Franz Danzi

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Franz Ignaz Danzi (June 15, 1763 - April 13, 1826) was a German cellist, composer and conductor, the son of the noted Italian cellist Innocenz Danzi. Born in Schwetzingen, Franz Danzi worked in Mannheim, Munich, Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, where he died.

Danzi lived at a significant time in the history of European concert music. His career, spanning the transition from the late Classical to the early Romantic styles, coincided with the origin of much of the music that lives in our concert halls and is familiar to contemporary classical-music audiences. As a young man he knew Mozart, whom he revered; he was a contemporary of Beethoven, about whom he—like many of his generation—had strong but strongly mixed feelings; and he was a mentor for the young Weber, whose music he respected and promoted.

Born in Schwetzingen and raised in Mannheim, Danzi joined the superlative orchestra of the elector Karl Theodor as a teenager. His father, principal cellist of the orchestra, was praised by Mozart for his playing at the premiere of Idomeneo. Danzi remained behind in a more provincial Mannheim when Karl Theodor moved his court to Munich in 1778. After an apprenticeship with the small theater orchestra left in Mannheim he rejoined the main court in Munich as principal cellist—taking his father’s position—in 1784.

By 1798 he rose to the position of Vizekapellmeister in one of the most important musical centers of Europe, but in 1807, unhappy at the treatment he received at court and despairing of any further advancement, he left Munich to be Kapellmeister in the smaller and less important court of Württemberg in Stuttgart. After five years he moved again to Karlsruhe, where he spent the last years of his life struggling to raise the modest courtly musical establishment to respectability.

Although not himself a composer of the first rank, Danzi was a highly competent musician. Known today chiefly for his woodwind quintets, he composed in most major genres of the time, including opera, church music, orchestral works and many varieties of chamber music. He was a first-rate cellist as well as a conscientious and—by all reports—effective orchestra leader and conductor.

Francesca Lebrun (1756-1791), a singer and composer, was Franz Danzi's sister.

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