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Franz Anton Rösler (also known as Francesco Antonio Rosetti [Rossetti]) was a German composer. His birth name cannot be exactly determined, then it could have also been called "Anton Rös(s)ler" or "Rusizscka" or something similar. His marriage entry in Wallerstein notes only the name Antonio Rosetti and the place Leitmeritz. The first name frequently specified "Franz" is based on a mistake of a music scientist, who regarded a Franz Anton Rösler, born to 1746, as Antonio Rosetti. Franz Anton Rösler was however a shoemaker. He probably received his musical training with a Jesuitenorden in Prague.
Following his studies, Anton Rösler had a wanderer life. According to certain records, he served around 1770 at the court of the Russian Count Orlow. He adopted the Italian name Antonio Rosetti when he moved to Germany in 1773, to work as double bassist and eventually composer in the highly musical court of Kraft Ernst, Prince of Öttingen-Wallerstein. In 1781 Rosetti travelled to Paris. It is reported that he had great success there with his compositions and could give some his works were also printed by Paris publishing. With the retirement of Joseph Reicha in 1785, Rosetti rose to the position of Kapellmeister of Fürstlichen Kapelle and stayed there until 1789, when he became Kapellmeister at the court of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in Ludwigslust. In 1791, he composed a Requiem to be performed at a memorial service for Mozart in Prague (the work was originally written as Requiem on the death of the Mrs. Krafft-Ernst in Öttingen-Wallerstein in 1776). He himself died a year later, at 42, leaving wife and 3 daughters. The prince house exposes a pension, to Rosetti's daughters and they were employed as singers later at the Hofe. It seems altogether appropriate to the confusion surrounding Rosetti's identity that the one picture of him is of questionable attribution, by an anonymous hand and taken from an original now lost.
The standard numbering by Oskar Kaul lists 32 Rosetti symphonies, all written between about 1784 and 1792. Like the symphonies of his great model, Haydn, which Rosetti's often resembled, they are full of boldly original and often humorous strokes. But they can also be highly dramatic, so much so that the G-minor work, is a worthy companion to Mozart's two splendid symphonies in that key. Rosetti's fondness for the winds, nurtured by the crack players at Wallerstein, shows up repeatedly throughout his works.
Horace Fitzpatrick writes in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians: "Rosetti's contemporaries ranked him with Haydn and Mozart". |
