Abert, Hermann

Abert, Hermann, eminent German musicologist, son of Johann Joseph Abert and father of Anna Amalie Abert; b. Stuttgart, March 25, 1871; d. there, Aug. 13, 1927. He studied with his father, and then with Beller-mann, Fleischer, and Friedlaender at the Univ. of Berlin (Ph.D., 1897, with the diss. Die Lehre vom Ethos in der griechischen Musik; publ. in Leipzig, 1899). He completed his Habilitation in 1902 at the Univ. of Halle with his Die ästhetischen Grundsätze der mittelalterlichen Melodiebildung (publ. in Halle, 1902), where he was made an honorary prof. in 1909 and a lecturer in 1911. In 1920 he became a prof. at the Univ. of Leipzig. From 1923 he was a prof. at the Univ. of Berlin. Abert’s most important work was his exhaustively rewritten and revised ed. of Jahn’s biography of Mozart, which he publ. as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Neu bearbeitete und erweitert Ausgabe von Ottojahns “Mozart” (2 vols., Leipzig, 1919, 1921; rev. by his daughter, 1955-56). Among his other books were Robert Schumann (Berlin, 1903; 4^th ed., 1920), Die Musi-kanschauung des Mittelalters und ihre Grundlagen (Halle, 1905), Niccolo Jommelli als Opernkomponist (Halle, 1908), Johann Joseph Abert, 1832-1915: Sein Leben und seine Werke (Leipzig, 1916), and Goethe und die Musik (Engel-horn, 1922). F. Blume ed. his Gesammelte Schriften und Vorträge (Halle, 1929).

Bibliography

F. Blume, ed., Gedenkschrift für H. A. von seinen Schülern (Halle, 1928); K. Funk, H. A.: Musiker, Musikwissen-schaftler, Musikpädagoge (Stuttgart, 1994).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire