Ernst Naumann

Carl Ernst Naumann (15 August 183215 December 1910) was a German organist, composer, conductor, editor, arranger and musicologist. He is best known now as an arranger and editor of the music of J.S. Bach, Mozart and Mendelssohn. He was a friend of Schumann and Brahms, and conducted the first performance of the latter’s Alto Rhapsody in 1870. Biography Carl (or Karl) Ernst Naumann was born in Freiberg in Saxony in 1832, the son of mineralogist Carl Friedrich Naumann. He was a cousin of Emil Naumann (1827–1888) and grandson of Johann Gottlieb Naumann (1741–1801), both composers. Ernst Naumann studied the organ with (1789–1864) and composition with Moritz Hauptmann and Ernst Richter. Naumann was friendly with Brahms and Schumann. The similarity of Brahms’s music to that of late Beethoven was first noted in a letter from Albert Dietrich to Ernst Naumann on 5 November 1853. Naumann was one of the people Dietrich wrote to in March 1854, following Schumann’s suicide attempt in late February. On 3 March 1870, with the Akademischer Gesangverein of Jena, Naumann conducted the first public performance of Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, with Pauline Viardot as soloist. He died in 1910 in Jena, aged 78