Johann Andre

Johann Anton Andre was a German violinist, composer, and music publisher born in Offenbach am Main on 6 October 1775. From a very early age, his musical talent attracted attention, and he received instruction from Ferdinand Frenzel in violin and Johann Georg Vollweiler in theory and composition. His academic path took him to Jena, from where he embarked on several major concert tours that contributed to his early reputation as both performer and composer.

After the death of his father, Johann Andre assumed control of the family publishing business in their hometown. Through prudent management, the publication of many of his own compositions, which enjoyed popularity for a long period in southern Germany, and especially through the acquisition of Mozart’s musical estate, he elevated the firm to exceptional prominence. In 1799 he purchased a substantial collection of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s manuscripts from the composer’s widow Constanze and brought them to Offenbach. This remarkable archive contained more than 270 autographs, including the operas The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute, numerous string quartets and quintets, several piano concertos, and A Little Night Music.

Drawing on this invaluable collection, the Andre publishing house prepared and issued several editions of Mozart’s works, some of them for the first time. Because of his extensive efforts in editing, cataloguing, and studying Mozart’s manuscripts, Johann Anton Andre later acquired the reputation of being the "father of Mozart research." Before 1800 he had already composed about seventy works, and he continued composing actively thereafter, leaving behind well over one hundred pieces.

By the early twentieth century, the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary described his contribution to German and world culture in particularly broad terms. Andre composed symphonies for large orchestra, a significant body of chamber works, duets for various instruments, dances, operas, cantatas, and songs, although many of these works have since fallen into obscurity. His theoretical treatise Lehrbuch der Tonsetzkunst, published in two volumes between 1832 and 1843, reflected the same thoroughness found in his music; he had intended it to span six volumes but did not complete it.

Andre also earned recognition in music history for publishing Mozart’s diary and several of the composer’s original scores. He was among the first to apply Alois Senefelder’s technique of lithography on a wide scale to music printing, helping modernize methods of music publication. Johann Anton Andre died in Offenbach am Main on 5 April 1842.

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