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Deutsche Musik-Zeitung

(Vienna, 1860-1862)

Prepared by Beverly J. Sing
1 volume (1994)

The Deutsche Musik-Zeitung, a short-lived music weekly, was published in Vienna under the direction of Selmar Bagge, immediately prior to his assumption of the direction of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in Leipzig. Studies in piano, organ, violoncello, figured bass and composition gave Bagge a strong base from which to develop his authority as a writer on music. After contributing to the Monatschrift für Theater und Musik, Bagge founded the Deutsche Musik-Zeitung with the goal of addressing both the old and the new in music. The journal contains a mixture of serious articles and reviews, correspondents’ reports and news about local and foreign events.

The main collaborators of the Deutsche Musik-Zeitung are Gustav Eduard Engel (writing on idealism and realism in music); Albert Hahn (writing about musical dilettantism and Goethe’s ideas about art); and the well-known critic Otto Gumprecht (discussing the differences between “church music” and “religious music”). Of particular interest are the writings of Wagner’s champion Alfred von Wolzogen on Mozart’s opera librettos, the Schumann biographer Joseph von Wasielewsky on the life and works of Ludwig Spohr, and Debrois von Bruyck on Bach’s Well-Tempered Keyboard. In addition to original pieces written for the journal by Eduard Hanslick, some of his important reviews from the Neue freie Presse are reproduced. Feature articles deserving special mention are those on performance practice, on Wagner’s creative principles as illustrated in his music dramas, and on the “true” purpose of church music. Bagge also presented his view of the general state of music as seen in the context of developments in the other arts. Feuilletons include reminiscences on the life and works of Mendelssohn by Wilhelm von Waldbrühl, and, Elise Polko’s novellas based on the lives of J. S. Bach’s youngest sons, Johann Christoph Friederich and Johann Christian.

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