Online Encyclopedia

JOHANN KARL GOTTFRIED LOWE (1796-1869)

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V17, Page 73 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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JOHANN KARL GOTTFRIED

LOWE (1796-1869)  , German composer, was born at Lobejun, near Halle, on the 3oth of November 1796, and was a choir-boy at Kothen from 1807 to 1809, when he went to the Franke Institute at Halle, studying
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music with Turk . The beauty of Lowe's voice brought him under the
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notice of Madame de Stael, who procured him a pension from Jerome
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Bonaparte, then king of Westphalia; this stopped in 1813, on the
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flight of the king . He entered the University of Halle as a theological student, but was appointed cantor at
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Stettin in 182o, and director of the
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town music in 1821, in which
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year he married Julie von Jacob, who died in 1823 . His second wife, Auguste Lange, was an accomplished singer, and they appeared together in his
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oratorio performances with
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great success . He retained his office at Stettin for 46 years, when, after a stroke of paralysis, he was somewhat summarily dismissed . He retired to
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Kiel, and died on the loth of
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April 1869 . He undertook many concert
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tours during his tenure of the
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post at Stettin, visiting Vienna,
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London, Sweden, Norway and Paris . His high soprano voice (he could sing the music of the " Queen of
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Night " in Die Zauberflote as a boy) had
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developed into a
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fine tenor . Lowe was a voluminous composer, and wrote five operas, of which only one, Die drei Wiinsche, was performed at Berlin in 1834, without much success; seventeen oratorios, many of them for male voices, unaccompanied, or with short instrumental interludes only; choral
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ballads, cantatas, three
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string quartets, a pianoforte trio; a
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work for clarinet and piano, published posthumously; and some piano solos . But the branch of his
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art by which he is remembered, and in which he must be admitted to have attained perfection, is the solo ballad with pianoforte accompaniment . His treatment of long narrative poems, in a
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clever mixture of the dramatic and lyrical styles, was undoubtedly modelled on the ballads of Zumsteeg, and has been copied by many composers since his day . His settings of the "
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Erlkonig " (a very early example), " Archibald Douglas," " Heinrich der Vogler," "
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Edward " and " Die Verfallene Mtihle," are particularly fine .

End of Article: JOHANN KARL GOTTFRIED LOWE (1796-1869)
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