Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Niemann, Walter

(b Hamburg, 10 Oct 1876; d Leipzig, 17 June 1953). German composer and writer on music. He came from a musical family. His father, Rudolph (Friedrich) Niemann (b Wesselburen, Holstein, 4 Dec 1838; d Wiesbaden, 14 May 1898), was a pianist and composer, a pupil of Moscheles and David in Leipzig, Marmontel and Halévy in Paris (premier prix, 1858), and von Bülow in Berlin, then worked at Hamburg (1864–83) and as a teacher at the conservatory in Wiesbaden; he was a virtuoso pianist and his compositions (opp.1–54) are in a fluent and expressive late Romantic style. Rudolph’s brother Gustav Adolph Niemann (b Wesselburen, 6 Dec 1843; d Helsinki, 5 Dec 1881) was a violinist, a pupil of David at Leipzig and later a prominent figure in Helsinki musical life.

Walter Niemann was a pupil of his father, then of Humperdinck, and from 1898 at Leipzig Conservatory under Reinecke and at the University of Leipzig under Riemann, graduating with a dissertation on early ligatures and mensural music. He worked first (1906–7) as a teacher in Hamburg, then in Leipzig. He was briefly editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, but worked principally as teacher, composer, pianist and writer, serving as critic of the Leipziger neueste Nachrichten, 1907–17. Niemann was a prolific composer, especially for the piano (his opus numbers reach 189); at first influenced by Schumann and Brahms, he later admitted folksong and narrative elements, and drew too on impressionism and exoticism. He composed sonatas, educational music, dances and abstract works, but above all numerous character-pieces, often programmatic or portraying Nature.

Niemann was an outspoken and sometimes vitriolic critic, whose influence can be gauged from Max Reger's threat in 1910 to pursue a libel suit against him. An adherent of the Heimatkunst movement, he contributed to various völkisch periodicals, and he attached great importance to the discipline of ethnomusicology. He praised nationalist composers such as Pfitzner, Sibelius and MacDowell, while denouncing the ‘pathological’ and ‘sensuous’ music of Richard Strauss, Mahler and Schoenberg. Niemann's important biography of Brahms sought to distance the composer from his liberal milieu, placing him within the context of North German regionalism.

WRITINGS

Über die abweichende Bedeutung der Ligaturen in der Mensuraltheorie der Zeit von Johannes de Garlandia (Leipzig, 1902/R)

Musik und Musiker des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1905)

ed.: A. Kullak: Die Ästhetik des Klavierspiels (Leipzig, 4/1905, 5/1916, 7–8/1920

Die Musik Skandinaviens (Leipzig, 1906)

Das Klavierbuch: Geschichte der Klaviermusik und ihre Meister (Leipzig, 1907, 3/1913)

with G. Schjelderup: Edvard Grieg: Biographie und Würdigung seiner Werke (Leipzig, 1908)

Das Nordlandbuch (Weimar, 1909)

‘Rudolph Niemann’, Neue Musik-Zeitung, xxx (1909), 275 [with work-list]

Die musikalische Renaissance des 19. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1911)

Taschenlexikon für Klavierspieler (Leipzig, 1912, 3/1917 as Klavier-Lexikon: Virtuosen, Komponisten, Pädagogen, Methodiker und Schriftsteller des Klaviers)

Die Musik seit Richard Wagner (Leipzig, 1913; 5th and later edns. to 18–20/1922 as Die Musik der Gegenwart der letzten Vergangenheit bis zu den Romantikern, Klassizisten und Neudeutschen)

Jean Sibelius (Leipzig, 1917)

Die nordische Klaviermusik (Leipzig, 1918)

ed.: O. Klauwell: Die Formen der Instrumentalmusik (Leipzig, 2/1918)

Die Virginalmusik (Leipzig, 1919)

Meister des Klaviers (Berlin, 1919, 2/1921)

Brahms (Leipzig, 1920, 15/1933; Eng. trans., 1929/R)

Articles in KJb, Neue Musik-Zeitung, ZfM etc.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (R. Sietz) [with work-list]

H. Fey: Schleswig-holsteinische Musiker (Hamburg, 1922), 76

M. Steinitzer: ‘Walter Niemann und die Exotik’, Simrock-Jb, i (1928), 115–19

H. Wilske: Max Reger: zur Rezeption in seiner Zeit (Wiesbaden, 1995)

ROSE MAURO

Niemecz [Němec], Joseph [Pater Primitivus]

(b Vlašim, 9 Feb 1750; d Vienna, 9 Jan 1806). Bohemian maker of mechanical instruments and viol player. He was ordained as a priest in 1776, taking the name of Father Primitivus. In 1780 he was appointed librarian to Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, with additional duties as viol player in the orchestra under the direction of Joseph Haydn. In 1795 he moved with the Esterházy household to Vienna. Niemecz became one of the most innovative of the Viennese clockwork barrel organ makers (see Musical clock), although there is no record of where he learnt such skills. Haydn admired his mechanical ability and produced a number of pieces of music (h XIX) for him to transcribe on to his organ cylinders. Four of his organs dating from the early 1790s still exist, each playing various of these Haydn pieces. Niemecz also made instruments for Müller’s Kunstkabinett, a Viennese exhibition for which Mozart wrote three pieces of music (k594, k608, k616), and Beethoven a further three. He is also said to have made a musical chair which played a tune when a person sat down on it, and a musical spinning wheel. A full account of his career is given in A.W.J.G. Ord-Hume: Joseph Haydn and the Mechanical Organ (Cardiff, 1982).

ARTHUR W.J.G. ORD-HUME

Niemetschek [Niemeczek], Franz Xaver [Němeček, František Xaver (Petr)]

(b Sadska, Bohemia, 24 July 1766; d Vienna, 19 March 1849). Czech teacher and music critic. Born into a large and musical family, he attended the Gymnasium in Prague (1776–82) and studied philosophy at the university. He taught poetry at the gymnasiums in Plzeň (1787–92) and in the Malá Strana district of Prague, meanwhile developing his music publishing activities. In 1800 he was awarded the doctorate, and in 1802 appointed professor of philosophy at Prague University, where he also lectured on logic, ethics and pedagogy; among his pupils was the composer Voříšek. He also served as book censor and as director of the institute for the deaf and dumb. In 1819 he sided with the dean of the philosophical faculty, who was charged with having an undesirable influence on the students; and in 1820 he was formally transferred to Vienna and there prematurely retired at his own request. His estate, which included a rich correspondence with the Mozart family, was formerly in the possession of A. Richter of Portschach, Lower Austria, but is now lost.

Niemetschek was one of the earliest music critics in Prague. Among the first to appreciate Italian opera, he blamed Viennese Singspiel for the decline of musical taste in Prague. He saw in the works of Mozart the fulfilment of his aesthetic ideals; his monograph (1798), for which Mozart’s widow lent him many documents, was the first independent publication on Mozart and has remained a valuable source, not the least of its interest lying in its revelation of the Bohemian enthusiasm for Mozart and his music and in Niemetschek’s early appreciation of Idomeneo and other then little-valued pieces. He was also responsible for the posthumous edition of Mozart’s works by Breitkopf & Härtel and other publishing firms. After Mozart’s death he accepted responsibility for the education of the composer’s son, Carl Thomas.

WRITINGS

Leben des k.k. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart nach Originalquellen beschrieben (Prague, 1798, enlarged 2/1808/R; Eng. trans., 1956/R); critical edn by E. Rychnovsky as W.A. Mozarts Leben nach Originalquellen (Prague, 1905); ed. and Fr. trans. G. Favier (St Etienne, 1976)

‘Über den Zustand der Musik in Böhmen um 1800’, AMZ, ii (1800), 488–94, 497–507, 513–23, 537–40

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ČSHS

W. Hitzig: ‘Die Briefe Franz Xaver Niemetscheks und der Marianne Mozart an Breitkopf & Härtel’, Der Bär: Jb von Breitkopf & Härtel auf das Jahr 1928 (1928), 101–16

P. Nettl: Mozart in Böhmen (Prague, 1938)

M. Zenger and O.E. Deutsch: Mozart und seine Welt in zeitgenössischen Bildern/Mozart and his World in Contemporary Pictures (Kassel, 1961), 272 [portrait]

T. Volek: ‘Repertoir Nosticovského divadla v Praze z let 1794, 1796–98’ [The repertory of the Nostitz Theatre, 1794, 1796–8], MMC, no.16 (1961), 5–191

T. Volek: ‘Neznámá tvář F.X. Němečka’ [The unknown face of Niemetschek], HRo, xix (1966), 427 only

R. Angermüller and S. Dahms-Schneider: ‘Neue Brieffunde zu Mozart’, MJb 1968–70, 211–41

TOMISLAV VOLEK