A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Stockhausen, Margarethe

by Louisa Mary Middleton

STOCKHAUSEN, Madame, was born Margarethe Schmuck, at Gebweiler in 1803, and trained in Paris as a concert-singer by Cartruffo. She became the wife of the harpist and composer Franz Stockhausen, and the mother of the singer Julius Stockhausen. Husband and wife travelled, giving not very remunerative concerts in Switzerland (1825). Paris was visited later, but Mme. Stockhausen's greatest successes attended her in England, where she was induced to return almost every year from 1828 to 1840, singing at some of the concerts of the Philharmonic and Vocal Societies, and also taking part in the principal private and benefit concerts. She had little or no dramatic feeling, but as she gained in power she grew in public favour, and came to be recognised as a true musician and an accomplished singer of Swiss airs (with or without the 'jodel' burden), and also, and especially, those of Mozart, Spohr, Handel and Haydn. Mme. Stockhausen was frequently engaged at provincial festivals, and her delivery of the music of Mary in Spohr's 'Calvary,' evoked special praise among her oratorio parts. The Earl of Mount-Edgecumbe, in his criticism of the Musical Festival in Westminster Abbey, 1834, notes the 'science and skill which enabled her always to sing well.'

Mme. Stockhausen's voice is described by Henry Phillips as 'a clear, high soprano, the upper part of her register being unusually sweet and liquid, qualities which she rarely missed the opportunity of exhibiting, for she almost always terminated her songs on the highest octave.'

A few years after her farewell appearance in London, a home was made in Colmar, whither the Stockhausens retired to devote themselves to the education of their six children. Up to 1849 Mme. Stockhausen was heard with her son, at local concerts; she left Alsace only occasionally to appear in public, and in her last visit to Paris (1849) her singing showed a great falling off. She died in 1877, nearly ten years after her husband, much regretted by her many English friends.

[ L. M. M. ]