Johann Sigismund Kusser or Cousser (baptized 13 February 1660 – before 17 November 1727) was a composer born in the

Kingdom of Hungary The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from the Middle Ages into the 20th century. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the coronation of the first king Stephe ...

who was active in Germany, France, and Ireland.

Life

The son of Johann Kusser, a Protestant

cantor A cantor or chanter is a person who leads people in singing or sometimes in prayer. In formal Jewish worship, a cantor is a person who sings solo verses or passages to which the choir or congregation responds. In Judaism, a cantor sings and lead ...

Pressburg Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approximately 140% of ...

(then in the

), Johann Sigismund and his parents moved to Stuttgart in 1674 because of religious persecution. Two years later he went to spend six years in Paris and the

Palace of Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

. There he met the French court composer

Jean-Baptiste Lully Jean-Baptiste Lully ( , , ; born Giovanni Battista Lulli, ; – 22 March 1687) was an Italian-born French composer, guitarist, violinist, and dancer who is considered a master of the French Baroque music style. Best known for his operas ...

and learned from him how to compose in the French style. Kusser was then employed at the princely courts in

Baden-Baden Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the Rhine, the border with France, ...

and

Ansbach Ansbach (; ; East Franconian: ''Anschba'') is a city in the German state of Bavaria. It is the capital of the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Ansbach is southwest of Nuremberg and north of Munich, on the river Fränkische Rez ...

, before taking a trip to Germany in October 1683. In 1690 he became the first ''

Kapellmeister (, also , ) from German ''Kapelle'' (chapel) and ''Meister'' (master)'','' literally "master of the chapel choir" designates the leader of an ensemble of musicians. Originally used to refer to somebody in charge of music in a chapel, the term ha ...

'' of the in

Braunschweig Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( , from Low German ''Brunswiek'' , Braunschweig dialect: ''Bronswiek'') is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the ...

. In the following years, he married Hedwig Melusine von Damm, daughter of a local ''Ratsherr''. Their daughter Auguste Elisabeth married the Braunschweig historian . During his time there, Kusser wrote eight operas, enriching the Italian-influenced repertoire. Disagreements in 1694 with the librettist and court poet Friedrich Christian Bressand led Kusser to move to the

Oper am Gänsemarkt The Oper am Gänsemarkt was a theatre in Hamburg, Germany, built in 1678 after plans of Girolamo Sartorio at the Gänsemarkt square. It was the first public opera house to be established in Germany: not a court opera, as in many other towns. Ev ...

in Hamburg. He then left Hamburg at the end of 1695 and, after spells working in

Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...

and

Augsburg Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the '' ...

, took a post at the court of

Eberhard Louis, Duke of Württemberg Duke Eberhard Louis (18 September 1676 – 31 October 1733) was the Duke of Württemberg, from 1692 until 1733. Biography Eberhard Louis was born in Stuttgart the third child of Duke William Louis and his wife, Magdalena Sibylla of Hesse-Dar ...

in 1699, being made ''Hofkapellmeister'' there the following year. At the end of 1704, he moved to London as a composer and private music teacher. In 1707 he went to Dublin and in 1711 was made Chapel-Master of

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

. He was then appointed "Chief Composer" and "Master of the Musick, attending His Majesty's State in Ireland" in 1716, dying in Dublin in 1727. His tasks included the composition of annual birthday odes for the English king and other festive occasions; his Dublin serenatas were staged like semi-operas. Kusser's works are now rarely played, but he influenced the following generation of composers, such as

Reinhard Keiser Reinhard Keiser (9 January 1674 – 12 September 1739) was a German opera composer based in Hamburg. He wrote over a hundred operas. Johann Adolf Scheibe (writing in 1745) considered him an equal to Johann Kuhnau, George Frideric Handel and Geor ...

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 ...

Georg Philipp Telemann Georg Philipp Telemann (; – 25 June 1767) was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family's wishes. After studying in Magdeburg, Zellerfeld, and Hi ...

Christoph Graupner Christoph Graupner (13 January 1683 – 10 May 1760) was a German composer and harpsichordist of late Baroque music who was a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann and George Frideric Handel. Life Born in Hartmannsdo ...

, Georg Caspar Schürmann and George Frideric Handel.

Selected works

Instrumental works

* ''Composition de Musique'' (1682), a collection of overtures * Three collections of suites: ''Apollon Enjoüé'', ''Festin des Muses'' and ''La cicala della cetra d'eunomio'' (1700)

Stage works

* ''Cleopatra'' (Libretto presumed to be by Friedrich Christian Bressand after Giacomo Francesco Bussani, ''Giulio Cesare in Egitto''), opera in a prologue and three acts (premiered Braunschweig, 4 February 1690) * ''Julia'' (Braunschweig?), opera in 3 acts (Braunschweig, 1690) * ''La Grotta di Salzdahl'' (Flaminio Parisetti), divertimento 1 act (Braunschweig, 1 January 1691) * ''Narcissus'' (Gottlieb Fiedler), opera in a prologue and 3 acts (Braunschweig, 4 October 1692; Kusser is referred to on the libretto amburg, 1692as ''Ober-Capellmeister'') * ''Andromeda'', Singspiel 3 acts (Braunschweig, 1692) * ''Ariadne'' (Bressand), opera 5 acts (Braunschweig, 15 December 1692) * ''Jason'' (Bressand), Singspiel 5 acts (Braunschweig, 1 September 1692) * ''Porus'' (Bressand, after

Jean Racine Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western tradit ...

), Singspiel in 5 acts (Braunschweig, 1693); reworked by Christian Heinrich Postel and put on in Hamburg in 1694 as ''Der durch Groß-Muth und Tapfferkeit besiegte Porus'' under Kusser's direction * ''Erindo, oder Die unsträfliche Liebe'' (Bressand), Schäferspiel 3 acts (Hamburg, 1694) * ''Der großmütige Scipio Africanus'' (Fiedler, after

Nicolò Minato Count Nicolò Minato (b. Bergamo, ca. 1627; d. Vienna, 28 February 1698) was an Italian poet, librettist and impresario. His career can be divided into two parts: the years he spent at Venice, from 1650 to 1669, and the years at Vienna, from 1669 u ...

), opera in 3 acts (Hamburg, 1694) * ''Pyramus und Thisbe getreue und festverbundene Liebe'' (C. Schröder), opera with prologue (possibly never staged) * ''Der verliebte Wald'', Singspiel in 1 act (Stuttgart) * ''Gensericus, als Rom und Karthagens Überwinder'' (Postel), opera (Hamburg, 1694?); dubious attribution, possibly even by Johann Georg Conradi * '' The Man of Mode'' (play by

George Etherege Sir George Etherege (c. 1636, Maidenhead, Berkshire – c. 10 May 1692, Paris) was an English dramatist. He wrote the plays '' The Comical Revenge or, Love in a Tub'' in 1664, '' She Would If She Could'' in 1668, and '' The Man of Mode or, ...

) (London: Little

Lincoln's Inn Fields Lincoln's Inn Fields is the List of city squares by size, largest public square in London. It was laid out in the 1630s under the initiative of the speculative builder and contractor William Newton, "the first in a long series of entreprene ...

, 9 February 1705) * ''Adonis'' (score dated 1699 or 1700 found in State Library of Württemberg by Dr Samantha Owens, c.2015)

Bibliography

* Harold E. Samuel: "A German Musician Comes to London in 1704", in ''

Music & Letters ''Music & Letters'' is an academic journal published quarterly by Oxford University Press with a focus on musicology. The journal sponsors the Music & Letters Trust, twice-yearly cash awards of variable amounts to support research in the music fi ...

'', vol. 62 (1981), pp. 591–593. * Brian Boydell: ''A Dublin Musical Calendar, 1700–1760'' (Blackrock: Irish Academic Press, 1988) * Hans Joachim Marx: "Eine wiederaufgefundene Serenata theatrale von John Sigismond Cousser und ihr politischer Kontext", in ''Rudolf Eller zum Achtzigsten: Ehrenkolloquium zum 80. Geburtstag von Prof. em. Dr Rudolf Eller am 9. Mai 1994'', ed. Heller & Waczkat (Rostock, 1994), pp. 33–40. * Samantha Owens: "The Stuttgart Adonis: A Recently Rediscovered Opera by Johann Sigismund Cousser?", in ''

The Musical Times ''The Musical Times'' is an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom and currently the oldest such journal still being published in the country. It was originally created by Joseph Mainzer in 1842 as ''Mainze ...

'', vol. 147 (2006), pp. 67–80. * Samantha Owens: "Johann Sigismund Cousser, William III and the Serenata in Early Eighteenth-Century Dublin", in ''Eighteenth-Century Music'', vol. 6 (2009), pp. 7–40. * Samantha Owens: ''The Well-Travelled Musician. John Sigismond Cousser and Musical Exchange in Baroque Europe'' (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2017), .

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kusser, Johann 1660 births 1727 deaths 18th-century classical composers 18th-century German composers 18th-century male musicians German Baroque composers German male classical composers German opera composers Hungarian Baroque composers Hungarian male classical composers Hungarian opera composers Irish Baroque composers Irish classical composers Irish male classical composers Male opera composers Musicians from Bratislava People associated with Trinity College Dublin