A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Schauroth, Delphine
SCHAUROTH, Delphine (Adolphine) von, a Bavarian lady of noble family, a great pianoforte player, with whom Mendelssohn flirted (seriously, even for him) and played duets, during his visit to Munich in June 1830.[1] She and Josephine Lang are the two most prominent figures in his letters of that date. He reached Venice on Oct. 10, and on the 16th wrote the well-known 'Venetianisches Gondellied' (Songs without Words, bk. i. no. 6), which on the MS., though not in print, bears the words 'für Delphine Schauroth.' Their acquaintance was renewed on his return in the following [2]October, and the G minor Concerto, written at Munich, is dedicated to her. She was born at Magdeburg in 1814, and was a pupil of Kalkbrenner. Before 1835 she married Mr. Hill Handley, an Englishman, but the union does not appear to have been happy, and was soon dissolved. Schumann, in noticing her Sonate brillante in C minor (Diabelli) and her Caprice (Ibid.), in his 'Neue Zeitschrift für Musik' (ii. 125; v. 132), while kindly quizzing her consecutive fifths, false relations, and other marks of inexperience in composing, pardons them all for the thoroughly musical nature—'Musik in ihrem Wesen,' 'der eigentliche musikalische Nerv'—which her pieces display. Indeed he goes so far as to class her with Clara Wieck as 'two Amazons in a brilliant procession.' In 1839 she played the E♭ Concerto at a concert given in Munich for the Beethoven monument, with great brilliancy and success (A. M. Z. xli. 488). In 1870 she gave a recital at Leipzig on Mendelssohn's birthday, in reference to which the Signale speaks of her own pieces and two of Chopin's as having special charm. She is now (1881) living at Charlottenburg. It is matter of great regret that a life which began so brilliantly should, to all appearance, be so much overclouded at its close. [App. p.781 "She appeared in England when only nine years old, and gave a concert on July 2, 1823, playing Beethoven's E♭ quartet for PF. and strings, and an air and variations by Kalkbrenner."]
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