His career, spanning the transition from the late Classical to the early Romantic styles, coincided with the origin of much of the music that lives in our concert halls and is familiar to contemporary classical-music audiences.

[1] In his youth he knew Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom he revered; he was a contemporary of Ludwig van Beethoven, about whom he — like many of his generation — had strong but mixed feelings and he was a mentor for the young Carl Maria von Weber, whose music he respected and promoted.

[1] Born in Schwetzingen and raised in Mannheim, Danzi studied with his father and with Georg Joseph Vogler[2] before he joined the superlative orchestra of the Elector Karl Theodor in 1778 as a teenager.

After an apprenticeship with the small theatre orchestra left in Mannheim, he rejoined the main court in Munich as principal cellist — taking his father's position — in 1784.

In 1812, he moved again to Karlsruhe, where he spent the last years of his life at the Royal Konservatorium struggling to raise the modest courtly musical establishment to respectability.