Frankenburger, Paul. See Ben-Haim, Paul. Frankfurt (am Main)

Frankenburger, Paul.

Frankfurt (am Main).

The few surviving documents of medieval music in Frankfurt include an 11th-century missal with neumes and the Rorbach Missale (c1460) in Gothic choral notation. The treatise Sermones by J. Floess (1418–19) derives from Reichenau. Performances of Passion plays are recorded from the mid-14th century. In the 16th century the townspeople and guilds also performed plays with music. The Frankfurt fair was a strong attraction for minstrels. The ceremony of the Piper’s Court, continued until 1802, became famous through Goethe’s description (Dichtung und Wahrheit, i, 1): in order to gain customs exemption, deputies from Nuremberg, Worms and Bamberg brought symbolic gifts to the autumn fair every year and were led in procession by their respective town pipers. In Goethe’s time they still played the melody supposed to date from about 1500. Several famous organ builders worked in Frankfurt before the 15th century, including the Franciscan friar L. Mertz, who also worked in Barcelona, Nuremberg, Aschaffenburg, Worms and elsewhere.

Until well into the 17th century the high cost of becoming a citizen and the mercantile orientation of the city prevented musicians of more than regional importance from coming to Frankfurt. Among the few exceptions in the years before the Reformation were the city physician Johannes von Soest (d Frankfurt, 1506) and the polymath and music theorist Johannes Cochlaeus, dean of the Liebfrauenstift from 1520 to 1524. In 1520 the council founded a grammar school which provided musical education. In 1530 the printer Christian Egenolff settled in Frankfurt and two years later published the first music printed there, Petrus Tritonius’s setting of some Horatian odes. The subsequent music publications of Sigmund Feyerabend, Georg Rab, Johann Wolff and Nikolaus Stein enlarged the scope of music publishing in Frankfurt, and the printed music trade came to rank with the book trade as a main attraction of the Frankfurt fair.

According to Luther (1546) the musical arrangement of the church service was simple. The elaboration with florid counterpoint, carried out by teachers and pupils of the grammar school, was emphasized as being an innovation in 1573. In the same year Jacob Meiland came to Frankfurt, but he left in 1575, after a series of his compositions had appeared in print. It was characteristic of the council’s lack of interest in music and the citizens’ lack of initiative that no attempt was made to keep this excellent composer in Frankfurt. There was some improvement after the rising of the citizens against the oligarchic rule of the council (1612). In 1623 Herbst was appointed first civic director of music and director of church music at the main Protestant church, the Barfüsserkirche. He trained a competent choir and an orchestra, had the organ renovated and ordered a second, smaller organ, other instruments and printed music, thus creating the basis for the performance of polychoral compositions. He remained in Frankfurt until his death (1666) except for eight years (1636–44) spent in Nuremberg. His main achievements were in church music and music theory, but he also greatly stimulated the development of instrumental music. A Musik-Kränzlein first mentioned in 1608 developed into a collegium musicum, recorded in 1672 in the dedication of Wolfgang Carl Briegel’s Musicalisches Tafel-Confect. It was maintained by the Gesellschaft Frauenstein, a society of wealthy merchants ruling the town's council. Of Herbst’s successors, Telemann in particular made the collegium musicum part of civic musical life. During his term of office (1712–21) he organized regular concerts, thus inaugurating the city’s public concert life; under him church music reached its zenith (he was Kapellmeister at the Barfüsserkirche and the Katharinenkirche). His talent as an organizer and his close connections with the Gesellschaft Frauenstein made him more influential than any other musician in Frankfurt.

The many concerts given in the 18th century by travelling virtuosos included those of the Mozart family (1763); Mozart’s second stay in Frankfurt on the occasion of Leopold II’s coronation (1790) was financially disappointing. From 1700 German, French and Italian opera companies often gave guest performances in Frankfurt, but there was no permanent theatre until 1792, when the Nationalbühne was formed as a joint-stock company by a group of citizens. In the repertory there was a slight predominance of opera over drama; Mozart’s operas in particular became established in Frankfurt at an early date. A German version of La finta giadiniera given in 1782 was the first Mozart production in the whole of central and northern Germany, and was followed by productions of Die Entführung (1783) and all Mozart's subsequent operas, again in German, before the end of the century. The orchestra of the Nationaltheater was directed from 1792 by F.L.A. Kunzen and later by Ferdinand Fränzel and Carl Cannabich, both well experienced in the traditions of the Mannheim orchestra. With regard to the teaching of composition, Mannheim influence arrived with Johann Georg Vollweiler, the teacher of Anton André and Ferdinand Hiller.

The city gained a new cultural centre with the founding in 1808 of the Museum, a society for the cultivation of literature, art and music which gradually came to concentrate its activities entirely on music. Its orchestral and chamber music concerts continue to be an important part of Frankfurt musical life. The same is true of the Cäcilienverein, a choral society founded by J.N. Schelble in 1818. Among the first conductors of the opera and the Museum was Spohr (1817–19), who introduced Beethoven’s symphonies to the Frankfurt public. In 1819 Spohr conducted the première of his opera Zemire und Azor. His successor Carl Guhr (1821–48) promoted the contemporary French repertory, and there were also early performances of new German (Conradin Kreutzer, Marschner, Lortzing) and Italian opera (Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti), though Verdi's arrival was slower. The first Wagner opera performed was Tannhäuser (1853), followed the next year by Lohengrin and Der fliegende Holländer. In 1862 Wagner conducted two performances of Lohengrin (from a score preserved in D-F).

The Museum and the Cäcilienverein were maintained by the wealthy upper class, but during the 19th century numerous choral societies were also founded by the middle and lower classes. In 1838 a choral festival was held; its initiators, Schnyder von Wartensee and Wilhelm Speyer, used the occasion to campaign for the forming of the Mozartstiftung, which was to help talented musicians to learn composition. The recipients of grants from the foundation included Bruch, Humperdinck and Toch. Music education was furthered by the founding of the Frankfurt Musikschule by H. Henkel and J.C. Hauff in 1860 and of the Hoch Conservatory in 1878. This was endowed by the Frankfurt merchant J. Hoch, who bequeathed his complete estate (900,000 gold marks) to establish it. The directors of the conservatory included J.J. Raff (until 1882), Bernhard Scholz (1883–1908), Iwan Knorr (1909–16), W. von Bausznern (1916–23) and Bernhard Sekles (1923–33). Its excellent staff (Clara Schumann, Julius Stockhausen, Humperdinck, James Kwast, Hugo Heermann, Bernhard Cossmann and others) quickly gave it an international reputation; the students included Cyril Scott, Grainger, Pfitzner, Walter Braunfels, Clemens Franckenstein, Toch, Hindemith, Klemperer and Hans Rosbaud. In 1937 it was divided into a Staatliche Hochschule für Musik (directed by Hermann Reutter until 1945, Walter Davisson 1950–54, Philipp Mohler 1958–75 and Hans Dieter Resch 1975–95) and a conservatory, which has trained amateur musicians and latterly music teachers.

In 1880 the opera house (now the Alte Oper) was opened: early productions included Wagner's Ring (1882–3), Die Meistersinger and Tristan (1884), all conducted by Otto Dessoff. Humperdinck was opera critic of the Frankfurter Zeitung from 1890 to 1897 and composed Hansel und Gretel in the city. Under Ludwig Rottenberg's conductorship (1893–1924) there were early performances of Falstaff and of works by Humperdinck, Pfitzner and Strauss, as well as Schreker premières and the first production of Pelléas in German (1907). The conservatism of Frankfurt musical life in the 19th century was beginning to give way to more interest in new music.

The 1920s were a climax in Frankfurt's music history: Furtwängler (1920–22), Scherchen (1922–4), Krauss (1924–9) and Rosbaud (1928–37) worked as conductors, and Hindemith was Konzertmeister of the opera house and Museum orchestras from 1915 to 1922. He remained in Frankfurt until 1927, living in an old tower where he wrote Cardillac and other works. At the university (founded in 1914) a department of music was formed in 1921 under Moritz Bauer. The musical material in the Rothschild Library and the Manskopf Collection (now in the Stadt- und Universtätsbibliothek) and the music library of Paul Hirsch (now in GB-Lbl) provided valuable material for study. Bauer’s successors included Helmuth Osthoff (1937–67) and Ludwig Finscher (1968–81).

Frankfurt's concert activities were inhibited by the lack of suitable halls (the concert hall built in 1861 was destroyed by bombing in World War II) until the ruined opera house was rebuilt as a concert hall in 1981. Productions at the Frankfurt Opera and the Museum concerts reached a high standard under the direction of Georg Solti (1952–61); Christoph von Dohnányi was civic director of music from 1968 to 1975. The more traditional programmes of the Museum Concerts were balanced by the concerts of the Frankfurt RSO under Winfried Zillig, Otto Matzerath, Dean Dixon and Eliahu Inbal. This orchestra took part in the Darmstadt summer courses. The most important choirs, apart from the Cäcilienverein, are the Frankfurt Singakademie (Ljubomir Romansky) and the Frankfurt Kantorei (Kurt Thomas, Helmuth Rilling, Wolfgang Schaefer).

When Michael Gielen was conductor of both the opera and the Museum, between 1977 and 1987, there was greater emphasis on new works, adventurous programming and novel stage productions. Among the last were a Les broyens directed by Ruth Berghaus and the first German stagings of Nono's Al gran sole carico d'amore and Prometeo. Gielen inaugurated the Alte Oper concert hall with a performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony in 1981, and during this period the Frankfurt Festival became one of the most important in Germany; the festival was discontinued in 1994 on economic grounds. Meanwhile Gielen had been succeeded by Gary Bertini (1987–90) and Sylvain Cambreling (intendant of the opera from 1993).

The organist Helmut Walcha (1907–91) achieved particular distinction with his playing of J.S. Bach. Of composers resident in Frankfurt, Kurt Hessenberg (1908–94) was the best-known. As regards music criticism, Frankfurt became important through the work of Paul Bekker and Karl Holl on the Frankfurter Zeitung (1911–25); the influence of the teaching and writing of T.W. Adorno (1903–69) went far beyond the city.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Israel: Frankfurter Concert-Chronik von 1713–1780 (Frankfurt, 1876, 2/1986)

C. Valentin: Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt am Main vom Anfange des XIV. bis zum Anfange des XVIII. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt, 1906/R)

F. Bothe: Geschichte der Stadt Frankfurt am Main in Wort und Bild (Frankfurt, 1913/R)

P. Epstein: ‘Die Frankfurter Kapellmusik zur Zeit J.A. Herbst’s’, AMw, vi (1924), 58–102

O. Bacher: Die Geschichte der Frankfurter Oper im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1926)

H. de Bary: Museum: Geschichte der Museumgesellschaft zu Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt, 1937)

T. Peine: Der Orgelbau in Frankfurt am Main und Umgebung von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt, 1956)

H. Weber, ed: Das ‘Museum’: einhundertfünfzig Jahre Frankfurter Konzertleben, 1808–1958 (Frankfurt, 1958)

L. Hoffmann-Erbrecht: ‘Ein Frankfürter Messenkodex’, AMw, xvi (1959), 328–34

W. Saure: Die Geschichte der Frankfurter Oper von 1792 bis 1880 (diss., U. of Cologne, 1959)

O. Rüb: Die chorischen Organisationen der bürgerlichen Mittel- und Unterschicht im Raum Frankfurt von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart (diss., U. of Frankfurt, 1964)

A.R. Mohr: Das Frankfurter Mozart-Buch (Frankfurt, 1968)

E.-L. Berz: Die Notendrucker und ihre Verleger in Frankfurt am Main von den Anfängen bis etwa 1630, CaM, v (Kassel, 1970)

P. Cahn: ‘Hindemiths Lehrjahre in Frankfurt’, Hindemith-Jb 1972, 23–47, esp. 25

H. Schaefer: Die Notendrucker und Muskverleger in Frankfurt am Main von 1630 bis um 1720 (Kassel, 1975)

A.R. Mohr: Musikleben in Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt, 1976)

P. Cahn: Das Hoch'sche Konservatorium in Frankfurt am Main (1878–1978) (Frankfurt, 1979)

J. Schlichte: Thematischer Katalog der kirchlichen Musikhandschriften des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts in der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt, 1979)

A.R. Mohr: Das Frankfurter Opernhaus 1880–1980 (Frankfurt, 1980)

R. Didion and J. Schlichte: Thematischer Katalog der Opernsammlung in der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt, 1990)

E. Hanau: Musikinstitutionen in Frankfurt am Main 1933–1939 (Cologne, 1994)

PETER CAHN

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