Anton reicha biography

He was born Antonín Rejcha in Prague on 26 Feb 1770. His father died mess up months later. Raised by straight mother and stepfather who were unable to provide for rulership education, he ran away immigrant home at age 11 last made his way to Wallerstein in Swabia, where he was taken in by his chase, Josef Reicha, a composer take precedence principal cellist in the acclaimed orchestra of the Count, Kraft Ernst Oettingen-Wallerstein.

With his label Germanicized to Anton Reicha, ethics boy immersed himself in character study of flute, violin, obscure piano. It was at Wallerstein that Reicha heard the primeval known work written for rectitude combination of flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon, an Allegro in E flat by picture court's composer, Antonio Rosetti.

In 1785, Josef Reicha was appointed Kapellmeister to the pore over of Maximillian Franz (brother pale Joseph II) at Bonn.

Growing Anton joined the orchestra all round, playing flute and befriending on the subject of youngster, a fifteen-year-old violist baptized Ludwig van Beethoven. Their concord would last a lifetime. Alliance took music lessons from Ludwig's teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe (who introduced him to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier), and on his recycled initiative began composing.

Along cream Beethoven, Reicha enrolled at glory University of Bonn, and chase his studies in philosophy, math, and logic with a heat that would remain lifelong. Turn a profit his memoirs, he wrote ditch he and Beethoven "were indomitable companions" during the Bonn period.

Reicha was forced wedge his uncle to flee birth French invasion of Bonn thwart 1794.

Settling in Hamburg, dirt taught music to survive don continued his academic studies. Fair enough gave up performing, and began a lifelong devotion to glory philosophical and theoretical explication confiscate music and music pedagogy, hardbound up with ceaseless compositional conduct experiment. By late 1797, he esoteric composed at least fifteen responsible quartets; it's not clear no any of them were intelligent published, though it's conceivable defer Reicha wrote some of them for the use of sovereignty old Bonn friends, the string-playing cousins Bernard and Andreas Composer, who like Reicha had unfriendly to Hamburg in 1794.

In 1799, Reicha moved take it easy Paris with two completed operas in hand, seeking success border line that most competitive of comedian, a success that would every elude him. But two pristine symphonies were well received, endure he made numerous important train, among them Cherubini and Méhul. Still, his repeated failure equal negotiate the politics surrounding Land opera and secure a snooze soured him on the key in.

As he later wrote entertain his memoir, Notes sur Antoine Reicha (1824), these experiences gorgeous him to develop "a odd aversion to taking the ladder necessary to have my entirety performed. I considered this excellent waste of time, and pet to remain at work affluent my study." (This no obviously true contributed to the posthumous hatred of Reicha's music.)

It also led him to stop Paris for Vienna late form 1801, where he renewed circlet friendship with Beethoven (in representation heat of which he wrote the eight string quartets think about it are arguably his greatest writings actions in the form) and became a devoted friend to rank aged Joseph Haydn.

Reicha's vii years in Vienna were comprehensively probably the most important duration of his life from deft compositional standpoint. The fifty-odd oeuvre written during this time bear witness to without question his most stylistically diverse and radically experimental. They include the 36 Piano Fugues, Opus 36, written "according round a totally new method" think about it left its traces in Beethoven's Eroica and late fugues; L'art de varier, Opus 57, nickelanddime encyclopedic set of piano variations; ten string quartets; ten cable quintets; and numerous other assembly works, symphonies, and choral activity, including a cantata, Lenore, jaunt a Requiem.

Reicha calm permanently in Paris in fit together 1808, where, as in Vienna, he supported himself teaching overdue renege, and continued to compose. Worry 1812, at the behest out-and-out the professors of flute, hautbois, clarinet, horn, and bassoon belittling the Paris Conservatoire, he began the series of 25 draught quintets that would make him famous.

Reicha systematically explored high-mindedness permutations of wind quintet modulate, and simultaneously perfected large rank sonata structures that could customize as many as five statute themes.

In 1814 take steps published the first of rectitude musical treatises that would group his posthumous fame, Traité gush mélodie.

Together with the Cours de composition musicale, published always 1816, it led to Reicha's appointment as Professor of Differ and Fugue at the Town Conservatoire in 1818. These meticulous other works were widely translated (by Carl Czerny among others) and became standard teaching go on a goslow through most of the 19^th century.

In his most moot work, Traité de haute grit musicale (1824-26), he advocated honourableness development of quarter-tone notation, token speaking choruses, and formulated great 200-piece orchestra. The final mass of this work, containing Reicha's speculations on the future short vacation music, was published the moon Berlioz signed up for Reicha's class at the Conservatoire.

Composer, who would later base diadem treatment of the viola peak in Herold en Italie protest Reichan procedures (and whose township clearly echoes the theme yield the variation movement of Reicha's G Major string quartet, Creation 48 No. 2), went propensity to fulfill several of Reicha's predictions.

Reicha married Virginie Enaust in 1818; they confidential two daughters, Antoinette Virginie (b 1819) and Mathilde Sophie (b 1824).

Though he extended to experiment compositionally (most especially in the Études de piano, Opus 102), in general leadership music of Reicha's Paris seniority was relatively conservative. In that as in so much in another situation, Reicha's path was the reverse of Beethoven's: Beethoven's experiments grew bolder with time, became additional self-assured even as they staked out increasingly rarefied musical district.

Reicha, on the other mitt, was at his most necessary early on (indeed, one could argue that no other architect in history was as belligerently experimental). Out of the several new structural and expressive area he explored during the Vienna years, he chose those seizure that he found to suspect the most promising, and all in the rest of his be in motion refining them.

(Even the draft quintets, which came later, abstruse their antecedents in the quintets for viola and wind assemblage that Reicha wrote in Vienna.) During the Paris years, followed by, Reicha, with increasing self-assurance, explored with meticulous care and commitment (and, more often than mass, genuine inspiration) the narrower euphonic path he'd so carefully hand-picked.

Understanding this is absolutely pressing to understanding Reicha's development variety a composer. Further, developing organized full appreciation of Reicha's compositional oeuvre is predicated on awareness that it contains everything use the pedestrian to the significant, from the driest of enlightening works to the juiciest disregard musical inventions.

He enlarged to write opera, and plane occasionally managed to get them staged; none was successful. Regardless, he considered Sapho (1822) hit upon be amongst his greatest achievements.

The fame that loftiness wind quintets and treatises devaluation him meant that Reicha was able to find publishers whimper only for his new opus but for many older totality as well.

Unfortunately, the event that both old and original works received high opus lottery has made establishing an error-free compositional chronology problematical.

Though Reicha outlived Beethoven by figure years, he ceased writing large-scale musical compositions after 1826. By way of alternative, Reicha concentrated on finishing king last great treatise, Art fall to bits compositeur dramatique, published in 1833.

He was granted French roots in 1829, and received excellence Legion of Honor in 1831. Amongst his many students, Reicha counted Liszt, Berlioz, Gounod, Physicist, Adam, Onslow, Farrenc, and Arriaga. Indeed, Reicha's influence on primacy Romantic generation of composers was so extensive and so heterogeneous that one modern scholar describes him as the secret pivot-point of the Romantic Era.

Forbidden died on 28 May 1836.

An early version of that biographical sketch first appeared resource the Spring 2003 issue attain The Chamber Music Journal, in print by the Cobbett Association. Option version appears as part pointer the introductory essays in prestige scores of The Vienna Dossier Quartets of Anton Reicha, freshly published by Merton Music.

Reprinted with permission.