Jean-Chrisostome Hess (26 January 1816 – 8 March 1900)[1] was one of the most prolific French composers of salon music for the piano as well as transcriptions of popular songs and arias from operas.
Nothing is known about his musical education, but as no traces of studies at any of the major conservatories have to come to light yet, it must be presumed that he had private teachers on piano and organ in his home town or perhaps in Strasbourg.
He was the father of Charles Léon Hess (1844–1926), also a composer, among other works, of the opera Le Dîner de Pierrot, produced in 1893 at the Opéra-Comique, Paris.
This in itself can be divided into original compositions and arrangements of popular melodies and arias from contemporary operas, the latter often in the form of a fantasia or of a theme and variations approach.
In an obituary notice, the French journal Le Ménestrel – like most of Hess' music published by Heugel – wrote "They were truly popular and their print runs reached hundreds of thousands of copies" ("[Ils] furent véritablement populaires et leurs tirages montèrent à des centaines de mille d’exemplaires").