Wilhelm von Lenz (born 20 May 1809 in
Riga - died 7 January 1883 in
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
) was a
Baltic German
Baltic Germans (german: Deutsch-Balten or , later ) were ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since their coerced resettlement in 1939, Baltic Germans have markedly declined ...
Russian official and writer. Wilhelm von Lenz was a friend and student of many mid-century
Romantic composers
The Romantic era of Western Classical music spanned the 19th century to the early 20th century, encompassing a variety of musical styles and techniques. Part of the broader Romanticism movement of Europe, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert ...
, including
Franz Liszt,
Frédéric Chopin and
Hector Berlioz, Lenz's most important and influential work was an early biography of the German composer
Ludwig van 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 classic ...
, entitled ''Beethoven et ses trois styles'' (1855), written in response to the disparagement of Beethoven by
Alexander Ulybyshev in his ''Nouvelle biographie de Mozart'' (1843). Lenz promoted the idea (already suggested by earlier figures such as
François-Joseph Fétis
François-Joseph Fétis (; 25 March 1784 – 26 March 1871) was a Belgian musicologist, composer, teacher, and one of the most influential music critics of the 19th century. His enormous compilation of biographical data in the ''Biographie univer ...
) that Beethoven's musical style be divided into three characteristic periods. Lenz's periodisation, with minor changes, is still widely used today by musicologists in discussing Beethoven's compositions.
[Meyers Konversations-Lexikon. 4. Ed. 10 vols, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1885–1892, p. 688.]
Selected works
* ''Beethoven. Eine Kunststudie'', Band 1, Kassel 185
(Digitalisat)* ''Beethoven. Eine Kunststudie'', Band 2, Kassel 185
(Digitalisat)* ''Beethoven. Eine Kunststudie'', Band 3, Hamburg 186
(Digitalisat)
Writings
*
References
External links
*
Musiklexikon
1809 births
1883 deaths
Baltic-German people
Russian musicologists
19th-century musicologists
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