# Franz Xaver Richter



## neoshredder

Shocked no thread on him. Just discoring his Symphonies right now. Loving it. Here is one I really like.


----------



## clavichorder

He was a good composer of some outstanding qualities, namely his foot in both baroque and classical styles that gave him a more sophisticated approach to dissonance. I like this one: 




Seeing the numbers, I was not aware of how prolific his output was.


----------



## hammeredklavier

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Xaver_Richter
Franz (Czech: František) Xaver Richter, known as François Xavier Richter in France (December 1, 1709 - September 12, 1789) was an Austro-Moravian singer, violinist, composer, conductor and music theoretician who spent most of his life first in Austria and later in Mannheim and in Strasbourg, where he was music director of the cathedral. From 1783 on Haydn's favourite pupil Ignaz Pleyel was his deputy at the cathedral.

The most traditional of the first generation composers of the so-called Mannheim school, he was highly regarded in his day as a contrapuntist. As a composer he was equally at home in the concerto and the strict church style. Mozart heard a mass by Richter on his journey back from Paris to Salzburg in 1778 and called it charmingly written. Richter, as a contemporary engraving clearly shows, must have been one of the first conductors to actually have conducted with a music sheet roll in his hand.

Richter wrote chiefly symphonies, concertos for woodwinds, trumpet, chamber and church music, his masses receiving special praise. He was a man of a transitional period, and his symphonies in a way constitute one of the missing links between the generation of Bach and Handel and the Viennese classic. Although sometimes contrapuntal in a learned way, Richter's orchestral works nevertheless exhibit considerable drive and verve. Until a few years ago Richter "survived" with recordings of his trumpet concerto in D major but recently a number of chamber orchestras and ensembles have taken many of his pieces, particularly symphonies and concertos, into their repertoire. He was also on friendly terms with Haydn and Mozart.

In April 1769 he succeeded Joseph Garnier as Kapellmeister at Strasbourg Cathedral, where both his performing and composing activities turned increasingly to sacred music. He was by then recognized as a leading contrapuntist and church composer. Johann Sebastian Bach's first biographer, composer and musicologist Johann Nikolaus Forkel, wrote about Richter in 1782:

"Ist ein sehr guter Contrapunktist und Kirchenkomponist." ("Is a very good contrapuntist and church composer.")


----------



## TxllxT

Photo from Franz Xaver Richter's buste (1709-1789) in the town of his birth Holešov (Czech Republic, Central Moravia).


----------



## hammeredklavier

There used to be a video of Richter's te deum (1781) on youtube, but it's now gone. It contrasted with his older te deum (1742), the newer one sounds Classical, while the older one sounds Baroque. An interesting composer with a life-span long enough to encompass both periods.


----------

