Jozef Elsner

Józef Elsner was born on 1 June 1769 in Grodków, Poland, to German Silesian Catholic parents. He showed an early interest in music and studied at various schools and colleges in Wrocław. He also learned to play the violin and the basso continuo. He composed his first motet at the age of 13 and performed as a soloist and a chamber musician. He initially enrolled in theology and medicine at the University of Wrocław, but later decided to pursue music as his career. He moved to Vienna in 1789, where he contracted a serious illness, and then to Brno in 1791, where he became a violinist in the theatre orchestra. In 1792, he went to Lwów, where he worked as a conductor and a composer for the German Opera. He married Klara Abt in 1796, but she died a year later. He collaborated with Wojciech Bogusławski, a Polish playwright and theatre director, and composed his first Polish operas. In 1799, he moved to Warsaw with Bogusławski and became the principal conductor of the National Theatre. He married Karolina Drozdowska in 1802 and had four children with her. He also traveled to Paris, Dresden, and Poznań, where he met E.T.A. Hoffmann and founded the Musikressource. He resigned from the theatre in 1824 due to complaints that he favored Germans. He then devoted himself to teaching and writing music theory. He taught at the Warsaw Lyceum and the Institute of Music. He was the principal composition teacher of Frédéric Chopin, whom he praised as a musical genius. He also taught Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński and Maria Szymanowska. He composed over 100 religious works, eight symphonies, three concertos, three ballets, and thirty-eight operas. He was one of the first Polish composers to incorporate folk music elements into his works. He died on 18 April 1854 in Elsnerów, a village named after him. He was buried at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw. He is regarded as one of the most important Polish composers of the classical era and a pioneer of national style.