Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Neumeyer, Fritz

(b Saarbrücken, 2 July 1900; d Freiburg, 16 Jan 1983). German keyboard player and composer. He received his musical training in Cologne and Berlin with the aim of becoming an opera conductor. From 1924 to 1927 he was répétiteur, then chorus master and conductor, at the Stadttheater in Saarbrücken. In 1928 he returned to Berlin as a freelance accompanist, primarily of singers. His involvement with early music began at this time with his interest in the collection at the Musikinstrumentenmuseum des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung in Berlin and his meeting with its director, Curt Sachs, who encouraged him in playing historical keyboard instruments and in the study of performance practice. In these Neumeyer became a central figure, believing that each repertory, from Sweelinck and Frescobaldi to Schumann and Brahms, is best served by instruments of its own time and place. With this aim he began, in 1930, a notable collection of keyboard instruments which he had restored to playing condition and made available to performers. Since 1974 this has been housed in the castle at Bad Krozingen. As a performer Neumeyer was known from many recitals and broadcasts. In 1935 he joined the influential Kammermusikkreis of Gustav Scheck and August Wenzinger and in 1954 joined the Cappella Coloniensis of WDR. His influence was reinforced by prominent professorships in historical keyboard performance at the Hochschule für Musik, Berlin (from 1940), and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik, Freiburg (1946–68). His compositions, which are listed in full in J. Böhme: Fritz Neumeyer: Wege zur alten Musik (St Ingbert, 1996), consist almost entirely of songs.

DAVID LEDBETTER

Neuner, Carl (Borromäus)

(b Munich, 29 July 1778; d Munich, 1 April 1830). German composer and violinist. He learnt the violin with the Benedictines at Tegernsee and later studied music theory with Joseph Graetz and singing with J.E. Valesi. In 1800 he joined the Munich court as ballet répétiteur and supernumerary second violinist, advancing in 1807 to a permanent position as violinist (he later played the double bass) with the court orchestra. He retired in 1827. He was a founder-member of the Munich Musikalische Akademie, and was locally important in a circle that included Winter and Poissl.

Neuner was especially significant as a composer of early Romantic ballets. His flair for novel instrumentation aroused the interest of Weber, who praised his one-act ballet Der Dichter Gessner (1809) for its ‘melodic richness … expressed in good orchestration’ and unsuccessfully urged him to turn his attention to the higher sphere of opera ‘since none of the requirements of a good opera composer seem to be lacking in him’. Whether Weber also knew Neuner’s music for F.X. von Caspar's ‘Romantic tragedy’ (the word ‘Romantic’ was added in manuscript) Der Freischütze (1812) is uncertain. The text was based on the tale in Apel and Laun's Gespensterbuch (1810), which was also Kind's source for Weber's opera; and though Neuner's score emphasizes lively, unsubtle dances, his overture is a more substantial, well-written piece which could have impressed Weber. Neuner's works consist principally of ballets; he also wrote some sacred choral music, songs and instrumental music, including an Oboe Concerto (1819) and a Symphony in E (1826).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Kaiser, ed.: Sämtliche Schriften von Carl Maria von Weber (Berlin, 1908)

G. Mayerhofer: C.B. Neuner: sein Leben und seine Musik zur Tragödie ‘Der Freischütze’ (diss., U. of Munich, 1933)

G. Mayerhofer: ‘Abermals vom Freischützen’: der Münchener ‘Freischütze’ von 1812 (Regensburg, 1959)

J. Warrack: Carl Maria von Weber (London, 1968, 2/1976)

JOHN WARRACK

Neupert.

German firm of piano and harpsichord makers. Founded by Johann Christoph Neupert (1848–1921) in 1868 as piano builders, it was among the first German makers to add harpsichords, clavichords and fortepianos to its production, in 1906. The company, which has been based in Bamberg since 1874, had begun to assemble a collection of historical stringed keyboard instruments even earlier, in 1895. Eventually this grew to number more than 250 specimens when it was donated to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg in 1968 (a number of instruments from the collection considered to duplicate other examples had been transferred to the Händel-Haus Museum in Halle in 1939).

Hanns Neupert (1902–1980) joined the firm as technical director in 1928, after a three-year apprenticeship in piano building and studies in musicology and physics at the universities of Erlangen and Munich. He wrote a number of works dealing with historical stringed keyboard instruments and their revival in the 20th century. In 1975, Wolf Dieter Neupert (b 1937) took over the management of the firm. He has written widely on the reproduction of historical keyboard instruments.

Until the mid-1970s the firm’s harpsichord production was generally typical of the pre-1939 modern German school: heavily constructed, open at the bottom, a very long treble scale, with a 16' register in the larger instruments, registration pedals and, from about 1930, adherence to the so-called ‘Bach disposition’ (see Bach harpsichord). Neupert clavichords and fortepianos are more closely modelled on 18th-century prototypes. Reproduction instruments were occasionally produced before 1970, but it is only since then that a number of models of harpsichords in traditional styles superseded the firm’s line of modern instruments; these include copies of historical harpsichords by Antunes, Blanchet and Hemsch, and grand fortepianos by Dulcken and Graf.

For illustration of a Neupert instrument see Harpsichord, fig.16.

WRITINGS

H. Neupert: Das Cembalo (Kassel, 1933/4, 1966; Eng. trans., ed. F.E. Kirby, 1960, 2/1968 as Harpsichord Manual: a Historical and Technical Discussion)

H. Neupert: Das Klavichord (Kassel, 1948/2, 1955; Eng. trans., 1965)

W.D. Neupert: ‘Physikalische Aspekte des Cembaloklanges’, Das Musikinstrument, xx (1971), 857–60

W.D. Neupert: ‘Kopie oder Rekonstruktion?’, Clavichord und Cembalo: Blankenburg, Harz, 1987, 74–9

W.D. Neupert: ‘Zur Frühgeschichte des Hammerflügels’, Münchener Beethoven-Studien, ed. J. Fischer (Munich and Salzburg, 1992), 79–80

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.H. van der Meer: ‘Ein Überblick über den deutschen Cembalobau’, Fünf Jahrhunderte deutscher Musikinstrumentenbau, ed. H. Moeck (Celle, 1987), 235–56

M. Elste: ‘Nostalgische Musikmaschinen. Cembali im 20. Jahrhundert’, Kielklaviere: Cembali, Spinette, Virginale (Berlin, 1991), 239–77

HOWARD SCHOTT/MARTIN ELSTE