Johann Heinrich Walch

Johann Heinrich Walch ( born November 21, 1775 in United - Neuhausen, † October 2, 1855 in Gotha ) was a musician, composer and Kapellmeister at the court in Gotha. He is regarded as a reformer of the military music of Saxe- Gotha military and is a composer of many dances and marches, which are nowadays mainly played in Sweden.

Life

Johann Heinrich Walch spent his youth in Great Neuhausen, where his mother Marie as a servant of Count Johann Georg Heinrich von Werther (1730-1790) worked in the castle. His father Heinrich was a soldier. The village schoolmaster and the priest soon realized the musicality of Johann Heinrich and trained him as a musician. Soon he was playing in the court orchestra with. After the death of the Earl of Werthern the royal household in Great Neuhausen was dissolved. Johann Heinrich Walch was a soldier in the Electoral Saxon Life Guards Grenadier Regiment in Dresden until 1805. Then he got a job as a bugler in the court orchestra of the Duke Augustus of Saxe -Gotha and Altenburg. Herzog August 1806 joined the by the French Emperor Napoleon I, founded a military alliance, the Confederation of the Rhine and instructed his chamber musician Walch with the installation of a military music corps on the French model and military marches to compose.

His now famous Parisian Einzugsmarsch ( Prussian army march Collection II, 38) rang in 1814 at the victory parade of Bavarian, Saxon and Prussian cavalry regiments at a trot.

When Duke died suddenly August 1822, took over his older brother Frederick to 1825 the government and dissolved the court chapel on. Johann Heinrich Walch received unpaid leave and toured in Denmark, Sweden and Russia. His compositions have been estimated there and sold well.

With the death of Duke Frederick the line of the Dukes of Saxe- Gotha -Altenburg died out, they followed the line of the Dukes of Saxe- Coburg and Gotha. Duke Ernst I was the famous court orchestra at Gotha rise anew and put Johann Heinrich Walch as a chamber musician again. Walch still served until 1845, then he retired for reasons of age, composed and taught gifted students in the game of the piano, the violin and the French horn until his death in 1855.

His voluminous correspondence preserved with personalities of his time shows how famous Johann Heinrich Walch was then. In Germany he is forgotten in Sweden sounds his Reveille and his tattoo a day before the Stockholm Palace.