Franz Anton Hoffmeister: Three Duets op.6, for Violin and Cello

Composer(s)

Franz Anton Hoffmeister (b Rothenburg am Neckar, 12 May 1754; d Vienna, 9 Feb 1812). Austrian music publisher and composer. He went to Vienna in 1768 to study law, but after qualifying, devoted his time to music, especially publishing and composing. As early as 1783, when Viennese music publishing was still in its infancy, he began to publish two series of symphonies in Lyons (printed by Guéra), and some quartets and duets for flute. On 24 January 1784 he announced in the Wiener Zeitung that he planned to publish all his musical works at his own expense and under his own supervision from Rudolf Gräffer’s bookshop (see illustration). But in a large advertisement on 6 August 1785 he no longer mentioned Gräffer, having established a firm in his own name at his home. This advertisement gives a list of works which had already appeared as well as a new publishing programme of three different series, including orchestral and chamber music by Haydn, Mozart, Vanhal, Albrechtsberger, Pleyel, Miča, Ordonez and other foreign composers, besides Hoffmeister’s own works. Although he did not maintain his announced schedules, the business evidently flourished. Hoffmeister had connections with the Speyer publisher Bossler, whose firm acted as a kind of agent for Hoffmeister. Hence a series of announcements and some detailed reviews of works published by the Hoffmeister firm appeared in Bossler’s Musikalische Realzeitung (later Musikalische Korrespondenz), particularly in 1789–91.