Gebruiker:Hugovdberg/Werkruimte/František Xaver Richter

František Xaver Richter
František Xaver Richter dirigeert
Algemene informatie
Volledige naam	František Xaver Richter
Geboren	1 december 1709
Overleden	12 september 1789
Land	Tsjechië
Werk
Genre(s)	Klassiek
Beroep	Componist Muziekpedagoog Violist Zanger
Instrument(en)	Viool
Portaal    Muziek

František Xaver Richter (In het Engels vaak Franz Xaver Richter en in het Frans François-Xavier Richter) (Holešov, Moravië, 1 december 1709 – Straatsburg, Elzas, 12 september 1789) was een Moravisch componist, muziekpedagoog, muziektheoreticus, zanger, violist en een belangrijk vertegenwoordiger van de Mannheimer Schule. Het grootste deel van zijn leven bracht hij door in Oostenrijk en later in Mannheim en Straatsburg, waar hij kapelmeester was van de Kathedraal van Straatsburg. Vanaf 1783 was Joseph Haydn's favoriete pupil Ignaz Pleyel zijn plaatsvervanger.

Als de meest traditionele componist van de eerste generatie van de Mannheimer Schule werd hij zeer gewaardeerd als contrapuntist. Hij was zowel thuis in de concerto's als in de strenge kerkstijl. Toen Mozart een mis van hem hoorde op zijn terugreis van Parijs naar Salzburg in 1778 noemde hij deze "charmant geschreven". Richter was waarschijnlijk een van de eerste dirigenten die dirigeerde met bladmuziek in de hand, zoals te zien in een gravure uit die tijd.

Richter schreef voornamelijk symfonieën, concertos voor houtblazers, trompet, kamer- en kerkmuziek, waarvan vooral zijn missen bijzonderd gewaardeerd worden. Hij was een man uit een overgangsperiode en zijn sympfonieën vormen in zekere zin de missende schakel tussen Bach en Händel enerzijds en het Weense classicisme anderzijds. Hoewel zijn gebruik van contrapunt soms aangeleerd overkomt tonen Richter's orkestwerken energie en geestdrift. Tot voor kort 'overleefde' Richter met opnames van zijn trompet concerto in D Majeur, maar recentelijk hebben diverse kamerorkesten en ensembles veel van zijn werken opgenomen in hun repertoire, vooral symfonieën en concerto's.

Biografie

1709-1739 Afkomst en opleiding

Holešov (Hedendaags uitzicht)

Hoewel dit niet met zekerheid te zeggen is, is Richter waarschijnlijk geboren in Holešov, in wat nu Tsjechië is, maar toen een stad was in het Heilige Roomse Rijk. In het geboorteregister van de kerk van Holešov wordt geen melding gemaakt van zijn geboorten. Zijn werkcontract met de Prins Abt van Kempten stelt dat hij afkomstig is uit Bohemen, de musicoloog Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg zegt dat hij uit Hongarije komt en zijn overlijdensakte uit Straatsburg vermeldt "ex Kratz oriundus".

Hoewel zijn verblijfplaats tot 1740 niet gedocumenteerd is, is het duidelijk dat Richter een gedegen opleiding in het gebruik van contrapunt kreeg aan de hand van de verhandeling Gradus ad Parnassum van Johann Josef Fux, mogelijk zelfs als leerling van Fux in Wenen. Zijn beheersing van de strenge kerkstijl, die duidelijk naar voren komt in zijn liturgische werken maar ook doorklinkt in zijn symfonieën en kamermuziek, is te danken aan zijn oorsprong in de Oostenrijkse en zuid Duitse barokmuziek.

1740-1747 Vize-Kapellmeister in Kempten

Fürststift Kempten (Modern view)

Op 2 April 1740 werd Richter aangesteld als plaatsvervangend kapelmeester (Vize-Kapellmeister) van de Prins-Abt Anselm von Reichlin-Meldeg van Kempten in Allgäu. Als Prins Abt bestuurde Reichlin Meldeg het Fürststift Kempten, een groot benedictijns klooster in wat nu zuid-west Beieren is. Het klooster had vrij zeker een koor en mogelijk een ook klein orkest (meer een band zoals het destijds genoemd werd), maar veel stelde dit niet voor. Richter verbleef zes jaar in Kempten, maar het is moeilijk voor te stellen dat een man met zijn talent en opleiding de rest van zijn leven in dit mooie maar dorpse stadje zou verblijven.

In 1743 trouwde Richter met Maria Anna Josepha Moz, waarschijnlijk uit Kempten. In 1744 werden twaalf van Richters symfonieën voor strijkers in Parijs gepubliceerd. Men gaat er vanuit dat Richter Kempten al verlaten had voor Reichlin-Meldeg in december 1747 overleed.

1747-1768 Singer and Cammercompositeur in Mannheim

Mannheim (1755)

Just how much Richter must have disliked Kempten can be deduced from the fact that in 1747 his name appears among the court musicians of the Prince elector Charles Theodore in Mannheim – but not as music director or in any other leading function but as a simple singer (bass). Obviously Richter preferred being one among many (singers and orchestra combine numbered more than 70 persons) in Mannheim to acting deputy Kapellmeister in a small town like Kempten.

Because of his old fashioned, even reactionary music style Richter was not popular in Mannheim. The title awarded to him in 1768 as Cammercompositeur (chamber composer) seems to have been merely an honorary one. He was slightly more successful as a composer of sacred music and as music theoretician. In 1748 the Elector commissioned him to compose an oratorio for Good Friday, La deposizione dalla croce. It is sometimes concluded that this oratorio was not a success as there was only one performance and Richter was never commissioned to write another one.

Richter was also a respected teacher of composition. Between 1761 and 1767 he wrote a treatise on composition (Harmonische Belehrungen oder gründliche Anweisung zu der musikalischen Ton-Kunst oder regulären Komposition), based on Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum – the only representative of the Mannheim School to do so. The lengthy work in three tomes is dedicated to Charles Theodore. Among his more notable pupils were Joseph Martin Kraus, probably Carl Stamitz and Ferdinand Fränzl.

After 1768 Richter's name disappears from the lists of court singers. During his Mannheim years Richter made tours to the Oettingen-Wallerstein court in 1754 and later to France, the Netherlands and England where his compositions found a ready market with publishers.

It seems clear from Richter’s compositions that he did not really fit in at the Mannheim court. Whereas his colleagues at the orchestra were interested in lively, energetic, homophonic music that focused on drive, brilliancy and sparkling orchestral effects gained from stock devices, Richter, rooted in the Austrian Baroque tradition, wrote music that was in a way reminiscent of Handel and his teacher Fux. Thus, when in 1769 an opening at Strasbourg's cathedral became known Richter seems to have applied right away.

1769-1789 Maitre de Chapelle de Notre-Dame de Strasbourg

Strasbourg street sign "Rue François Xavier Richter" (2010)

Strasbourg (ca. 1644)

In April 1769 he succeeded Joseph Garnier as Kapellmeister at Strasbourg Cathedral, where both his performing and composing activities turned increasingly to sacred music. He was by then recognized as a leading contrapuntist and church composer. Johann Sebastian Bach’s first Biographer, composer and musicologist Johann Nikolaus Forkel, wrote about Richter in 1782:

"Ist ein sehr guter Contrapunktist und Kirchenkomponist." ("Is a very good contrapuntist and church composer.")

In Strasbourg Richter also had to direct the concerts at the Episcopal court (today Palais Rohan); in addition to that he was for a time also in charge of the town concerts which were held at regular intervals. The main part of Richter’s sacred music was composed during his Strasbourg years. He was active as a composer until his last year. During his last years Haydn's favourite pupil Ignaz Pleyel served as his assistant at the cathedral.

In 1787 he visited Munich, where he met Mozart’s father Leopold, one last time. In Munich he met most of his former colleagues of the Mannheim court orchestra who by then had moved to Munich to where the court had been transferred.

From 1783 on, and due to Richter's advanced age and declining health, Joseph Haydn's favourite pupil Ignaz Pleyel served as his assistant. He would succeed him at the post after his death.

Richter died an octogenarian in the year of the French Revolution, and this was probably for the better. Thus he did not have to witness that his deputy Ignaz Pleyel was forced to write hymns to praise the supreme being and that Jean-Frédéric Edelmann, a gifted composer from Strasbourg, would die under the guillotine in his home town.

1770 Richter meets Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette (1769)

Strasbourg's Palais Rohan where Marie Antoinette stayed and where Richter conducted the Tafelmusik (Modern view)

In 1770 Marie Antoinette, future queen of France, on her way from Vienna to Paris passed through the Alsatian capital, where she stayed at the Episcopal Palace, the Palais Rohan. Richter, who almost certainly directed the church music when Marie Antoinette went to mass the next day, witnessed the earliest stages of historical events that would later contribute to the downfall of the French monarchy. The prelate who greeted Marie Antoinette on the steps of the cathedral, probably in Richter’s presence, was the same Louis Rohan who would later, duped by a prostitute impersonating Marie Antoinette, trigger the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. Several historians and writers think that this bizarre episode undermined the trust of the French in their queen and thus hastened the onset of the French Revolution.

But Richter did not live to see this. What he saw was Strasbourg all dressed up to greet the Dauphiness:

"The city of Strasburg was in gala array. It had prepared for the dauphiness the splendours it had displayed 25 years before for the journey of Louis the Well-beloved. (...) Three companies of young children from twelve to fifteen years of age, habited as Cent-Suisses, formed the line along the passage of the princess. Twenty-four young girls of the most distinguished families of Strasbourg, dressed in the national costume, strewed flowers before her; and eighteen shepherds and shepherdesses presented her with baskets of flowers. (...)

On the following day (May 8, 1770) Marie Antoinette visited the cathedral. By a strange coincidence the prelate who awaited her with the chapter at the entrance to felicitate her, and who greeted her "the soul of Maria Theresa about to unite itself to the soul of the Bourbons", was the nephew of the bishop, that prince, Louis de Rohan, who was later to inflict upon the dauphiness, become queen, the deadliest of injuries. But in the midst of the then so brilliant prospect who could discern these shadows?"

1778 Richter meets Mozart

W. A. Mozart (1780)

Both Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his father Leopold knew Richter. Mozart would have meet him still as a boy on his Family Grand tour in 1763 when the Mozart family came through Schwetzingen, the summer residence of the Elector Palatinate. Mozart met him once again in 1778 on his way back from Paris when he was headed for the unloved Salzburg after his plans to gain permanent employment in Mannheim or Paris had come to naught. In a letter to his father, dated November 2, 1778, Mozart seems to suggest that the by then elderly Richter was something of an alcoholic:

"Strasbourg can scarcely do without me. You cannot think how much I am esteemed and beloved here. People say that I am disinterested as well as steady and polite, and praise my manners. Everyone knows me. As soon as they heard my name, the two Herrn Silbermann [i. e. Andreas Silbermann and Johann Andreas Silbermann] and Herr Hepp (organist) came to call on me, and also Kapellmeister Richter. He has now restricted himself very much ; instead of forty bottles of wine a day, he only drinks twenty! ... If the Cardinal had died, (and he was very ill when I arrived,) I might have got a good situation, for Herr Richter is seventy-eight years of age. Now farewell ! Be cheerful and in good spirits, and remember that your son is, thank God ! well, and rejoicing that his happiness daily draws nearer. Last Sunday I heard a new mass of Herr Richter's, which is charmingly written."

However, Mozart was not one to laud lightly. The epithet “charmingly written” can be taken at face value and from someone like Mozart this was high praise indeed.

Works (overview)

Orchestral

• Symphonies (approximately 80 are extant)
• Thereof: Grandes Symphonies 1-6 (Paris 1744)
• Thereof: Grandes Symphonies 7-12 (Paris 1744)
• Several concertos for flute and orchestra, oboe and orchestra, and trumpet and orchestra

Sacred music

• Kempten Te Deum for soli, choir and orchestra (1745)
• 39 Masses
• La Deposizione della Croce (Oratorio, 1748)
• Numerous motets and psalms.

Chamber music

• Sonate da camera Op.2 Nr. 1-6 (sonatas for harpsichord, flute and violoncello)
• String quartets Op. 5 Nr. 1-6 (1757)

Sources

• Blume, Friedrich, Hrsg. Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik. Ungekürzte elektronische Ausgabe der ersten Auflage. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1949-1987.
• Forkel, Johann Nikolaus. Musikalischer Almanach für Deutschland auf das Jahr 1782. Leipzig: Im Schwickertschen Verlag, 1781.
• Funck-Brentano, Frantz. The Diamond Necklace. Translated by H. Sutherland Edwards. London: Greening & Co. LTD, 1911.
• Goncourt, Edmond et Jules de. Histoire de Marie Antoinette. Paris: G. Charpentier et Cie., 1884.
• Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Edited by Ludwig Nohl. Translated by Lady Wallace (i.e. Grace Jane Wallace). Vol. 1. 2 vols. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1866. [1]
• Randel, Don Michael, ed. The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-674-37299-9
• Riemann, Hugo. Handbuch der Musikgeschichte. Die Musik des 18. und 19. Jahrhhunderts. Zweite, von Alfred Einstein durchgesehene Auflage. Bd. II. V Bde. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1922.
• Rocheterie, Maxime de la. The Life of Marie Antoinette. Translated by Cora Hamilton Bell. Vol. 1. 2 vols. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1895.
• Slonimsky, Nicolas, ed. Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. 5th Completely Revised Edition. New York, 1958.
• Alfried Wieczorek, Hansjörg Probst, Wieland Koenig, Hrsg. Lebenslust und Frömmigkeit - Kurfürst Carl Theodor (1724–1799) zwischen Barock und Aufklärung. Bd. 2. 2 Bde. Regensburg, 1999. ISBN 3-7917-1678-6

Discography (Selection)

• Grandes Symphonies (1744), Nos. 1-6 (Set 1) (Helsinki Baroque, Hakkinen) NAXOS 8.557818
• Grandes Symphonies (1744), Nos. 7-12 (Set 2) (Helsinki Baroque, Hakkinen) NAXOS 8.570597
• Sonate da camera (1764): Nos. 1-3 (Fred, Peltoniemi, Hakkinen) NAXOS 8.572029
• Symphonies (London Mozart Players, Bamert) Chandos

External links

The picture on the NAXOS site does not show the composer Franz Xaver Richter but an Austrian government official of exactly the same name who lived almost a century later. This other Richter is clearly clad in an Austrian uniform of the first half of the 19th century (1830s, 1840s).

• (en) Artaria Editions providing a biography and editions of Richter's works
• (en) NAXOS Records providing a biography and discography of NAXOS Richter recordings
• (en) Sheet Music from Schott Publishers
• Bladmuziek van Richter op de website van het International Music Score Library Project

Voetnoten

Bronnen

{{DEFAULTSORT:Richter, Frantisek Xaver}} [[Categorie:Componist van de 18e eeuw]] [[Categorie:Tsjechisch componist]] [[Categorie:Oostenrijks componist]] [[Categorie:Klassiek componist]] [[Categorie:Tsjechisch muziekpedagoog]] [[Categorie:Christelijke muziek]] [[cs:František Xaver Richter]] [[de:Franz Xaver Richter]] [[es:František Xaver Richter]] [[eo:František Xaver Richter]] [[fr:François-Xavier Richter]] [[it:Franz Xaver Richter]] [[en:Franz Xaver Richter]] [[ja:フランツ・クサヴァー・リヒター]] [[fi:Franz Xaver Richter]] [[sv:Franz Xaver Richter]] [[zh:弗朗兹·克萨韦尔·里赫特]]