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seven Prince Louis Ferdinand and Louis Spohr prince louis ferdinand: a musical amateur Frederick the Great’s nephew, Friedrich Christian Ludwig (1772–1806), Prince of Prussia—known as Louis Ferdinand—shared his uncle’s enthusiasm for music. Gifted with enormous talents, Louis was active both as a performer and as a composer. He always remained an amateur musician, but he certainly had the capability to have become a professional. Though he composed a great deal of ‹ne chamber music, his works remain largely unknown. The reasons for this neglect are easily discovered: his name is associated ‹rst and foremost with the powerful Prussian aristocracy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; consequently, he himself, in a sense, overshadowed his works as a creative artist. Furthermore Louis, like Schubert, had the bad fortune of dying before he reached the age of forty. He was killed in combat with Napoleon’s army at the Battle of Saalfeld on 10 October 1806. Louis had been surrounded with ‹ne music since his early childhood. He was acquainted with the works of Mozart, Dittersdorf, Beethoven, and other Viennese Classicists, Cramer, Gluck, composers of the Berlin song school, and also music of J. S. Bach, which was preserved in the library of Princess Amalia. Louis Ferdinand knew many of the leading composers of his own age ‹rsthand. He met Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760–1812) in 1803 at Magdeburg. Subsequently, Dussek often advised him concerning both piano technique and composition. He ‹rst met Beethoven in Berlin in 1796, then they met again in Vienna in 1804. Beethoven dedicated his Third Pi102 ano Concerto in C minor, Op. 37, to the prince, whose virtuosity at the keyboard was widely respected. As a composer, too, Louis Ferdinand was recognized as a formidable talent. Robert Schumann once called him “the Romanticist of the Classical period.”1 Other musicians who expressed admiration for Louis Ferdinand’s abilities include Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Louis Spohr, Carl Maria von Weber, and Franz Liszt. Liszt did this by using themes of the prince’s music in an Elegy that he composed in 1842 and dedicated to Princess Augusta of Prussia. The principal chamber works of Louis Ferdinand include the Quintet in C minor for Piano and Strings, Op. 1, which was issued in Paris by Erard in 1803; the Piano Trio in A-›at major, Op. 2; a second Piano Trio in E-›at major, Op. 3; and a Quartet for Piano and Strings in E-›at major, Op. 5, all published in Leipzig by Breitkopf und Härtel in 1806; a second Piano Quartet in F minor, Op. 6, printed in the following year by Breitkopf und Härtel; and a “Grand Trio” in E-›at major, Op. 10, which was published in Berlin by Werckmeister in 1806.2 In that same year, Breitkopf und Härtel began publishing his works in cooperation with Dussek. The prince did not live to see his music in print, nor did he have the opportunity to make corrections of the proofs. The Quintet in C minor for Piano and Strings, Op. 1, is remarkable; it is the earliest example of the piano quintet (piano with string quartet), a chamber ensemble that subsequently became one of the standard chamber ensembles.3 The Quintet is an impressive work in four movements dedicated to Friedrich Heinrich Himmel (1765–1814), himself a proli‹c composer and virtuoso pianist. The ‹rst movement, in sonata form, treats the ensemble in the manner of a concerto with the piano contrasting with the string quartet. Virtuosic aspects of the piano part include extended arpeggios, rapid scalar passages, and scales in parallel thirds. The ‹rst appearance of these scales in thirds presents little problem to a competent pianist since the right hand can take the upper note and the left hand the lower note; however, the corresponding passage in the recapitulation actually has scales in parallel thirds in both the right- and left-hand parts. The structure of the movement is absolutely clear. Each of the three themes—the opening theme, the subordinate theme, and the closing theme—is highly pro‹led and distinctive. The powerful, upward leaping minor sixth is the conspicuous feature of the opening theme. The secondary theme, an expressive melody in E-›at major, is stated initially by the piano with doublings here and there in the string parts to enrich the sonority and add splashes of color. After its statement, the string Prince Louis Ferdinand and Louis Spohr • 103 [3...

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