NEEFE, CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB (1748–1798)

Susan Kagan, a pianist, author, and educator, has explored the music of composers associated with Beethoven and his milieu. She holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; her dissertation on the music of Archduke Rudolph, Beethoven’s composition student for more than two decades, was published by Pendragon Press in 1988.

Beethoven did much to enlarge the possibilities of music and widen the horizons of later generations of composers.

Christian Gottlob Neefe, born in 1748, is remembered today mainly as Beethoven’s first important teacher in Bonn. Neefe (pronounced Nay-fuh) was a respected and successful musician of his time: Court Organist and Kapellmeister of the Electoral Court Orchestra in Bonn, music director of a prominent theatre group, composer of numerous Singspiele (operettas) and other works, and music teacher. He became Beethoven’s teacher around 1780, in piano, organ, thoroughbass, and composition. A great admirer of the Bach family, he introduced Beethoven to the Well-Tempered Clavier of JS Bach, and the music and writings of Bach’s distinguished son, Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach. In addition, Neefe was a sympathetic and fatherly friend to the young Beethoven, who later wrote to him: “I thank you for the counsel which you gave me so often…If I ever become a great man yours shall be a share of the credit.”