Gustav Jacobsthal was the brother of my grandmother's grandmother...
He was a musician, composer and musicologist.

Gustav Jacobsthal was born 1845 in Pyritz, a little town in Eastern Germany (Pommern, today in Poland) and he studied composition and history of music in Berlin from 1865 to 1870. After historical studies in Vienna he began his own researches and his teaching in Straßburg after the German-French-War in 1872. There he built up the first Institute for Musicology in Germany and during 33 years he taught mainly about problems how to reconstruct mediaeval music from partly unclear sources, but also about the history of the opera and about Mozart. With his Academic Choral Society he performed vocal works from elder periods and occasionally some own compositions, traditional madrigals mainly on texts of the Hebrew bible (Psalms in German translation). In 1905 he went back to Berlin, where he died in 1912. Because his researches and his teachings claimed his full attention he did not publish the results of his investigations and today it is necessary to consult his estate to get information about his doctrines. In several publications Peter Sühring, musicologist living in Berlin, had given some insights into his studies, until now only in German:

• Das entraetselte Mittelalter. Gustav Jacobsthal und seine Schicksale, in: Concerto Nr. 152, Köln April 2000, S. 16-22.
• "Der einzelne Ausdruck mit seiner Gewalt". Eine Beethoven-Kritik Gustav Jacobsthals aus dem Jahre 1889, in: Die Musikforschung 55 (2002), Kassel, S. 373-385.
• Verwirklichung des Humboldt'schen Bildungsideals. Gustav Jacobsthal - ein fast vergessener Begruender der neueren deutschen Musikwissenschaft, in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 20 Mai 2003, S. 11.
• Gustav Jacobsthal als Kritiker der Modaltheorie avant la lettre. Ergebnsse archivalischer Studien, in: Acta musicologica 75 (2003), Kassel, S. 137-172.

For more information about Gustav Jacobsthal contact Peter Sühring at: Peter.Suehring@gmx.de.