Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg

See also: Zumsteeg

Johan Rudolf Zumsteeg (born with Sachsenflur in the Odenwald, the January 10th 1760 – died with Stuttgart the January 27th 1802), German musician.

It expressed as of its childhood of great provisions for the music. Nevertheless his/her father, who was manservant of the Duc of Wurtemberg, made it raise at the military academy, as intending for the service, and then took the party to make a sculptor of it. The vocation of the Zumsteeg young person triumphed over the one and other over these determinations, and finally it was allowed to him to be given up exclusively with its taste for the musical art. Polished, Borani and Mazzanti, ducal choirmasters, gave him successively lessons. With a constant practice, the pupil united the study of the theory and contemplated during the night the works of Mattheson, D' Alembert and Marbourg. He had not still completed his courses of song that already he dared to test himself with the composition, and that he made cantatas for the festivals of the court. The majority remained handwritten in the paperboards of the author, but of others were engraved and point out themselves by a noble song and suave.

Among those one seeks especially Lolotte (Lottchen) with the court , Tamira , Zaalor , Armide . Admitted with the number of the musicians of the duke, Zumsteeg was made applaud as violoncellist, and showed his talent as type-setter by parts of a kind broader and more difficult than that to which it had been limited up to that point. It was sometimes a mass with full orchestra, sometimes a song for the Fête of the spring of Klopstock, sometimes of the airs for the choruses of the Brigands of Schiller, his/her former classmate. Also the admiration of the Dilettanti made him it, at the time of the retirement of Polish, to entrust the title of Master in the concerts of the vault of Wurtemberg, place which it occupied until his death, arrival in Stuttgart, the January 27th 1802, following an attack of striking down Apoplexie.

Without this premature end, it is probable that this musician would have produced masterpieces. One can even say that some of its works are worthy of this title. Such are particularly its Plainte of Agar , Colma , the Chant melancholic person , Lénore , words of Burger, and especially the island of the Spirits , words of Gotter. In all these pieces one finds a song marrowy and broad, gracious and sublime. Zumsteeg excelled making the impressions solemn and serious, pathetic and soft. Ily has in the whole as in the details of its harmony something of imposing and continuous which raises the heart without making it leave calm majestic and full with nobility. By a too rare artifice nowadays, its music satisfies at the same time the scientist who likes to see the type-setter being played in the middle of the musical difficulties, and the dilettante beginner, still unfitted to release the subgrade and the musical idea of the embroidery which wraps it and varies it. Sometimes the author enjoys to tackle and overcome another kind of difficulty: he places notes under a whole ballade, sometimes under an account, and tries to accompany the MUSE epic with the song which usually hardly thinks of competing but with the lyric MUSE.

Papers and the manuscripts of Zumsteeg were bought with its death by the hereditary Prince of Weimar, which found there, inter alia still formless fragments, an opera in three acts, heading Arzace and Mirza , the subject of it is drawn from a novel of Montesquieu.

One can consult on this musician:

the Gazette of Germany , 1802, n° 30, where the journalist gives a biographical draft, since printed with share, with a funeral praise and a few pieces of poetries on the death of Zumsteeg;
the Museum of the famous musicians, with engraving, etc , of the professor Siebigke, Breslau, the ordinary musical gazettes give the census of its works.

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