Anton Reicha (also Antonín Rejcha), * 26 February 1770 in Prague, † 28 May 1836 in Paris.
The father of Anton Reicha, a baker, died when his son was not yet a year old. At the age of 11, in 1781, the boy went to Wallerstein to his uncle Joseph Reicha, who, being childless himself, took his nephew in as his own child.
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Under his uncle's care, Anton, who until then could only speak Czech, received a general education, learning German and French and studying flute, violin and piano with great enthusiasm. How far his uncle instructed him personally is unknown. Together with his uncle, Anton joined the court chapel of the Elector Maximilian of Cologne in Bonn. In 1790 he is mentioned there as a violinist, and as a flautist at the Cologne National Theatre. In the chapel he became friends with Beethoven.
In the chapel Reicha came to know works of the Mannheim School and Viennese Classicism, but above all French operas. This is also where his preference for wind instruments developed.
In 1790 Reicha made the acquaintance of Joseph Haydn, who passed through Bonn on his first journey to London. After the chapel was disbanded following the outbreak of the French Revolution, Anton Reicha left his uncle Joseph and went to Hamburg in 1794, where he taught privately.
In 1799 Reicha moved to Paris. The city's flourishing musical life and liberal conditions exerted a strong attraction on him.
He left the city in the winter of 1801/02 and went to Vienna. Warmly received by Haydn, he completed his compositional training there with him, as well as with Albrechtsberger and Salieri. He also renewed his friendship with Beethoven.
Reicha turned down the brilliant offer of the position of Kapellmeister to Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia.
As a composition teacher he enjoyed the widest recognition. In October 1808 he settled permanently in Paris, but despite all his efforts his operas found little response. His instrumental works, above all the wind quintets, met with lasting success, and as a teacher he achieved a high reputation.
A professorship was created for him at the Paris Conservatoire, which he took up on 1 January 1818. Together with Cherubini, Paër, Lesueur, Berton and Boieldieu, he was a member of the Comité d'enseignement. In addition to his compositions, his theoretical writings were also published.
In 1819 Reicha married a Frenchwoman, and in 1829 he took French citizenship. In recognition of his services to music, he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1831, and on 23 March 1835, as Boieldieu's successor, a member of the Institut de France. Shortly afterwards he fell ill and died.
His pupils included Adam, Onslow, Liszt, Berlioz, Dancla, César Franck and J. G. Kastner, among others.
24 Trios for 3 Horns, op. 82
These 24 trios for three horns, op. 82, were published in 1815 in Paris. The publisher Pleyel/Schlesinger issued the work in four volumes (livraisons) of 6 trios each. Reicha was certainly prompted to write this composition by the horn player Louis-François Dauprat (1781–1868), who also seems to have given him valuable help with its technical realisation for natural horn.
Horn trios were by no means an unfamiliar genre to Reicha. At the Wallerstein court, for instance, 43 trios by the horn player Franz Zwierzina (ROM 100) survive, which were certainly also played in Reicha's time. In 1797, 24 trios by the horn player Joseph Kenn were published in Paris. In 1808 this collection was expanded to 36 trios by Kenn's student Louis-François Dauprat and published again (newly edited as ROM 88). This version contains effects such as artificially raised notes in the third horn part played open (ouvert). The same effects can be found in the third horn part of Anton Reicha's op. 82, the trios presented here.
These trios impressively demonstrate the state of virtuoso mastery of the natural horn in Paris at the beginning of the 19th century.
