The composer, conductor and organist Johann Friedrich Naue determined musical life in Halle (Saale) in the period after the wars of liberation in 1813/15. As organist at the Marienkirche, director of the city choir and university music director, he organized numerous concerts with well-known musicians of his time and three major music festivals in the city of Saale. Together with the philosophy professor Johann Gebhard Ehrenreich Maaß, he founded the Singakademie Halle in 1814, today’s Robert-Franz-Singakademie. For his research on ancient German music and in the field of Protestant church music, he received a doctorate from the University of Jena.
Now the Nauestrasse receives additional signs informing about the namesake. At the Thursday, September 30, 2021, at 6 p.m. on the corner of Nauestrasse and Lutherstrasse the signs are attached. The signs were donated by the Robert-Franz-Singakademie Halle, whose singers accompany the affixing of the explanatory signs in honor of their founder with music.
Johann Friedrich Naue (1787-1858)
On November 17, 1787, Johann Friedrich Naue was born in Halle as the only son of the wealthy master needle maker Christoph Andreas Naue and his wife Marie Magdalene. As a Latina student in the Francke Foundations, he was also the singer of the city choir. Later he attended lectures on aesthetics at the University of Halle with Prof. Johann Gebhard Ehrenreich Maaß (1766-1823).
He received his musical training in Berlin from Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Carl Friedrich Zelter, who brought him closer to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Handel and where he got to know the Sing-Akademie, which had existed there since 1791. Naue continued his studies in Halle with Johann Friedrich Reichardt and Daniel Gottlob Türk, as well as in Prague and Vienna, where Beethoven taught him. Friedrich Naue developed into a virtuoso on the organ and the piano. He studied entire libraries of ancient German church music and acquired a broad knowledge of a wide variety of classical works, compositional styles and questions of music theory. At the same time, he built up his own large collection of music, which he offered singers and pianists to borrow and later raffled off to students. In 1924 he sold the medieval manuscripts from his library to the musical archive of the Royal Library in Berlin, where they formed one of the foundations of today’s musical collection in the Berlin State Library.
After Turk’s death, Friedrich Naue was appointed organist at Halle’s Marktkirche in 1814, and he became the director of Halle’s city choir. From 1815 Naue was a member of the Hallesche Masonic lodge to the three swords. In the spring of 1814, Friedrich Naue founded the Halle Singakademie together with his teacher and later step-in-law, Prof. Maaß, which initially rehearsed in the professor’s apartment. The aim was to sing together, to maintain church songs and “classical” music as well as to celebrate the liberation from the French occupation.
To celebrate the birthday of King Friedrich Wilhelm III. of Prussia on August 3, 1814 in the cathedral church, the Singakademie appeared publicly for the first time with a cantata written and composed by the two founders and religious arias and choirs by Handel, including Handel’s “Hallelujah”. The proceeds from the concert were earmarked for the war soldiers and their families. As a result, the Singakademie performed regularly to celebrate the king’s birthday. In October 1814 Friedrich Naue applied for the post of university music director. The relevant ministry was already prepared to appoint him as university music director in 1814, but it was only three years later – in March 1817 – that he was officially appointed to this position, also on the recommendation of his Berlin teacher Zelter. Initially, however, he had to work for free, as no budget was set for it. In December 1817 he was awarded a wage of 200 thalers.
His duties included:
1) to hold public chorale rehearsals, which also brought income to the city
2) practice responsories with the students, which they presented at the university service
3) lectures on sound science
4) Performing concerts, own compositions of altar chants and responsories
5) Publication of musicological writings
As university music director, Naue organized other festivities such as the Reformation Festival in 1817 or the inauguration of the royal university building on October 31, 1834, which were musically accompanied by the Singing Academy. Every year at Easter he arranged the performance of the passion cantata “The Death of Jesus” by Carl Heinrich Graun (1707-1759). The highlight of Naue’s work as an organizer were the three three-day music festivals of the Thuringian-Saxon Music Association in Halle in 1829 and 1835, and in Erfurt in 1831. The first of these music festivals was under the artistic direction of the Berlin music director Gaspare Spontini (1774-1851). 371 members of the Singakademie, including 9 soloists, 195 musicians in the orchestra, reinforced by foreign artists, offered a top-class program, including Handel’s oratorio “Samson” and Beethoven’s 5th symphony.
Over the winter, Naue organized subscription concerts in the hall of the Ratskeller or in the hall of the Gasthof zum Kronprinzen. He engaged well-known artists of his time in Halle, foreign singers, virtuosos on the piano, clarinet, bassoon, guitar, French horn, violoncello and more. The singers from the Singakademie and instrumental musicians from the city performed at these concerts. Works by Mozart, Haydn, Spohr, Carl Maria von Weber, Rossini, as well as older works such as Palästrina, could be heard. Naue donated part of the income from his concerts for charitable purposes, including in 1825 for the benefit of the residents of the North Sea who were hit by floods, in 1827 for the erection of the Francke memorial, in 1831 for orphans who had lost their parents to cholera and in 1839 in favor of those who suffered weather damage in Weißenfels impoverished families. Johann Friedrich Naue also gave piano lessons and organized the quarterly singing sessions for the choir singers of the city choir, during which the choir members went through the streets and sang under the windows and received money, New Year and Easter gifts from the residents, which were recorded in a choir cash book.
Naue had another sideline in the office of the Royal Free Table Inspector of the Francke Foundations. His task was to distribute the available table places for the students, to sift through the applications, to publish the table lists, to issue the brands, to supervise the observance of the table laws and to issue the corresponding landlord’s bills. In doing so, he was accountable to the respective chancellor. With his compositions and the publication of church chants, Naue tried to reform Protestant church music. In 1818 his attempt at a musical agenda or altar chants appeared for use in Protestant churches.
For research into the historical basis of the Protestant liturgy, he received a doctorate from the University of Jena in 1835. With the organization of the numerous music festivals and concerts, Johann Friedrich Naue had taken over financially. In September 1855 he gave up his work as director of the city singing choir because of his old age and deteriorating eyesight. The following year he ended the office of free table inspector. He died impoverished on May 19, 1858 in his hometown.
Sources:
- Konstanze Musketa: Music history of the city of Halle: Guide through the exhibition of the Handel House. Halle 1998, p. 53 f.
- Katrin Möller: Singing art and civic engagement – 200 years Singakademie Halle. Culture butterfly September 2014
- Stadtarchiv Halle Familienarchiv FA 1421 Naue
- University Archives Halle-Wittenberg (UAHW, Rep 6, No. 822 – Sale or raffle of sheet music from the University Music Director Naue – 1821; UAHW, Rep 3, No. 525 Report on the Royal Fridays … submitted in October 1828; UAHW, Rep. 3, number 320 – appointment of the university music directors – 1763-1835)
- Hallisches Patriotisches Wochenblatt, digitized version of the ULB Halle-Wittenberg
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