Adolf Friedrich Hesse

Adolf Friedrich Hesse (b Breslau, 30 Aug 1809; d Breslau, 5 Aug 1863). German organist and composer. He was taught by F.W.

Berner in the Silesian Bach tradition, and on his first major concert tour in Germany met Hummel in Weimar and Spohr in Kassel. In Darmstadt he met Rinck, who had studied with Bach’s pupil J.C. Kittel, and with whom he studied for six months in the winter of 1828–9. From 1831 until his death Hesse was organist of the Bernardine church in Breslau. In 1844 he inaugurated the Doublaine-Callinet organ at St Eustache in Paris, where his interpretation of Bach’s organ works, hitherto almost unknown there, created as great a sensation as his own virtuosity. In 1851 he played very successfully in the Crystal Palace and elsewhere in London. Hesse was the first 19th-century German organist to win international recognition as a touring virtuoso, even before Mendelssohn. His concert programmes consisted mainly of his own compositions and works by Bach, including fugues from Das wohltemperirte Clavier. Doubt has recently been cast on the significance of Hesse’s teaching of J.N. Lemmens, whom Fétis regarded as Hesse’s heir and thus a link between the tradition of Bach and the modern French school.

Hesse’s compositions combined fugal polyphony modelled on Bach with rich, Romantic harmonies influenced by Spohr, whom he greatly admired. While his organ works were widely distributed, his orchestral and choral compositions were little known outside Breslau. During the last 15 years of his life, feeling dissatisfied at the direction of ‘modern music’, he hardly composed at all.