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Johann Carl Gottfried Loewe (Karl Löwe)
(1796-1869)

Biography

Carl Loewe was a German composer, baritone singer and conductor. His works combined great dramatic impact with fine lyrical melodies. Loewe was regarded by many as the "Schubert of North Germany".

Loewe received his first music lessons from his father. He was a choir-boy, first at K�then, and later at Halle, where he went to grammar school. The beauty of Loewe's voice earned him a pension from J�r�me Bonaparte, the king of Westphalia, which enabled him to further his education in music, and to study theology at Halle University.

In 1820, he moved to Stettin in Prussia, where he worked as organist and music director of the school. It was while there that he did most of his work as a composer, publishing a version of Goethe's Erlk�nig in 1824 (written 1817-18) which some say rivals Schubert's far more famous version.

He went on to set many other poets' works, including Gottfried Herder, Theodor Fontane, Friedrich R�ckert, and translations of William Shakespeare and Lord Byron.

In 1821 he married Julie von Jacob, who died in 1823. His second wife, Auguste Lange, was an accomplished singer, and they appeared together in his oratorio performances with great success.

In 1827, he conducted the first performance of the 18-year old Felix Mendelssohn's Overture "A Midsummer Night's Dream", (Op.21).
He and Mendelssohn were also soloists in Mendelssohn's Concerto in A-flat major for 2 pianos and orchestra.

Later in life, Loewe became very popular both as a composer and as a singer.
As a youth, he had a high soprano voice (he could sing the music of the "Queen of the Night" in Die Zauberfl�te as a boy), and his voice developed into a fine high baritone.

He made several tours as a singer in the 1840s and 1850s, visiting England, France, Sweden and Norway amongst other countries.

He eventually moved back to Germany, and, after quitting his posts in Stettin after 46 years, moved to Kiel, where he died from a stroke on 20 April 1869.

Loewe wrote five operas, of which only one was performed at Berlin in 1834, without much success; seventeen oratorios, many of them for male voices unaccompanied, or with short instrumental interludes only; choral ballads, cantatas, three string quartets (his opus 24), and a pianoforte trio; a work for clarinet and piano, published posthumously; and some piano solos. But the branch of his art by which he is remembered, and in which he must be admitted to have attained perfection, is the solo ballad with pianoforte accompaniment. His treatment of long narrative poems, in a clever mixture of the dramatic and lyrical styles, was undoubtedly modelled on the ballads of Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg, and has been copied by other composers since his day. Some of his finest settings are presented here.

In 1875, at Bayreuth, Richard Wagner remarked of Loewe, "Ha, das ist ein ernster, mit Bedeutung die sch�ne deutsche Sprache behandelnder, nicht hoch genug zu ehrender deutscher Meister, echt und wahr!" (Ha, that is a serious German Master, authentic and true, one who uses the beautiful German language with meaning, one who cannot be sufficiently revered!).