Remembering Friends

An Album Entry by Ignaz Moscheles

Oliver Huck

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Family books and albums are manuscripts used by their owners to collect personal entries from friends, acquaintances, and celebrities as souvenirs. As a rule, each entry comprises one page and is provided with a date, dedication, and signature. Immediately after the emergence of family books in the 16th century, music was also entered in addition to texts and pictures. Until the 18th century, this music was mainly in the form of canons and songs that could be recorded on one page due to the small amount of space required, and to a lesser extent instrumental music, especially for the piano. In the 19th century, there was a differentiation of the albums, as the family books were now often called, and the type of music album emerged in which primarily or exclusively music was collected. Some of the entries were pure dedications in which composers added a short quotation of music, usually from one of their own works, with a dedication, date and signature, thus serving as a souvenir and evoking the presence of the writer by writing it down in his own hand.

In many cases, however, complete compositions were also inscribed, some of which had only been written on this occasion, and which could be played by the recipients themselves, especially on the piano or with singing accompanying them. The most famous one is Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Für Elise”, a composition that was created as one such “album sheet” (presumably for Therese Malfatti). It thus bears today a title that, regardless of its actual purpose, was also used from the 1840s onwards for a collector’s album of piano pieces and collections of piano pieces (such as Robert Schumann’s “Album für die Jugend”).

Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) was considered one of the leading piano virtuosos and teachers of his time. After marrying in Hamburg in 1825, he lived in London for a long time, where he taught among other places at the Royal Academy of Music, before taking over the piano class at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1846 at the request of his former pupil, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. As a composer, he wrote primarily for the piano, both for his own performances and for pupils and friends. Moscheles kept a music album himself, as did his wife Charlotte and his two older daughters, Emily and Serena. In return, Moscheles wrote in many albums during his concert tours during his life; around 100 such entries can currently be traced (see Rost 2020, p. 259–67). He wrote an album page for Marie Julie Hogé and her sister Antolka Hiller in Dresden on 7 January 1845 (see Rost 2020, p. 245), when he played his Piano Concerto op. 60 and, with Ferdinand Hiller and Clara Schumann, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Triple Concerto for three pianos in one of the subscription concerts that Hiller had established the previous year.

Moscheles entered a short Andante melanconico in E minor for the piano for the composer Ferdinand Hiller’s wife in Hiller’s album (Köln, Historisches Archivder Stadt, Bestand 1051, A 1, Nr. 231). Hiller returned the favour the following day with an entry (for which he chose the beginning of Moscheles’ concerto that he had conducted the previous evening) in Moscheles’ album (London, British Library, Zweig 215, fol. 135v), which the latter carried with him, on this album see Henrike Rost 2020. Moscheles wrote a longer piano piece “con Sentimento” in A minor on a loose leaf for Marie Julie Hogé (1820–1880), who would later marry Alphonse de Bernard, Vincomte de Calonne.

While most music albums were laid out in landscape format, the sheet now in Hamburg has an almost square format after the portrait format typical of music paper was trimmed at the bottom edge. It is unclear whether it was ever part of an album – the visible folds would lead to a small format and in many cases individual sheets were glued, bound or inserted into albums – or whether it functioned as a loose album sheet from the outset. In any case, it can be assumed that the recipient played the not too difficult piece herself. Moscheles signed urbanely with “A Mademoiselle Julie Hogé par I. Moscheles Dresde ce 7 Janvier 1845”. It is not known how the sheet came into the collection of the Altona autograph collector Oscar Ulex. Parts of his collection were then acquired by the city of Altona (others being auctioned off in 1927), and initially kept in the Altona City Archives.