Franz Wohlfahrt

[John_Boyer]

Former violin students will remember working their way through Franz Wohlfahrt's opp. 45 and 60 etudes, as well his op. 38 method.  Wohlfahrt had a gift for melody, so I always found his etudes far more interesting to play than similar studies by Hans Sitt or Otakar Sevcik.  You felt like you were playing music, not just exercises. 

Given the opus numbers cited, there are at least 57 other opera that remain relatively unknown.  What are these works?  Does anyone know them?  Edition Silvertrust and IMSLP list a few hausmusik works, but the trail goes cold after that.  It doesn't help that he shares his name with a popular football player.  Given the pop culture nature of the Internet, it means most searches are clogged with false football leads.  (I am reminded of a recent affair when, attempting to find out how a torpedo's steam engine both works underwater and instantaneously generates enough power to drive the torpedo without the typical steam engine warm-up, I found to my dismay that "steam torpedo" is the name of a popular internet game, making attempts to find information about...well, steam torpedoes to be almost impossible.)

So, does anyone know of any major works (works for professionals, chamber or orchestral) by Herr Wohlfahrt?

[tpaloj]

Worldcat.org is a good starting point, you can search and filter for musical scores of any particular composer and it attempts to find references to published scores in most libraries. Excluding any football players from searches is also possible!

In short, it seems to me that op.35 ~ 88 are all pretty much exclusively practice etudes, studies, easy trios duets etc for violin & piano. The only other thing I was able to find was a reference to "The Passion of Prometheus" - a dramatic Oratorio in three scenes. https://www.worldcat.org/title/passion-des-prometheus-dramatisches-oratorium/oclc/725253311&referer=brief_results

[eschiss1]

Worldcat is a starting point but there are others. And if you're preparing a worklist for scholarly use rather than trying to acquire scores for perusal or performance, there are other sources that should be added, just for example Hofmeisters Monatsberichte (start your search in 1867 to avoid works by other Wohlfahrts - relatives perhaps- as it seems that Frz. Wohlfahrt's Op.1 was published in that year.) (And of course with such sources, caveat; they're good for what they're good for- in HMb's case, putting you on to an approximate date of publication, not a composition date, and not in all cases a date of first publication either nor a full list of works, while Worldcat and other library catalogs will list only existing works or in some cases works that (e.g. Library of Congress) may no longer exist but which the Library still lists in the catalog for various reasons (having ordered them and...).

[eschiss1]

now for example Op.6 is a set of "Zwei Lieder für vier Männerstimmen" published by 1868 by Naumburg of Leipzig (and republished in 1873 by Kahnt.)
Op.12 has the interesting title "Fest-Fantasie" (for piano duet, published in 1869 by Stoll of Leipzig.)

Note also this trio facile for 2 violins and piano in D minor dedicated to Louis Kohler.