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First Name

 Johann

Middle Name

 

Last Name

 Burgmüller

Birth Year

 1806

Death Year

 1874

Biography

 German musical director and composer. Burgmüller’s father intended him for an academic career, but a love of the theatre drew him into stage management. At 20 he held a post as theatre director in Weimar and subsequently obtained similar positions in various south German centres. In 1805 he married Baroness Anne Therese von Zandt and settled in Düsseldorf the following year, remaining there until his death. He founded the Lower Rhine Festival in 1818, an important event in the German musical calendar to this day; and while principally an organizer and director, he also found time to compose many songs, sacred pieces and stage works, some of which (e.g. the Singspiel Das hätte ich nicht gedacht and the incidental music for Macbeth) contain elements of Romanticism. His sons Johann Friedrich and Norbert became prominent composers and pianists. Friedrich settled in Paris after 1832, where he established himself as a fashionable writer of songs of little merit, descriptive piano studies mostly intended for children, and stage works including a ballet, La péri (1843). Bibliography: Richard Kershaw. Burgmüller, Johann August Franz. In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/04362 (accessed September 23, 2009).