School of Musical Composition, Practical and Theoretical

The influential music theorist and composer Adolf Bernhard Marx (1795–1866) spent much of his career as a professor of music in Berlin and was a friend and mentor of Mendelssohn. He believed music should be part of everyone's general education and lobbied the Prussian government for a comprehensive national scheme for musical education. His compositions included many songs and choral works now largely forgotten, with the exception of the 1841 oratorio Mose. Among his publications is Gluck und die Oper (1863) which is reissued in this series in both the German original and English translation. His most famous and influential work, Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition, was intended for the students of the University of Berlin, setting out in simple terms the principles of music theory and composition for the untrained. This English translation, of only the first volume of the fourth edition, was published in 1852.