Georg Matthias Monn
Matthias Georg Monn (sometimes Mann) (April 9, 1717, Vienna - October 3, 1750, Vienna) was an Austrian composer, organist and music teacher.
Together with Georg Christoph Wagenseil and Josef Starzer, Monn formed the Viennese Pre-Classical movement (Wiener Vorklassik in German), whose composers are nowadays mostly known only by their names. However, his successful introduction of the secondary theme in the symphony was an important condition for the First Viennese School that would come some fifty years later.
Life
We know much less about Monn's life than about his musical ideas. Only his appointments as an organist are known, at first in Klosterneuburg near Vienna. Afterwards, he was appointed in the same function in Melk in Lower Austria and at the Karlskirche on the edge of the city center of Vienna. Monn died when he was only 33 years old.
From Rococo to the Classical period
Together with Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777) and other contemporaries such as Leopold Mozart (1719-1787), Monn forms a school of Austrian composers who had thorougly studied the principles of counterpoint as practised by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Joseph Fux, but also forced the change from the rigid and pompous Rococo style to the looser, graceful Galante music. Moreover, they renewed the sonata form by expanding the concepts of secondary theme and development. Later on, Michael and Joseph Haydn would develop these concepts to a highpoint.
The oeuvre of Matthias Monn contains of sixteen symphonies, a score of quartets, sonatas, masses and compositions for violin and keyboard. Even today, he is one of the most famous representatives of the Pre-Classical movement.
List of works
- Symphony in G major
- Symphony in B major
- Symphony in F major
- Quartet in B major
- Keyboard concerto in D major
- Harpsichord concerto in G minor
- Cello concerto in G minor
- Sonata in G minor
External links
All these links are in German.