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Simon Sechter (11 October 1788 – 10 September 1867) was an Austrian music theory, composer, conducting, and organist. He is best known as a strict music teacher, whose many students included Anton Bruckner, Sigismond Thalberg, and Henri Vieuxtemps. In 1851, he was professor of composition at the Vienna Conservatory; after Sechter's death, his student Bruckner would succeed him and continue teaching his approach to harmony and counterpoint.
A highly prolific composer, his total output numbers more than 8000 compositions, particularly since he sought to write a fugue every day. However, Sechter's best known works are his later (post-1825) masses and oratorios. Carl Christian Müller (18311914)http://www.lieder.net/lieder/m/kcmuller.html compiled and adapted Sechter's Die richtige Folge der Grundharmonien as The Correct Order of Fundamental Harmonies: A Treatise on Fundamental Basses, and their Inversions and Substitutes (Wm. A. Pond, 1871; G. Schirmer, 1898).
Sechter had strict teaching methods. For instance, he forbade Bruckner to write any original compositions while studying counterpoint with him. The scholar Robert Simpson believes that "Sechter unknowingly brought about Bruckner's originality by insisting that it be suppressed until it could no longer be contained." The Essence of Bruckner By Robert Simpson, Robert Wilfred Levick Simpson Gollancz, 1967 Sechter taught Bruckner by mail from 1855 to 1861 and considered Bruckner his most dedicated pupil. Upon Bruckner's graduation, Sechter wrote a fugue dedicated to his student.
In the three-volume treatise on the principles of composition, Die Grundsätze der musikalischen Komposition, Sechter wrote a seminal work that influenced many later theorists. Sechter's ideas are derived from Jean-Philippe Rameau's theories of the fundamental bass, always diatonic even when the surface is highly chromatic; music theory historians strongly associate Sechter with the Viennese conception of fundamental bass theory.p. 60, Cook (2007) Nicholas. Oxford The Schenker project: culture, race, and music theory in fin-de-siècle Vienna Oxford University Press Sechter was an advocate of just intonation over well temperament.
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