# Johann Friedrich Reichardt



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Johann Friedrich Reichardt (25 November 1752 - 27 June 1814) was a German composer, writer and music critic.
Much of Reichardt's reputation as a composer rests on his Lieder that number about 1500, using texts by some 125 poets. Important among these are the settings of Goethe's texts, some of which were known to, and influenced, Schubert. He was also known by his Singspiele, a genre that he refined with Goethe's support. He also wrote 49 songs to Herder's texts. Aside from his music, his work as an essayist has maintained its value up to this day. The collection of poems Des Knaben Wunderhorn is, in the epilogue, dedicated to Reichardt. This was probably in the expectation that he would set the text to music. However, such a setting from Reichardt was never composed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Friedrich_Reichardt


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

The slim volume of Reichardt's ardent letters written to friends in Frankfurt and Leipzig during the years 1774-1776 is worth perusing. He shares his feelings about many of his great and lesser known musical contemporaries. Here are his comments on the English music historian Charles Burney:

'Anyone who reads Mr. Burney's book in the original will find that it is beautifully, elegantly, and passionately written. One can tell from the book how easily writing comes to him, and I know that it was quite easy for him to translate the reports, often crudely written by others, into his native tongue. One item in this regard (which really concerns his way of thinking more than his writing style) leads me to a point which I could not possibly omit. Patriotism rankles me, whenever I find it, and it makes me throw down the book. Here is someone's unconsidered opinion which Mr. Burney asserts at the beginning of the third volume in the article on Prague; he repeats it at the end of the book where he says: "If there is such a thing as innate genius, then Germany is certainly not the seat of it, even if one must admit that patient hard work and application are there at home." How in the world is it possible to speak so strongly against one's own feelings and be guilty thereby of a terrible contradiction! "I will not refute you, sir, but direct you to your own book. Pick it up. And when you come upon the name of Hasse, or Bach, or Gluck, do you not tremble like the weak atheist who, when leafing through holy writ, pales at the name of Him against Whom he sins? Did you not yourself admire the genius of our Keiser and Handel, of our Bachs and Grauns, or our Hasse and Gluck, of our Bendas and Quantz? Indeed, sir, were you not rather prodigal in your dispensation of genius, as you travelled through Germany, since you accorded me that distinction from having seen a few pieces of mine which I now despise with all my heart? No, no, sir. Should you ever fall into our hands again, we would hold onto you for at least a few years, so that we could show you how we use patient hard work and application to mould young geniuses and at the same time make reasonable men of them who don't contradict themselves at every turn.'


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