Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/761

Rh  Biblmgraphy.—A complete bibliography of Goethe literature would ﬁll a very large space. “'6 must con- tent ourselves with an indication of the principal sources from which a knowledge of his life may be derived. The most important source of all is his own works. The Dieht- any and ll'cthrheit, the Italienz'sche Reise, the Campagne um Rhetn, and the Tages— and Jahresheften have an especial autobiographical value. Next to these come the poems, and lastly the letters. Many of these are lost for over, many remain unpublished. For the ﬁrst period of his life Der Junge Goethe, in three volumes, published by Hirzel, with an introduction by Michael Bernays, is indis- pensable. It contains his letters and poems in chrono- logical order. A commentary on this work by “'ilhelm Scherer, entitled Aus Goethes Frz'thsez't was published in 1879. Otto J ahn published Goethes Briefe an seiner Leip- iger Frezmlle. letters of the Strasburg period. with Schiller and with chter was published during his life- time. Besides these we have his letters to Herder, Merck, Kestner and Lotte, Lavater, Knebel, Countess Stolberg, Jacobi, Karl August, and Frau von Stein. Lately have appeared his letters to Marianne von “'illemer, and some of those addressed to J. G. Schlosser. We are without his letters to Behrisch, Lerse, and Zimmermaun; and we have only a few of those addressed to Horn and Sophie La Roche. Goethe’s real letters to Bettina von Arnim are in the main unpublished; those which bear the name have been largely falsiﬁed, but have a substratum of truth. We have also a few. volumes of Goethe’s scientiﬁc correspond,- ence, published by his descendants. Help to the understand- ing of his poetry is given by the. letters of \Vieland, Caroline F lachsland, and his Weimar friends. The letters addressed to him by Frau von Stein exist, but have not been made public. The ﬁrst life of Goethe was published by Doring in 1828, of which a second enlarged edition appeared after the poet’s death in 1833. Then followed Viehoff in 4 volumes, 1847—1853. The best life of Goethe is that of Schiifer, which appeared ﬁrst in 1851, and the third edition of which dates from 1877. It is contained in two volumes of moderate size, and is written with scarcely a superﬂuous word. The account of Goethe and Schiller by Karl Goedeke in his Grundriss der Deutsehen. Diehtzmg is admir- able, and so is the little book Goethes Leben and Sehrzften, Schtill and A. Hober have collected the‘ Goethe’s correspondence ‘ published by him in 1874. The life of Goethe has been popularized in England by G. H. Lewes, in a work which is as much read in German as in English. A complete biography of Goethe cannot be written until the archives of the Goethe Hans at Weimar are thrown open for con- sultation. The knowledge of Goethe’s works in England is due as much as anything else to the writings of Thomas Carlyle. The commentaries on Goethe’s works are end- less in number. The most active labourer in this ﬁeld has been 11. Diintze, who has left no side of Goethe’s activity and no period of his life unexplored. “'e must also men- tion the brilliant lectures on Goethe by Hermann Grimm (Berlin, 1877), and the excellent sketch of his life and works published by A. Hayward in 1878. The following works deserve particular mention :—

1em  

 GOETZ, (1840–1876), a musical composer, presents one of those instances, too frequent in the his- tory of art, of success long sought for, and cut short by death when achieved at last. He was born at KOuigs- burg in Prussia in 1840, and began his regular musical studies at the comparatively advanced age of seventeen. He entered the music-school of Professor Stern at Berlin, and studied composition chieﬂy under Ulrich and Hans von Biilow. In 1863 he was appointed organist at Winterthur in Switzerland, where he lived in obscurity for a number of years, occupying himself with composition during his leisure hours. One of his works was an opera, The Taming of the Shrew, the libretto skilfully adapted from Shakespeare’s play. After much delay it was produced at Mannheim (October 1874), and its success was as instan- taneous as it has up to the present proved lasting. It rapidly made the round of the great German theatres, and spread its composer’s fame over all the land. But Goetz did not live to enjoy this happy result for long. In Decem- ber 1876 he died at Zurich from overwork. A second opera, Francesca (la. Bimini, on which he was engaged at the time of his death, remained a fragment; but it has since been ﬁnished according to his directions by a friend, and was performed for the ﬁrst time at Mannhelm a few months after the composer’s death. Besides his dramatic work, Goetz also wrote various compositions for chamber- music, of which a trio (Op. 1) and a quintet (Op. 16) have been given with great success at the London Monday Popular Concerts. Still more important is the Symphony in F, on which the composer’s great reputation in England is mainly founded. As a composer of comic opera Goetz lacks the sprightliness and artistic saz'oz'rfa'lre so rarely found amongst Germanic nations. His was essentially a serious nature, and passion and pathos were to him more congenial than humour. The more serious sides of the subject are therefore insisted upon more successfully than Katherine’s ravings and Petruchio’s eccentricities. There are, however, very graceful passages, e.g., the singing lesson Bianca re- ceives from her disguised IOVer. Goetz’s style, although inﬂuenced by “'agner and other masters, shows signs of a distinct individuality. The design of his music is essenti- ally of a polyphonous character, and the working out and interweaving of his themes betray the musician of high scholarship. But breadth and beautiful ﬂow of melody also were his, as is Seen in the symphony, and perhaps still more in the quintet for pianoforte and strings above