Johann Sigismund Kusser (1660-1727)
- Ouverture (VI, C-Dur) des 'Festin des Muses' (1700)
Performers: Musica antiqua KöIn; Reinhard Goеbеl (conductor)
Further info: Johann Sigismund Kusser (1660-1727)
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German composer of Hungarian parentage, active in Germany, England and
Ireland. He received his early musical training from his father, Johann
Kusser (1626-1675), a minister and organist. He lived in Stuttgart as a
boy, then spent 8 years in Paris (1674-82), where he became a pupil of
Jean Baptiste Lully. He subsequently was a violin teacher at the Ansbach
court (1682-83), becoming opera Kapellmeister in Braunschweig in 1690.
In 1695 he became co-director of the Hamburg Opera, but left the next
year and was active in Nuremberg and Augsburg as an opera composer. He
was again in Stuttgart from 1700 to 1704 as Ober-Kapellmeister. In 1705
he appeared in London, and in 1709 settled in Dublin, where he was made
Chappel-Master of Trinity College in 1717 and Master of the Musick
"attending his Majesty's State in Ireland" in 1717. He was greatly
esteemed as an operatic conductor. Johann Mattheson, in his 'Volkommener
Capellmeister', holds him up as a model of efficiency. Kusser is
historically significant for being the mediator between the French and
the German styles of composition, and the first to use Lully's methods
and forms in German instrumental music. Lully's influence is shown in
Kusser's set of 6 suites for Strings, 'Composition de musique suivant la
methode française' (Stuttgart, 1682). His extant music includes four
sets of orchestral suites, the 1711 birthday ode, the 1713 serenata and
collections of arias from his operas Erindo and Ariadne.
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