1747–1800 · Germany, Denmark · Baroque
Johann Abraham Peter Schulz (1747–1800) was a German composer and conductor from Lüneburg. He worked at court in Rheinsberg and in Copenhagen, writing operas, songs and keyboard pieces. He is remembered above all for the tune of "Der Mond ist aufgegangen", set to words by Matthias Claudius, and for the Christmas song "Ihr Kinderlein, kommet".
Schulz was born in Lüneburg on 31 March 1747. From 1757 to 1759 he attended St Michael's school, and after that, until 1764, the Johanneum. His father was a baker and a diligent churchgoer; he hoped his son would become a priest and sent him to a Latin school. At eleven he was already composing, though he knew nothing of harmony.
In the church choir the boy stood out for his fine voice and could sing even difficult parts at sight. Schmügel, the organist of the Johanneskirche, took charge of his musical education: he taught him theory and organ playing and even let him live in his own house, where it was far quieter to practise than in the modest family home. The boy's quick progress on the organ changed his father's mind, and in 1765 he allowed him to go to Berlin.
In Berlin Schulz met Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who recommended him to Johann Philipp Kirnberger, a theorist of counterpoint well known at the time. He was eighteen, and the school proved strict: everything the young man had written before was set aside, and he had to start again like a schoolboy. Kirnberger took him into his own house, looked after him and taught him tirelessly in chorale writing and in simple and double counterpoint. Kirnberger did not take his pupil to concerts, and organ playing was put aside.
Schulz later said that he had gained in theoretical knowledge but lost in inventiveness, and that it was hard for him to win back his natural ease in writing melody. This may be why his career as a composer began fairly late: in 1778 his first booklet of keyboard pieces appeared and was received very warmly, and a year later came the collection Gesänge am Clavier.
Kirnberger put Schulz forward in 1768 as music teacher and accompanist to Princess Sapieha, a Polish noblewoman. He journeyed across Europe in her company, and these trips acquainted him with a good many fresh musical ideas. On the way he visited Joseph Haydn in Vienna and got to know his works, whose heartfelt and natural union of melody and harmony made a strong impression on him, and he also met the song composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt.
The accompanist's job eventually wore Schulz out. He left the princess's service in Warsaw and took a similar post with her relative Prince Sapieha, who lived in Dereczyn, a small town in Lithuania, but he lasted there only six months. In 1773 he went back to Berlin and made his living as a music teacher. Work soon piled up: he contributed pieces about music to the Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste of Johann Georg Sulzer and helped with Kirnberger's treatises.
From 1776 Schulz directed the music of the French theatre in Berlin, which was supported by the court. Then, from 1 April 1780, Prince Henry, the brother of Frederick II, engaged him as Kapellmeister of his French theatre in Rheinsberg. The prince had liked the small French operettas that the crown princess and her ladies staged before his eyes under Schulz's direction.
The prince demanded a great deal of work from his Kapellmeister, and Schulz spared himself in no way. During his years in Rheinsberg he staged many French operettas, with a special liking for Grétry, as well as the finest large operas by Gluck, Piccinni and Sacchini. For the local theatre he composed many occasional pieces, the operetta La fée Urgèle in 1782, the opera Aline, reine de Golconde and music for Racine's tragedy Athalie.
Schulz's family life brought losses. In 1781 he married Wilhelmine Friederike Caroline Flügel of Berlin; she died in 1784. In 1786 he married her sister Charlotte Flügel. With Charlotte he had a son, Carl Eduard, who died at the age of three, and in 1794 a daughter, Wilhelmine Charlotte, known as Minchen.
The music to Athalie was published as a piano reduction in 1786 by Professor Cramer of Kiel, who had translated the text into German. In the same year it was performed with applause at a concert in Berlin. In January 1787 it was given three times in Copenhagen under Kunzen's direction at aristocratic concerts in the Schimmelmann palace. Schulz was offered the vacant post of royal Danish Kapellmeister and gladly accepted: the salary was about twice what he had earned in Rheinsberg, and since 1785 he had also felt ill at ease because of the offences done to him by Princess Amalie. He arrived in Copenhagen on 19 October 1787.
A new and fruitful period began in Copenhagen. His Lieder im Volkston were already known in Denmark before he came, and they became even more popular when Knud Lyne Rahbek published a selection of them with Danish words in 1792. Schulz quickly learned Danish language and literature. In the winter of 1787–1788 he wrote the Passion oratorio Maria og Johannes to a text by Johannes Ewald; it was performed at court with great success in Lent 1788. The first Danish work by Schulz to be performed in public was a chorus in a prologue by Thaarup, sung in the theatre on 8 December 1788 in the presence of the crown prince. From 1789, when the oratorio came out in a piano reduction, it was often performed.
Writing an original Danish opera was Schulz's dearest wish, and Thaarup began a text for it but could not finish it. So for the king's birthday in 1789 the theatre decided to stage Schulz's French opera Aline in a Danish translation: he reworked it and added ballet music. The opera stayed in the repertoire for nearly thirty years. On 16 September 1790, for the entry of Crown Prince Frederik and his bride, the one-act Singspiel Høstgildet, to a text by Thomas Thaarup, was given for the first time. It proved even more lasting and was received even more warmly. The Singspiel was a tribute to the freeing of the peasants.
In Copenhagen Schulz also taught Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse, whom many regard as the father of Danish music, and he supported Friedrich Ludwig Æmilius Kunzen. In 1795 he returned to Berlin.
In the 1790s Schulz suffered from advancing tuberculosis. Hoping for relief, he planned a sea voyage to Portugal, but it ended in a shipwreck at Arendal in Norway. Back in Germany he lived in Lüneburg (1796), Berlin, Rheinsberg (1797), Stettin (1798–1799) and Schwedt (1799–1800).
His daughter Minchen lived with him in Schwedt. Schulz died of consumption on 10 June 1800 and was buried in the Great Churchyard, now the city park of Schwedt. Minchen later married the glass manufacturer Ludwig Heinrich Betzien and died in Berlin in 1861.
Schulz had many friendships with writers and musicians of his time, among them Johann Heinrich Voss, Matthias Claudius, Friederike Brun and Johann Friedrich Reichardt. He admired Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Friedrich Schiller. In Schwedt the municipal school of music and art is named after him.
His output included operas, incidental music, oratorios and cantatas, together with piano pieces and plenty of songs in a folk manner, plus a single operetta. As a theorist he left his mark on the works of others: he helped with Kirnberger's book on the art of pure composition and wrote important articles for Sulzer's encyclopedia of the arts.
Songs hold the central place in his legacy. The collection Lieder im Volkston bei dem Claviere zu singen ("Songs in a folk style, to be sung at the keyboard") appeared in three parts, and in the second, revised edition the first two parts came out in 1785 and the third in 1790. These songs combine folk-like simplicity with a distinctive lyrical mood, and they are thought to have played an important part in the development of the German Lied. Schulz is counted among the most notable representatives of the so-called Second Berlin Lieder School. The setting of Claudius's text "Serenata im Walde" is also certainly his.
For keyboard he published the six pieces of opus 1 ("for harpsichord or fortepiano", 1778): a Prelude, Andante sostenuto, Allegro maestoso, Andante, Allegretto and Larghetto con variazioni. There is also a Sonata, opus 2, for solo harpsichord, in three movements (Allegro, Adagio, Vivace) and dedicated to Signora Arrighetta Willmann. For the stage he wrote music to Racine's Athalie, Peters bryllup ("Peter's Wedding", 1793, libretto by Thomas Thaarup), the Singspiel Høstgildet and the operas La fée Urgèle and Aline. Among his sacred works are the oratorio Maria og Johannes and Frelseren's sidste Stund (1794), as well as the church pieces Gud Jehovah, vi prise Dig, to a text by Thaarup, and Vor dir o Ewiger tritt unser Chor zusammen.
His music also mattered a great deal to Denmark. The Lieder im Volkston won favour there once Rahbek's Danish selection appeared, and through his pupil Weyse Schulz influenced Danish music, especially the Danish romance. In Copenhagen, at the request of champions of the peasants' liberation, above all Reventlow, he also wrote a short treatise on the influence of music on the education of a people, Gedanken über den Einfluss der Musik auf die Bildung eines Volks (1790). His works were performed at the national theatre in Copenhagen throughout the nineteenth century.
The best way to begin with Schulz is his best-known tune, "Der Mond ist aufgegangen", to the poem by Matthias Claudius. On the site this song is available as sheet music for voice and piano at the intermediate level. He also composed the melody of the church song "Wir pflügen und wir streuen" and of the Christmas song "Ihr Kinderlein, kommet".