Martin Gustav Nottebohm (12 November 1817, Lüdenscheid,

Westphalia Westphalia (; german: Westfalen ; nds, Westfalen ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants. The territory of the regio ...

– 29 October 1882,

Graz Graz (; sl, Gradec) is the capital city of the Austrian state of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna. As of 1 January 2021, it had a population of 331,562 (294,236 of whom had principal-residence status). In 2018, the popul ...

) was a

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

, musical

editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, orga ...

and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

who spent most of his career in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. He is particularly celebrated for his studies of

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

. Nottebohm studied in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

, where he met

Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic music, Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositi ...

and Schumann, and settled in Vienna in 1846. In 1862 he met Brahms, who became a lifelong friend; Brahms cared for Nottebohm in his last illness and took care of the arrangements for his funeral. Nottebohm was a pioneer researcher in what are now described as 'Beethoven studies'. He sought out Beethoven relics and produced an important 'thematic catalogue' of Beethoven's works. His greatest contribution, however, is probably his series of essays and commentaries on several of the musical 'sketchbooks' in which Beethoven notated and elaborated his initial ideas. The last of Nottebohm's publications on this subject appeared posthumously in 1887, edited by his former pupil Mandyczewski. Writing of Nottebohm's investigations into Beethoven's sketches, the later Beethoven scholar

Joseph Kerman Joseph Wilfred Kerman (3 April 1924 – 17 March 2014) was an American musicologist and music critic. Among the leading musicologists of his generation, his 1985 book ''Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology'' (published in the UK as ''Mus ...

evaluated him in the following terms: "He made some mistakes, but it is to be doubted whether many musical scholars have maintained so high a standard of accuracy and objectivity, and so sharp a sense of the relevant, in treating a similar mass of difficult material". Nottebohm's scholarly efforts were not confined to Beethoven, however. He published a thematic catalogue of Schubert's works and was an avid collector of

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

and pre-Baroque music both vocal and instrumental. Brahms inherited some of his collection and bequeathed it, along with his own library, to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. Nottebohm's own compositions were mainly in the fields of chamber and piano music. The latter includes a set of Variations on a

Sarabande The sarabande (from es, zarabanda) is a dance in triple metre, or the music written for such a dance. History The Sarabande evolved from a Spanish dance with Arab influences, danced by a lively double line of couples with castanets. A dance cal ...

J.S. Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suite ...

for piano duet, which he often performed with Brahms. In a letter to

Heinrich von Herzogenberg Heinrich Picot de Peccaduc, Freiherr von Herzogenberg (10 June 1843 – 9 October 1900) was an Austrian composer and conductor descended from a French aristocratic family. He was born in Graz and was educated at a Jesuit school in Feldkirch, ...

dated 20 August 1876, Brahms numbers Nottebohm (in the same sentence with Schumann) among the modern practitioners of variation form.

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nottebohm, Gustav 1817 births 1882 deaths 19th-century classical composers 19th-century classical pianists 19th-century German musicians 19th-century German male musicians Beethoven scholars German classical pianists Male classical pianists German male classical composers German pianists German male pianists German Romantic composers People from the Province of Westphalia Schubert scholars 19th-century German musicologists