Simon Sechter
Simon Sechter (11 October 1788 – 10 September 1867) was an Austrian music theorist, teacher, organist, conductor and composer. He was one of the most prolific composers who ever lived, although his music is largely forgotten and he is now mainly remembered as a strict music teacher, most notably of Anton Bruckner. He was a well respected music teacher during his life earning the praise of Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann.
Carl Christian Müller (1831–1914)[1] compiled and adapted Sechter's Die richtige Folge der Grundharmonien as The Correct Order of Fundamental Harmonies: A Treatise on Fundamental Basses, and their Inversions and Substitutes (Wm. A. Pond, 1871; G. Schirmer, 1898).
Biography
[edit]Sechter was born in Friedberg (Frymburk), Bohemia, then part of the Austrian Empire, and moved to Vienna in 1804, succeeding Jan Václav Voříšek as court organist there in 1824. In 1810 he began teaching piano and voice at an academy for blind students. In 1828 the ailing Franz Schubert had one counterpoint lesson with him.[2] In 1851 Sechter was appointed professor of composition at the Vienna Conservatory. His final years were spent in poverty due to his involvement in a son-in-law's bankruptcy.[3] He was succeeded at the Conservatory by Anton Bruckner, a former student[4] whose teaching methods were based on Sechter's.
Teaching methods
[edit]Others whom Sechter taught include Henri Vieuxtemps, Franz Lachner, Eduard Marxsen (who taught Johannes Brahms piano and counterpoint), Johann Nepomuk Fuchs, Gustav Nottebohm, Anton Door, Karl Umlauf, Béla Kéler, Nina Stollewerk, Sigismond Thalberg, Adolf von Henselt, Anton de Kontski, Kornelije Stanković and Theodor Döhler.
Sechter had strict teaching methods. For instance, he forbade Bruckner to write any original compositions while studying counterpoint with him. The scholar Robert Simpson believes that "Sechter unknowingly brought about Bruckner's originality by insisting that it be suppressed until it could no longer be contained."[5] Sechter taught Bruckner by mail from 1855 to 1861 and considered Bruckner his most dedicated pupil. Upon Bruckner's graduation, Sechter wrote a fugue dedicated to his student.
In the three-volume treatise on the principles of composition, Die Grundsätze der musikalischen Komposition, Sechter wrote a seminal work that influenced many later theorists. Sechter's ideas are derived from Jean-Philippe Rameau's theories of the fundamental bass, always diatonic even when the surface is highly chromatic; music theory historians strongly associate Sechter with the Viennese conception of fundamental bass theory.[6] Sechter was an advocate of just intonation over well-tempered tuning.[citation needed]
As composer
[edit]Sechter was also a composer, and in that capacity he is mostly remembered for writing about 5,000 fugues (he tried to write at least one fugue every day), but he also wrote masses and oratorios. In addition he wrote five operas: Das Testament des Magiers (1842), Ezzeline, die unglückliche Gegangene aus Deli-Katesse (1843), Ali Hitsch-Hatsch (1844), Melusine (1851), and Des Müllers Ring (?).[7] In 1823–24, he was one of the 51 composers who composed a variation on a waltz by Anton Diabelli for Vaterländischer Künstlerverein.
References
[edit]- ^ http://www.lieder.net/lieder/m/kcmuller.html[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Schubert's Lesson with Sechter", Alfred Mann: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 159-165
- ^ Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950. Band 12, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2005, pp. 79-80
- ^ The Wind and Wind-chorus Music of Anton Bruckner, by Keith William Kinder. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000
- ^ The Essence of Bruckner By Robert Simpson, Robert Wilfred Levick Simpson Gollancz, 1967
- ^ p. 60, Cook (2007) Nicholas. Oxford The Schenker project: culture, race, and music theory in fin-de-siècle Vienna Oxford University Press
- ^ OperaGlass. "Simon Sechter". Opera Composers: S. Stanford.edu. Retrieved 22 February 2012.
- 1788 births
- 1867 deaths
- Musicians from the Austrian Empire
- 19th-century Austrian people
- 19th-century classical composers
- 19th-century classical musicians
- 19th-century keyboardists
- 19th-century Czech male musicians
- 19th-century organists
- Austrian classical organists
- Austrian Classical-period composers
- Austrian conductors (music)
- Austrian music educators
- Austrian music theorists
- Austrian opera composers
- Austrian people of German Bohemian descent
- Austrian Romantic composers
- Czech classical organists
- Czech Classical-period composers
- Czech conductors (music)
- Czech male classical composers
- Czech music educators
- Czech opera composers
- Czech Romantic composers
- German Bohemian people
- Austrian male conductors (music)
- Austrian male opera composers
- Male classical organists
- People from Český Krumlov District
- Mozart scholars