Sophia Maria Westenholz (1759-1838)
- Thème | avec | X VARIATIONS | pour le Piano=Forte | composées |
par | SOPHIE WESTENHOLZ. | Oeuvre II. | Chez Rodolphe Werckmeister | à
Berlin ... (1806)
Performers: No available
Further info: Variations A major
---
German singer, pianist and composer. Born into a musical family, she was
the daughter of Ferdinand Fritscher (?-1764), the organist of
Neubrandenburg. At a young age, she received private piano and voice
lessons from Johann Wilhelm Hertel. In 1775, she secured a position in
the Schwerin court orchestra. Her professional and personal life
intertwined in 1777 when she married Carl August Friedrich Westenholz
(1736-1789), the Kapellmeister of the Mecklenburg-Schwerin court in
Ludwigslust. By 1779, she became an official member of that court,
serving as both a singer and pianist. Her dedication to her musical
career continued alongside her personal life, which included raising
eight children. Following the premature death of her husband in 1789,
she assumed a more central role in the court's musical life. She
remained an active participant in court and church music for over three
decades, until her retirement in 1821. During this period, she also held
the esteemed position of piano instructor to the daughters of Duke
Franz Friedrich I and Duchess Luise, further solidifying her influence
within the Mecklenburg-Schwerin court. By the 1780s, she had established
a regional reputation as a formidable pianist. Her virtuosic skill was
praised by contemporaries, including the composer Ernst Wilhelm Wolf,
who in 1782, enthusiastically described her as a "powerful female piano
player" whose style was reminiscent of "the great Bach in Hamburg." This
admiration was echoed by Carl Friedrich Cramer, who, in a review of six
sonatinas dedicated to her by Wolf, celebrated her as "a true student
of the only true, the Bachian style." Westenholz’s concert career
flourished, and between 1792 and 1804, she performed as both a pianist
and a glass harmonica player in major European cities such as Leipzig,
Copenhagen, Hamburg, Hanover, and Berlin. From 1803 to 1837, Louis
Massonneau, a violinist and later concertmaster in Ludwigslust, recorded
the court concerts of the court orchestra in the so-called
Ludwigsluster Diarium. This shows that Sophie Westenholz performed not
only piano works by Mozart, Haydn, Pleyel, and other contemporary
composers but also her own works. After her husband died in 1789 and his
successor, Antonio Rosetti, died in 1792, she conducted the court music
from the piano. The last performance by the musician in Ludwigslust is
dated on 3 March 1813; she and her son, the pianist and composer Carl
Ludwig Cornelius Westenholz (1788-1854), played a Mozart sonata for four
hands. As a composer, in 1806 she published several works for piano and
a collection of songs. The published Rondo (Op.1), Variations (Op.2),
and Sonata for Four Hands (Op.3) were met with controversial reviews.
