Riemann, Karl Wilhelm Julius Hugo

Musicologist

Born: 18.07.1849 in Großmehlra (Thuringia)

died: 10.07.1919 in Leipzig

Riemann was employed as a piano and theory teacher at the Wiesbaden Conservatory of Music (Freudenberg Conservatory) from 1890-95. In 1878 he habilitated at the University of Leipzig with his "Studies on the history of musical notation".

In the following years, he taught at the conservatories in Bromberg and Hamburg, where he met Johannes Brahms, among others. In 1890, Max Reger became his pupil at the princely conservatory in Sondershausen and followed him to Wiesbaden. Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949) was also his pupil here for a short time. From Wiesbaden, Riemann returned to Leipzig. In 1901, he was appointed professor at the university there and received numerous honors in the following years. However, his efforts to obtain a chair in Berlin, Prague or Vienna were unsuccessful. Finally, he became director of the musicological institute he founded in Leipzig in 1908 and director of the "State Saxon Research Institute for Musicology", which he also founded, in 1914.

By systematically developing musical analysis and compositional theory, Riemann became one of the most important musicologists of his generation. Without being able to completely free himself from subjective judgments, he attempted to justify musical interpretations more through the analysis of "principles of form and style" than through individual feelings. With his "theory of functions", Riemann made a significant contribution to the theory of harmony. However, towards the end of his life he came to the realization that there could be no universally valid principles in harmony or rhythm.

His extensive publishing activities were most famously reflected in the "Musik-Lexikon. Theorie und Geschichte der Musik, der Tonkünstler alter und neuer Zeit mit Angabe ihrer Werke, nebst einer kompletten Instrumentenkunde" (12th, completely revised edition, Mainz 1959 ff., 13th edition 2013), which is still referred to today as "der Riemann".