Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] 83

Freylinghausen, Johann Anastasius

(b Gandersheim, nr Brunswick, 2 Dec 1670; d Halle, 12 Feb 1739). German theologian and poet. He grew up in Gandersheim, where his father was mayor, and then from the age of 13 he attended the grammar school in the neighbouring town of Einbeck, where his maternal grandfather was a pastor. In 1689 he went to the University of Jena, where he soon came under the influence of the Pietists. In 1691, in Erfurt, he became acquainted with the leading Pietist A.H. Francke, following him in 1692 to the newly founded University of Halle. After some periods spent in Gandersheim, where because of his Pietist attitudes he did not obtain an incumbency, he became Francke’s unpaid assistant in Halle in 1695, living with Francke’s family. Only in 1715 did he receive a post there at the Ulrichskirche, enabling him to marry Francke’s daughter Johanna Sophie Anastasia, his godchild, born in 1697. In 1727, after his father-in-law’s death, he became director, together with Francke’s son Gotthilf August, of the Halle educational establishments.

Freylinghausen was editor of the most influential of the Pietist songbooks, Geistreiches Gesang-Buch: den Kern Alter und Neuer, wie auch die Noten der unbekannten Melodeyen … in sich haltend (Halle, 1704), and its second part, Neues geistreiches Gesang-Buch (Halle, 1714). Both parts appeared in numerous, constantly expanded editions, the first in 19 up to 1759, the second in four up to 1733. An edition comprising both parts, containing 1581 songs with 609 tunes, was prepared by G.A. Francke in 1741; this appeared in several further editions up to 1778. Behind these numerous publications it is possible to discern the importance that A.H. Francke attributed to singing both in Pietist congregations and in his education system. In addition to its wide circulation, Freylinghausen’s songbook was used in many subsequent publications, including the songbooks of the established church in the 18th century, notably the Schemelli Hymnbook (Leipzig, 1736), in which J.S. Bach played a part. The sources for the new treasury of songs in Freylinghausen’s work, which contains hitherto unknown tunes and gives them with notated figured bass, are only partially indicated; for example, 37 texts with their melodies originate in H.G. Neuss’s Hebopfer zum Bau der Hütten Gottes (Lüneburg, 1692, and Wernigerode, 1703), while the origins of others remain obscure. The Geistreiches Gesang-Buch makes comprehensive use of the aria manner of early evangelical Pietism, both in its strictly isometric style and, more characteristically, in its dactylic melodies in triple time set to suitable poems (for example the song Eins ist not! Ach, Herr, dies eine with a melody borrowed from Adam Krieger’s O Rosidore, edele Flore, 1657). Although the songs of Freylinghausen’s songbook owe much of their popularity to this style, it was just this which militated against the critical approval of the Wittenberg Theological Faculty in 1716, because the tunes were ‘not in the slightest compatible with the gravity of the elevated mysteries which ought to be contained therein’. This style did however endear the songs to the Brethren who took many of them over for their first hymnbook (1720).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (W. Blankenburg; ‘Francke, August Hermann’, W. Blankenburg)

NDB (Christiane Engelbrecht)

W. Lueken: ‘Lebensbilder der Liederdichter und Melodisten’, Handbuch zum evangelischen Kirchengesangbuch, ed. C. Mahrenholz and O. Söhngen, ii/1 (Göttingen, 1957), 220–01

W. Blankenburg: ‘Geschichte der Melodien’, Handbuch zum evangelischen Kirchengesangbuch, ed. C. Mahrenholz and O. Söhngen, ii/2 (Göttingen, 1957), 45–117

B. Baselt: ‘Zur Stellung der Musik im Schulsystem August Hermann Franckes’, A.H. Francke: das humanistische Erbe des grossen Erziehers (Halle, 1965), 80–95

K. Kronenberg: ‘Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen 1670–1739’, Niedersächsische Lebensbilder, viii (1973), 117–31

D.R. Hinks: Brethren Hymn Books and Hymnals, 1720–1884 (Gettysburg, PA, 1986)

D.M. McMullen: The ‘Geistreiches Gesangbuch’ of Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen (1690–1739): a German Pietist Hymnal (diss., U. of Michigan, 1987)

WALTER BLANKENBURG/DOROTHEA SCHRÖDER

Freystädtler [Freystädter, Freystadler], Franz Jakob

(b Salzburg, 13 Sept 1761; d Vienna, 1 Dec 1841). Austrian composer. He was the son of Johann Jacob Freystädtler (1723–87, composer, choirmaster and ‘Totensänger’ of St Sebastians-Kirche). After serving as a choirboy in the fürstliches Kapellhaus, Freystädtler studied the organ with Franz Ignaz Lipp, and in 1777 entered the Kapelle of St Peter, where he was organist until September 1782. He then went to Munich as a piano teacher; he ran up debts, as he had done in Salzburg, and was imprisoned. On 13 May 1786 he arrived in Vienna, where he studied counterpoint with Mozart. Until 1961 it was thought that his book of studies (A-Sm) was Mozart’s own material from his studies with his father Leopold. Mozart employed his pupil as a copyist, and Freystädtler copied the Piano Concerto in B k456 and replaced six pages of the autograph score of the String Quintet in G minor k516. During a lawsuit in 1786/7, in which Freystädtler was accused of having stolen a piano, Mozart came to his help by posting bond for him and presenting a written surety. In summer 1787 he was the eponymous hero of Mozart’s project for a burlesque Der Salzburgerlump in Wien (k509b), which includes the canon Lieber Freistädtler, lieber Gaulimauli (k509a). Freystädtler was still active as a piano teacher in 1834. He moved into a pensioners’ home in April 1837 and died there, destitute, in 1841. Nowak’s theory that Freystädtler was involved in completing the orchestration of the ‘Kyrie’ in Mozart’s Requiem is ruled out by recent studies of his manuscripts.

Freystädtler’s compositions include sonatas and sets of variations (and also a variation for Diabelli’s Vaterländischer Künstlerverein, 1824), programmatic piano fantasies, two piano concertos (a quattro), songs in the popular, simple style, and two cantatas. In 1793 he arranged Mozart’s last three string quartets for piano trio (with viola). An arrangement for piano quartet of the Piano and Wind Quintet k452 dating from 1786 and ascribed to him by Deutsch and Oldman in 1931, must be regarded as spurious.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Hackel: ‘Erinnerungen 1: Franz Freystädter’, Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung, ii ( 1842), 489–92

H.W. Hamann: Franz Jacob Freystädtler: ein Salzburger Mozartschüler (diss., U. of Innsbruck, 1963) [incl. list of works]

L. Nowak: ‘Wer hat die Instrumentalstimmen in der Kyrie-Fuge des Requiems von W.A. Mozart geschrieben? Ein vorläufiger Bericht’, MJb1973–4, 191–201

H. Federhofer and A. Mann, eds. : Introduction toBarbara Ployers und Franz Jakob Freystädtlers Theorie-und Kompositionsstudien bei Mozart, NMA, X: 30/ii ( 1989)

M. Lorenz: ‘Franz Jakob Freystädtler: neue Forschungsergebnisse zu seiner Biographie und seinen Spuren im Werk Mozarts’, Acta mozartiana, xliv (1997), 85–108

M. Lorenz: Franz Jakob Freystädtler: Studien zu seiner Biographie und seinen Spuren im Werk Mozarts (diss., U. of Vienna, 1999)

MICHAEL LORENZ