Waart, Edo de. 56 Wachmann, Eduard 56



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Wachtel, Theodor


(b Hamburg, 10 March 1823; d Frankfurt, 14 Nov 1893). German tenor. He studied with Julie Grandjean and made his début at Hamburg in 1849. After singing in Hanover, Schwerin, Dresden and other German cities, he appeared at the Berlin Hofoper between 1862 and 1879, but could not be given a permanent engagement because of a broken contract at Kassel. He made his London début on 7 June 1862 as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden, where he also sang Salvator Rosa in Flotow's Stradella (4 June 1864) and Vasco da Gama in Meyerbeer's L'Africaine (22 July 1865), both first London performances. He returned to Covent Garden in 1870 and sang at Her Majesty's Theatre in 1877. His roles included Arnold in Guillaume Tell, Manrico in Il trovatore, John of Leyden in Le prophète, Pollione in Norma, Raoul in Les Huguenots and Elvino in La sonnambula; but his favourite part, and the one he sang most often, was Chapelou in Adam's Le postillon de Lonjumeau, which showed off not only his stentorian top notes (he commanded a powerful chest high C), but also his ability to crack a whip. His son Theodor (1841–74) was also a tenor.

ELIZABETH FORBES


Wächter


(Ger.).

See Direct.

Wachter, Georg


(b ?Bamberg; d Nuremberg, 24 July 1547). German printer. By his marriage on 15 December 1527 to Kunegunde, widow of Hans Hergot, he became a citizen of Nuremberg and acquired the latter's printing business, which continued to issue Reformation songs under her name until 1538. After her death (Nuremberg, 7 Feb 1547), Wachter married Kunegunde Hermann, who later became the wife of Valentin Neuber.

BIBLIOGRAPHY


R. Wagner: ‘Nachträge zur Geschichte der Nürnberger Musikdrucker im 16. Jahrhundert’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, xxx (1931), 107–52, esp. 124

S. Braungart: Die Verbreitung des reformatorischen Liedes in Nürnberg in der Zeit von 1525 bis 1570 (diss., U. of Erlangen, 1939)

For further bibliography see Hergot, Hans.

THEODOR WOHNHAAS

Wächter, Johann Michael


(b Rappersdorf, 2 March 1794; d Dresden, 26 May 1853). Austrian baritone. He sang in various church choirs in Vienna and made his stage début in 1819 at Graz in the title role of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Engagements at Bratislava, Vienna and Berlin followed; then in 1827 he joined the Dresden Hofoper, where he remained for the rest of his career. His roles included Mozart’s Figaro, and he sang in three Wagner premières: Rienzi (1842, as Orsini), Der fliegende Holländer (1843, title role) and Tannhäuser (1845, Biterolf). Berlioz, who heard Der fliegende Holländer in Dresden, considered Wächter’s baritone ‘one of the finest I have ever heard, and he uses it like a consummate singer. It is of that rich and vibrant timbre that has such a wonderful power of expression, provided that the artist sings with soul and feeling, which Wächter does to a high degree’ (Mémoires). His wife, the mezzo Thérèse Wächter-Wittman (b Vienna, 31 August 1802), also sang at Dresden; she created Mary in Der fliegende Holländer.

ELIZABETH FORBES/R


Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich


(b Berlin, 13 July 1773; d Berlin, 13 Feb 1798). German writer. He studied at Erlangen and Göttingen (art history and Middle High German, as well as law which his father had prescribed for him), and with his friend Tieck paid a fruitful visit to the Dresden galleries in 1796. In Berlin they were members of the circle that included Reichardt and Zelter, whose encouragement and practical help would have been still more fruitful but for Wackenroder’s early death.

He studied the piano and composition but it is the visual arts that figure most prominently in his two books, Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (Berlin, 1797) and Phantasien über die Kunst, für Freunde der Kunst (Hamburg, 1799). The latter was edited and enlarged by Tieck, but the sections on Joseph Berglinger and on church music and instrumental music contain the essence of the early Romantic musical aesthetic, which is perhaps best and most succinctly summed up in a phrase in ‘Die Wunder der Tonkunst’ (from the Phantasien) as ‘that land of faith … where all our doubts and our sufferings are lost in a resounding ocean’. The earlier book contains a lengthy study of Joseph Berglinger, an imaginary composer whose otherworldliness and naivety in some respects foreshadow Hoffmann’s Kreisler and other Romantic portraits of the musician. It is perhaps surprising, in view of Wackenroder’s conviction that the work of art itself is what matters, that most of the Herzensergiessungen consists of biographical sketches, largely based on Vasari, of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance. The later work contains a number of passages describing the eternal and heavenly realm of music drawing man upwards and revealing ‘all the motions of our soul, incorporeal, in golden clouds’. The ideal sounds produced, rather than the work of the composer and performer or the mediation of the listener, were what Wackenroder understood by music. In his last essay on the inner nature of music he was deeply conscious of the conflict between ‘the deep-based, unchanging holiness’ of music, and ‘the pure, formless being … and … the thousand-fold transition of sensations’. The influence of his thinking, incompletely realized as it was, continued to be felt directly or indirectly far into the 19th century.


BIBLIOGRAPHY


K. Goedeke and others: Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, vi (Dresden, 2/1898), 46–7

J. Gregor: ‘Die deutsche Romantik aus den Beziehungen von Musik und Dichtung: W.H. Wackenroder’, SIMG, x (1908–9), 505–32

G. Becking: ‘Zur musikalischen Romantik’, DVLG, ii (1924), 581–615

R. Schäfke: Geschichte der Musikästhetik in Umrissen (Berlin, 1934, 3/1982), 322ff

H. Sorgetz: Musiker und Musikanten als Dichtermotiv (Würzburg, 1939)

E. Hertrich: Joseph Berglinger: eine Studie zu Wackenroders Musiker-Dichtung (Berlin, 1969)

J. Kielholz: Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder: Schriften über die Musik (Berne, 1972)

H. Geulen: ‘Bemerkungen zur musikalischen Motivik in Wackenroders Leben des Joseph Berlingers und Grillparzers Der arme Spielmann’, ‘Sagen mit Sinne’: Festschrift für Marie-Luise Dittrich, ed. H.R. Rücker and K.O. Seidel (Göppingen, 1976), 329–43

P. Michelsen: ‘Die “Aufbewahrung der Gefühle”: zur Musikauffassung Wilhelm Heinrich Wackeroders’, Das musikalische Kunstwerk: Festschrift Carl Dahlhaus, ed. H. Danuser and others (Laaber, 1988), 51–65

S. Vietta and R. Littlejohns, eds.: W.H. Wackenroder: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe (Heidelberg, 1991)

I.T. Hasselbach: ‘Paradigmatische Musik: Wackenroders Joseph Berglinger als Vorläufer von Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus’, The Romantic Tradition: German Literature and Music in the Nineteenth Century, ed. G. Chapple, F. Hall and H. Schulte (Lanham, MD, 1992), 95–112

PETER BRANSCOMBE




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