Gernsheim, Friedrich

Gernsheim, Friedrich – Waldmeisters Brautfahrt op. 13, Ouvertüre

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

Preface
Composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher Friedrich Gernsheim was a member of the emerging school of classical romanticists, inheritors of the Mendelssohnian tradition that would bring about the latter more conservative styles in what would become the Brahmsian tradition in the second half of the nineteenth century. The child of wealthy and educated Jews in Worms, Gernsheim was first taught by his mother on piano. His prodigious talent was recognized early, and at thirteen, he became the youngest student accepted at the Leipzig Conservatory.1 There he forged lifelong relationships and indebtedness to leading musical figures of the period: 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).2

Gernsheim continued his studies with Antoine François Marmontel in Paris from 1855 to 1861, where he came to know Rossini, Liszt, Rubinstein, and Saint-Saëns. In 1861, he succeeded Hermann Levi as director of the Gesang- und Instrumentalverein in Saarbrücken. He then taught piano and composition at the conservatory in Cologne beginning in 1865. Gernsheim’s longest appointment was as director of the Maatschappij tot Bevordering van Toonkunst (Society for the Promotion of Art) in Rotterdam, from 1874 to 1890,3 followed by an employment as a teacher of the Berlin Stern Conservatory between 1890 and 1897. Gernsheim was a lifelong friend of Max Bruch, with whom he is stylistically comparable. The pair met in 1860 at the Mittelrheinisches Musikfest in Mainz and corresponded until Gernsheim’s death in 1916.4 Gernsheim composed extensively for mixed and men’s choir, especially during his periods serving as conductor of singing societies, but wrote no operas or oratorios. The bulk of his compositional output was in classical instrumental forms, including four symphonies, five string quartets, concertos for violin, cello, and piano, as well as various chamber music such as string quartets, works for piano and strings, and sonatas for violin, cello, and piano. …

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