Wilibald Nagel


Wilibald Nagel was a German musicologist and music critic.

Life and career

Born in Mülheim an der Ruhr Nagel, son of the Lieder and oratorio singer Siegfried Nagel, studied German studies and musicology with Philipp Spitta and Heinrich Bellermann at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1888 he habilitated and accepted a position at the University of Zurich for musicology and taught there as a lecturer at the faculty of philosophy until 1894.
After that he lived in England for study purposes until 1896 and after his return to Germany he worked as a music writer in. In 1898 Nagel was appointed as a lecturer in musicology at the Technical University Darmstadt, in 1905 he was appointed professor. at the there he gave piano lessons and directed the Academic Singing Association. From 1913 to 1917 he lived as a writer in Zurich. From 1917 to 1921 Nagel was editor and editor of the bi-monthly .
In 1921 he became teacher for piano, music theory and history at the Württembergische Hochschule für Musik and took over the music department at the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Nagel became known among other things through his co-authorship of the three-volume work General History of Music by Richard Batka. His research on Mozart is also acknowledged in Karl Storck's Mozart - His Life and Work. His treatises on Die Nürnberger Musikgesellschaft are quoted in several subsequent music-historical works.
His nationalist-reactionary attitude and his aesthetic politicization of the term Worldview as a journalist is evident, among other things, in his position on the Pfitzner-Bekker controversy to "musical impotence" and in articles like Der Futurismus – eine undeutsche Erscheinung, in which he resorts to polemical expressions such as "mindless ridiculousness" and turns against the composers of New Music - among others Ferruccio Busoni, Arnold Schönberg, Josef Matthias Hauer.
Nagel was a member of the Berlin masonic lodge since 1897 Friedrich Wilhelm zur Morgenröthe.
Nagel died in Stuttgart at age 66.

Publications