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Heinrich Bellermann

born Berlin, March 10, 1832; died Potsdam, April 10, 1903

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German music theorist and composer.

Bellermann's counterpoint treatise, Der Contrapunct (1862), was based on Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum (1725). Like Fux, Bellermann saw the art of composition as founded on vocal rather than instrumental models, and the species of counterpoint, still in the modal system, as indispensible to its study. Bellermann also wrote the first modern work to explain the late medieval system of mensural notation.

Bellermann and Schenker

Schenker knew Bellermann's counterpoint treatise well, and referred to it frequently (along with the treatises by Fux, Albrechtsberger, and Cherubini) in his own Kontrapunkt .

Bibliographhy:

  • Der Contrapunct; oder, Anleitung zur Stimmführung in der musikalischen Composition (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1862)

Contributor:

  • Ian Bent

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Correspondence

  • CA 96-98 Handwritten letter from Schenker to Cotta, dated May 26, 1909

    Schenker raises again the splitting of Kontrapunkt into two half-volumes, or even four installments. — He reports that his Beitrag zur Ornamentik has been adopted by the Academy of Music, despite his being in a constant state of feud with all officialdom. — The Academy's Director is a supporter of his theory. — Schenker outlines how earlier works of his have become influential. — His Kontrapunkt is "eagerly awaited" and will be the "leading work" on the subject; he argues the case for splitting the work on "psychological" and "technical" grounds.

  • OJ 14/45, [21] Handwritten letter from Moriz Violin to Heinrich Schenker, dated April 28, 1923

    Violin reports on a brief trip to Berlin for respite from the strain of teaching and his son’s illness. He is reading the second volume of Schenker’s Counterpoint, but asks him for clarification of a matter concerning second-species counterpoint in two voices, discussed in volume 1.

Lessonbooks