Friedrich Gernsheim

Friedrich Gernsheim (July 17, 1839 – September 11, 1916) was a German composer, conductor, and pianist.

Early life

Gernsheim was born in Worms to a prominent Jewish physician. He was given his first musical training at home by his mother, and then from age seven Gernsheim studied under Worms' musical director, Louis Liebe, a former pupil of Louis Spohr's.

Gernsheim's doctor father moved the family to Frankfurt am Main in the aftermath of the 1848's year of revolutions. In Frankfurt, Gernsheim studied with Jakob Rosenhain's brother, Edward Rosenhain. Gernsheim made his first public appearance as a concert pianist in 1850 and toured for two seasons. His family then settled in Leipzig, where he studied piano with Ignaz Moscheles from 1852. He spent 1855 to 1860 in Paris, meeting Gioachino Rossini, Théodore Gouvy, Édouard Lalo, and Camille Saint-Saëns.

Career

His travels afterwards took him to Saarbrücken, where in 1861 he took the conductor post vacated by Hermann Levi, then to Cologne, where in 1865 Ferdinand Hiller appointed him to the staff of the Conservatory where pupils included Engelbert Humperdinck and Carl Lachmund. He then served as musical director of the Philharmonic Society of Rotterdam from 1874 until 1890. In the later years, he became a teacher at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, and in 1897 moved there to teach at the Prussian Academy of Arts, where he was elected to the senate in 1897. In 1877, he married Helene Hernsheim from Karlsruhe.

Gernsheim was a prolific composer, especially of orchestral, chamber, and instrumental music as well as songs. Some of his works implied Jewish subject matter, but Gernsheim rarely made explicit references in his music to Jewish heritage. His third symphony, for example, was based on the legend of the Song of Miriam, but directly inspired by a performance of Handel’s Israel in Egypt. His earlier works show the influence of Robert Schumann, and from 1868, when he first became friendly with Johannes Brahms, his compositions demonstrate a Brahmsian influence.

Gernsheim's four symphonies, the first of which was written before the publication of Brahms' First Symphony, are an interesting example of the application of Brahms' style by a contemporary. Gernsheim's last works, most notably his Zu einem Drama (1902), show him moving away from that reliance on influence and into a more personal style. He died in Berlin.

Because he was Jewish, Gernsheim's work was banned in Nazi Germany, and his papers and a biography written about him by Karl Holl were removed from music libraries.

Style

Those who have studied Friedrich Gernsheim’s music categorize him as a Romantic composer heavily influenced by Johannes Brahms. However, while he did learn from his contemporary, Gernsheim began his career before hearing Brahms' work and this influence was only discovered later. Christopher Fifield suggests that Gernsheim owes his “instrumentation, thematic shapes, accompaniments, and orchestral textures” to both Brahms and Max Bruch. Some believe Gernsheim’s symphonic work to resemble Bruch's more than Brahms', but homages to both are present in his music. Unlike Bruch, who was largely inspired by folk songs, Gernsheim is described as having his own “personal melodic language” and is considered more daring in his harmonies.^{[citation needed]}

Gernsheim’s first symphony premiered before Brahms’, and his themes were praised for possessing an “abundance of beautiful details,” many of which pass by the listener unnoticed in the first hearing, as Fifield describes. Fifield also claims that his treatment of instrumentation “reveals a very talented hand,” and many listeners of the time preferred Gernsheim’s symphonies to those by Brahms. Bruch considered Gernsheim’s first symphony a work that “ranks without question among the best that has been written in this genre in our time.”^{[citation needed]} He even called Brahms’s symphonies overrated and agreed with critics in that Gernsheim demonstrated a great advantage over those of his contemporaries: “its excellent orchestration.”^{[citation needed]}

Some of Gernsheim’s critics—including his teacher, Ignaz Moscheles—said he fell into the same trap Anton Bruckner did by composing short melodies or themes that were too complicated to develop further. However, Moscheles was quoted, after playing Gernsheim’s first piano quartet, that he did compose “with great agility in the manner of Schumann” and in the Romantic style of the time, but thought his clear motives were often sacrificed to “artificial counterpoint.”^{[citation needed]} Many theorists and music critics today agree with this evaluation, saying his symphonies and other works tend to be discursive, while praising his talent in orchestration and achievements in chamber music.^{[citation needed]}

In chamber settings, he wrote particularly well for strings and presented his most focused ideas and logical developments.^{[citation needed]} His late orchestral works, such as his fourth symphony and the tone poem Zu einem Drama, demonstrate the maturity reached in his chamber music on a larger scale.

Throughout his career, Gernsheim proved himself a somewhat conservative composer and a faithful student of classical form. He composed under the belief that every measure should be “essential and inevitable,” which is present in his later works.^{[citation needed]} Some argue that his discursive ideas, with their small-scale developments, that brought him criticism were often used intentionally to add variety within traditional structures.^{[citation needed]} His music that follows the sonata-allegro form, for example, usually include at least three expositional themes that establish structural patterns while also allowing him to undermine them.^{[citation needed]}

Common threads and relationships can be traced through his many themes, however, and Gernsheim uses them to achieve a certain balance in his music.^{[citation needed]} Alexander Ringer calls this virtue “Gediegenheit,” or “decency and solidarity,” a principle that served as a constant guide in Gernsheim’s musical and personal life.

Selected works (excerpted from worklist)

Of Gernsheim's music, the symphonies, the cello concerto, the first cello sonata, the piano trios, two of the piano quartets, the two piano quintets, the violin sonatas, and the second string quartet have been recorded.

References

Further reading

• Green, Janet M. and Josephine Thrall (2016). "Friedrich Gernsheim", in: The American History and Encyclopedia of Music, Vol. 9, p. 908.
• Holl, Karl (1928). Friedrich Gernsheim: Leben, Erscheinung und Werk. Berlin: Breitkopf & Härtel.
• Koch, Dr. Hans-Oskar. Notes to the recording on Arte-Nova of the Complete Symphonies of Friedrich Gernsheim.

External links

• Free scores by Friedrich Gernsheim at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• "Gernsheim, Friedrich" . New International Encyclopedia. 1906.
• Friedrich Gernsheim’s String Quartet No. 2 , Piano Trio No.2 & Piano Quintet No.1 sound-bites with discussion of works
• Detailed biography and worklist on the page of an association for Jewish culture in his hometown (in German, cf. #2 there)
• Detailed biography, worklist and discography by François-Emmanuel de Wasseige on the French website musicologie.org (in French)
• Jewish Encyclopedia biography