![GustavNottebohm](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/GustavNottebohm.jpg)
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 ...
of
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
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{{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