Ernst Christian Hesse (14 April 167616 May 1762) was a German

gambist The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bow (music), bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments, stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and Tuning mechanisms for stringed instruments, pegboxes where ...

and composer. Born at

Großengottern Großengottern is a village and a former municipality in the Unstrut-Hainich-Kreis district of Thuringia, Germany. Since 1 January 2019, it is part of the municipality of Unstrut-Hainich. Geography Großengottern is located in the norther ...

Thuringia Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million. Erfurt is the capital and lar ...

, he attended school in

Langensalza Bad Langensalza (; until 1956: Langensalza) is a spa town of 17,500 inhabitants in the Unstrut-Hainich district, Thuringia, central Germany. Geography Location Bad Langensalza is located in the Thuringian Basin, the fertile lowlands along t ...

and

Eisenach Eisenach () is a town in Thuringia, Germany with 42,000 inhabitants, located west of Erfurt, southeast of Kassel and northeast of Frankfurt. It is the main urban centre of western Thuringia and bordering northeastern Hessian regions, situat ...

. Guentersberg
Retrieved 3 January 2018 He studied law at

Giesen Giesen is a village and a municipality in the district of Hildesheim, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approximately 6 km northwest of Hildesheim, and 22 km southeast of Hanover. The municipality includes five villages: * Ahrb ...

, then

viola da gamba The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch ...

in Darmstadt. In 1692, aged 16, he performed for the Landgrave Ernst Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt, who engaged him for his court. The landgrave then sent him for further study in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, under the two leading composer-performers of the day,

Marin Marais Marin Marais (; 31 May 1656, in Paris – 15 August 1728, in Paris) was a French composer and viol player. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully, often conducting his operas, and with master of the bass viol Monsieur de Sainte-Colomb ...

and Antoine Forqueray. But Marais and Forqueray were bitter rivals, and Hesse could not study under both – at least, not under the same name. So, he called himself by his real name Hesse for one of the teachers, and "Sachs" for the other. The plan foundered when the two rival teachers chose to show off their star pupils in a public competition, not realising they were the same pupil.Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th edition, Vol. IV, p. 264 Hesse was able to please both masters by playing in their styles in turn, and this led to a rapprochement between them. Hesse then toured as a virtuoso throughout Europe, becoming friends with

Johann Mattheson Johann Mattheson (28 September 1681 – 17 April 1764) was a German composer, singer, writer, lexicographer, diplomat and music theorist. Early life and career The son of a prosperous tax collector, Mattheson received a broad liberal education ...

and George Frideric Handel, and possibly studied under Antonio Vivaldi in

Mantua Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and '' comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, it was named as the Eur ...

. On Easter Sunday, 8 April 1708, in Rome, it was most likely Hesse who played the demanding viola da gamba solo part at the premiere of Handel's oratorio ''

La resurrezione ''La resurrezione'' (''The Resurrection''), HWV 47, is an oratorio by George Frideric Handel, set to a libretto by Carlo Sigismondo Capece (1652–1728). Capece was court poet to Marie Casimire Louise de La Grange d'Arquien, Queen Marie Casimire ...

'' (HWV 47) under

Arcangelo Corelli Arcangelo Corelli (, also , , ; 17 February 1653 – 8 January 1713) was an Italian composer and violinist of the Baroque era. His music was key in the development of the modern genres of sonata and concerto, in establishing the preeminence of th ...

. He returned to Darmstadt in 1708, where in 1713 he married the soprano Johanna Elisabeth Döbricht, his third wife. He became Kapellmeister in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, staying there till 1719. He was also appointed a war commissar and war councillor ("Secretar der Kriegs- und französischen, auch anderer ausländischen Affairen": Minister of War, French and Foreign Affairs).''Music at German Courts'', p. 335, footnote 6
Retrieved 3 January 2018 He returned to Darmstadt, where he died in 1762, aged 86. Most of his compositions (operas, sonatas, church music) are lost, but an opera and some gamba pieces are extant, and there are some recordings of his music. His first two wives, Katharina Magdalena Merck and Anna Katharina Merck, half-sisters, were daughters of the royal court apothecary. He had 18 (or 20) children by his latter two wives. His son Ludwig Christian Hesse also became a prominent gambist who worked alongside

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (8 March 1714 – 14 December 1788), also formerly spelled Karl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, and commonly abbreviated C. P. E. Bach, was a German Classical period musician and composer, the fifth child and sec ...

, who wrote pieces for him. His only other pupil was Johann Christian Hertel.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hesse, Ernst Christian 1676 births 1762 deaths German classical violists German Baroque composers