Author: David Hackett

The theatre was in Gioachino Rossini’s lifeblood. Born in the small Adriatic city of Pesaro, some of his earliest memories were of touring with his musician parents from town to town, as they sought work in local operatic productions. Rossini senior was a French horn player (and occasional abattoir inspector), while his …

John Field may well have been classical music’s first genuine rock-star. A world-famous pianist, he loved to perform in fashionable salons and glittering concert halls while relishing the money and adulation his fame brought him. Outside of performing venues, he devoted himself to a life of …

It is a measure of Franz Danzi’s versatility that music historians have never quite agreed upon his overriding legacy as a composer. Was he a master of chamber music, especially in the early evolution of the wind quintet? Or was he the all-important mentor of Carl Maria von Weber …

If you were measuring Johann Wilhelm Wilms’ current standing as a composer on a scale of one to ten, with one being “a little neglected” and ten “completely forgotten”, he would probably be about a nine. But had you lived in the Netherlands …

Despite his varied and successful career as a composer, pianist, concert administrator and one-time amanuensis to Ludwig van Beethoven, Ferdinand Ries seems to have spent a surprising amount of his time trying to avoid conscription into an invading army, usually a French one …

Weber was a man of many contradictions. He wrote the first German Romantic opera – indeed he practically invented the genre – and yet all of his training was in high European Classicism. He was near-sighted, consumptive and walked with a limp all of his life – Beethoven would …

There is a temptation to regard social progress as an inevitable part of history, whereas it is often much more fragile than we think and all too easy to put into reverse. In later blog posts we will encounter several mid-nineteenth century female composers …

Etienne Méhul must have been a resilient man. His career spanned countless political upheavals in his country – the French Revolution, the post-Revolution Terror, the First Republic, the Directory, the Consulate, the First Empire and then the Bourbon Restoration – and yet he not only survived each regime intact …

Alessandro Rolla is best known today for having supposedly taught famous violin virtuoso, Niccolò Paganini, even if some doubt remains over whether he actually did so. The story goes that Paganini’s father took his 13-year-old son to see Rolla, with the young prodigy recalling …

A talented, dynamic colossus of a man, Johann Nepomuk Hummel was a key musical figure across the first three decades of the nineteenth century. Alongside Beethoven, he served as the other all-important link between Mozart and the early Romantics. He excelled at writing music for his instrument…