Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Albrechtsberger, John George

Albrechtsberger, John George, was born at Klosterneuburg, in the year 1736, and at the age of only seven years was engaged as a singing boy in his native town, from whence he removed to the Abbey of Moelk, where he con-ducted a school. In the mean time he learned the organ and composition of Monn, the court organist, and was soon himself appointed organist at Raab. In 1772, he obtained the situation of court organist, and member of the academy at Vienna, and subsequently was made chapel-master at the Cathedral of St. Stephen's, at Vienna. He died in 1803. Albrechtsberger was one of the most learned of modern contrapuntists. He formed a great number of eminent scholars, among whom Beethoven is particularly distinguished. Haydn had the greatest esteem for Albrechtsberger, and is said sometimes to have consulted him professionally. Of his works, his "Elementary Treatise on Composition," published in 1790, at Leipsic, is the one by which he is most generally known ; it is an excellent book, and is for modern composition what the Gradus of Fux is for ancient music. The principal part of this work has been translated into French. He also wrote "Methods of Harmony," "Figured Bass," and " Composition," adapted for self-instruction. His remains rest in the same burying-place with those of his friends and associates, Haydn and Mozart. Among his distinguished pupils, in addition to Beethoven, were Eybler, Hummel, Soyfried, Lidesdorf, Schneider, Weigl, and Moscheles ; and though Albrechtsberger had no power to form, he had the ability to direct, the minds of these eminent men. He did not make them, but he enabled them to be what they were. The seed fell on good soil, hut it was his seed, and he must have felt proud of such a pupil as that colossus of harmony-the wizard and the poet - BEETHOVEN- Clementi made Albrechtsbergerknown to England as a composer. There seems to have existed, among some of the German school, a predisposition for complicated harmony; their musical aliment appears to have necessarily generated fugue and canon, or the organ of philofugativeness must have been developed in an unusual degree. Albrechtsberger said of himself', "I have no merit in composing good fugues, for I do not recollect ever having an idea that might not be employed in double counterpoint." It is from Albrechtsberger and Sebastian Bach, and like men, that the materiel of harmony is acquired : they have furnished our musical store-houses and arsenals ; they have equipped our Haydns, Mozarts, and Beethovens for the field; they discovered and laid bare "the chains that tie the hidden soul of harmony."