Julius Buths

Julius Buth ( born May 7, 1851 in Wiesbaden, † March 12, 1920 in Dusseldorf ) was a German pianist, composer and conductor, as well as Director of Music in Dusseldorf.

Life and work

Julius Buth received his first piano lessons at first by his father Carl Buth, a chamber musician and conductor of Wilhelm Freudenberg and had already during his high school years first public appearances. After high school he studied at the Cologne Conservatory under Ferdinand Hiller and Friedrich Gernsheim. After he first took over the management of the Society of St Cecilia in Wiesbaden before he moved to Friedrich Kiel to continue his studies in Berlin. Then he joined in 1873 as a fellow of Giacomo Meyerbeer Foundation a study tour of Italy, which brought him to the various concert halls with great success. However, he fell ill during this concert tour and had to go to a spa in Davos.

After his recovery, he initially joined for a short time in Paris in appearance, but soon moved on to Breslau, where he headed the orchestra and founded a choral society. In 1879 he followed a call to Elberfeld, where he, on the recommendation of Johannes Brahms the successor of Hermann chimney, the son of co-founder of the Lower Rhine Music Festivals Johannes chimney, got a job as director of several important musical associations. Here he succeeded in the following years, despite a relatively small budget available a compelling and successful work. This led in 1890 to the fact that the city of Dusseldorf offered him the position of municipal director of music as the successor of Julius Tausch. Buth accepted the offer and was promoted to the Royal Professor five years later. In addition, it was 1902 or appointed as the first director of the company founded, together with Otto Neitzel from him private " Buth - Neitzel Conservatory ", which later in 1935 on the initiative of music director Hugo Balzer with two other musical institutions to today's Robert -Schumann-Hochschule Dusseldorf merged. In addition, he took over leadership of the teacher nor the Choral Society and also went through the establishment of regular chamber music evenings deserves where he usually also participated together with his friends Max Reger and Joseph Joachim as a pianist himself.

At the turn of 1907/ 08 Buths decided his work as music director resign despite great successes and undisputed popularity and retain only the direction of the teacher glee club and the Conservatory. This resulted in the spring of 1908 to that in the absence of a short-term and competent substitute for the festival management that as scheduled to be held in that year in Dusseldorf Lower Rhine Music Festival had to be canceled. Julius Buth's now retired in the following years gradually from active musical life back and eventually died on 12 March 1920. One of his two daughters, Else king - Buth, was a successful and also active in Dusseldorf harpsichordist. In his honor, they named in Dusseldorf a small road to the " Julius- Buth - way ".

Throughout his time in Dusseldorf Julius Buths studied with his orchestra a number of premieres and first performances. So it was under his leadership, among other things to Dusseldorf premieres the new edition of the B Minor Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach and of "La Damnation de Faust " by Hector Berlioz and the German premieres of the oratorio "The Dream of Gerontius " and " The Apostles translated "by Edward Elgar and the Requiem op 63 by Charles Villiers Stanford, all each by himself into German. He also directed the premieres of " Messa da Requiem " by Giuseppe Verdi, the " Grand Messe Des Mortes " by Berlioz as well as the world premieres of his oratorio " Rinaldo ", the " Te Deum " by Franz Wüllner, the choral work " Athenian spring dance " by Joseph fresh and the ballad "Vom Pagen and the King's Daughter" by Fritz Vollbach. In addition to the respective annual concert plans Julius Buth was a total of six festival director of the Lower Rhine Music Festival, partly together with Hans Richter and Richard Strauss and made ​​headlines here a balanced combination of traditional classical music along with current and modern compositions of the emerging contemporary music of partly not yet known composers.

Works (selection)

• " Rinaldo ", op 10, Cantata after texts by Goethe for soloists, male chorus and orchestra
• Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in D minor
• " Festmotette " for mixed choir and orchestra
• String Quartet in D minor
• Piano Quintet in D major
• Madrigal for nine -part a cappella choir to Goethe's charade " Herzlieb "
• Six Preludes for Piano

Literature and sources

• Julius Alf: Buth, Julius. In: New German Biography ( NDB ). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2, pp. 78 f ( digitized ).
• Julius Alf: The Düsseldorf musical life under Julius Buth, in: Karl Gustav Fellerer (ed.): Contributions to the musical history of the city of Dusseldorf, Cologne -Krefeld 1952, p.54 -63 ( Issue 1 )