Bachmann, Carl Ludwig
- E. Eugene Helm
- , revised by Martin Elste
Extract
(b Berlin, 1748; d Berlin, May 26, 1809). German viol player and instrument maker. He was a viol player in the royal chapel from 1765, and in 1770, together with J.F.E. Benda, he established the Berlin Liebhaberkonzerte. With Benda’s death in 1785 Bachmann succeeded him as director of the concerts; in the same year he married the noted singer and pianist Charlotte Caroline Wilhelmine Stöwe. Throughout this period he also made instruments in the shop of his father, the violin maker and court violinist Anton Bachmann (1716–1800), and may have been responsible for several innovations, including a screw-tuning mechanism for double basses which he introduced in about 1778, although a similiar mechanism was already known in France, having been developed by Benoît Fleury in 1766. He continued alone in his father’s business from 1791, at about which time he passed the directorship of the Liebhaberkonzerte to his younger brother, the court violinist Friedrich Wilhelm Bachmann (...
