Publisher's Synopsis
As composer, organist, and teacher for nearly half a century, Franz Schneider was a central figure in the 18th-century school of composers active at the Benedictine Abbey of Melkon the Danube, Austria, which counted among its members Haydn's pupil Robert Kimmerling, Constanze Mozart's musical advisor Maximilian Stadler, and Beethoven's teacher, Johan Georg Albrechtsberger. Schneider, a student of Albrechtsberger, played an important role in the history of religious music in the Classical period. This book lists 296 original compositions, versions and connafacta--eighteen involving the Haydn brothers alone--based mainly on a unique collection of holographic scores, fragments, and sketches preserved at Melk. Since many of the problems of attribution could be solved, the catalogue provides a valuable reference not only to Schneider's own compositions, but also to those of a number of his contemporaries. An illustrated list of watermarks in the music papers used at Melk in the second half of the eighteenth century is included.
