Robert Eitner

Robert Eitner (22 October 1832 – 22 January 1905) was a German musicologist and bibliographer.

Life Eitner was born and grew up in Breslau, the rapidly industrialising administrative capital of Silesia. He attended the St. Elisabeth Gymnasium (secondary school) in the city before moving on to study at the university where for five years he was taught by the organist-composer Moritz Brosig. Sources nevertheless stress that in many respects Eitner was self-taught.

In 1853 he moved to Berlin, becoming a music teacher. A succession of piano compositions and songs followed. In 1863 he opened his own music school, but by now he was increasingly diverting his attention away from teaching and towards music research and writing. In 1867 he produced a "Lexicon of Dutch Composers" which won a prize from the Amsterdam "Society for the promotion of Music", although in the end it was never published.

In 1868 Eitner headed up the establishment in Berlin of the "Society of Music Research" (Gesellschaft für Musikforschung), becoming secretary to the association and editor of its monthly magazine, Monatshefte für Musik-Geschichte, launched in 1869. Another series of publications from the association was the 29-volume set entitled Publikation älterer praktischer und theoretischer Musikwerke, although it appears that this was never published in its entirety. There was also a succession of bibliographical works, which reflected Eitner's own enthusiasm for compositions from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In addition, there was a ten-volume reference compendium entitled Biographisch-Bibliographisches Quellen-Lexikon der Musiker und Musikgelehrten der christlichen Zeitrechnung bis zur Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, published between 1900 and 1904 in Leipzig, which set out the locations of both printed and manuscript works by early composers and musicologists, and which in the end was sufficiently valued as a research tool to be available in more than 200 major libraries in Europe.

He also contributed 399 biographical articles to the , almost all of them on musicians.

In 1882 he moved to Templin, a country town between Berlin and the Baltic coast. It was here that he died in 1905.

Publications

Among his published works are the following:

Books As author . Berlin: T. Trautwein, 1871 . Berlin: T. Trautwein, 1874 (i.e., with Franz Xaver Haberl, Anders Lagerberg and Carl Ferdinand Pohl). Berlin: Leo Liepmannssohn, 1877 , 3 volumes. Berlin: T. Trautwein, 1881–1885 . Berlin: T. Trautwein, 1885 . Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1891 . Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1900–1904 . Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1904

As editor

, 29 volumes, 1873–1905: (Johann Ott, 1544), 1873 (Erfurt, 1524), 1874 (Caccini, Peri, Monteverdi), 1875 (Heinrich Finck), 1876 (Heinrich Glarean), 1876 , 1877 (Hermann Finck), 1878 (supplement, libretti), 1879 (Peter Schöffer, 1513), 1880 (Cavalli, Il Giasone), 1881 (Sebastian Ochsenkun), 1882 (score of Il Giasone), 1883 (Cesti, La Dori), 1884 (score of La Dori), 1885 (Lechner and Eccard), 1886 (Michael Praetorius), 1887 (Alessandro Scarlatti), 1888 (Steffani, Alarico), 1889 (Keiser, Prinz Jodelet), 1890 (Georg Rhau, 1538), 1891 (Arnt von Aich, about 1519), 1892 (Josquin des Prez), 1893 (Lully, Armide), 1894 (Gluck, Orfeo), 1895 (Hans Leo Hassler), 1896 Orazio Vecchi: L'Amfiparnaso, 1897 (Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo), 1898 (French and Dutch masters, sixteenth century), 1899 (Sweelinck), 1905

Periodicals

(1869–1905)