Ferdinand Praeger

Ferdinand Praeger (22 January 1815 – 2 September 1891) (aka Ferdinand Christian Wilhelm Praeger) was a composer, music teacher, pianist and writer. He is now best known for his controversial biography of Richard Wagner, Wagner As I Knew Him, published in 1892 after Praeger's death.

Life

Praeger was born in Leipzig, to Jewish parents, the Dutch-Jewish violinist, composer and conductor Heinrich (Hijman Chaim Aron) Aloys Praeger (Amsterdam 1783 – Magdeburg 1854) and his English-Jewish wife Elizabeth (Wilhelmina), née Davis or Davison (b. 1788). Heinrich Praeger was a director of opera in Leipzig until 1828, and later at Hanover and Magdeburg.

Praeger studied the cello as a child but on the advice of Hummel took up the piano. In 1831 he moved to The Hague and in 1834 went on to London, which thereafter became his home. From 1842 onwards he was the British correspondent of the Leipzig Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, the journal founded by Robert Schumann. In England he continued as a teacher and a composer, marrying his French wife Léonie in about 1850. His many compositions included piano music, chamber music, and orchestral works (his overture Abellino was conducted by Hector Berlioz in London in 1855). These included thirty-six piano sonatas and twenty-five string quartets.

In 1869, Praeger undertook the tuition of the then eleven-year-old pianist Sophia Flora Heilbron, and the two continued to work together until Heilbron was at least thirteen.

He wrote a number of pieces to celebrate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee (1887), and was still composing shortly before his death in 1891. Some of his works are dedicated to his musical friends, including an 1889 Impromptu dedicated to the composer Ethel Smyth. He was active in British musical social life and worked with many musicians visiting Britain, including Antonín Dvořák. But despite lobbying William George Cusins (the Master of the Queen's Musick) to conduct his other orchestral works, he was unable ever to get these performed.