Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754–1812)
Concerto No. 1 in D Major for Horn and Orchestra
– First Edition –
Franz Anton Hoffmeister was born in 1754 in Rottenburg am Neckar. The eighth of eleven children of Martin Hoffmeister and his wife Regina, née Nadler, he grew up in Rottenburg until the age of fourteen. His great-grandfather Sebastian Hoffmeister was mayor of the town around 1648. In 1768 Hoffmeister went to Vienna, at first to study law, but soon turned to music.
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Hoffmeister became a renowned composer in the shadow of the “greats” Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, and at the same time an important publisher of these classical masters. Ludwig van Beethoven, whose famous “Pathétique” piano sonata, Op. 13, Hoffmeister was the first to publish, once called him a “brother in the art of music”. He was also a personal friend of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Mozart’s Piano Quartet K. 478 was first published by him, Mozart repeatedly asked him for money, and he dedicated the “Hoffmeister Quartet” K. 499 to him. Joseph Haydn, whose chamber music he also published, was even called a “stingy character” by Hoffmeister in a letter to his business partner.
Around the turn of the century Hoffmeister co-founded a music publishing house in Leipzig, from which, after the death of his partner A. Kühnel, the still-famous publisher C. F. Peters emerged.
As a composer Hoffmeister was extremely productive: he wrote almost seventy symphonies, many serenades, several concertos and countless chamber works in every conceivable and some unusual scorings, as well as a number of secular and sacred vocal works, among them the opera “Der Königssohn aus Ithaka” (The Prince of Ithaca), which was well known in his day, to a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. His output comprises several hundred works, for which no complete catalogue exists to this day. His well-known Viola Concerto in D major is a required piece for every violist auditioning for a professional orchestra today. His music also belongs to the standard repertoire of flautists and clarinettists, as well as to many chamber music combinations.
Hoffmeister did not labour over every bar in order to leave something great to posterity. He wrote with a light pen for the here and now and hit the taste of his audience. All in all, he is to be regarded as one of the most remarkable, skilful and prolific composers of refined, artful entertainment music of his time. Franz Anton Hoffmeister died in Vienna in 1812.
His works are widely scattered to this day and only incompletely catalogued. Alongside his extensive output as a composer, his work as a music publisher was just as significant: he was an important partner for W. A. Mozart, and the publishing house C. F. Peters, which still exists today, has its origins with Hoffmeister.
Hoffmeister’s Works with Solo Horn
For the reasons given above, the number of Hoffmeister’s works with solo horn cannot be stated exactly. His two concertos for 2 horns and orchestra (first editions as ROM 27 and ROM 28) were written around 1792 in Vienna. According to their titles, they were composed for the Wallerstein hornists Nagel and Zwierzina; one of the two quotes Mozart’s Horn Concerto K. 495 several times.
Besides several quintets for horn and string quartet, Hoffmeister’s oeuvre includes a concerto for 3 horns, which was performed in 1780 by the hornists Steinmüller (who were employed at Esterházy under Haydn). It was heard in Leipzig and Magdeburg in 1801. Sadly, the only known copy burned in 1944 during a bombing raid on Darmstadt. Only a copy of the middle movement survives, which was published for the first time as ROM 35.
Another concerto, in E major for horn and orchestra, was found in the music department of the Berlin State Library and was first published as ROM 150 by Robert Ostermeyer Musikedition.
The Concerto in D Major
Supplement Volume XV of the Leipzig music publisher Breitkopf, covering the years 1782, 1783 and 1784, contains an entry for a concerto in D major, which Breitkopf offered as a manuscript copy:
The editor has found a copy of this concerto.
The range of the concerto is one of the largest the editor knows of in a horn concerto of this period. In bar 75 of the first movement the horn is taken up to a sounding f''-sharp. In bars 171–173 of the first movement Hoffmeister notates so-called “fault tones” (Faultöne). These are notes in the bass register that do not exist on the natural horn’s normal scale, but which skilled soloists can nevertheless produce (with limitations in tone) by lowering the pitch from the low fundamental. Such notes are very rare in the solo literature of the time (e.g. in ROM 009, Joh. And. Amon, Quintet No. 1 in F major, horn, 1st movement, bars 119–120).
To make the work easier to play, the horn part has been edited in both D and F, and simplifications are marked in the very high passages.
Numerous performances show that Hoffmeister’s horn concerto was popular. On 15 April 1782, for example, it was heard at the Societaets-Theater in Leipzig, played by the hornist Hummel – perhaps even as its premiere. Further performances in Leipzig followed in 1799 and 1808 (see www.french-horn.net).