Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832) - Concerto per il Viola di Braccia (1779)

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag Carl Friedrich Zelter! 🎻🍷 Composer: Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832) Work: Concerto per il Viola di Braccia, 2 Violini, 2 Viole, 2 Corni e Basso (1779) Performers: Georg Schmid (1907-1984, viola); Kammerorchester Des Saarländischen Rundfunks, Saarbrücken; Karl Ristenpart (1900-1967, conductor) Concerto per il Viola di Braccia (1779) 1. Allegro 0:00 2. Adagio 7:27 3. Rondo 13:56 Painting: Louis François Gerard van der Puyl (1750-1824) - Portrait of the van Assche family HD image: Further info: Listen free: No available --- Carl (Karl) Friedrich Zelter (Berlin, 11 December 1758 - Berlin, 15 May 1832) German composer, conductor and teacher remembered primarily as a composer of lieder. The son of the mason George Zelter, he was brought up in the same trade, but his musical inclinations soon asserted themselves. He began training in piano and violin at 17, and from 1779 he was a part-time violinist in the Doebbelin Theater orchestra in Berlin. Also there he was a pupil of . Fasch (1784-86). In 1786 he brought out a funeral cantata on the death of Frederick the Great. In 1791 he joined the Singverein (later Singakademie) conducted by Fasch, often acting as his deputy, and succeeding him in 1800. He was elected associate (“Assessor“) of the Royal Academy of the Arts in Berlin in 1806, becoming a teacher in 1809. In 1807 he organized a Ripienschule for orchestra practice, and in 1809 he founded in Berlin the Liedertafel, a pioneer men’s choral society that became famous; similar organizations were subsequently formed throughout Germany, and later in America. Zelter composed about 100 men’s choruses for the Liedertafel. In 1822 he founded the Royal Institute for Church Music in Berlin, of which he was director until his death (the Institute was later reorganized as the Akademie fur Kirchen- und Schulmusik). His students, among others, included Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Loewe and Nicolai. Goethe greatly admired Zelter’s musical settings of his poems, preferring them to Schubert’s and Beethoven’s; this predilection led to their friendship, which was reflected in a voluminous correspondence, ’Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter’ (ed. in 6 vols. by F.W. Riemer, Berlin, 1833-34; ed. in 3 vols. by L. Geiger, Leipzig, 1906; ed. in 4 vols. by M. Hecker, Leipzig, 1913; Eng. tr. by AD. Coleridge, London, 1887). His songs are historically important, since they form a link between old ballad types and the new art of the lied, which found its flowering in Schubert and Schumann. Zelter’s settings of Goethe’s ’König von Thule’ and of ’Es ist ein Schuss gefallen’ became extremely popular. He published a biography of . Fasch (Berlin, 1801). Zelter’s autobiography was first published under the title ’C.F. Zelter. Eine Lebensbeschreibung nach autobiographischen Manuscripten’, ed. by W. Rintel, then as ’C.F. Zelter. Darstellungen seines Lebens’ (Weimar, 1931).