Cartellieri / Quartett Nr. 1

Cartellieri, Anton
(1772 - 1807)

Quartett Nr. 1 D-Dur

Klarinette in A, Violine,
Viola und Violoncello

1. Allegro moderato
2. Larghetto
3. Menuetto. Allegro
4. Rondo. Allegro (semplice)

(Ed.: Hanno Fendt)

Score and parts

© 2022
ee 222020
ISMN 979-0-700415-20-4

Biographical details are not very reliable concerning Antonio Casimir Cartellieri, who was born in Gdansk on September 27, 1772, and died at the age of thirty-five on September 2, 1807, in Liebshausen (Bohemia, today Libčeves (Czech Republic)). What is certain is that he was the son of an Italian tenor and a soprano from Riga, both of whom were in the service of the court of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Cartellieri’s son Joseph reports in his biography of his father (ca. 1826) that he received his first musical lessons from his mother, which his father then continued after discovering Antonio’s compositional talent.

There is evidence of successful performances of some of Cartellieri’s stage works in Berlin in 1792. He went to Vienna and reliably received lessons from Albrechtsberger, and probably also from Salieri. At the performance of his oratorio Gioas in Vienna in 1795, he is mentioned for the first time as “Kapellmeister Cartellieri”. In this concert, Beethoven also participated as the interpreter of his (chronologically) first piano concerto. It remains unclear when exactly Cartellieri took up his position as second Kapellmeister alongside Wranitzky with Prince Joseph von Lobkowitz. His son mentions the year 1796. Antonio Cartellieri’s places of activity from then on were Vienna, Raudnitz (today Roudnice) and Eisenberg (Jezeří). In 1803 he married Franziska Kraft, the daughter of the violoncellist Anton Kraft. Performances of his works – but not of his clarinet quartets – are separately mentioned in the Leipziger Allgemeine Musikzeitung.