Gernsheim, Friedrich

Friedrich Gernsheim
(b. Worms, 17 July 1839 — d. Berlin, 11 September 1916)

Fantasiestück Op. 33

Preface
Composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher Friedrich Gernsheim (1839-1916) was part of a generation of musicians that inherited the classical romantic tradition. While he might be called a conservative traditionalist given his association with the Brahmsian circle and his predilection for classical forms, tuneful melodies, and well-crafted harmony, his music also displays evidence] of the trends in expanding tonality and the increasingly blurred lines of absolute form and programmatic content. Gernsheim was born in Worms, one of the oldest Jewish communities in all of German-speaking Europe, dating back to the 11th century. The family, though descended from the last Judenbischof of Worms, was highly assimilated and valued secular education. Gernsheim’s father, Abraham, was a successful physician, and his mother, Josephine née Kaula of Augsburg, was trained in piano and provided young Fritz with his first piano lessons.1 His earliest teachers were Louis Liebe and Ernst Pauer, director of the music societies in Worms and Mainz, respectively. By 1850, he was a student in Frankfurt-am-Main, studying with Eduard Rosenhain (piano), Johann Christian Hauff (theory), and Eduard Eliason and Heinrich Wolff (violin). His first recital, which included performances on piano and violin as well as an overture the young boy had composed for orchestra, was reported on enthusiastically by the German foreign correspondent to the Parisian periodical, Le Nouvelliste: “The precocity of this child’s musical genius recalls that of Mozart.”2 According to his biographer Karl Holl, at age thirteen, Gernsheim was the youngest accepted student at the Leipzig Conservatory. There he was exposed to an illustrious and influential circle of major musicians and writers of the day: Ignaz Moscheles and Louis Plaidy (piano), Ferdinand David and Raimund Dreyschock (violin), Moritz Hauptmann and Ernst Friedrich Richter (counterpoint and fugue), Julius Rietz (composition), and Franz Brendel (music history). …

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