Heinrich Donatien Wilhelm Schulz-Beuthen was a composer of the high Romantic era.
Education
He was intended for the profession of a chemist, and studied chemistry at the University of Breslau, but his drive to write music was greater. From 1862 to 1865 he studied with Ignaz Moscheles and Carl Reinecke at the Leipzig Conservatory, where Edvard Grieg and Johan Svendsen were among his fellow students. He also studied privately with Karl Riedel.
Career
His original surname was Schulz: it was not unusual for people with such common surnames to add the name of their home town to distinguish themselves from others, as Schulz-Beuthen did at some point early in his career. In Switzerland he met Richard Wagner, the novelist Gottfried Keller, and was befriended by Mathilde Wesendonck. Following a nervous breakdown (the details of which are not precisely known) Schulz-Beuthen returned to Germany.
He was unable to compose for several years, but resumed his teaching activities in Dresden, where he lived – except for a short period spent in Vienna, 1893-1895 – from 1881 until his death on 12 March 1915.
His last years were spent in an asylum.
Views
Finding Leipzig"s classicism uncongenial to his more romantic temperament, after his graduation Schulz-Beuthen left Germany for Switzerland, where he taught composition in Zurich from 1866 to 1880.
Membership
He also became friends with the composer Theodor Kirchner, an important member of the Schumann-Brahms circle, and created an orchestral cycle out of arrangements of some of Kirchner’s piano pieces.