Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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SCHWARBEOOK SCHWENKE 385
events after his return was the performance of
Schubert's Octet, which is marked as finished
on March 1, and was doubtless played very
shortly after. [Seea«fe, p. 301.] The acquaintance
thus begun was cemented by Schubert's
dedication of his lovely Quartet in A 'to his
friend I. Schuppanzigh,' a j'ear later. Schuppanzigh
was a member of the court-chapel, and
for some time director of the court-opera. He
died of paralysis, March 2, 1830. Of his compositions
the following were printed :—
' Solo
pour le violon aveo quatuor ' (Diabclli), Variationen
'
iiber ein russisohes Lied ' (Cappi), and
'
' Variationen iiber ein Thema aus Alcina
(MoUo). F. G.
SCHWARBEOOK, Thomas, a German, was
in the employ of Eenatus Harris, the organbuilder.
Early in the 18th century he left
London to live at Warwick, and built many
noble instruments. His masterpiece was the
organ of St. Michael's, Coventry, built in
1733, which cost £1400. The latest mention
of him is in 1752, when he improved the
organ of Worcester Cathedral. See vol. iii. p.
537a. V. DE p.
SCHWARTZENDORF, J. P. A. See Martini
IL Tedesco, vol. iii. p. 68.
SCHWEIZERFAMILIE, die. Opera in
three acts, words by Castelli, music by Joseph
Weigh Produced at A'ienna, March 14, 1809.
SCHWEMMER, Heineich, was born March
28, 1621, at Gumbertshausen near Hallburg in
Lower Franconia, a place which the Thirty
Years' War is said to have wiped out of existence.
In his younger years war and the pestilence
obliged his family to seek i-efuge first at Weimar,
then at Coburg. According to Gerber he first
visited Nuremberg in 1641 as a pupil of the St.
Sebald School, and received his musical instruction
from the organist Johann Erasmus Kindermann.
But the first documentary evidence we
have of his presence at Nuremberg is in connection
with a great musical festival and banquet
held there in 1649, in honour of the Swedish
Field-Marshal, after the Peace of Westphalia.
Schwemmer appears among the singers on that
occasion, though not yet holding any appointment.
1650 is the date of his first appointment
at Nuremberg as one of the Assistant Masters
at the St. Laurence School. In 1656 he is
described as Director Chori niusici at the Frauenkirche
; but with this post, which he seems to
have retained till his death. May 26, 1696, he
was obliged, in accordance with the custom of
the time, to combine certain duties of ordinary
school instruction at the St. Sebald School.
Like greater musicians after him Schwemmer
appears to have found his ordinary school duties
somewhat irksome, and .for an occasional negligence
in them came under the censure of the
town authorities. In spite of this he was
recognised as the best musical teacher in Nuremberg,
and the most distinguished of later
VOL. IV
Nuremberg musicians, such as Pachelbel, Johann
Krieger, and Baltazar Schmidt, were his pupils.
He was also the musician most sought after for
such occasional compositions as wedding and
funeral anthems. The Quellen-Lexilconenvcmevates
twenty of such works for voices and instruments.
He was also the composer of a large
number of naelodies for the various Nuremberg
hynm- books of the time. In the Denkmaler
der Tonkunst in Bayern, Jahrgang VI. there is
printed for the first time an Easter Motet by
him for voices and instruments, which is characterised
by much of the Handelian simplicity
and directness of choral effect. Only a few other
Church works by him remain in MS. j. it. M.
SCHWENKE, or SCHWENCKE, », German
musical family, whose founder, Johann Gottlieb
(born August 11, 1744, at Breitenau in
Saxony, died at Hamburg, Dec. 7, 1823), was a
famous bassoonist and a Bathsmusikus. ' ' His
son. Christian Fmedmoh Gottlieb, was born
at Wachenhausen in the Harz, August 30, 1767,
was a proficient clavier-player, and appeared in
public at Hamburg in a concerto of his father's
in 1779, when eleven and a half years old.
Emanuel Bach interested himself in the boy's
career, and was instrumental in getting him
sent to Berlin (1782), where he studied under
Kirnberger. He tried for an organist's post at
Hamburg in 1 783, but wasunsuooessful, although
Emanuel Bach was a judge. In 1787 and 1788
he studied at the university of Leipzig and
Halle, and after the dispute which followed on
Emanuel Bach's death in 1789, Schwenke was
appointed to succeed him as town-cantor, but
the new conditions attached to the post were
so irksome that he devoted himself mainly to
mathematical problems. As a composer his
main importance was in the stress he laid on
good accentuation. He set Klopstock's ' Vaterunser
' and Der Frohsinn ' ' to music, and was
a friend of the poet's. Various cantatas for
solo and chorus with orchestra, six organ fugues,
a concerto for oboe, and clavier sonatas are
mentioned in the Qiiellen-Lemkmi, from which
most of the above information is derived. He
was bold enough to re-score the ' Messiah ' and
Bach's B minor Mass. He died at Hamburg,
Oct. 28, 1822. Two of his sons were musicians ;
the elder, Johann Fried uich, born atHamburg,
April30, 1792, was a player on the organ, violoncello,
and clarinet, was appointed to the Nikolaikirche
in Hamburg in 1829, and composed
cantatas with organ accompaniment, arrangement,
etc. , of chorales, a septet for five violoncellos,
double bass and drums, and orchestrated
Beethoven's 'Adelaide' and ' Wachtelschlag,'
among other things. The younger, KAiiL,'born
at Hamburg, March 7, 1797, was a clever pianist
and an industrious compcser ; three sonatas for
piano duet, and one for violin, appeared, as well
as a symphony performed at the Paris Conservatoire
in 1843, and at Hamburg. From 1870,
2 c