August Wilhelm Julius Rietz (28 December 1812, Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 – 12 September 1877, Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, conductor

Conducting

Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

 and cellist

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

. He was a teacher among whose students were Woldemar Bargiel

Woldemar Bargiel

Woldemar Bargiel was a German composer of classical music.-Life:Bargiel was born in Berlin, and was the half brother of Clara Schumann. Bargiel’s father Adolph was a well-known piano and voice teacher while his mother Mariane had been unhappily married to Clara’s father, Friedrich Wieck. Clara was...

, Salomon Jadassohn

Salomon Jadassohn

Salomon Jadassohn was a German composer and a renowned teacher of piano and composition at the Leipzig Conservatory.-Life:...

 and Arthur Sullivan

Arthur Sullivan

Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...

. He also edited

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

 many works by Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

 for publication.

Biography

He studied the cello under Schmidt, Bernhard Romberg

Bernhard Romberg

Bernhard Heinrich Romberg , was a German cellist and composer.-Life:Romberg was born at Dinklage. His father, Anton Romberg, played the bassoon and cello and gave Bernhard his first cello lessons. He first performed in public at the age of seven...

, and Gans. At 16, he joined the orchestra of the Königstädter Theater, for which he wrote the music to Holtei

Karl Eduard von Holtei

Karl Eduard von Holtei was a German poet and actor.-Life and career:Karl Eduard von Holtei was born at Breslau, the son of an officer of Hussars...

's play Lorbeerbaum und Bettelstab. In 1834, he was appointed assistant conductor at the Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

 Opera under Mendelssohn, whom he succeeded the following year. In 1847, he was called to Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

 as theatre kapellmeister

Kapellmeister

Kapellmeister is a German word designating a person in charge of music-making. The word is a compound, consisting of the roots Kapelle and Meister . The words Kapelle and Meister derive from the Latin: capella and magister...

 and conductor of the Singakademie. In 1848, he succeeded Mendelssohn as conductor of the Gewandhaus

Gewandhaus

Gewandhaus is a concert hall in Leipzig, Germany. Today's hall is the third to bear this name; like the second, it is noted for its fine acoustics. The first Gewandhaus was built in 1781 by architect Johann Carl Friedrich Dauthe. The second opened on 11 December 1884, and was destroyed in the...

 concerts and as teacher of composition at the Conservatory. He was called to Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 in 1860 to succeed Reissiger

Carl Gottlieb Reissiger

Carl Gottlieb Reißiger was a German Kapellmeister and composer.-Biography:...

 as court kapellmeister. Here he conducted the opera and afterwards undertook the direction of the royal conservatory. He died at Dresden.

Compositions

As a composer, he belongs to the younger classic school and was strongly opposed to the Neo-German movement. Among his works are the operas, three symphonies, several overtures to plays, flute sonatas, violin sonatas, motets, masses, psalms, and a quantity of other church music.

Operas

• Jery und Bätely (1839)
• Das Mädchen aus der Fremde (1839)
• Der Korsar (1850)
• Georg Neumann und die Gambe (1859)

Legacy

The Louisville Orchestra

Louisville Orchestra

The Louisville Orchestra is the primary orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky and has been called the cornerstone of the Louisville arts scene. It was founded in 1937 by Robert Whitney and Charles Farnsley, Mayor of Louisville...

 First Edition series contained, besides many works mostly by modern composers (usually American), Rietz' Concert Overture, opus 7 (coupled with the second symphony of Max Bruch

Max Bruch

Max Christian Friedrich Bruch , also known as Max Karl August Bruch, was a German Romantic composer and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including three violin concertos, the first of which has become a staple of the violin repertoire.-Life:Bruch was born in Cologne, Rhine Province, where he...

), and recorded around 1970. This may have been the same concert overture commissioned by the Lower Rhenish Music Festival to commemorate an anniversary
.

External links