Louis Köhler

Christian Louis Heinrich Köhler was a German composer, conductor and piano teacher.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Louis Köhler.

From the period sources

Louis Köhler, a German composer, writer, and pianist, was born in Brunswick in 1820 and studied under Seyfried and Sechter (Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 1886). He also received piano instruction from the “brilliant pianist” Karl Maria von Bocklet in Vienna between 1839 and 1843 (Grove’s Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1906; A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 2nd ed., 1905). Köhler served as a conductor in Marienburg and Elbing before settling in Königsberg in 1847, where he remained until his death in 1886 (Grove’s Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1906).

Köhler’s contributions to music included three operas, one of which, Maria Dolores, was performed in Brunswick in 1844, and a ballet, Der Zauberkomponist, staged in 1846 (Grove’s Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1906). He was particularly renowned for his educational pianoforte music, including numerous studies and transcriptions from operas, totaling around 300 works (Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 1886). His pianoforte studies were “famous over the whole musical world” and considered “a never-failing source of instruction and delight to musicians of all grades” (Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 1886). Among his pupils were Robert Goldbeck, his nephew, who later founded conservatories in Boston and Chicago (Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, Vol. 2, 1889; Grove’s Dictionary, American Supplement, 1920), and Hermann Genss, a talented pianist who studied with Köhler before attending the Royal School of Music in Berlin (A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 2nd ed., 1905). Köhler also contributed articles to the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and the Berliner Musik-Zeitung (Grove’s Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1906).