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Scan 643
A dictionary of music and musicians, 1926
6 lines. Read by computer on 11 September 2026. Printed page 587. See the scan on archive.org.
1music, he was associated with Melgounov in collecting and harmonising the Russian folk-songs. (See MELGOUNOV.) In 1893 he became director of the Music School at Tiflis, which gave him the opportunity of studying the music of the various Caucasian races. He was the first to organise 'Ethnographical Concerts' in Russia. In 1902 he was appointed sub-director of the Imperial Chapel. He has composed several successful ballets; incidental music to plays, 'Messaline,' 'Antony and Cleopatra,' etc.; cantatas and a 'Georgian Liturgy' a cappella (1902).
3KLINDWORTH, KARL, born at Hanover on Sept. 25, 1830, was in early youth an accomplished performer on the violin. From his seventeenth to his nineteenth year he acted as conductor to a travelling opera troupe; then he settled in Hanover and took to playing the piano and composing. In 1852 he went to Weimar to study pianoforte-playing under Liszt, and had Hans von Bülow, W. Mason, and Dionys Pruckner as his fellow-pupils. In 1854 he came to London, where he remained fourteen years, appearing in public at intervals as a pianist and conductor of orchestral concerts, but in the main living the quiet life of a student and teacher. [His first appearance here was at one of Ella's 'Musical Winter Evenings' on March 30, 1854, and he played Henselt's concerto at the New Philharmonic concert on July 4, 1855.] He organised two series of three chamber concerts in the spring of 1861 and 1862, and a series of three orchestral and vocal concerts in the summer of 1861, under the title of the 'Musical Art Union.' The most remarkable compositions brought forward at the latter were Rubinstein's 'Ocean' Symphony; Gade's 'Erl King's Daughter'; Cherubini's Requiem, No. 1; Schumann's PF. Concerto. They were well carried out, but met with the usual fate of such enterprises in London, and were discontinued for want of capital. In 1868 Klindworth was appointed to the post of professor of the pianoforte at the Conservatorium of Moscow, and while there he brought out the works which have made his name famous, the pianoforte scores of Wagner's 'Der Ring des Nibelungen,' begun during Wagner's visit to England in 1855, and his critical edition of Chopin; the latter beyond all praise for rare insight into the text and minute care bestowed on the presentation of it; the former quite wonderful for the fidelity with which the transcript is contrived to reflect Wagner's complicated orchestration. [In 1882 he returned to Germany, and was conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Concerts, jointly with Joachim and Wüllner, and was also conductor of the Berlin Wagner Society. He established a school of music in Berlin, which existed until 1893, when he retired to Potsdam, and has since devoted himself to private teaching. He visited London once again to conduct a concert given by Mr. F. Dawson, on May 15, 1898. See the Musical Times for 1898, p. 513.] His arrangement of Schubert's Symphony in C major for two pianofortes, and the four-hand arrangement of Tchaikovsky's Poème symphonique, 'Francesca da Rimini,' as also, amongst his original compositions, a very difficult and effective Polonaise fantaisie for pianoforte, should be particularly mentioned. The manuscripts of a masterly resoring of Chopin's Concerto in F minor, and a condensation and orchestration of C. V. Alkan's Concerto in G# minor (Études, op. 39), are well known to his friends. [The new version of Chopin's concerto has been often played, and in the opinion of a large class of musicians the work is improved thereby, though others consider that the slighter accompaniment designed by the composer is really more effective.]
5KLOTZ, the name of a numerous family of violin-makers, who lived at the little town of Mittenwald, in the Bavarian Alps, and founded a manufacture of stringed instruments which makes Mittenwald to this day only less famous than Markneukirchen in Saxony, and Mirécourt in the Vosges. A variety of the pine, locally known as the 'Hasel-fichte' (Bechstein calls it the 'harte oder späte Roth-tanne'), of delicate but strong and highly resonant fibre, flourishes in the Bavarian Alps. The abundance of this material, which the ingenious peasants of the neighbouring Ammerthal use for wood-carving, led to the rise of the Mittenwald violin manufacture. For about two centuries there was held in the town a famous fair, greatly frequented by Venetian and other traders. In 1679 this fair was removed to Botzen, and the Mittenwalders attribute the rise of the violin industry to the distress which thereupon ensued. One EGIDIUS KLOTZ had already made violins at Mittenwald. Tradition says that he learned the craft from Stainer at Absam. He is more likely to have learned it from seeing Stainer's violins, which he imitated with success. His son, MATTHIAS or MATTHEW KLOTZ (1653-1743), followed in the same path. He travelled, however, into Italy, sojourning both at Florence and Cremona. Tradition reports him to have returned to Mittenwald about 1683, and to have at once begun to instruct many of the impoverished Mittenwalders in the mystery of fiddle-making. The instruments found a ready sale. They were hawked about by the makers at the churches, castles, and monasteries of South Germany; and Mittenwald began to recover its prosperity. Most of the instruments of Matthias Klotz date from 1670 to 1696. They are well built, on the model of Stainer, but poorly varnished. His son SEBASTIAN surpassed him as a maker. His instruments, though Stainer-like in appearance, are larger in size, of flatter model, and better designed: and his varnish is often of a good Italian quality.
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