1806), who bore him two children. Zelter was familiar with music from early childhood. He taught himself to play various instruments (including the violin and piano) and later took formal violin lessons. In 1779 he played part-time in the orchestra of the Theater am Gendarmenmarkt, and a few years later he played first violin in J.A. Hiller’s Berlin performance of Messiah. His early compositions date from this period. Zelter finally took composition lessons (1784-86) with C.F.C. Fasch, who later founded the Berliner Sing-Akademie. He became a member of this organization in 1791 and its conductor after Fasch’s death in 1800. Under Zelter, the Sing-Akademie became a model for the performance of sacred music from the past, and similar institutions were founded throughout Germany. While a cappella singing predominated at first, it soon began performing choral works with instrumental accompaniment, provided by an ensemble, the Ripienschule, which Zelter founded in 1807. Its repertory ranged from polyphony of the 16th and 17th centuries to contemporary works; Zelter set high standards with his performances of Handel’s oratorios, Bach’s motets, cantatas and St Matthew Passion, Haydn’s Creation and Seasons and Mozart’s Requiem. Zelter also established the Liedertafel, a patriotically inclined men’s choir, in 1809, and he was appointed professor of music of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin the same year. On his initiative, institutes for teaching church and school music were founded in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad; 1814), Breslau (now Wrocław; 1815) and Berlin (1822); he took over complete responsibility for the Berlin institute in 1823. He also founded a student ‘collegium musicum vocale’ (1830). His many pupils included A.W. Bach, Eduard Grell, A.B. Marx, Felix Mendelssohn, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Otto Nicolai and G.W. Teschner. In 1829 Zelter received an honorary doctorate from the University of Berlin. He died only a few weeks later than his friend Goethe. #ClassicalMusic