August Wilhelm Ambros
August Wilhelm Ambros (17 November 1816 – 28 June 1876)[1] was an Austrian composer and music historian of Czech descent.
Life
He was born in Mýto, Rokycany District, Bohemia.[1] His father was a cultured man, and his mother was the sister of Raphael Georg Kiesewetter[2] (1773–1850), the musical archaeologist and collector. Ambros studied at the University of Prague[1] and was well-educated in music and the arts, which were his abiding passion. He was, however, destined for the law and an official career in the Austrian civil service, and from 1839 he occupied various important posts under the ministry of justice, music being an avocation.[3]
From 1850 onwards, he became well known as a critic and essay-writer, and in 1860 he began working on his magnum opus, his History of Music, which was published at intervals from 1862[4] in five volumes, the last two (1878, 1882) being edited and completed by Otto Kade and Wilhelm Langhans.[3]
Ambros was a professor of the history of music at Prague from 1869 to 1871.[5] Also in Prague, he sat on the board of governors in the Prague Royal Conservatory. By 1872, he was living in Vienna and was employed by the Department of Justice as an officer and by Prince Rudolf's family as his tutor. Through his work in Vienna, he was given a leave of absence for half the year in order to let him travel the world to collect musical information to include in his History of Music book.[6] He was an excellent pianist, and the author of numerous compositions reminiscent of Felix Mendelssohn.[3]
Ambros died at Vienna in 1876, aged 59.[6]
Notes
- ^ a b c Blom, Eric (2005) Everyman's Dictionary of Music, Kessinger Publishing. p. 15. ISBN 1-4179-8918-1.
- ^ Todd. R. Larry. (1991) Mendelssohn and His World, Princeton University Press. p. 304. ISBN 0-691-02715-3.
- ^ a b c public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ambros, August Wilhelm". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 798. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ Lang, Paul Henry. (1997) Music in Western Civilization, W. W. Norton & Company. p. 987. ISBN 0-393-04074-7.
- ^ Meinong, Alexius & Adler, Guido (1995) Eine Freundschaft in Briefen Alexius, Rodopi. p. 8. ISBN 90-5183-867-0.
- ^ a b Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. .
- Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference
- Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
- Articles incorporating a citation from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia with Wikisource reference
- Articles with short description
- Short description matches Wikidata
- Use dmy dates from October 2023
- Articles with FAST identifiers
- Articles with ISNI identifiers
- Articles with VIAF identifiers
- Articles with WorldCat Entities identifiers
- Articles with BIBSYS identifiers
- Articles with BNE identifiers
- Articles with BNF identifiers
- Articles with BNFdata identifiers
- Articles with CANTICN identifiers
- Articles with GND identifiers
- Articles with J9U identifiers
- Articles with KBR identifiers
- Articles with LCCN identifiers
- Articles with NDL identifiers
- Articles with NKC identifiers
- Articles with NLA identifiers
- Articles with NLK identifiers
- Articles with NTA identifiers
- Articles with PLWABN identifiers
- Articles with PortugalA identifiers
- Articles with VcBA identifiers
- Articles with CINII identifiers
- Articles with MusicBrainz identifiers
- Articles with BMLO identifiers
- Articles with DTBIO identifiers
- Articles with Trove identifiers
- Articles with RISM identifiers
- Articles with SNAC-ID identifiers
- Articles with SUDOC identifiers
- 1816 births
- 1876 deaths
- People from Mýto
- Composers from the Austrian Empire
- Composers from Austria-Hungary
- Classical composers
- Charles University alumni
- German Bohemian people
- Romantic composers
- Josquin scholars
- 19th-century Austrian musicologists