Friedrich Chrysander
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
music historian
Music history
Music history, sometimes called historical musicology, is the highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies the composition, performance, reception, and criticism of music over time...
and critic, whose edition of the works of George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
and authoritative writings on many other composers established him as a pioneer of 19th-century musicology
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
.
Born at Lübtheen
Lübtheen
Lübtheen is a municipality in the Ludwigslust-Parchim district, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany. It is situated 28 km west of Ludwigslust, and 37 km southwest of Schwerin....
, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin
Mecklenburg-Schwerin
Mecklenburg-Schwerin was a duchy in northern Germany created in 1348, when Albert II of Mecklenburg and his younger brother John were raised to Dukes of Mecklenburg by King Charles IV...
, Chrysander was the son of a miller
Miller
A miller usually refers to a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a cereal crop to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalents in other languages around the world...
. He earned a Doctorate in Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
from the University of Rostock
University of Rostock
The University of Rostock is the university of the city Rostock, in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.Founded in 1419, it is the oldest and largest university in continental northern Europe and the Baltic Sea area...
in 1853. He then focused his studies on music, and in an obituary for Chrysander in October 1901, the Musical Times
The Musical Times
The 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...
said of him that
- "From the beginning he assumed the role of an historian in rigorously defending the right and claims of musical masterpieces of a distant past to a legitimate and faithful reproduction, i.e., without modernising, and without instrumental or vocal additions."
Chrysander is also credited with rediscovering the autograph score of Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's Mass in B Minor, which he then sold to the Royal Library in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, generously doing so only for the same sum that he himself paid for it.
He also edited the music of many other composers, including (in collaboration with Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
) the collected harpsichord music of François Couperin le Grand
François Couperin
François Couperin was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le Grand to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family.-Life:Couperin was born in Paris...
, published from 1871 to 1888.
Publications
Between 1858 and 1902, the Händel-GesellschaftHändel-Gesellschaft
Between 1858 and 1902, the Händel-Gesellschaft, or "German Handel Society," produced a collected 105-volume edition of the works of Georg Frideric Handel. Even though the collection was initiated by the society, many of the volumes were published by Friedrich Chrysander working alone...
or "German Handel Society" edition of Handel's collected works was published, and this was almost entirely the work of Chrysander; however, Julius Rietz
Julius Rietz
August Wilhelm Julius Rietz was a German composer, conductor and cellist. He was a teacher among whose students were Woldemar Bargiel, Salomon Jadassohn and Arthur Sullivan. He also edited many works by Felix Mendelssohn for publication.-Biography:He studied the cello under Schmidt, Bernhard...
prepared the first volume (with results that were much to Chrysander's dissatisfaction), and Max Seiffert also assisted with some of the later editing. Early in the publication of the edition, the publisher dropped out of the project, after which Chrysander set up an engraving shop at his home and produced subsequent volumes himself. Additionally, he sold fruits and vegetables raised in his garden as a way of bringing in further income during the publication years.
The quality of some of the editing has been challenged in subsequent decades, with one writer calling the Händel-Gesellschaft edition "anything but complete and reliable" and another criticizing Chrysander's "arbitrary selection of material in the more complex works and his failure to explain his methods." Nevertheless, this publication, which produced over 100 volumes of music, is acknowledged to have been a remarkable achievement for its day.
Further reading
- Karl Franz Friedrich Chrysander--The October 1901 obituary on Chrysander from The Musical Times.
- Ferdinand PfohlFerdinand PfohlFerdinand Pfohl , was a German music critic, music writer and composer....
: Friedrich Chrysander. (Hamburg-)Bergedorf, Köster & Wobbe, 1926 (in German)