Hermann Kretzschmar
born Olbernhau, Jan 19, 1848; died Berlin, May 10, 1924
Documents associated with this person:
German writer on music, Director of the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, 1909 to 1920.
Kretzschmar was notable for his advocacy of music hermeneutics, the theory of which he developed in two articles entitled "(Neue) Anregungen zur Förderung musikalischer Hermeneutik," ((New) Stimuli to the Promotion of Hermeneutics of Music), Musikbibliothek Peters für 1902, 9 (1903), 45-66, and 1905, 12 (1906), 73-86), and which he practised in his multi-volume concert guide, Führer durch den Konzertsaal (Leipzig: Liebeskind, 1888-90, later editions by Breitkopf & Härtel), which went through many editions.
Kretzschmar and Schenker
Kretzschmar was a frequent butt of Schenker's criticism, most notably in the monograph Beethovens Neunte Sinfonie (1912), in the secondary literature sections of which he constantly attacked Kretzschmar's remarks about the Ninth Symphony in the latter's Führer, vol. I; and also in Die letzten fünf Sonaten von Beethoven ... op. 109 (1913), where, in Walter Dahms's words, he "uses polemics to annihilate Kretzschmar's verbal extravagances." The contemptuous phrase "Kretzschmar e tutti quanti" (Kretzschmar and all that lot) appears frequently in Schenker's letters. Schenker's plans during the 1910s for a Kleine Bibliothek were to some extent modeled on Kretzschmar's Führer and intended vastly to surpass them in quality.