Philipp Spitta

Julius August Philipp Spitta (* December 27 1841 in Wechold Hoya, today Hilgermissen, † April 13, 1894 in Berlin) was a musicologist and Bach biographer.

Life

Spitta was a son from the marriage of theologian and poet Philipp Spitta with Johanna Maria Hotzen; his younger brother was Friedrich Spitta. After Philipp Spitta was initially taught by private tutors, he moved into the Lyceum in 1856 in Hanover, two years later, the high school in Celle, where he obtained a high school in the spring of 1860. On April 20, 1860, he enrolled, according to the wishes of his parents, as " studiosus theologiae " at the Georg -August- University Göttingen, but visited from the first semester of lectures exclusively the Faculty of Arts. With the beginning of the summer semester 1861 he moved formally to classical philology.

Soon after his arrival in Göttingen Spitta began to establish personal relationships, especially those that opened him access to Göttingen musical life. One of the earliest was the acquaintances. Julius Otto Grimm, about whom he also made the acquaintance of Hermann Sauppe and the Göttingen gynecologist Eduard von Siebold, whose daughter Agathe von Siebold was in closer acquaintance of Johannes Brahms Through his dedication and expertise in musical questions Spitta obtained in the subsequent period in Göttingen some recognition and was in September 1861 Member and conductor of the "Student Choral Society of the Georgia Augusta " (now the Student Music Association Blue singer Göttingen in SV) and joined with this in the following time several times successfully. The Office of the conductor, he finally gave up at the end of 1863 in order to prepare adequately for his exams in 1864 can, but the student glee club remained as a senior member until his death connected. He graduated on 23 July 1864 in Bonn with a dissertation on the syntax in Tacitus ( " De Taciti in componendis enuntiatis ratione. Pars prior. " ) From.

In August 1864 Spitta moved to Tallinn ( Estonia) to take up his duties as a senior teacher of Greek and Latin at the local knights and cathedral school. From there, he repeated in a letter to Sauppe the desire already expressed earlier, still drop the Hanoverian Headteacher state examination in Göttingen in order - as he wrote - "To win for all cases a secured floor ", which eventually also beginning in January 1885 happened. Until 1867 he remained first in Reval, then let himself but put as a senior teacher at the High School of Sondershausen.

Already in Reval he began extensive research on the life and work of Johann Sebastian Bach, the results of which he presented in 1873 in the first volume of his biography of Bach. This raised " the hitherto unknown with one blow to the highest honors of science" ( Julius Rodenberg ) and initially led in April 1874 to Spitta's appointment as head teacher at the Leipzig's St. Nicholas School. Together with Heinrich von Herzogenberg, Franz von Holstein and Alfred Volkland he founded the Leipzig Bach Society.

In April 1875 Spitta took over the position of the second permanent secretary of the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin and has worked as a full professor of Music History at the Royal College of Music academic whose Deputy Director he was in 1882. At the same time he was appointed the Royal Friedrich- Wilhelm University as an associate professor of musicology.

In addition to his Bach biography, he was known by a complete edition of the organ works of Dietrich Buxtehude and the works of Heinrich Schütz. Together with Friedrich Chrysander and Guido Adler he was since 1885 the quarterly magazine of Musicology, published in Leipzig, out. Philipp Spitta is now regarded as the founder of modern musicology.

At the age of 52 years he died and was given an honorary grave in the Protestant New Cemetery of the Twelve Apostles church at Werdauer path 5 in Tempelhof- Schöneberg ( Berlin). According to him the Spittastraße in Berlin- Lichtenberg among others named.

Works

• Quaestiones Vergilianae. Deuerlich, Göttingen 1867.
• Johann Sebastian Bach. 2 vols Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1873-1880, digitized version of Vol 1, Leipzig 1873, and Vol 2, Leipzig 1880 ( 3rd, unchanged edition, Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1921, Vol 1 and Vol 2). English translation by Clara Bell, John Alexander Fuller Maitland: Johann Sebastian Bach. His Work and Influence on the Music of Germany, 1685-1750. 3 vols Novello, London 1884/85 ( digitized version of Vol 1, Vol 2 and Vol 3, and additional requirements).