1869 portrait of Catharina PrattenTim Beatty performs Pratten's Malbrook Fantasy on her instrument in 2021
Catharina Josepha Pratten (15 November 1824 – 10 October 1895) was a German guitar virtuoso, composer, and teacher, also known as Madame Sidney Pratten.
She was born Catharina Josepha PelzerinMülheim on 15 November 1824,[1] the daughter of the German guitarist and music teacher Ferdinand Pelzer. Her family moved to England in 1829.[2] On 24 September 1854, she married the English flautist Robert Sidney Pratten.[3][4]
Catharina began touring in Europe from the age of eight, and by 1844 was well known in England as a composer and guitar teacher. She soon established her school - Madame Sidney Pratten's Guitar School - and published tutorials, including Guitar School: a Book of Methods (1859)[5] and Learning the Guitar: Simplified (1874), which advocated the use of alternative tuning in E major.[6] Her pupils included Queen Victoria’s daughters Louise, Princess of Wales and Beatrice, and the actor, singer, guitarist, and composer Ernest Shand.[2]
She composed some 250 works, most of them for solo guitar or voice and guitar.[7] Heike Matthiesen has recorded some of the guitar pieces, including the variations on Carnaval de Venise, the two Fairy Sketches, and the Serenade.[8]
Her residence in London was 22 Dorset Street, Portman Square, where she lived after the death of her husband in 1868, and where she died on 10 October 1895.[9] Her sister, Giulia Pelzer (also a teacher), continued to run the guitar school after Catharina’s death. Catharina is buried at Brompton Cemetery, London.[10]
She owned many guitars herself and selected others for her pupils, often with her label inside. One -
"in splendid condition" - was advertised for sale in The Times in 1939.[11]
^see Nicoletta Confalone in "il Fronimo" n.181, Jan. 2018, who at p.21, note 3. refers about the discovery by Ulrich Wedemeier of the birth certificate
