Philipp Spitta
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 musicologist
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...
best known for his 1873 biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
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...
.
Biography
He was born in Wechold, near HoyaHoya, Germany
Hoya is a town in the District of Nienburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the left and right bank of the Weser, approx. 20 km north of Nienburg, and 15 km southwest of Verden....
, and his father was also called Philipp Spitta (1801–1859); he was a theologian and wrote the Protestant collection of hymn
Hymn
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
s entitled Psalter und Harfe. As a child, he learnt the piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
, organ
Pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...
, and composition
Musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
. He studied theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
and classical
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
at the University of Göttingen from 1860, graduating in 1864 with a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
for a dissertation on Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
(Der Satzbau bei Tacitus, 1866). While at university, he composed, wrote a biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
, and became friends 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...
. He became a teacher of Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
and Latin in, successively, Reval, Sondershausen
Sondershausen
Sondershausen is a town in Thuringia, Germany, capital of the Kyffhäuserkreis district, situated about 50 km north of Erfurt. On 1 December 2007, the former municipality Schernberg was incorporated by Sondershausen....
, and Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, while pursuing his interest in and lecturing on music history in general and 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...
in particular.
His Bach study began to be published in 1873, and was followed by an appointment as professor of music history at the University of Berlin in 1875, and a further appointment as administrative director of the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, at which posts he remained for the rest of his life. The students he taught include Oskar Fleischer, Max Friedlaender, Carl Krebs
Carl Krebs
Carl Immanuel Krebs was a Danish gymnast who competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics. He was part of the Danish team that won the bronze medal in the men's free system team gymnastics event.-External links:*...
, Max Seiffert
Max Seiffert
Max Seiffert was a German musicologist and music arranger.-Biography:Seiffert was born in Beeskow an der Spree, Germany; and died in Schleswig, Germany. He was first educated at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium at Berlin, and then at the University of Berlin where he received a Ph.D. in 1891 for the...
, Emil Vogel
Emil Vogel
Emil Wilhelm Vogel was a highly decorated General der Gebirgstruppe in the Wehrmacht during World War II who commanded the XXXVI. Gebirgskorps. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves...
, Peter Wagner
Peter Wagner
Peter Wagner may refer to:* Peter Wagner , Canadian politician, member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba* Peter Wagner , German social theorist...
, and Johannes Wolf
Johannes Wolf
Johannes Wolf was a Swiss Reformed theologian .- Life :Johannes Wolf was born in Zurich around the year 1521. He became the chaplain of the Zurich hospital in 1544. He received a ministerial position of at the Zurich Fraumünster in 1551. In 1565 He became theology professor at the Zurich...
. He founded one of the first scholarly music periodicals, the Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft, with Friedrich Chrysander
Friedrich Chrysander
Karl Franz Friedrich Chrysander was a German music historian and critic, whose edition of the works of George Frideric Handel and authoritative writings on many other composers established him as a pioneer of 19th-century musicology.Born at Lübtheen, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Chrysander was the son...
and Guido Adler
Guido Adler
Guido Adler was a Bohemian-Austrian musicologist and writer.His father Joachim, a physician, died of typhoid fever in 1857...
in 1885, and also had an important role in the publication of the Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst.
Work
Historical criticism
Historical criticism, or historical-critical method, and also known as higher criticism, is a branch of literary criticism that investigates the origins of ancient text in order to understand "the world behind the text"....
and 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...
; his work spanned periods of music history from the early Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
to his own time, and embraced research, teaching, writing, and editing of musical editions to a very rigorous degree, including the use of source-critical studies. He was influenced by neo-Kantian philosophy. In his Bach biography, he wrote the first major study of German choral and keyboard
Keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
music of the 17th century (early baroque
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
).
Books
Most of his papers are divided between the library of the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and the library of the University of Łódz. He contributed many scholarly articles to periodicals, and wrote articles on SchumannRobert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
, Spontini, and Weber
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....
for Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1886.
- Ein Lebensbild Robert SchumannRobert SchumannRobert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
s (Leipzig, 1862) - Johann Sebastian BachJohann Sebastian BachJohann 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...
(Leipzig, 1873–1880, 1962; English translation: 1884–1885, 1899) - Zur Musik (Berlin, 1892) - 16 essayEssayAn essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s - Musikgeschichtliche Aufsätze (Berlin, 1894) - collected essays
Editions
- Dietrich Buxtehude: Orgelwerke (Leipzig, 1876–1877)
- Heinrich SchützHeinrich SchützHeinrich Schütz was a German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and often considered to be one of the most important composers of the 17th century along with Claudio Monteverdi...
: Sämtliche Werke (Leipzig, 1885–1894) - Friedrichs des Grossen: Musikalische Werke (Leipzig, 1889)
Further reading
- U. Schilling: Philipp Spitta: Leben und Wirken im Spiegel seiner Briefwechsel (Kassel, 1994) - contains a complete bibliography of Spitta's writings
- H. Riemann: Philipp Spitta und seine Bach-Biographie (Berlin, 1900)
- Johannes Brahms: Briefwechsel XVI (Berlin, 1920) - contains Brahms-Spitta correspondence
- W. Sandberger: Das Bach-Bild Philipp Spittas: ein Beiträg zur Geschichte der Bach-Rezeption im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1997)
Sources
- Christoph WolffChristoph WolffChristoph Wolff is a German-born musicologist, presently on the faculty of Harvard University. Born and educated in Germany, Wolff studied organ and historical keyboard instruments, musicology and art history at the Universities of Berlin, Erlangen, and the Music Academy of Freiburg, receiving a...
: 'Spitta, (Julius August) Philipp', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 2007-06-13), http://www.grovemusic.com/