Uccelli [née Pazzini], Carolina Uccellini, Marco

Uhlig, Theodor

(b Wurzen, nr Leipzig, 15 Feb 1822; d Dresden, 3 Jan 1853). German theorist, critic and composer. The illegitimate son of King Friedrich August II of Saxony, he studied with Friedrich Schneider in Dessau (1837–40) and joined the Dresden orchestra as a violinist in 1841. Although he was initially hostile to Wagner, study of Tannhäuser and of the essay on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (1846) turned him into one of the earliest, most loyal and most articulate of Wagner's defenders. His ‘great seriousness and his quiet but unusually firm character’ attracted the attention of Wagner, who also wrote in his autobiography that Uhlig ‘had grasped with clear understanding and perfect agreement those very tendencies of mine which many musicians of apparently wider culture than his own regarded with almost despairing horror, as being dangerous to the orthodox practice of their art’. He remained a close friend of Wagner, whose correspondence with him is filled with enlightening personal and professional details (Uhlig's letters to Wagner have not survived). With Uhlig's untimely death to consumption in 1853, Wagner lost one of the few ‘progressive’ commentators from the early 1850s (besides Liszt) whose opinions Wagner supported. Uhlig attacked Meyerbeer and Le prophète in 1850–51 in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, at the same time defending Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Wagner's operatic practice in general. He allowed his sympathies for Berlioz, Weber, Mendelssohn and Schumann to be diminished by his devotion to Wagner; but he is important for being one of the first critics to write about music with reference to the issues raised by Wagner, as not merely a limited aesthetic sensation or a matter for technical theory but as part of the cultural life of a country and an epoch. Nevertheless, Uhlig's articles tended to focus more on purely musical issues than Wagner's writings. Uhlig's thought also had a reciprocal influence upon Wagner's own writings, for example in the reception of Beethoven. Uhlig's theoretical writings include a study of phrase structure that greatly impressed Wagner, and one of errors in the printed scores of Beethoven's symphonies. His review of an article by Liszt drew from the composer an admiring letter (25 June 1851). Uhlig's compositions, which ran to 84 opus numbers, include Singspiele, symphonies, chamber music and songs.

WRITINGS

L. Frankenstein, ed.: Musikalische Schriften (Regensburg, 1914) [incl. most of Uhlig's pubd writings, omits shorter polemic articles and reviews]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. von Wolzogen, ed.: Richard Wagner’s Briefe an Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, Ferdinand Heine (Leipzig, 1888; Eng. trans., 1890/R)

M. Ahrend: Theodor Uhlig (Bayreuth, 1904)

M. Gregor-Dellin, ed.: Richard Wagner: Mein Leben (Munich, 1963, 2/1976; Eng. trans., 1983)

S. Spencer and B. Millington, eds.: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner (London, 1987)

J. Thym: ‘Schumann in Brendel's Neue Zeitschrift für Musik from 1845 to 1856’, Mendelssohn and Schumann: Essays on their Music and its Context (Durham, NC, 1984), 21–36

C. Berktold: ‘Theodor Uhlig und Richard Wagners Das Judenthum in der Musik’, Musik in Bayern, xlix (1994), 65–78

JOHN WARRACK/JAMES DEAVILLE

Uhlmann.

Austrian family of wind instrument makers and musicians. The firm was founded by Johann Tobias Uhlmann (b Kronach, Upper Franconia, 8 June 1778; d Vienna, 12 May 1838), who was granted a licence to trade in Vienna in 1810; he took the oath of citizenship in 1817. In addition to his instrument-making activities he was an oboist at the Theater an der Wien. In 1831 his sons Leopold and Jakob entered the firm, which already had become one of the most important in the Austrian lands, producing wind instruments of all kinds and exporting them to the rest of Europe as well as to Egypt, Persia and Brazil. Jakob Uhlmann (bap 19 Dec 1803; d 18 Nov 1850) received his licence to trade in 1830 and was also an oboist in the Hofmusikkapelle from 1843. He died of typhoid. His son Jakob (b 1837) is recorded at the same address during the following years. The fact that Jakob Uhlmann junior (d 10 Sept 1871) was also an oboist has caused some confusion. The younger Jakob played in the orchestra of the court opera, and from 1866 taught at the conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. He died of pulmonary tuberculosis aged 34.

Leopold Tobias Uhlmann (b 22 Feb 1806; d 8 March 1878) learned his father's trade and applied for his ‘freedom’ in 1825. In 1830 he received a patent in connection with improvements to the double-piston or Vienna valve (see Valve (i); for illustration see Horn, fig.1b), developed by Joseph Riedl and Josef Kail. The new valve was quieter, more airtight and produced less friction. Although Uhlmann used this valve in horns, trumpets and trombones, it was to prove useful only for the horn; with minor alterations it is still used today in the so-called Vienna horn in F. Uhlmann also made improvements to the ophicleide, providing it too with Vienna valves (see Ophicleide, §3). In 1843 he applied for patents for four other improvements: a mouthpiece in which the volume of the cup changes according to lip pressure; a new process for making the flare; an improved rotary valve; and auxiliary keys to improve intonation. Uhlmann was appointed wind instrument maker to the Austro-Hungarian court in 1874. His advertisements proudly mention the firm's exports to both Russia and America, and the nine medals won at trade and international exhibitions. After Leopold Uhlmann's death his son of the same name continued the family business. In 1900 the Erste Productivgenossenschaft der Musikinstrumentenmacher (workers' cooperative; founded 1892) took over the stock of the workshop.

Joseph Uhlmann (b 31 Dec 1807; d 1 May 1859) also joined his father's business and appears in the Vienna registers as an independent instrument maker of wind instruments from 1846 onwards.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Waterhouse-I

Langwill

H. Haupt: ‘Wiener Instrumentenbauer von 1791–1815’, SMw, xxiv (1960), 120–84

H. Fitzpatrick: ‘Notes on the Vienna Horn’, GSJ, xiv (1961), 49–51

H. Ottner: Der Wiener Instrumentenbau 1815–1833 (Tutzing, 1977)

R. Dahlqvist: ‘Some Notes on the Early Valve’, GSJ, xxxiii (1980), 111–24

H. Heyde: Das Ventilblasinstrument (Leipzig, 1987)

R. Hopfner: Weiner Musikinstrumentenmacher, 1766–1900 (Tutzing, 1999)

RUDOLF HOPFNER