Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann

Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann (14 May 1805 – 10 March 1900) was, together with his son-in-law Niels W. Gade, the leading Danish composer of the 19th century, a period known as the Danish Golden Age. According to Alfred Einstein, he was "the real founder of the Romantic movement in Denmark and even in all Scandinavia". J.P.E. Hartmann was the third generation of composers in the Danish musical Hartmann family. Biography Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann was born and died in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was the son of composer August Wilhelm Hartmann (1775–1850) and Christiane Petrea Frederica Wittendorff (1778–1848), and the grandson of composer Johann Hartmann (1726-1793), who had originally emigrated to Denmark from Silesia. J.P.E. Hartmann himself was largely self taught. Complying with his father's wishes (who wanted to protect him from the uncertainties of a musician's life), he studied the law and worked as a civil servant from 1829 to 1870, whilst pursuing an extensive musical career. By 1824, he became organist at the Garnisons Kirke in Copenhagen, and in 1832, made a first major impression on audiences with the opera Ravnen. The opera received a long and positive review from Robert Schumann. The libretto was by Hartmann’s lifelong friend Hans Christian Andersen with whom he later cooperated on numerous other works, cantatas, songs, incidental music or operas (among others his popular opera Liden Kirsten, a Danish pendant to the Bartered Bride, which was performed by Liszt in Weimar, and which remains today the most often played Danish opera). Hartmann also cooperated with other important Danish writers of his time, such as Henrik Hertz on his opera Korsarerne or with Adam Øhlenschlæger, writing incidental music and overtures to several of his plays, as well as music in the form of both songs and also melodramas for some of his poems (e.g. Guldhornene), and cooperating in writing numerous cantatas. In 1836, Hartmann made a study tour to Germany and France, where he made the acquaintance of Frédéric Chopin, Gioachino Rossini, Luigi Cherubini, Gaspare Spontini and Louis Spohr. In his early musical life, Spohr and the Danish composer Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse were Hartmann's most important mentors, as well as Heinrich Marschner. Further journeys to Germany followed in the next few years, during which he met Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms and other renowned composers of the time.