Friedrich Kuhlau
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Friedrich Daniel Rudolf Kuhlau (September 11, 1786 – March 12, 1832) was a German-Danish composer during the Classical and Romantic periods.
Born in Germany, after losing his right eye in a street accident at the age of seven, he studied piano in Hamburg. His father, grandfather, and uncle were military oboists. Even though Kuhlau was born to a poor family, his parents managed to pay for pianoforte lessons. In 1810, he fled to Copenhagen to avoid conscription in the Napoleonic Army, which overwhelmed the many small principalities and duchies of northern Germany, and in 1813 he became a Danish citizen. Outside of several lengthy trips which he took, he resided there until his death. During his lifetime, he was known primarily as a concert pianist and composer of Danish opera, but was responsible for introducing many of Beethoven's works, which he greatly admired, to Copenhagen audiences. Considering that his house burned down destroying all of his unpublished manuscripts, he was a prolific composer leaving more than 200 published works in most genres.
Beethoven, whom Kuhlau knew personally, exerted the greatest influence upon his music. Interestingly, few of Beethoven’s contemporaries showed greater understanding or ability to assimilate what he was doing than Kuhlau. Certainly with regard to form, Kuhlau was clearly able to make sense and use what Beethoven was doing in his Middle Period.
He wrote a piano concerto, a string quartet, several works for piano which included all the current genres of the day: sonatas, sonatinas, waltzes, rondos and variations. He also created several works for the strings (three quartets and two quintets, and several violin sonatas), works of incidental music and several operas. However, his most-often recorded and played works are several piano sonatinas and numerous works for flute. It is because of these flute works that he was nicknamed "the Beethoven of the flute" during his lifetime.
While Kuhlau is generally regarded as a minor composer, in Denmark his opera Elverhøj is regarded as the national opera, and its overture enjoys particular popularity. It was used in the 1976 movie Olsen-banden ser rødt in the showdown of which, the Olsen gang bombs, drills, and hammers its way through the opera house's basement in synchronicity with the music.
[edit] References
Some of the information on this page appears on the website of Edition Silvertrust but permission has been granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
[edit] External links
- International Friedrich Kuhlau Society Has worklist
- Friedrich Daniel Rudolf Kuhlau 1786-1832
- Friedrich Kuhlau Grand String Quartet Op.122 Soundbites and short biography
- Friedrich Kuhlau was listed in the International Music Score Library Project
