Carl Friedrich Zelter

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Carl Friedrich Zelter

Carl Friedrich Zelter (11 December, 1758 – 15 May, 1832) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
composer, conductor and teacher of music.
Friedrich Zelter was born in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the Capital of Germany city and one of sixteen States of Germany of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is the country's largest city....
. He trained to become a mason like his father, but his musical talent showed through. He studied composition under Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch, joining his Berlin Singakademie

Berlin Singakademie

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Carl Friedrich Zelter (11 December, 1758 – 15 May, 1832) was a German

Germany

Biography

Carl Friedrich Zelter was born in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin Singakademie

The Berlin Singakademie is a musical society founded in Berlin in 1791 by Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch, harpsichordist to the court of Prussia, on the model of the 18th century London Academy of Ancient Music....
in 1791. When Fasch died in 1800, Zelter became director of the Singakademie.

Zelter started an orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is an Musical ensemble, usually fairly large with string, brass, woodwind sections, and possibly a percussion section as well. The term orchestra derives from the name for the area in front of an theatre of ancient Greece reserved for the Greek chorus....
called the Ripienschule to accompany the Singakademie in 1808. The following year, he became a faculty member of the Royal Academy of the Arts in Berlin and also founded the Liedertafel, for which he wrote choral music. In 1822 he founded the Royal Institute for Church Music.

Zelter became friendly with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

was a Germans writer and according to George Eliot, "Germany's greatest man of letters? and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, humanism and science....
, and his works include settings of Goethe's poems. During his career, he composed about two hundred lieder, as well as cantata

Cantata

A cantata is a vocal music music composition with an musical instrument accompaniment and often containing more than one movement ....
s, a viola concerto

Viola concerto

The viola concerto is a concerto contrasting a viola with another body of musical instruments, usually a full orchestra or string orchestra but sometimes smaller....
(performed as early as 1779) and piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard instrument. Widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to musical composition and rehearsal....
music.

Amongst Zelter's pupils (at different times) were Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born, and generally known in English-speaking countries, as Felix Mendelssohn was a Germany composer, pianist, organist and conducting of the early Romantic music period....
, Fanny Mendelssohn

Fanny Mendelssohn

Fanny C?cilie Mendelssohn , later Fanny Hensel, was a Germany pianist and composer, the sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn and granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn....
and Giacomo Meyerbeer

Giacomo Meyerbeer

Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted Germany-born opera composer, and the first great exponent of Grand Opera....
. Felix Mendelssohn was perhaps Zelter's favorite pupil and Zelter wrote to Goethe boasting of the 12-year old's abilities. Zelter communicated his strong love of the music of J. S. Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and organ whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque music period and brought it to its ultimate maturity....
to Mendelssohn, one consequence of which was Mendelssohn's 1829 revival of Bach's St. Matthew Passion

Matthäuspassion

The St. Matthew Passion , BWV 244, is a musical composition written by Johann Sebastian Bach for solo voices, double choir and double orchestra, with libretto by Picander ....
at the Singakademie under Zelter's auspices. This epochal event sparked a general re-evaluation and revival of Bach's works which were then largely forgotten and regarded as old-fashioned and beyond resuscitation. Mendelssohn had hoped to succeed Zelter on the latter's death as leader of the Singakademie, but the post went instead to Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen.

Zelter was married to Julie Pappritz in 1796, one year after his first wife, Sophie Eleonora Flöricke, née Kappel had died. Pappritz was a well-known singer at the Berlin Opera. Zelter is buried at the Sophienkirche

Sophienkirche (Berlin)

The Sophienkirche is a Evangelical Church in Germany church in the Spandauer Vorstadt part of the Berlin-Mitte region of Berlin in Germany. One of its associated cemeteries is the Friedhof II der Sophiengemeinde Berlin....
in Berlin. The violinist Daniel Hope (1974- ) is a direct descendant of Zelter.

Zelter was the author of a biography of Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch, first published in 1801 by J.F.Unger in Berlin.

Carl Friedrich Zelter

Biography

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