Friedrich Ludwig Æmilius Kunzen
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F.L.Æ. Kunzen
)
Friedrich Ludwig Æmilius Kunzen (24 September 1761 – 28 January 1817) was a German composer and conductor who lived and worked for much of his life in Denmark.
Life
He was born in
Hamburg Opera in the 1720s. In 1781 he began studying law in Kiel, but his true love was music, and in 1784, encouraged by composer Johann Abraham Peter Schulz, he moved to Copenhagen
to pursue a musical career.
He performed as a pianist at court and in clubs, and in the next few years had successes with a memorial cantata for Count Otto Thott and music for the marriage of Crown Princess
Frederik Christian II, Duke of Augustenborg, as well as theatre music. In 1788 he met the young author Jens Baggesen, and the two collaborated on the opera Holger Danske, which premiered the following year, causing the "Holger Feud," as a result of which Kunzen temporarily left the country. For the next two years he lived in Berlin
.
From 1792 until 1794 he worked as musical director of the new
Mozart's Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute. During his stay in Frankfurt he married one of the foremost singers of the era, Johanna Margaretha Antonetta Zuccarini (1766-1842). [citation needed
]
In 1794 he and his wife moved to
Cosi fan tutte failed spectacularly in 1798.[1][page needed] However, he had successes with Don Giovanni (1807) and Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1813). [citation needed
]
Aside from an occasional composition for the court and city, he composed the oratorio Opstandelsen (The Resurrection, 1796), the grand opera Erik Ejegod (1798), and various hymns and
Singspiele. In 1809, he was appointed professor, and in 1811 he was honoured as a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog and appointed a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. On 28 January 1817, he suffered a stroke and died after an argument with Jens Baggesen over a plagiarism controversy concerning the opera Trylleharpen (The Magic Harp), which had been performed in 1806 in Vienna and Hamburg in German as Ossians Harfe, but without success. [citation needed
]
References
Work cited
- Kellner, Hans-Peter (2013). "FROM THE PRINCE OF DENMARK IN THE SULTAN'S HAREM TO DON JUAN IN THE ROYAL DANISH CHAMBERS: THE FORGOTTEN COMPOSER FRIEDRICH LUDWIG AEMILIUS KUNZEN.". In Hüttler, Michael; Weidinger, Hans Ernst (eds.). Ottoman Empire and European Theatre Vol. I: The Age of Mozart and Selim III (1756-1808). Vol. 1. OCLC 863126149.
- Baggesen, Jens (1995). Holger Danske (Libretto Booklet) (in Danish). OCLC 1015690101.
Further reading
- Kellner, Johann Peter (2014). Friedrich Ludwig Æmilius Kunzen (1761–1817) from the Life of a Forgotten Composer (PDF) (Mag.phil. thesis). University of Vienna.
External links
- Profile at the Don Juan Archiv symposium website
- Free scores by Friedrich Ludwig Æmilius Kunzen at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
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