Dehn, Siegfried Wilhelm

Dehn, Siegfried Wilhelm 

Born Feb. 25, 1799, in Altona; died Apr. 12, 1858, in Berlin. German music theorist and teacher.

Dehn received a legal and a musical education in Leipzig. In 1837 he published a collection of many-voiced vocal compositions of the 16th to 17th century (12 books). In 1842 he began to direct the music section at the Royal Library in Berlin and transformed it into a major music repository. An important work by Dehn was his textbook of harmony (1840), in which he developed the methods of B. Klein and the theoretical principles contained in C. Catel’s treatise on harmony and L. Cherubini’s course on counterpoint and fugue. In 1859, Dehn published his textbook of counterpoint, canon, and fugue, which was prepared for publication by his pupil B. Scholz. Dehn was an outstanding teacher; among his pupils were M. Glinka, A. G. and N.G. Rubinstein, and P. Cornelius.

WORKS

Theoretisch-praktische Harmonielehre mil angefügten General-bassbeispielen, 2nd ed. Berlin, 1860.
Lehre vom Contrapunkt, dem Canon und der Fuge, 2nd ed. Berlin, 1883.

REFERENCE

Asaf ev, B. (Igor’ Glebov). Glinka. Moscow, 1947. Pages 288–92.