Walter Niemann (composer)

Walter Rudolph Niemann ( born October 10, 1876 in Hamburg, † June 17, 1953 in Leipzig ) was a German composer and writer on music.

Life

Walter Niemann was the son of the composer Rudolph Niemann, who - even students, inter alia, by Moscheles - also taught him first. Niemann later studied in Leipzig composition with Humperdinck and Reinecke, also musicology with Hugo Riemann. After the graduation in 1901 he worked as a music writer, wrote among other things, Biographies of Brahms and Sibelius and worked as a music critic for newspapers Leipzig. Later he devoted himself increasingly - from 1917 almost exclusively - the composition, but also worked as a pianist.

Compositional work

Niemann's work as a composer includes some 190 opus numbers, which are devoted almost exclusively to the piano. Starting from Brahms, he became one of the few German composers who greatly annäherten Impressionism. In his colorful, often miniature-like piano pieces on the one hand reflects a tendency to past historical periods ( see, for example Titles like from Watteau's time, Sanssouci, Meissen porcelain ), on the other hand, an interest in exotic subjects (comparable to the Englishman Cyril Scott), which in poeticizing titles like Old China (op. 62), The orchid Garden (op. 76) or the exotic pavilion is expressed.

The 1919 first published book Masters of the Piano: the pianists of the present and the recent past is still considered valid pattern standard work on pianists and experienced numerous editions and is used and cited to this day.

Compositions

  • Catalog of works by opus numbers at IMSLP

Books (selection)

  • The music of Scandinavia. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1906; New edition BiblioBazaar, 2009
  • The piano book, brief History of the piano music and its masters, d piano building ud piano literature. With Tab on pianos d ue d overview of piano literature. Callwey, Munich, 1907, 1930 ( 13th ed.)
  • My life for the piano. Autobiography, Ed Gerhard HELZEL, staccato -Verlag, Dusseldorf 2008

Papers

  • Letters and autographs from Walter Niemann in the portfolio of publishers CF Peters and AJ Benjamin / Sikorski in the Saxon State Archive in Leipzig.
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