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 music with Turk . The beauty of Lowe's voice brought him under the notice of Madame de Stael, who procured him a pension from Jerome Bonaparte, then king of Westphalia; this stopped in 1813, on the flight of the king . He entered the University of Halle as a theological student, but was appointed cantor at Stettin in 182o, and director of the town music in 1821, in which 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 oratorio performances with 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 Kiel, and died on the loth of April 1869 . He undertook many concert tours during his tenure of the post at Stettin, visiting Vienna, London, Sweden, Norway and Paris . His high soprano voice (he could sing the music of the " Queen of Night " in Die Zauberflote as a boy) had developed into a 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 ballads, cantatas, three string quartets, a pianoforte trio; a work for clarinet and piano, published posthumously; and some piano solos . But the branch of his 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 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 " Erlkonig " (a very early example), " Archibald Douglas," " Heinrich der Vogler," " Edward " and " Die Verfallene Mtihle," are particularly fine .