Ignaz Seyfried

Ignaz Xaver von Seyfried was an Austrian composer, conductor and music director. A pupil of Mozart, Kozeluch and Albrechtsberger, he developed as a pianist and composer within the Viennese classical tradition. From 1797 to 1826 he served as musical director of Emanuel Schikaneder’s theatre, having earlier assisted at the first performances of The Magic Flute. He later conducted the premiere of Beethoven’s original Fidelio. Seyfried left valuable memoirs about Mozart and Beethoven, including his famous recollection of Beethoven performing the Third Piano Concerto from pages filled with minimal notation.

As a composer he wrote operas, operettas, symphonies, quartets, piano concertos and sacred works. He was also active as a critic and co-editor of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in Vienna. His students included Johann Strauss I, Franz von Suppé, Louis Schlösser, Josef Fischhof, Eduard Marxsen and Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst.

He was born into a culturally active family and was the brother of the playwright Josef von Seyfried. His memoirs also contain an account of Mozart in his final days imagining a performance of The Magic Flute featuring his sister-in-law Josepha Hofer as the Queen of the Night. In addition, Seyfried provided detailed biographical notes on Beethoven in the appendix to his Studien im Generalbass, valued in the nineteenth century for their extensive information.

In 1832 he published Ludwig van Beethoven’s Studies in Thoroughbass, Counterpoint and Composition, a collection purportedly drawn from Beethoven’s manuscripts; although widely reissued, it was later shown by Gustav Nottebohm to be largely inauthentic. Seyfried also edited Albrechtsberger’s complete written works, issued after the composer’s death.

His pupils further included Antonio Casimir Cartellieri. Over the course of his career he composed overtures and incidental music for stage works, ballets and melodramas, numerous sacred compositions including masses, motets, requiems, hymns and oratorios, as well as concertantes for clarinet, oboe and waldhorn, and serenades for four waldhorns. He also arranged over twenty operas for wind ensembles, re-scored Michael Haydn’s Deutsche Messe for men’s voices, and prepared choral versions of Beethoven’s Three Equals for his funeral.

Birth place / Death place:
Vienna — Vienna

Years of birth and death:
1776–1841

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