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Adam Valentin Volckmar (6 March 1770 – 1851) was a German composer, organist and singer.

Biography
Born 1770 in Schmalkalden, Germany , died 1851 in Rinteln The history of the town of Rinteln is so rich in interesting personalities that it is not easy to keep alive the memory of even the most important of them. The composer Adam Valentin Volckmar is one of those who have largely been forgotten, although his work has lost none of its strength and expressiveness to this day. Adam Valentin Volkmar was born on March 6, 1770 as the son of a tin founder in the Thuringian town of Schmalkalden. Adam Valentin VolkmarAt that time, the area of ​​the Lordship of Schmalkalden, like the county of Schaumburg, was an exclave that belonged to Hesse-Kassel and was far away from the mainland. Since his father's job as a pewter was often combined with that of an organ builder, it can be assumed that Volckmar was already familiar with instruments and how to play them as a child and thus found his way from craftsmanship to music. He received thorough musical training from the Schmalkalden organist and composer Johann Gottfried Vierling, a student of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach. Both left a lasting mark on the young talent's understanding of music. The first of his own compositions, a collection of easy organ pieces, appeared in Leipzig in 1796. A few years later, an Offenbach publisher published three sonatinas for piano with violin and cello.

In 1799 Volkmar accepted the position of singing teacher for the Landgrave of Hesse-Rheinfels in Rotenburg and in 1805, newly married to the pastor's daughter Philippine Zeiss, moved to Hersfeld as city and monastery organist. With the founding of the very well-equipped Electoral Gymnasium in Rinteln in 1817, its new director, Gottlieb Wiß, not only brought together excellent subject teachers for languages, history and natural sciences in the Weser city, but also sought well-known artists for musical education. He managed to set up a combined and therefore better paid position for a city organist and music teacher at the high school, so that in Volckmar Rinteln was able to engage a successful musician from a much larger city.

Volkmar traveled from Hersfeld to Rinteln in October 1817. In order to take care of his extensive luggage, including a valuable pianoforte, he accompanied it on the way by ship on the Fulda and Weser, but later the sluggish, slow journey remained in his memory like a real nightmare. The arrival in Rinteln on October 29, 1817 was followed by moving into the local town organist and sexton house. This building still stands today at Kirchplatz 4, directly opposite the south portal of the parish church of St. Nikolai, where Volckmar worked.

Since the Reformation, church music in Rinteln has repeatedly reached an astonishingly high level. As early as the late 16th century, organ concerts were accompanied and figured in polyphony with a wide variety of instruments. With the arrival of the new organist and his almost famously virtuoso organ playing, a rise in the level was again noticeable, which had a lasting impact on musical life in the Weser city. Volckmar's Biedermeier era was particularlyVolckmar house on the church square in Rintelnmusicality receptive. A romantic feeling for nature and life combined with bourgeois inwardness led to a wave of amateur choirs being founded, with the Rintelner Liedertafel, founded in 1833, being one of the first in northern Germany. Most of these choirs were formed under the direction of local cantors. What personal part Volckmar had in Rinteln is uncertain.

Volckmar was a musician through and through, so that his contemporaries were happy to forgive him for some oddities and aloofness. So did Friedrich Buschmann, the inventor of the terpodion, a kind of small organ, with which he toured Germany on a concert tour. On January 23, 1828 he also presented his new instrument in Rinteln. "Old Volkmar," he wrote later, "seems to be a stranger to me, but otherwise a good man and a capable musician, I have to admit, I like the people." He particularly liked Sophie, the young daughter, who was also extremely musical Volckmars, an affection that was not unrequited. They got married in 1833 and the two talents went on a concert tour through half of Europe. Eventually they presented the terpodion to Queen Victoria in London, who bought one for herself. The younger of Volckmar's two sons, Wilhelm, was also successful as a musician. After graduating from the Ernestinum, he set new standards as one of the most famous organ virtuosos and composers of his time in the circle of Franz Liszt and Louis Spohr. His "practical organ school" introduced generations of musicians to the instrument, and in 1886 he received the honorary title of "Professor" and "Royal Music Director" in Berlin. In this way, Adam Valentin Volckmar became the progenitor of a whole dynasty of passionate musicians, some of which continues to the present day. Even today, direct descendants live professionally from and with music.

It was not destined for the Rinteln town organist to leave the small-town framework. Nonetheless, Adam Valentin Volckmar was held in extremely high esteem in those around him, both for his excellent organ playing and for his compositions, among which the organ work “Te deum” was particularly close to his heart. Characteristic of Volckmar's work was not modernity or stylistic extravagance, but perfect compositional design and variation. According to the Swiss music publisher Bernhard Päuler, his chamber music works are “far above the functional music of their time”. Their "technical brilliance, their noble melos and the balanced voice leading" make them musical treasures of high classical music. What is also remarkable about the chamber music pieces is the fact that Volckmar was apparently aware of the current state of further developments in the construction of the clarinet and aligned his pieces accordingly.

During the decades of his work, Volckmar fascinated hundreds of students and countless churchgoers with his organ playing and, at a time when music was not commonplace but reserved for special occasions, he earned a gratitude and admiration that seems almost foreign today. In 1846, for example, the renowned Bückeburger Hofkapelle performed a large concert accompanied by more than 70 singers in the St. It seemed as if the whole town was bowing down to the well-deserved old gentleman, starting with the students and teachers of the grammar school, through the numerous Rinteln singers to the official churches and officials. Of course, he didn't like to draw so much attention to his person and endured the honors rather unwillingly, a circumstance that was sympathetically ignored. In old age Volckmar began to be ill, frequent colds, which were explained by the damp church air, kept him tied to the house for weeks, a time that he seems to have spent composing, among other things. A large part of his scores bear the spelling of his name with "ck", which was adopted after 1839. He lived through the thorough renovation of the Rinteln organ, which he had so vehemently pursued, and still had the satisfaction of playing it himself. After his death in 1851, who was much famous during his lifetime, quickly fell into oblivion. He himself had only published a very small part of his works, either out of modesty or lack of money. His son Wilhelm, who owned them, was a composer himself and was building his own career. The great complexity of the organ works, some of which demand top performance from the organist, may have contributed to the fact that contemporaries and successors, when in doubt, preferred to use the simpler score by another composer. Volckmar's sheet music thus remained largely unknown and survived the times in the family's possession until they were donated to the Rinteln Museum in 1910. Its publication, which the Hanover music professor Sievers strongly recommended as early as 1966, could be described as overdue. Now, in cooperation with the ARTE ensemble and the NDR, a CD has been produced that makes it possible to experience Volckmar's chamber music pieces again for the first time in more than 150 years.

Chamber

 * Quartet in C major for Clarinet, Violin, Viola & Violoncello
 * Quartet in F major for Clarinet, Violin, Viola & Violoncello
 * Trio in B flat major for Clarinet, Violoncello & Piano
 * Trio in C major for Violin, Violoncello & Piano

Organ works

 * Lord Jesus Christ, mein's Lebens Licht
 * Sonata II in d