Carl Friedrich Zelter

Carl Friedrich Zelter (Berlin, 1758 – Berlin, 1832) was a central figure in German musical life at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. A composer, conductor and teacher, he is remembered above all for his lieder and for his musical and epistolary friendship with Goethe, and for shaping choral and educational institutions that spread throughout Germany.

The son of a bricklayer from Saxony, Zelter initially followed his father's trade: he became a master bricklayer in 1783 and took over the family business in 1787, although he remained a member of the Berlin bricklayers' guild until 1815. His musical inclinations, however, were evident early on. He was largely self-taught on several instruments, received violin lessons and played in the orchestra of the Gendarmenmarkt theatre. Between 1784 and 1786 he studied composition with C. F. C. Fasch, founder of the Berlin Sing-Akademie, at whose head Zelter would eventually stand following his teacher's death in 1800.

Under his direction, the Sing-Akademie became a model for the performance of sacred music of the past, and his work inspired similar institutions in other German cities. In 1807 he founded the Ripienschule, an instrumental ensemble that accompanied the choirs, and in 1809 he established the Liedertafel, a men's choir with a patriotic inspiration, as well as being appointed professor of music at the Akademie der Künste. Between 1814 and 1822, institutes for the teaching of church and school music were founded in Königsberg, Breslau and Berlin, and Zelter assumed full responsibility for the Berlin institute from 1823. Among his pupils were Felix Mendelssohn, Giacomo Meyerbeer and Otto Nicolai.

His relationship with Goethe, documented in some nine hundred letters between 1799 and 1832, was one of the most notable features of his life. Goethe found in him a musical adviser, and valuable accounts of encounters such as Goethe's meeting with Beethoven in 1812 or the premiere of Der Freischütz in 1821 derive from that correspondence.

As a composer, Zelter is above all an author of lieder: of his two hundred and ten lieder for solo voice, seventy-five set texts by Goethe. He championed the primacy of the text and a preference for strophic song over through-composition, a stance he shared without wholly rejecting the principle of through-composition. His men's choral works, admired by Goethe, are also notable. His legacy, which includes a valuable music collection containing numerous manuscripts by Bach, and his influence on German music teaching in the nineteenth century justify his place in music history today.