MARX, ADOLF BERNHARD

MARX, ADOLF BERNHARD (1795–1866), German musicologist. Born in Halle, he was originally a lawyer, but in 1830 became professor of music at Berlin University, a post that had been intended for but declined by the 21-year-old Felix Mendelssohn. In 1850 he helped to found the school still known as the Stern Conservatory and taught there till 1856. He wrote operas, lieder, a piano sonata, a symphony, and an oratorio Moses (1843), but achieved no importance as a composer. His theoretical and critical works, however, retain their value, the most important being a four-volume work on composition, Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition (1837–47); Ludwig van Beethoven, Leben und Schaffen (1859); Gluck und die Oper (2 vols., 1863); and a work on the interpretation of Beethoven's piano works (1863). Marx's memoirs, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, were published in two volumes in 1865, and a collection of his articles appeared in three parts, from 1912 to 1922. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: K.E. Eicke, Der Streit zwischen Adolph Bernhard Marx und Gottfried Wilhelm Fink um die Kompositionslehre (1966); Baker, Biog Dict; S.V.; Grove, Dict; MGG; Riemann-Gurlitt. (Alfred Einstein)