János Fusz

János Fusz, also known as Johann Evangelist Fuss, was a Hungarian composer born in Tolna in 1777 and died in Buda in 1819. His output falls within the transitional years between Viennese Classicism and early Romanticism, and he is regarded as a representative of the German tradition within Hungarian music of the early nineteenth century.

His basic education and first music lessons took place in Baja, and he later taught music in Tolna County. By the 1790s he was already known as a pianist and organist, which opened the doors to the service of the amateur Ignác Végh, for whom he was piano teacher until 1801. He later worked as a teacher in Pozsony, present-day Bratislava, where, according to his friend and biographer József Krüchten, he composed the one-act melodrama Pyramus és Thisbe, whose performance at the local theatre is possible but not certain.

In Vienna he studied with Albrechtsberger and maintained a close relationship with Haydn. He published his Op. 1 in 1804 and, after a brief stay in Pozsony in 1806, composed the opera Watwort. Back in Vienna he led an intense musical life, partly documented in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. His most important work is, apparently, the piano duet overture, which he later orchestrated as the prelude to Schiller's Die Braut von Messina. Around 1815 he became involved with Beethoven in the project of setting Treitschke's Romulus und Remus; Fusz went so far as to premiere his version, although only one canon survives.

Around 1817 he retired to his native land in search of relief for his health, which was steadily worsening. He died in 1819 while working on a Mass. His legacy includes, in addition to the works mentioned, the operetta Der Käfig, the musical satire Pandora szelencéje and his sonatas for violin, among them the Sonata Op. 36, as well as four volumes of lieder.