Johann Friedrich Reichardt

An acquaintance and friend of many prominent literary artists Reichardt was considered a virtuoso violinist and keyboard played though some of his compositions were trivial pandering for favors. In his many travels Reichardt met, conversed with and in some cases befriended Hiller, Goethe, Nicolia, Schiller, C.P.E. Bach, and Benda among others. He composed over one thousand and five hundred songs, about thirty operas, incidental music, ballets, oratorios, cantatas, sacred music, and a number of instrumental works. His operatic works are forward looking beyond the opera seria -- notably "Tamerlan," "Panthee," and "Andromeda" -- towards the Italian forms, and, into the German forms. Clearly his vocal music was extensive but he also added to the corpus of musical literature with important writings. A writer of travelogues, an editor of an highly respected magazine ("Musikalisches Kunstmagazin"), and author of treatises on music, Reichardt added an impetus to the rising Romanticism also expressed in the German lied. Reichardt was so well respected musically that he served as the Kapellmeister in Berlin and in the courts of Frederick the Great and Frederick II but was dismissed because of sympathies with the French revolution. ~ Keith Johnson