Friedlaender, Max

Friedlaender, Max, eminent German musicologist; b. Brieg, Silesia, Oct. 12, 1852; d. Berlin, May 2, 1934. He was first a bass, and studied voice with Manuel Garcia in London and Julius Stockhausen in Frankfurt am Main. He appeared at the London Monday Popular Concerts in 1880. He returned to Germany in 1881 and took a course at Berlin Univ. with Spitta, obtaining the degree of Ph.D. at Rostock with the diss. Beitrage zur Biographic Franz Schuberts (1887; publ. in Berlin, 1887). He then was Privatdozent at Berlin Univ. in 1894, and a prof, and director of music there from 1903. He was exchange prof, at Harvard Univ. in 1911. He lectured at many American univs. and received the degree of LL.D. from the Univ. of Wise.; retired in 1932. He discovered the MSS of more than 100 lost songs by Schubert and publ. them in his complete ed. (7 vols.) of Schubert’s songs. Together with Johann Bolte and Johann Meier, he searched for years in every corner of the German Empire in quest of folk songs still to be found among the people. Some of these he publ. in a vol. under the title 100 deutsche Volkslieder in Goethe Jahrbuch (1885). He was ed. of Volksliederbuch fur gemischten Chor (1912) and edited songs of Mozart, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, Beethoven’s “Scotch Songs” the first version of Brahms’s Deutsche Volkslieder (1926), Volksliederbuch fur die deutsche Jugend (1928), etc. He publ. Das Deutsche Lied im 18. Jahrhundert (2 vols., 1902), Brahms Lieder (1922; Eng. tr., London, 1928), and Franz Schubert, Skizze seines Lebens und Wirkens (1928).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire