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chapter three Josephine Lang The Music of Romanticism in South German Cultural Life The Lang Musical Legacy The birth of Josephine Caroline Lang in Munich on March 14, 1815, crowned a remarkable musical dynasty with perhaps its most illustrious member. Aside from the situations of Lang’s contemporaries Fanny (Caecilie) Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Hensel (1805–1847) and Clara Schumann (1819–1896)—remarkable figures now well documented for their accomplishments—it is difficult to conceive of a more advantageous confluence of extraordinary native musical gifts, favorable family circumstances, and high urban cultural surroundings in the making of a German artist in the nineteenth century. That is, Lang’s life and works are defined here in terms of the particular society, time, and place that surrounded her from birth to her final years. Throughout her life, Lang enjoyed some measure of relative domestic stability, laced though it was with struggle and tragedy; and she experienced many of the advantages of her rich cultural heritage, advantages that paved her way to a professional position higher than that won by most talented German women of her day. Family Like the other women musicians examined in this book, Lang’s parents and other male and female family members were professional, or at least serious, musicians— either composers or performers or both.1 Lang inherited her musical gifts from both her paternal and maternal forebears. Her father, Theobald Lang (1783–1839), principal waldhornist of the Munich court orchestra and eventually its Kapellmeister (court director of music), had been a member himself of a musically accomplished Lang family in Mannheim, the Bavarian Palatinate court. (Munich was the chief Bavarian court residence.) Theobald Lang’s own father had likewise been a waldhorn virtuoso in the famed Mannheim court orchestra, along with several other Langs, leading wind players of their day. In 1778 Prince-Elector Carl Theodor (who reigned at Mannheim from 1742 to 1778) transferred his Mannheim court to Munich. At that time Mannheim was one of Europe’s most brilliant musical centers, chiefly because of its celebrated orchestra. (Mozart’s music was unquestionably influenced by the Mannheim style, which particularly impressed him during a visit to the Mannheim court in 1777–1778.) Consequently, the merger of the two court orchestral forces of Mannheim and Munich substantially enriched the already excellent court music establishment of Bavaria’s capital. Josephine Lang’s maternal grandmother, Sabina Renk-Hitzelberger, enjoyed a highly successful professional career as a coloratura soprano. She was born on November 12, 1755, in Randersacker, near Würzburg, a Bavarian court residence northwest of Munich, where she died sometime after 1807. All four of Josephine Lang’s grandparents, in fact, were professional musicians. As a tenyear -old soloist, Renk-Hitzelberger debuted publicly in local church choirs. Her extraordinary three-octave vocal range, remarkable span of vocal timbres, and persuasive interpretive powers soon captivated Würzburg’s prince-bishop. As head of all city affairs, he awarded Sabina Renk the financial support needed to pursue vocal and other musical studies with the court’s leading vocal pedagogue, Domenico Steffani.2 A princely nod also gained Sabina Renk easy entry into the professional corps of Würzburg court musicians, her voice winning immediate public acclaim there, and her fame soon spreading beyond Germany to France. In addition, she won a handsome financial award from Elector Maximilian of Cologne. At twentyone Sabina Renk appeared in Paris at the Concerts Spirituals, one of the earliest organizations of its kind in Europe to sponsor musical performances open to the general public.3 In 1776, on command of the French king and queen, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Sabina Renk sang at Versailles, where even the ultradiscriminating French music critics succumbed to her astounding vocal feats, awarding her lavish praise. After her marriage in 1777 to the brilliant Würzburg court flutist Franz Ludwig Joseph Hitzelberger, Sabina Renk-Hitzelberg declined offers of prestigious appointments, including several from Paris and the electoral court at Mainz.4 She chose instead to return to her native Würzburg, where her spellbinding performances drew generous public acclaim and a host of young students. But, after the birth of four daughters, Hitzelberger confined her teaching exclusively to her children: Regina and her three sisters, who would eventually be, respectively, Josephine Lang’s mother and maternal aunts. It comes as no surprise that all Sabina Hitzelberger’s daughters were gifted singers . Two died prematurely in the same year, 1795: the eighteen-year-old Catharina Elisabeth, reportedly a fine contralto and pianist...

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