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Carl Friedrich Abel (Composer, Viola da gamba, Bach's Pupil) |
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Born: December 221 3 or 234, 1723 - Köthen, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Died: June 20, 1787 - London, England |
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Carl Friedrich Abel was a German composer of the Classical era. He was a fine player of the viola da gamba, and composed important music for that instrument. He was the son of Christian Ferdinand Abel, the principal viola da gamba and violin and cello player in the court orchestra of J.S. Bach in Köthen; his elder brother Leopold August Abel (1718-1794) was violinist and composer; both studied with their father. By the time of his birth J.S. Bach left Köthen for Leipzig, but Abel later had close contacts with members of the Bach family. According to the historian Charles Burney (1726-1814), he became a pupil of J.S. Bach in Leipzig in 1743. Actually, there is no proof that Abel studied at the Thomasschule Leipzig (he might attend the school as an external), but it was on J.S. Bach's recommendation that in 1748 he was able to join as chamber musicians (gambist, cellist) Johann Adolf Hasse's Hofkapelle (court orchestra) at Dresden where he remained for ten years. No doubt he knew Wilhelm Friedemann Bach at Dresden during this tenure.
Around 1756-1759 Carl Friedrich Abel travelled. In 1759 (or 1758 according to Chambers), he went to England; and in 1762 became chamber-musician with Queen Charlotte. He gave a concert of his own compositions in London, performing on various instruments, one of which was a five-string cello known as a pentachord, which had been recently invented by John Joseph Merlin.
In 1762, Johann Christian Bach, the 11th son of J.S. Bach, joined him in London, and the friendship between him and Carl Friedrich Abel led, in 1764 or 1765, to the establishment of the famous Bach-Abel concerts, England's first subscription concerts. In those concerts, many celebrated guest artists appeared, and the works of Haydn received their first English performance.
For ten years the concerts were organised by Mrs. Teresa Cornelys, a retired Venetian opera singer who owned a concert hall at Carlisle House in Soho Square, then the height of fashionable events. In 1775 the concerts became independent of her, to be continued by Abel and J.C. Bach until J.C. Bach's death in 1782. Carl Friedrich Abel still remained in great demand as a player on various instruments new and old. He travelled to Germany and France between 1782 and 1785, and upon his return to London, became a leading member of the Grand Professional Concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms in Soho. Throughout his life he had enjoyed excessive living, and his drinking probably hastened his death, which occurred in London on June 20, 1787.
Carl Friedrich Abel's own music consists manly of orchestral and chamber works, most of them presumably composed for his own concerts (the programmes of which have not survived). One of the most widely known works of Abel became famous due to a misattribution: in the 19th century, a manuscript symphony in the hand of W.A. Mozart, was catalogued as his Symphony No. 3 in E flat, K. 18, and was published as such in the first complete edition of Mozart's works by Breitkopf & Härtel. Later, it was discovered that this symphony was actually the work of Abel, copied by the boy Mozart - evidently for study purposes - while he was visiting London in 1764. That symphony was originally published as the concluding work in Abel's Six Symphonies, Op. 7.
In 1789, Burney called Carl Friedrich Abel "a discipel of J. S. Bach"; he also learned “under his great master Sebastian Bach”. Gerber says in 1810 more cautiously that he genoß, als Thomas-Schüler zu Leipzig, wahrscheinlich den Unterricht des großen Sebast. Bach" (enjoyed, as Thomas student in Leipzig, probably the lessons of the great Sebast. Bach). Abel's name is missing in the alumni register of the Thomasschule, however, only his participation in a Leipzig concert in 1743 can be proven from the Riemer-Chronik. Regardless of the question of the pupil relationship with J.S. Bach, Abel had contact with J.S. Bach's sons Johann Christian Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, perhaps also in Dresden with Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. In addition, J.S. Bach had been working with Abel's father in the Köthener Hofkapelle and had taken over the baptism sponsorship of one of his daughters in 1720.
References: Koska: B-35; GND: 118646583; Bach Digital: 00001032 |
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Selected works by opus number |
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Op. 1: 6 Overtures or Sinfonias (1761)
Op. 2: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin and Cello (ad libitum) (1760)
Op. 3: 6 Trio Sonatas for 2 Violins and Basso Continuo (1762)
Op. 4: 6 Overtures or Sinfonias (1762)
Op. 5: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin and Cello (ad libitum) (1762)
Op. 6: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Flute (1763)
Op. 7: 6 Symphonies (1767)
Op. 8: 6 String Quartets (1768)
Op. 9: 6 Trio Sonatas for Violin, Cello and Basso Continuo (1771)
Op. 10: 6 Symphonies (1771)
Op. 11: 6 Concerti for Keyboard and Strings (1771)
Op. 12: 6 Flute Quartets (1774)
Op. 13: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin (1777)
Op. 14: 6 Symphonies (1778)
Op. 15: 6 String Quartets (1780)
Op. 16: 4 Trio Sonatas for 2 Flutes and Basso Continuo (1781)
Op. 16: 6 Trio Sonatas for Violin, Viola and Cello (1782)
Op. 17: 6 Symphonies (1785)
Op. 18: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin (1784) |
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Portrait of Carl Friedrich Abel by Thomas Gainsborough (1777) |
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Sources:
1. Wikipedia Website
2. Malcolm Boyd (Editor): Oxford Composer Companion - J.S. Bach (Oxford University Press, 1999)
3. Bernd Koska: Bachs Privatschüler in Bach-Jahrbuch 2019, English translation by Aryeh Oron (May 2020)
4. Bach Digital Website (April 2019)
Contributed by Aryeh Oron (February
2010,
May 2020) |
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Links to other Sites |
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Carl Friedrich Abel (Wikipedia)
Abel, Carl Friedrich (Bach Digital) |
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Bibliography |
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Chambers Biographical Dictionary , p. 3
"Abel, Karl Friedrich" in Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.) (1911)
S.M. Helm: Carl Friedrich Abel, Symphonist (London, 1953)
S. McVeigh: Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge, 1993)
Sources 3: C. Burney, A General History of Music, London 1789, S. 678f. (= Dok V, Nr. C 943aa); Gerber NTL, Bd. I, Sp.4; Dok II, Nr. 99; Dok III, Nr. 943; J. F. Reichardt, Musikalischer Almanach, Bern 1796, Abschnitt IV; G. Wustmann, Quellen zur Geschichte Leipzigs. Veröffentlichungen aus dem Archiv und der Bibliothek der Stadt Leipzig, Bd. I, Leipzig 1889, S. 426; Löffler 1929/31, Nr. 45; Löffler 1953, Nr. 62; W. Knape, Karl Friedrich Abel. Leben und Werk eines frühklassischen Komponisten, Bremen 1973; MGGo; S. Roe, Sons, family and pupils, in: The Routledge research companion to Johann Sebastian Bach, hrsg. von R. A. Leaver, London und New York 2017, S. 461f.; BJ 2018, S. 36f. (H.-J. Schulze)
Sources 4: NBA IV/5, 6; V/3, 12; Dok III, V, VI |
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