Mozart's Favorite Waltz With Variations, Op.752
Charles Grobe
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Browse piano sheets by Charles Grobe on Zen Virtual Piano. Grobe was born around 1817 in Weimar, reputedly the son of a Lutheran clergyman, and he crossed to the United States about 1839. From 1840 to 1861 he headed the music department at Wesleyan Female College in Wilmington, Delaware. After running his own Musical and Educational Agency there from 1862 to 1870, he taught at Pennington Seminary and Female Collegiate Institute from 1870 to 1874, then at Centenary Collegiate Institute in Hackettstown, New Jersey, until 1879. Emigration about 1839 and the post as head of a music department from 1840 may suggest that his American career was in music education from the outset. A birth around 1817 and a last post ending in 1879 may hint that nearly all of his adult working life was spent in the United States. Two books for female seminaries came from him, a New Method for the Pianoforte in 1859 and Concordia: A Collection of Vocal Music in 1861, and he also contributed articles to many American music journals. His output of piano music was huge: 1,998 opus numbers, with a special gift for variations brillantes on themes by the great German masters and on popular songs. He had reached Op. 1000 by June 1859, when he was the headline performer at a concert for a gathering of American music publishers. Nearly two thousand opus numbers in one working life hint at a composer who wrote quickly and aimed at popular taste. Writing books for seminaries suggests that his classroom and his desk fed each other. AllMusic describes three to five right-hand variations on a current tune, drawn from popular songs, operas, minstrel shows or sacred music, as the pattern most of his remaining works followed. He called his own work “predictable but pleasing piano music”, and the themes he chose were accessible and often prompted by current events. Zachary Taylor was honored in his 1846 Old Rough and Ready Quickstep, and The Battle of Buena Vista, from 1847, was composed during the same Mexican–American War. A formula of variations on tunes people already knew, and music tied to the news, suggests a composer who saw his work as popular and timely. In the early years of the Civil War he composed prolifically and published songs quickly with long captions taken straight from newspaper reports of recent battles, but as the war dragged on the appeal of these descriptive pieces faded and few appeared in its later years. Several of his pieces carried cover art by the lithographer Albert Newsam, and in 1862 Grobe and some friends set up a fund for Newsam, who had been paralyzed and had fallen into poverty. A fund started for an artist who illustrated some of his covers hints at a bond beyond business.
Browse piano sheets by Charles Grobe on Zen Virtual Piano.
Grobe was born around 1817 in Weimar, reputedly the son of a Lutheran clergyman, and he crossed to the United States about 1839. From 1840 to 1861 he headed the music department at Wesleyan Female College in Wilmington, Delaware. After running his own Musical and Educational Agency there from 1862 to 1870, he taught at Pennington Seminary and Female Collegiate Institute from 1870 to 1874, then at Centenary Collegiate Institute in Hackettstown, New Jersey, until 1879. Emigration about 1839 and the post as head of a music department from 1840 may suggest that his American career was in music education from the outset. A birth around 1817 and a last post ending in 1879 may hint that nearly all of his adult working life was spent in the United States.
Two books for female seminaries came from him, a New Method for the Pianoforte in 1859 and Concordia: A Collection of Vocal Music in 1861, and he also contributed articles to many American music journals. His output of piano music was huge: 1,998 opus numbers, with a special gift for variations brillantes on themes by the great German masters and on popular songs. He had reached Op. 1000 by June 1859, when he was the headline performer at a concert for a gathering of American music publishers. Nearly two thousand opus numbers in one working life hint at a composer who wrote quickly and aimed at popular taste. Writing books for seminaries suggests that his classroom and his desk fed each other.
AllMusic describes three to five right-hand variations on a current tune, drawn from popular songs, operas, minstrel shows or sacred music, as the pattern most of his remaining works followed. He called his own work “predictable but pleasing piano music”, and the themes he chose were accessible and often prompted by current events. Zachary Taylor was honored in his 1846 Old Rough and Ready Quickstep, and The Battle of Buena Vista, from 1847, was composed during the same Mexican–American War. A formula of variations on tunes people already knew, and music tied to the news, suggests a composer who saw his work as popular and timely.
In the early years of the Civil War he composed prolifically and published songs quickly with long captions taken straight from newspaper reports of recent battles, but as the war dragged on the appeal of these descriptive pieces faded and few appeared in its later years. Several of his pieces carried cover art by the lithographer Albert Newsam, and in 1862 Grobe and some friends set up a fund for Newsam, who had been paralyzed and had fallen into poverty. A fund started for an artist who illustrated some of his covers hints at a bond beyond business.
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Common questions
Charles Grobe was an American teacher and composer, born around 1817 in Weimar, who emigrated to the United States about 1839.
He produced 1,998 opus numbers and had already published Op. 1000 by 1859.
He wrote piano variations on popular melodies, operas, minstrel shows and sacred music, along with pieces composed during the Mexican–American War.
He headed the music department at Wesleyan Female College in Wilmington, Delaware, then taught at Pennington Seminary and Female Collegiate Institute and at Centenary Collegiate Institute in New Jersey.