Alfred Einstein

Alfred Einstein ( born December 30, 1880 in Munich, † February 13, 1952 in El Cerrito, California, USA ) was a German -American musicologist.

• 2.1 Major works
• 2.2 editor

• 5.1 scores (selection)
• 5.2 Other editions

Life

Origin, youth and scientific beginnings

Alfred Einstein was born into a Jewish family in Munich. It was after the siblings Max and Bertha the third child of his parents. The father was a partner in the company C. Neuburger & Einstein, silk and Sammtwaren wholesale.

Einstein visited after four years of primary school for six years, the Luitpold High School and then the Royal Theresa School Munich. The well-read and education hungry students began with nine or ten years playing the violin. After graduating from college in 1899 studied Einstein - a concession to the parents - a year long law degree. But then he followed his interests: he took a long time studied composition with Anton Beer- Walbrunn at the Academy of Music in Munich and began a musicology studies, which he in December 1903 with a dissertation on the viola da gamba in the 16th and 17th centuries completed.

His doctor father Adolf Sandberger refused him the Habilitation, according to Einstein's belief of anti-Semitic resentment. Nevertheless Sandberger involved him continue on his own research and helped him in 1918 to the editor items of the "Journal of Musicology ." Next Sandberger refusal of habilitation - - attributable to the anti-Jewish climate in the universities of the Weimar period, despite a rain publication activities the academic career was closed to him in the thirty years between his graduation and his exile Probably it is.

During the war, Einstein was admitted because of " mental disintegration " to a hospital, where he totally wrote his first important musicological work, the history of music (1917 ), without the use of dictionaries and musical aids.

As a music critic in Munich and Berlin

After he had asked in May 1927 in a letter to his friend Theodor Kroyer hopeful about his chances for a professorship in Heidelberg in the successor Hans Joachim Moser, Moser Kroyer let them know in writing that the lack of habilitation and Einstein Judaism a professorship in the way stood. So Einstein was a private scholar and went to earn money as a music critic after.

From 1909 to 1917 he was responsible for the " Munich Latest News " and 1917-1927 for " Munich Post" active. A half-day activity in the three- lector mask Verlag in Munich, probably from 1921 to 1927, he described in 1927 in a letter to Kroyer as " slavery ". Between 1927 and 1933 he was editor of the "Berliner Tageblatt", where he became one of the most respected German critics.

Relationship with Albert Einstein

In his time in Berlin, his friendship developed into Albert Einstein, whose neighbor he was early 1928 and with whom he had sung together at the Luitpold High School visited the school choir. Albert Einstein later continued with immigration offices for Alfred Einstein USA - Emigration, and the two Einstein saw occasionally in Princeton. However, the widely rumored allegation of cousinship Alfred and Albert Einstein can not be proved, although a distant relationship is close.

Exile and professor in Northampton

Eva Einstein, the only child of the marriage in 1906 closed with Hertha Heumann, recalled that the emigration was clear for her family after Hitler took power. On 24 June 1933, the German music company announced Einstein's position as editor of the "Journal of Musicology ." He received in early August his resignation from the " Berliner Tageblatt ", where their circumstances are not entirely clear.

The end of July, Einstein part in a musicological conference in Cambridge, from which he never returned to Germany. The following years until the transition into American exile in early 1939 he and his family spent in England, Italy, Austria and Switzerland. During this time, Einstein devoted in financially tight situation his research. In 1937 was allowed to appear by special permission of the Reich Music Chamber of him the revised third edition of the Kochel directory with his name on the title.

Just three months after the entry into the USA, Einstein was offered at Smith College, the prestigious women's university in Northampton, Massachusetts to teach, where he remained until his retirement in 1950. The small teaching commitment offered him plenty of space for guest lectures at other universities and for his research. Only in 1939 was the 58 -year-old Einstein before the working conditions which he had longed for since his doctorate in 1903.

To Europe but he looked during and after the war with suspicion: he refused an invitation in 1949 from the Free University of Berlin from because he felt no desire for a " visit to the Fourth Reich ". He also pointed in the same year the Golden Mozart Medal of the International Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg back, no longer published in Germany and applied pursued denazification processes of musicians and scientists.

His plans to work after retirement for a year at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor on a Mozart Complete Edition, were thwarted by a heart attack. The family moved because of the mild climate to El Cerrito in Berkeley, California, where Einstein further pursued his studies privately. In January 1952 a renewed heart attack threw him down, the consequences of which he died on February 13.

Scientific work

Major works

The musicologist Alfred Einstein is still even musical laymen a term. The monograph "Mozart, his character, his work" (English 1945, German 1947), which grew out of the investigation to the third edition of the Kochel directory ( 1937), receives more than sixty years after its release its reputation as a Mozart expert. But works such as " Size in Music" (English 1941, German 1951 ), "The romance in the music " (English 1947, German 1950), " Schubert " (English 1951, German 1952) as well as numerous music aesthetic essays assets by their clear language, the spirit richness and originality to reach a wide audience.

Einstein's books owe their wide dissemination of its excellent knowledge of the respective collected works and the virtuosity of their representation. Even today, rain on his judgment joyful assessments of their own employment and self- criticism.

Einstein's book Mozart counted repeatedly to read in Thomas Mann's later years. Einstein was in contact corresponded with a number of top musicians and writers personalities of his time. In the correspondence issue also includes letters from Béla Bartók, Bruno Walter, Edwin Fischer, Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann, Fritz Busch and Paul Hindemith and Wilhelm Furtwängler.

Publisher

With his meticulous source work, next to the " simmer " about in the ninth to eleventh edition of Hugo Riemann's "Music Encyclopedia " (1919, 1922, 1929) and in the three-volume "The Italian Madrigal " (1949 ) reflected, and with the publication of the "Journal of Musicology " (1918-1933) Einstein had established itself as a major player in the German music research, although he received a university job only in the year 1939 in the United States.

Discount

Einstein's heritage is as Alfred Einstein Collection 1 and 2 in the Music Library of the University of Berkeley, which also owns his musicological library. The custom built by him for his investigations score transcripts are located in the Josten Performing Arts Library at Smith College.

Works

• For German literature for viola da gamba in the 16th and 17th centuries, Diss Munich 1903 (31 pp. ); Print version in: Publications of the International Music Company. Beih. F. 2, H. 1
• History of Music, Leipzig, Berlin: Teubner 1917 ( from Nature and Spirit World, Vol 438) [ more revised versions] History of music. From the beginnings to the present, Zurich / Stuttgart: Pan -Verl. In 1953. ( Last version with additions, musical examples and a new final chapter of "Yesterday and Today" ).

• . German: Zurich: Pan - Verl, 1953 - 336 p. Numerous musical examples, 1980 dtv / Barenreiter ( with a foreword by Carl Dahlhaus ).

• Stockholm:. Bermann -Fischer, 1947 636 S.: Ill., music examples (many revised editions).
• Frankfurt am Main: Fischer paperback publishing house, 1991/ 2006.

• German: München: Liechtenstein - Verl, 1950 - 434 pp., .. last, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992.

• German Zurich. . Pan Verl, 1952 -. S. 404 musical examples.

Publisher

Scores (selection)

• Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli. Introduced and ed. by Alfred Einstein, Munich: Three masks, 1921.
• Johann Christian Bach: Sinfonia in D major / D major / Re majeur. Op. 18/4. Pocket Score / Miniature Score. Edited for the first time and with Foreword ( English and German ) by Alfred Einstein. With an Introduction by Alfred Einstein 2sprachigen, Leipzig, Eulenburg. , 1934.
• Arcangelo Corelli: Concerto Grosso No.8 [ Christmas Concerto ] for 2 Violins, Cello and String Orchestra. Edited and with Foreword by Alfred Einstein, London: Eulenburg oJ ( ca.1965 ).
• Giovanni Battista Viotti: Concerto No.. 22 A minor for Violin and Orchestra Edited with a forword by Alfred Einstein, London: Ernst Eulenburg oJ

Other editions

• Hugo Riemann's Musik- Lexikon ( 9th, 10th and 11th edition ), Berlin: Max Hesse, 1919/1922 / 1929.
• The New music lexicon. According to the Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians, edited by A. Eagle Field -Hull, translated and edited by Alfred Einstein, Berlin: Max Hesse, 1926.
• Letters German musician. Edited by Alfred Einstein, Stockholm: Bermann -Fischer, 1938. Second Edition: Zurich / Stuttgart: . Pan -Verl, 1953.