Simon Sechter
Simon Sechter (11 October 1788 – 10 September 1867) was an Austrian music theorist, composer, conductor, and organist. He is best known as a strict music teacher, whose many students included Anton Bruckner, Sigismond Thalberg, and Henri Vieuxtemps. In 1851, he was professor of composition at the Vienna Conservatory; after Sechter's death, his student Bruckner would succeed him and continue teaching his approach to harmony and counterpoint.
Simon Sechter
Josef Kriehuber · Public domain
- Born
- 1788 · Frymburk.
- Died
- 1867 · Vienna.
- Nationality
- Austrian Empire
- Occupation
- composer · conductor · musicologist · pedagogue · music educator · music theorist · university teacher · pianist
- Fields
- opera
- Teachers
- Antonio Salieri
- Languages
- German
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wikidata · Q582713 · wikipedia · Simon Sechter
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Institutions cited
Bibliothèque nationale de France · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
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Biography
Biography
However, Sechter's best known works are his later (post-1825) masses and oratorios. Pond, 1871; G.
Training under Antonio Salieri is recorded. Anton Door, Adolf von Henselt and Anton Bruckner are recorded as having studied under Simon Sechter. The recorded working language is German. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are opera. Residence is recorded at Kleine Sperlgasse 10. Employment is recorded with University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
Documentary record
Simon Sechter died on 10 September 1867 in Vienna.
Sechter was born on 11 October 1788 in Frymburk (Friedberg) in the Kingdom of Bohemia and moved to Vienna in 1804, succeeding Jan Václav Voříšek as court organist there in 1824. In 1810 he began teaching piano and voice at an academy for blind students. In 1828 the ailing Franz Schubert had one counterpoint lesson with him. In 1851 Sechter was appointed professor of composition at the Vienna Conservatory. His final years were spent in poverty due to his involvement in a son-in-law's bankruptcy. He was succeeded at the Conservatory by Anton Bruckner, a former student whose teaching methods were based on Sechter's.
Documentary record
Simon Sechter (11 October 1788 – 10 September 1867) was a musician, composer, “Kompositionslehrer”, organist, music teacher and musicologist. Simon Sechter was born on 11 October 1788 in Frymburk.
As composer
As composer
Sechter was also a composer, and in that capacity he is mostly remembered for writing about 5,000 fugues (he tried to write at least one fugue every day), but he also wrote masses and oratorios. In addition he wrote five operas: Das Testament des Magiers (1842), Ezzeline, die unglückliche Gegangene aus Deli-Katesse (1843), Ali Hitsch-Hatsch (1844), Melusine (1851), and Des Müllers Ring (?). In 1823–24, he was one of the 51 composers who composed a variation on a waltz by Anton Diabelli for Vaterländischer Künstlerverein.
Grave of honor of the music theorist, teacher, organist, conductor and composer en:Simon Sechter (1788–1867) at the Vienna Central Cemetery (gate 2, group 0, row 1, number 23)
Eva Maria Mandl
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1867
Simon Sechter died in 1867 at Vienna.
Places
Named by the record
Places
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Kleine Sperlgasse 10
Residences
Frymburk.
Birth place
Vienna.
Death place
Teaching methods
Others whom Sechter taught include Henri Vieuxtemps, Franz Lachner, Eduard Marxsen (who taught Johannes Brahms piano and counterpoint), Johann Nepomuk Fuchs, Gustav Nottebohm, Anton Door, Karl Umlauf, Béla Kéler, Nina Stollewerk, Sigismond Thalberg, Adolf von Henselt, Anton de Kontski, Kornelije Stanković and Theodor Döhler. Sechter had strict teaching methods. For instance, he forbade Bruckner to write any original compositions while studying counterpoint with him. The scholar Robert Simpson believes that "Sechter unknowingly brought about Bruckner's originality by insisting that it be suppressed until it could no longer be contained." Sechter taught Bruckner by mail from 1855 to 1861 and considered Bruckner his most dedicated pupil. Upon Bruckner's graduation, Sechter wrote a fugue dedicated to his student. In the three-volume treatise on the principles of composition, Die Grundsätze der musikalischen Komposition, Sechter wrote a seminal work that influenced many later theorists. Sechter's ideas are derived from Jean-Philippe Rameau's theories of the fundamental bass, always diatonic even when the surface is highly chromatic; music theory historians strongly associate Sechter with the Viennese conception of fundamental bass theory. Sechter was an advocate of just intonation over well-tempered tuning.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Simon Sechter, revision 1370776114 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Saslaw, Janna. Sechter, Simon. Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. 2001. 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.25293.
- 2.http://www.lieder.net/lieder/m/kcmuller.html
- 3."Schubert's Lesson with Sechter", Alfred Mann: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 159–165
- 4.Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950. Band 12, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2005, pp. 79–80
- 5.The Wind and Wind-chorus Music of Anton Bruckner, by Keith William Kinder. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000.
- 6.The Essence of Bruckner By Robert Simpson, Robert Wilfred Levick Simpson Gollancz, 1967
- 7.p. 60, Cook (2007) Nicholas. Oxford The Schenker project: culture, race, and music theory in fin-de-siècle Vienna Oxford University Press
- 8.OperaGlass. Simon Sechter. Opera Composers: S. Stanford.edu.
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He trained under Antonio Salieri. Each of those relationships is stated by the authority record rather than inferred from style.
Simon Sechter is recorded as composer, conductor, musicologist, pedagogue and music educator.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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