Anton Felix Schindler
Encyclopedia
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
.
His Life of Beethoven was first published in 1840 and, in its subsequently expanded form (1860), had a great deal of influence on later Beethoven biography. He was born in Medlov
Medlov (Olomouc District)
Medlov is a village and municipality in Olomouc District in the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic.The municipality covers an area of , and has a population of 1,544 ....
, Moravia
Moravia
Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...
and died in Bockenheim (Frankfurt am Main).
Recent discredit
Research published recently essentially demolished Schindler's reputation of reliability, due to his demonstrated falsifications of such things as Beethoven's Conversation Books (into which he inserted many spurious entries after Beethoven's death) and his exaggeration of his period of close association with the composer (his claimed '11 or 12 years' was likely no more than five or six). It was also believed that Schindler also destroyed more than half of the conversation books. It was the inconsistencies of Schindler's account that led Alexander Wheelock ThayerAlexander Wheelock Thayer
Alexander Wheelock Thayer , was a librarian and journalist who became the author of the first scholarly biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, still after many updatings regarded as a standard work of reference on the composer.-Life:Originally a librarian at Harvard law school, Thayer became aware of...
to commence his own research for his pioneering biography in the 1850s. The Beethoven Compendium (Cooper 1991, p. 52) goes so far as to say that Schindler's propensity for inaccuracy and fabrication was so great that virtually nothing he has recorded can be relied on unless it is supported by other evidence. Recently, Theodore Albrecht has re-examined the question of Schindler's reliability, and as to his presumed destruction of a huge number of conversation books, concludes that this widespread belief could not be true.
Works
- Anton Felix Schindler, Ignaz Moscheles (ed), The life of Beethoven: including numerous characteristic traits and remarks on his musical works, Volumes 1-2,Gamut Music Co., 1966
Sources
- Theodore Albrecht, 'Anton Schindler as destroyer and forger of Beethoven’s conversation books: A case for decriminalization', Music’s Intellectual History, RILM 2010, 168-81. http://www.rilm.org/historiography/talbrecht.pdf
- Barry CooperBarry CooperBarry Cooper is an English musicologist, composer, organist and author, a Beethoven scholar, and is editor of the Beethoven Compendium....
, gen. ed., The Beethoven Compendium, Ann Arbor, MI: Borders Press, 1991, ISBN 0-681-07558-9. - Howell, Standley (1979): "Beethoven's Mälzel Canon. Another Schindler Forgery?", The Musical Times Vol. 120, No. 1642, pp. 987-990. In German as "Der Mälzelkanon - eine weitere Fälschung Schindlers?", in: Harry Goldschmift (ed.): Zu Beethoven. Aufsätze und Dokumente, vol. 2. Berlin: Neue Musik 1984, pp. 163-171.
- William S. NewmanWilliam S. NewmanWilliam Stein Newman was an American musicologist.He was born in Cleveland, Ohio. From 1945 he taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill...
, 'Yet Another Major Beethoven Forgery by Schindler?', The Journal of MusicologyThe Journal of MusicologyThe Journal of Musicology is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journalof musicology published by University of California Press. The journal was established in 1982 by Marian C. Green....
, Vol. 3, No. 4. (Autumn, 1984), pp. 397-422. - Peter StadlenPeter StadlenPeter Stadlen was a composer, pianist, and musicologist, specializing in the study and interpretation of Beethoven....
, 'Schindler's Beethoven Forgeries', The Musical TimesThe Musical TimesThe Musical Times is an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom. It is currently the oldest such journal that is still publishing in the UK, having been published continuously since 1844. It was published as The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular until...
, Vol. 118, No. 1613. (July 1977), pp. 549-552. - Alexander Wheelock ThayerAlexander Wheelock ThayerAlexander Wheelock Thayer , was a librarian and journalist who became the author of the first scholarly biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, still after many updatings regarded as a standard work of reference on the composer.-Life:Originally a librarian at Harvard law school, Thayer became aware of...
, Ludwig van Beethoven's Leben, 5 vols., Berlin 1866-1908 (vols. 4 and 5 posthumously ed. by Hugo RiemannHugo RiemannKarl Wilhelm Julius Hugo Riemann was a German music theorist.-Biography:Riemann was born at Grossmehlra, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. He was educated in theory by Frankenberger, studied the piano with Barthel and Ratzenberger, studied law, and finally philosophy and history at Berlin and Tübingen...
).