Joseph Joachim (June 28, 1831 – August 15, 1907) (pronounced YO-a-chim) was a violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. He is regarded as one of the most influential violinists of all time.

Life

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Joseph Joachim was born in Kittsee (Kopčany / Köpcsény), near Bratislava and Eisenstadt, in today's Burgenland area of Austria. At the time, Kittsee was part of the Esterhazy holdings in Hungary, and Joachim is considered to be Hungarian. In 1833 his family moved to Pest, where he studied violin with Stanislaus Serwaczynski, the concertmaster of the opera in Pest. (Serwaczynski later moved to Lublin, Poland, where he taught Wieniawski). In 1839, Joachim continued his studies in Vienna (briefly with Miska Hauser and Georg Hellmesberger, Sr.; finally — and most significantly— with Joseph Böhm). He was taken by his cousin, Fanny Wittgenstein to live and study in Leipzig, where he became a protégé of Felix Mendelssohn. Twelve-year-old Joachim's 1844 performance of the Beethoven violin concerto in London was a triumph, and helped to establish that work in the violinist's repertory. Joachim was to remain a great favorite in England for the remainder of his life, and he came to look upon that country as his second home.

Following Mendelssohn's death, Joachim stayed briefly in Leipzig, teaching at the Conservatorium and playing on the first desk of the Gewandhaus Orchestra with Ferdinand David. In 1848, Franz Liszt took up residence in Weimar, determined to re-establish the town's reputation as the Athens of Germany. There, he gathered a circle of young avante-garde disciples, vocally opposed to the conservatism of the Leipzig circle. Joachim was amongst the first of these. He served Liszt as concertmaster, and for several years enthusiastically embraced the new "psychological music," as he called it. In 1852 he moved to Hanover, at the same time dissociating himself from the musical ideals of the New German School (Liszt, Wagner, Berlioz, and their followers, as defined by journalist Franz Brendel) and instead making common cause with Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. His break with Liszt became final in August of 1857, when Joachim wrote to his former mentor: "I am completely out of sympathy with your music; it contradicts everything which from early youth I have taken as mental nourishment from the spirit of our great masters." Joachim's time in Hanover was his most prolific period of compositon. During this time, he frequently performed with Clara Schumann and with Brahms, both in private and in public. In 1860 Brahms and Joachim jointly wrote a manifesto against the "progressive" music of the New German School, in reaction against the polemics of Brendel's Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. The manifesto is generally considered to have been a faux pas, and it was widely greeted with ridicule and hostility.

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Wait, no! Since MOMO's dad is named Joachim, that means SHE'S Mary and Jr. is Joseph! It should have been obvious from the start.
haydenmorrison (Hayden Morrison) Sat, 05 Dec 2009 18:54:59 -0000
Wait, no! Since MOMO's dad is named Joachim, that means SHE'S Mary and Jr. is Joseph! It should have been obvious from the start.

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