Catharina Josepha Prattenaus romantic

Catharina Josepha Pratten (known as Madame Sidney Pratten, * 1821 in Mülheim am Rhein; † 10 October 1895 in London) was a German-English guitarist, composer and guitar teacher.

Life

Catharina Josepha was born in 1821, the daughter of the German guitarist Ferdinand Pelzer. She grew up in England, as did her younger sister Giulia, and received guitar lessons from her father. She became known as a prodigy on the guitar and performed with Giulio Regondi as a child.

After a short stay in Exeter, she married in 1854 the flautist Robert Sidney Pratten (1824-1868), also known since childhood and from a renowned musical family, with whom she had three sons. This branch of the Pratten family probably used the second name Sidney to distinguish themselves from other branches of the family. After her marriage, Catharina appeared publicly under the name Madame Sidney Pratten.

Under this name, she was able to establish a reputation as an excellent guitar teacher in particular. It may also have contributed to this that she taught the Princesses Louise and Beatrice, among others, at the royal court. Later (from 1888), the guitarist and composer Ernest Shand was among her pupils. Yates refers to her in this context as the “most respected guitarist of her time”.

In her instructional works, Pratten increasingly showed simple and easy-to-learn ways to play the guitar. Turnbull sees this as reflecting the decline of the guitar in the course of the nineteenth century: Whereas her Guitar Tutor still contained pieces by Fernando Sor and Mauro Giuliani, the subsequent Learning the Guitar Simplified already featured “pleasant and easy pieces” and had an illustration of the fingerboard on every other page. Finally, Colored Diagrams, published in 1891, used simple colour markings, and Instructions for the Guitar Tuned in E-Major was expressly dedicated to “those who have little time for practice or learn to play the guitar late in life”.

After her death, her sister Giulia administered the legacy and also continued the guitar school in London.
Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharina_Pratten


Sheet music

Score for chamber music

Forgottenfor Gitarreguitar
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for Gitarreguitar
Edition: Downloaddownload