Friedrich Kühmstedt

Friedrich Karl Kühmstedt was a German composer. He studied with Johann Nepomuk Hummel in Weimar. His work includes symphonies, fugues and preludes for organ.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Friedrich Kühmstedt.

From the period sources

Friedrich Kühmstedt, born in Oldisleben, Saxe-Weimar, initially resisted his parents’ desire for him to enter the church, instead running away from the Weimar Gymnasium at nineteen to pursue music (Grove’s Dictionary, 1906; Dictionary of Music, 1896). He walked 150 miles to Darmstadt to seek the advice of G. H. Rinck, under whom he then studied theoretical and practical music for three years (Grove’s Dictionary, 1906). Kühmstedt aspired to be a piano virtuoso, but a debilitating paralysis in his right hand—not his left, as stated in the 1896 Dictionary of Music—frustrated this ambition, leaving him for years “almost without the means of subsistence” (Grove’s Dictionary, 1906). Despite this hardship, he persevered, eventually becoming music director and professor at the Eisenach Seminary in 1836. Tragically, on his wedding day, his wife died suddenly as they left the church, a period of “deep distress” from which music offered him relief (Grove’s Dictionary, 1906). While his oratorios, operas, and symphonies are largely forgotten, his fame rests on his organ works, including a “Gradus ad Parnassum” designed as preparatory training for Bach’s works, and his “Theoretisch-praktische Harmonie- und Ausweichungslehre” (A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 1900; Dictionary of Music, 1896). His pupil, Karl Müller-Hartung, succeeded him as music director at the Seminary in 1859 (Dictionary of Music, 1896).