Johann Baptist Novak

Johann Baptist Novak, also known as Janez Krstnik Novak, was a Slovene composer born and died in Ljubljana, around 1756 and in 1833 respectively. His figure occupies a modest yet significant place in the musical life of a city that at the time formed part of the Habsburg dominions.

A civil servant by profession in Ljubljana, he combined his employment with active participation in local musical life. He was one of the founding members of the Philharmonic Society in 1794, an institution of which he later became musical director between 1808 and 1825, having previously conducted its orchestra in 1799 and 1800.

In 1790 he composed the incidental music for T. Linhart's Ta veseli dan, ali Matiček se ženi, whose music became so significant that the piece functioned, in practice, as an opera. Linhart's plot relied heavily on the well-known comedy by Beaumarchais, and Novak, who had probably known it through Mozart's version, renamed it Figaro. Besides this work, only one occasional cantata survives; of another, Krains Empfindungen, premiered in 1801, only the text survives.

His legacy is above all local: his surviving output is scant, but his work with the Philharmonic Society and his music for Linhart's theatre document the Slovene musical activity of the early nineteenth century.