Jean-Baptiste Schiltz
Fantasy op. 66 for Horn and Piano
Unfortunately, little can be learned about the biography of the composer Schiltz from the standard reference literature. He was active in Paris roughly between 1830 and the early 1850s. Even his first name has not been reliably passed down: some sources give it as Jean Baptiste Schiltz, others simply note H. Schiltz. On the printed editions of his works he is always referred to only as Schiltz.
What exactly Schiltz's profession was is likewise not entirely clear. One printed edition notes:
Ouverture / de l'Opéra / Le Guitarrero / de F. Halévy / arrangée en Harmonie Militaire / par Schiltz / de l'Académie Royale de Musique
According to this, he was active at the Royal Academy of Music in Paris. The AMZ (Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung) of December 1840 records that, for Napoleon Bonaparte's funeral ceremonies in Paris, a funeral march was played along the route from Rouen to Neuilly:
… Hélevy's march was to be performed by 150–200 military musicians; for this purpose the instrument maker Schiltz had 30 trumpets of colossal dimensions built, which were tested at the Conservatoire de Musique and are said to produce a tremendous effect.
Schiltz published numerous methods (tutors) for wind instruments in print, including for signal horn, trumpet, cornet, bassoon, clarinet, serpent, and also horn. What stands out in these works, as well as in his equally numerous fantasies for wind instruments, is that Schiltz composed quite deliberately for the new valve instruments among the brass. Whether he also intended, through these compositions, to promote the instruments he built as an instrument maker cannot be conclusively proven, though it seems quite plausible. The Fantaisie pour Cor et piano op. 66 presented here appeared around 1840 and was written …sur les plus beaux motifs du Brasseur de Preston.
At the time it was common practice to rework popular, currently fashionable operas in the form of fantasies. The opera in question, Le Brasseur de Preston, was composed by Adolphe Adam (1803–1856) in 1838.
