Franz Hünten, otherwise known as François Hünten (26 December 179222 February 1878), was a German pianist and composer of salon music. He was born in

Koblenz Koblenz (; Moselle Franconian language, Moselle Franconian: ''Kowelenz''), spelled Coblenz before 1926, is a German city on the banks of the Rhine and the Moselle, a multi-nation tributary. Koblenz was established as a Roman Empire, Roman mili ...

, the son of the organist

Daniel Hünten Daniel Hünten (1? September 1760, in Treis-Karden – 1 April 1823, in Koblenz) was a German organist, guitarist and composer. He was baptised on 3 September 1760, probably one to three days after his birth. In 1784 Hünten was engaged as an org ...

, who taught

Henri Herz Henri Herz (6 January 1803 – 5 January 1888) was a virtuoso pianist, composer and piano manufacturer, Austrian by birth and French by nationality and domicile. He was a professor in the Paris Conservatoire for more than thirty years. Among his ...

. Like Herz he moved to

Paris Paris () is the capital and 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), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

and entered its Conservatorium in 1819. He wrote pleasant and technically undemanding piano music: rondos, fantasies, variations, dances, etc. Of Hünten’s 267 published works, the vast majority were written for piano solo or duet. His first success was ''Variations militaires à 4 mains'', op. 12, a simple imitation of

Ignaz Moscheles Isaac Ignaz Moscheles (; 23 May 179410 March 1870) was a Bohemian piano virtuoso and composer. He was based initially in London and later at Leipzig, where he joined his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as professor of piano at the ...

's variations on the ''Alexandermarsch'', and soon his popularity was such that for one work of ten pages he was paid 2000 francs. Two years after publishing the instruction book ''Nouvelle méthode pour le piano-forte'', op. 60 (1833), he moved back to Koblenz, where he continued to compose; he moved back to Paris after a few years but retired for good in 1848. Hünten's music was wildly popular throughout France, Germany, and England, but critical notices inevitably described it as trifling and later assessments have been much the same. His brothers, Wilhelm, a piano teacher at Koblenz, and Peter Ernst, a piano teacher at Duisburg, also composed piano music of a similar character. His son, Emil Hünten, was a painter.

Bibliography

*Gerd Zöllner: ''Franz Hünten. Sein Leben und Werk.'' Beiträge zur rheinischen Musikgeschichte 34, Köln 1959 (Diss. Köln) * *

External links

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hunten, Franz 1792 births 1878 deaths 19th-century German pianists German composers