Franz Xaver Richter
Richter wrote chiefly symphonies, concertos for woodwinds as well as trumpet, and chamber and church music, his masses receiving special praise.
Franz Xaver Richter was probably born in Holleschau (now Holešov),[5] Moravia (then part of the Habsburg monarchy, now the Czech Republic), although this is not entirely certain.
The musicologist Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg has Richter being from Hungarian descent and on his Strasbourg death certificate it says: "ex Kratz oriundus".
Richter stayed in Kempten for six years but it is hard to imagine that a man of his education and talents would have liked the idea of spending the rest of his life in this scenically beautiful but otherwise completely parochial town.
[8] Just how much Richter must have disliked Kempten can be deduced from the fact that in 1747 his name appears among the court musicians of the Prince elector Charles Theodore in Mannheim – but not as music director or in any other leading function but as a simple singer (bass).
Obviously Richter preferred being one among many (singers and orchestra combine numbered more than 70 persons) in Mannheim to acting deputy Kapellmeister in a small town like Kempten.
During his Mannheim years Richter made tours to the Oettingen-Wallerstein court in 1754 and later to France, the Netherlands and England where his compositions found a ready market with publishers.
In April 1769 he succeeded Joseph Garnier as Kapellmeister at Strasbourg Cathedral, where both his performing and composing activities turned increasingly to sacred music.
From 1783 on, and due to Richter's advanced age and declining health, Joseph Haydn's favourite pupil Ignaz Pleyel served as his assistant.
Thus he did not have to witness his deputy Ignaz Pleyel being forced to write hymns to praise the supreme being and the death by guillotine of Jean-Frédéric Edelmann, a gifted composer from Strasbourg.
In 1770 Marie Antoinette, future queen of France, on her way from Vienna to Paris passed through the Alsatian capital, where she stayed at the Episcopal Palace, the Palais Rohan.
Richter, who almost certainly directed the church music when Marie Antoinette went to mass the next day,[16] witnessed the earliest stages of historical events that would later contribute to the downfall of the French monarchy.
The Adagio and Fugue in G minor for Strings (1760) is one of Franz Xaver Richter's symphonies, which features the learned style in 18th century orchestral works.
[19] The first movement begins with the tonic key, G minor, entitled Adagio and fugue, and it distinguishes from later sonata form by Haydn and Mozart.
As Jochen Reutter acclaims, Franz Xaver Richter's compositional idiom "changed from a late Baroque sound to a tonal language which reached the threshold of the Classical style.
Also according to Reutter, "his [Richter's] works from this period include such conservative traits as fugal techniques, Baroque sequences and the frequent use of minor tonality."
