Johann Gänsbacher

Johann Baptist Peter Joseph Gänsbacher (Sterzing, South Tyrol, now Vipiteno, Italy, 1778 – Vienna, 1844) was an Austrian composer and conductor who became well known in Vienna as Kapellmeister of St Stephen's Cathedral. The son of a choirmaster and schoolmaster, he was trained in Tyrol and at Innsbruck, where he combined university studies in philosophy and law with private teaching, appearances as an organist and work in the theatre orchestra.

In 1801 he moved to Vienna to further his musical education. Around 1803 he entered the household of Count Firmian, who promoted his career, and he received lessons from Abbé Vogler and Albrechtsberger. A Mass in C major composed in 1806 at the commission of Nikolaus Esterházy gave him a reputation as a composer. After a brief period in Darmstadt with Vogler, where he met Weber and Meyerbeer in the Harmonische Verein, he returned to Tyrol in 1813 to take part in the struggle against the Bavarian occupation. After the war he joined the army as a first lieutenant and was posted to garrisons in Italy and later to Innsbruck, where he again tried to establish himself as a musician and helped to found the Musikverein.

He is said to have declined the post of musical director in Dresden offered to him by Weber in 1823, and in September 1824 he was appointed Kapellmeister of St Stephen's as successor to Josef Preindl. From then on he devoted himself chiefly to sacred music, writing masses, requiems, offertories and motets, although these works apparently show little stylistic innovation, while revealing considerable skill. His early instrumental pieces, such as the Sonata in F major of 1803 or the Concertino for clarinet, are valued more highly for their originality. His son Josef, a lawyer by training and a voice teacher, was for years a distinguished professor at the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and had as pupils singers of international renown; Brahms dedicated his Cello Sonata, Op. 38, to him.