Julius Stern

Julius Stern (8 August 1820 – 27 February 1883) was a Jewish German musical pedagogue and composer. Biography Stern was born at Breslau. He received his elementary education in music from the violinist Peter Lüstner, and at the age of nine played at concerts. In 1832 his parents removed to Berlin, where Stern studied first under Ludwig Wilhelm Maurer, Moritz Ganz, and , and later under Rungenhagen at the Königliche Akademie der Künste. As a result of several compositions which he had written while a pupil of the academy, King Frederick William IV of Prussia, who was an ardent lover of art, granted Stern a stipend which enabled him to pursue his studies. He went to Dresden, where he received instruction from Johann Aloys Miksch; and thence to Paris, where he subsequently was appointed leader of the Deutscher Gesangverein Society. While in the latter city he conducted, among other works, the incidental music by Mendelssohn to Sophocles’ Antigone. In 1846, Stern returned to Berlin, where, in the following year, he founded the Stern Gesangverein. The first performance of Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah (October 1847) established Stern’s reputation as one of the foremost conductors of his