Franz Xaver Niemetschek

Niemetschek, Franz Xaver

tschechischer Pädagoge, Musikkritiker und Mozartbiograph (1766-1849). Partial archive of the Niemetschek-Neuling-Richter family. Sadska, Prag, Wien u. a. O. Über 100 Briefe, Dokumente und Notizen von, an und zu Franz Xaver Niemetschek und Familie.
$ 27,040 / 25.000 € (42774/BN27874)

Copious archive aquired from the direct descendants of Mozart's first biographer. While the documents contain no new information on Mozart himself, they do shed new light on Niemetschek's hitherto rather obscure biography and provide a vivid account of the life of the Viennese and Bohemian bourgeoisie during the Biedermeier period. In particular, the present material provides documentation that the musically-minded scholar Niemetschek, a pianist himself, could very well have visited Mozart's concerts in 1787 during his time at the University of Prague, thus once more fuelling the old debate whether the biographer and his subject did in fact meet.

The archive comprises material from Niemetschek's lifetime and from that of his two children up to the early 1860s. A detailed catalogue is available upon request..

buy now