Gustav Reichardt

( Heinrich Wilhelm Ludwig) Gustav Reichardt ( born November 13, 1797 in Schmarsow, † October 18, 1884 in Berlin) was a German music teacher and composer.

Life and work

Gustav Reichardt received at the age of five years his first music lessons from his father, the country parson versatile formed Georg Gustav Zacharias Reichardt ( 1766-1852 ). At the age of nine years, he has performed with violin and piano. From 1809 to 1811 he was music lessons in Neustrelitz and was a violinist in a local chapel. From 1811 he attended high school and then he began at the University of Greifswald to study theology. In 1818 he moved to the Berlin Academy, but chose here to study music in 1819. He became a pupil of Bernhard Klein in music theory and composition. As a member of the Sing- Akademie zu Berlin (1819-1832) and he co-founded the Berlin Liedertafel he caused a sensation by his well-trained bass voice. He thus gained access in aristocratic circles up to the royal family of Frederick William III. A popular singing teacher, he also taught the later Emperor Frederick III. , Whose wedding in 1858, he composed a festive cantata.

Reichardt was in the early days to the employees of Robert Schumann in 1834 founded New Journal of Music. In 1850 he was appointed royal music director.

In his house regularly met artists such as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and music lovers together. In 1825, he set to music during a visit to the Snow Mountain, the poem The German Fatherland by Ernst Moritz Arndt and was thus known about the Prussian Berlin also. The song was one of the anthems of the German unification movement.

Reichardt's work consists mainly of vocal compositions, preferably for male choirs. In 1871 he published under the Opus 36 his last work, a national anthem with the text of Müller from the Werra. His final resting place is located on the southwest by reburial Stahnsdorf.