Alfred Schulz-Curtius
{{Short description|German-born British impresario (1853–1918)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2014}}
Alfred Schulz-Curtius (c. 1853 – 4 March 1918), also known as Alfred Curtis, was a German-British classical music impresario who was active primarily in continental Europe and the United Kingdom from the 1870s until the 1910s.
Schulz-Curtius was born in Kleinwolmsdorf near Radeberg and Dresden to Johann Heinrich Curtius and Agnes Schulz Curtius.UK, Naturalisation Certificates and Declarations, 1870-1916 In 1876, he founded the eponymous Alfred Schulz-Curtius music and artists management agency in the West End of London at 44 Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus. He is most well known for his popularization of the music of Richard Wagner. In 1882, he arranged the first British staging of the epic Ring Cycle, conducted by Anton Seidl and directed by Angelo Neumann. He became a British citizen in 1896.
During his four or more decades of professional activity, Schulz-Curtius organized dozens of concerts at concert and recital venues such as St James's Hall, Queen's Hall, the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, Wigmore Hall, which was then known as Bechstein Hall, and collaborated with other impresarios as well such as Robert Newman, founder of The Proms.
Alfred Schulz-Curtius had great enthusiasm for the string instruments designed by Dr. Alfred Stelzner and went to great lengths to encourage their use by soloists, ensembles and orchestras.
The conductors with whom Schulz-Curtius worked include Hermann Levi, Felix Mottl, Percy Pitt, Hans Richter, and Henry Joseph Wood. Others among the many artists whom he represented include pianist Ferruccio Busoni, violinist Jan Kubelík, soprano Dame Nellie Melba, and cellist Guilhermina Suggia.
He married Helen Mary Perry in 1908, and they had at least one son, Alfred Siegfried Curtis.London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754–1932
At the beginning of World War I, Lionel Powell was taken on as a partner in the agency (renamed Schulz-Curtius Powell) when Schulz-Curtius, a German national, was interned as an "enemy alien", despite having become a naturalized British subject in 1896, and changing his name by deed poll to Alfred Curtis on 24 September 1914.{{Cite web|url = https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/28918/page/7740|title = The London Gazette|date = 29 September 1914|access-date = 1 May 2015|website = The London Gazette}} Powell continued to manage the agency through the 1920s after the death of its founder in Bournemouth, Hampshire, on 4 March 1918.{{Cite book|title = Calendar of the Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration made in the Probate Registries of the High Court of Justice in England|last = Principal Probate Registry}} He was 64 years old.
Legacy
From the early 1930s, South African Harold Holt managed the agency as Harold Holt Ltd until his death in 1953. In 1956, Sir Ian Hunter joined the agency and, in 1969, by which time Harolt Holt Ltd was owned by Ibbs and Tillett, purchased it.
In the late 1990s, the agency which Alfred Schulz-Curtius had founded more than 120 years earlier merged with the Lies Askonas agency to form Askonas Holt.
References
{{Reflist|refs=
{{harvnb|Fifield|2005|loc=ch. 22, p. 308}}
{{cite news|url= https://www.nytimes.com/1899/03/19/archives/in-the-world-of-music-what-the-composers-players-singers-and.html |title= In the World of Music: What the Composers, Players, Singers, and Managers Are Doing in Various Places|newspaper=The New York Times|page= 6|date= 19 March 1899}} [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1899/03/19/117916239.pdf Full article]
{{cite web |url= http://concertprogrammes.orangeleaf.com/html/search/verb/GetRecord/4208 |title= Alfred Schulz-Curtius' Grand Wagner Concerts (1894–98) |work= Online database of library/archive holdings of concert programmes |publisher= Maintained by Cardiff University in collaboration with the Royal College of Music |access-date= 7 November 2007 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20081012105631/http://concertprogrammes.orangeleaf.com/html/search/verb/GetRecord/4208 |archive-date= 12 October 2008 |url-status= dead}}
Sir John Ritblat Gallery: [http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/whatson/exhibitions/ritblat/music.html Treasures of the British Library: Music] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071210110308/http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/whatson/exhibitions/ritblat/music.html |date=10 December 2007}} ("Brochure for 1898 Ring by Alfred Schultz-Curtius, Playbills 350, folio 64." British Library.)
{{harvnb|Fifield|2005|loc=ch. 3, pp. 25–26}}
{{cite news|url= https://www.nytimes.com/1904/01/03/archives/of-music-and-musicians-the-richard-wagner-society-and-the-parsifal.html |title= Of Music and Musicians|newspaper=The New York Times|page=17|date=3 January 1904}} [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1904/01/03/104978422.pdf Full article]
{{Cite book |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=28uHefY4ctMC&q=curtius+mottl |title=My Life of Music|author=Sir Henry Joseph Wood|isbn= 978-0-8369-5820-1 |year= 1946 |publisher= Books for Libraries Press}}
{{cite journal|jstor=905399|title=Mr. Percy Pitt|journal=The Musical Times|last=M.|date=1 January 1911|volume=52|issue=819|pages=293–295|doi=10.2307/905399|url=https://zenodo.org/record/1449982}}
{{cite web |url= https://www.nytimes.com/1899/01/29/archives/bonapartist-agitation-performance-of-the-king-of-rome-causes-stormy.html |title=Musical Matters Abroad|type=quoting The Pall Mall Gazette|newspaper=The New York Times|page= 6|date= 29 January 1899}} [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1899/01/29/102408886.pdf Full article]
{{cite web |url= http://www.draeseke.org/stelzner/christensen0601.htm |title= Dr. Alfred Stelzner: Pioneer in Violin Acoustics |author= James Christensen |work= International Draeseke Society}}
{{cite web |url= http://suggia.weblog.com.pt/arquivo/070682.html |title= O Regresso de Leipzig (The Return to Leipzig) |author= Guilhermina Suggia |work= Excerpt from Guilhermina Suggia – A Sonata de Sempre by Fátima Pombo) |language= pt|location=The Hague|date= January 1905 |author-link= Guilhermina Suggia}}
{{cite news|url= https://www.nytimes.com/1907/12/08/archives/a-boy-paderewski-musical-prodigy-makes-a-sensation-in-london.html |title= A Boy Paderewski: Musical Prodigy Makes a Sensation in London |author= Special Correspondence|newspaper=The New York Times|department=The Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Dispatches|page=C4|date= 8 December 1907}} [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1907/12/08/104712560.pdf Full article]
{{cite web |url= https://www.nytimes.com/1913/02/06/archives/melbakubelik-tour-other-wellknown-artists-to-join-concert.html |title= Melba-Kubelik Tour. Other Well-Known Artists to Join Concert Combination in America|department=Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph|newspaper=The New York Times|page= 4|date= 6 February 1913}} [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1913/02/06/100387687.pdf full article] ([http://www.rainfall.com/posters/newsServicePhotos/107974.htm Photo of Gabriel LaPierre] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20070615222044/http://www.rainfall.com/posters/newsServicePhotos/107974.htm |date=15 June 2007 }} with Jan Kubelík.)
{{harvnb|Fifield|2005|loc=ch. 24, p. 341}}
}}
Sources
- {{cite book|last=Fifield|first=Christopher|author-link=Christopher Fifield|title=Ibbs and Tillett: The Rise and Fall of a Musical Empire|at=ch. 22, p. 308|location=London|publisher=Ashgate Publishing|year=2005|isbn=978-1-84014-290-7|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qz-s4zdLCNsC}} ([http://www.ashgate.com/subject_area/downloads/sample_chapters/Ibbs_and_Tillett_Index.pdf "General index], Ashgate)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schulz-Curtius, Alfred}}
Category:Businesspeople from Saxony
Category:British businesspeople
Category:Year of birth uncertain