Theodor Avé-Lallemant


Johann Theodor Friedrich Avé-Lallemant was a German musician and music teacher.

Family and personal life

The son of a music teacher, Avé-Lallemant studied music from the age of nine, in Greifswald and Lübeck, before settling in Hamburg in 1828. Here he worked as a music teacher until 1874 and came to play a leading role in the Hanseatic city's music life. Thus, in 1838 he was appointed to the board of directors of the Philharmonic Society, eventually becoming its chairman and director of concerts. In 1841, he organized the third North German Music Festival in Hamburg, the largest event of its kind in Germany, and in 1847 he was one of the founders of the "Hamburger Tonkünstlerverein".
Avé-Lallemant married, in 1840, Wilhelmina of the Jauch family, the daughter of a wealthy Hamburg merchant. They had six children, and the godfathers of two of their sons were Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Avé-Lallemant was also on friendly terms with other notable musicians, including Clara Schumann, Josef Joachim, and Julius Stockhausen.

Tchaikovsky and Avé-Lallemant

was introduced to Avé-Lallemant in January 1888 when the Russian composer arrived in Hamburg to conduct a concert of his own music at the Philharmonie. The concert, which featured the Serenade for String Orchestra, the Piano Concerto No. 1, and the Theme and Variations from the Suite No. 3, took place on 8/20 January, and two days later Tchaikovsky, accompanied by his German publisher Daniel Rahter, called on Avé-Lallemant and spent a few hours at his house. The entry which he made in his diary that evening reflects something of the cordial atmosphere in which those hours were spent : "After dinner visit to Avé-Lallemant. The old man touched me by his invitation nach Deutschland zu übersiedeln ", and Tchaikovsky would describe their conversation in more detail in the account of his concert tour which he wrote up a few months later in his Autobiographical Account of a Tour Abroad in the Year 1888 :
Tchaikovsky did not forget this meeting, and he decided to dedicate his next major work, the Symphony No. 5, which he embarked on and completed that summer, to Avé-Lallemant. He asked his German publisher, Rahter, to find out whether Avé-Lallemant would accept such a dedication, and this is what Rahter reported in a letter to the composer on 23 July/4 August 1888: "I have seen Herr Avé-Lallemant here ; he told me that he had written to you saying that he considers himself too insignificant to accept the intended distinction. However, he will be very glad about it, so just go ahead with your plan". In another letter two weeks later, Rahter informed Tchaikovsky of how the dedicatee wished his name to be written on the title-page of the score of the Fifth Symphony: "Herrn Theodor Avé-Lallement in Hamburg" . A few months later, however, Tchaikovsky briefly considered dedicating his new work to the Royal Philharmonic Society in London instead — evidently for pragmatic reasons, since negotiations were underway for him to visit London during his next concert tour to Western Europe in the spring of 1889 and he seems to have intended to conduct his new symphony in the British capital. Rahter wrote to Tchaikovsky on 22 September/4 October 1888 that, in his view, Avé-Lallemant would not be offended by this, since he too would understand that it was a necessary gesture to secure the invitation from the Royal Philharmonic Society. Rahter added that Tchaikovsky could always dedicate some other work to Avé-Lallemant later on. This change of plan was but fleeting, though, and the original dedication of the Fifth Symphony to Avé-Lallemant remained in place: it was with this dedication that the full score was published by Jurgenson in Moscow later that year.
Unfortunately, ill health prevented the dedicatee from hearing Tchaikovsky conduct the new work at the Hamburg Philharmonie on 3/15 March 1889. He wrote to the composer on the morning of the concert: "Dear and esteemed Sir and friend! My cold has unfortunately got so worse that I shall have to keep to my room, and perhaps even to my bed, for several days, which means that I can also not attend the concert! How cruel this is for me, since you have become very dear to me not just as a composer, but also as the splendid person you are. I must therefore call out to you a written Grüß Gott, and, if He grants it, Auf Wiedersehen ". The Fifth Symphony was received very warmly at Tchaikovsky's concert in Hamburg, dispelling his earlier doubts about this work. However, as Modest Tchaikovsky observed in his biography of the composer: "The agreeable impression of that evening was slightly clouded by the fact that Avé-Lallemant, to whom the symphony is dedicated, was unable to attend the concert due to ill health. For Pyotr Ilyich had set such store on his being there, he had been so keen to know his opinion! Before the concert the old man sent a letter with many blessings and wishing him success, but he did not get to hear the symphony itself". It seems very likely that Tchaikovsky did not meet Avé-Lallemant at all during his brief stay in Hamburg on that occasion, but he did keep his promise of providing Avé-Lallemant's wife with a portrait photograph of himself — it was in fact one of the prints made, at Avé-Lallemant's instigation, by the Hamburg photographer E. Bieber during Tchaikovsky's previous visit to the city.
Theodor Avé-Lallemant died on 9 November 1890 after having devoted more than fifty years of his life to promoting the work of the Hamburg Philharmonic Society. Rahter reported this sad loss to Tchaikovsky in a letter two days later: "Good Herr Avé-Lallemant has died. The most distinguishing event in his life was in any case that which put his name on your 5th Symphony. He accorded you his full sympathy".

Tchaikovsky's Works Dedicated to Avé-Lallemant

One letter from Tchaikovsky to Theodor Avé-Lallemant has survived, dating from 1889: