Leopold Jansa

Leopold Jansa, lithograph by Josef Kriehuber , 1844

Leopold Jansa (born March 23, 1795 in Wildenschwert , Bohemia ; † January 24, 1875 in Vienna ) was a Czech-Austrian violinist and composer who made a name for himself mainly as a musician in the string quartet and as a teacher .

Life

Leopold Jansa, the son of a cloth maker, received singing and instrumental lessons from Jan Jahoda, the local school teacher. He learned to play the organ from his cousin, the organist Jan Zizius. On the violin, Jansa initially remained an autodidact. He completed his school education in Brno and moved to Vienna in 1817, where he first began to study law . But he broke this off after two years and devoted himself entirely to music. Through intensive studies, Jansa developed into an excellent violinist who was able to compete alongside the virtuosos Joseph Mayseder and Joseph Böhm . In addition, he took composition lessons from Emanuel Förster and created a number of violin works.

In 1823 Jansa was given the position of chamber virtuoso in the chapel of Count Brunswik in Hungary, but returned to Vienna after about a year, where he found a job with the kk Hofkapelle .

In 1834 he was given the position of music director at the University of Vienna and in the same year Jansa tried to revive the quartet tradition that had been lying idle in Vienna since Ignaz Schuppanzigh's death (1830), but initially with little success. After another failed attempt in 1836, the Jansa Quartet was only able to hold regular public concert cycles from 1845 onwards.

Before that, he had already worked as a private violin teacher, but in 1847 Jansa was finally appointed professor at the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde . Wilhelmine Neruda (later Norman or Hallé) and Karl Goldmark were among his most important students .

Apparently sympathizing with the rebels on the occasion of the revolution of 1848 , he took part in a benefit concert for the refugee Hungarian revolutionaries in London in 1849 , which is why he lost his positions in Vienna and also emigrated to England in 1850. There he worked successfully as a violin teacher for almost two decades. Pardoned by the Austrian Emperor in 1868 after the establishment of a dual state and given a pardon, Jansa returned to Vienna, where he last appeared in public in 1871. He died in 1875 at the old age of 80.

Jansa left behind a considerable number of compositions, most of them in the high romantic style but without any pronounced originality. In addition to four violin concertos , sonatas , terzets , quartets, etc., there were also some arrangements that had been made in Vienna and London over the years.

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Jansa, Leopold . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 10th part. Imperial-Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1863, p. 87 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Eduard Hanslick : History of the concert being in Vienna. 2 vols. Braumüller, Vienna 1869/1870 ( digitized version )
• Jansa Leopold. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 3, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1965, p. 76.
• Theophil Antonicek:  Jansa, Leopold. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 339 ( digitized version ).
• Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna. Volume 2: De-Gy. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-218-00544-2 , pp. 340f – 341.
• Uwe Harten : Jansa, Leopold. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 2, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-7001-3044-9 .

Web links

• Sheet music and audio files by Leopold Jansa in the International Music Score Library Project