Max Friedlander
When you sing the songs of Franz Schubert you can thank Max Friedlander.
He was instrumental in bringing many of them to publication in the Peters edition. No mere musicologist, Friedlander was a student of the great 19th-century vocal pedagogue Manuel Garcia and his famous pupil Julius Stockhausen as well as a friend to Jenny Lind. A baritone, Friedlander was schooled in the art of bel canto, which certainly must have informed his work.
The photo below, which was snapped up on Ebay, shows Friedlander celebrating his 75th birthday in a garden. He taught at Berlin University for 30 years and came to America in 1911 when Harvard bestowed an honorary doctorate upon him.
How wonderful it would be to sit in the garden with Friedlander, sip tea, and talk about singing and life. But sadly, we can only imagine.
Photographs may be the closest thing we have to time travel.
