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Georg August Griesinger (1769 - 1845) was a diplomat resident in Vienna during the late 18th and 19th centuries. He is remembered for his friendships with the composers Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and particularly for the biography he wrote of Haydn.

Early life and career

He was born in Stuttgart on 8 January, 1769. In 1799, he moved to Vienna, in order to work as the tutor of the son of the ambassador of Saxony to the Austrian Empire. He lived in Vienna for the rest of his life, switching to a career in diplomacy, in which he rose by 1831 to the rank of chargé-d'affaires.

Relations with Haydn

In Saxony Griesinger had become acquianted with Gottfried Härtel, one of the managers of the Leipzig publishing firm of Breitkopf & Härtel. Soon after he had moved to Vienna, the firm asked him to help negotiate a publishing agreement with Joseph Haydn. These negotiations were fully successful, and resulted in Breitkopf & Härtel producing a "complete works" edition of Haydn's compositions. Griesinger became Haydn's friend, and often visited him after his efforts were no longer needed for business reasons.

Haydn biography

Griesinger eventually conceived the idea of writing a biography of Haydn, and when he came home from his visits to the composer, he wrote down the words he remembered, in hopes of increasing the accuracy of his work. The book appeared first as a sequence of eight installments in the Breitkopf & Härtel journal Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, then, after revisions, as an independent work in 1810 (Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn, Leipzig).

Particularly in comparison to work of other biographers of the same time (e.g. Giuseppe Carpani and Albert Christoph Dies), Griesinger's stands out for its careful writing, thoughtfulness, care with facts, and reluctance to embellish. Haydn scholar Vernon Gotwals considered it a clear first choice among the early biographies for obtaining facts about Haydn's life. The letters that Griesinger sent to Breitkopf & Härtel concerning his discussions with Haydn also serve as a valuable source for Haydn biography.

Relations with Beethoven

Griesinger was also friendly with Ludwig van Beethoven, at one point succeeding in untangling a difficult problem involving rival publishers, by strongly defending Beethoven's integrity.

Death

Griesinger died in Vienna 9 April 1845.

Notes

1. Given Haydn's vast output, this edition was hardly complete, but its scope was far greater than anything before it in the publication of Haydn's work.
2. Gotwals 1959

References

• Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, online edition. Article "Georg August Griesinger", written by Edward Olleson. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.
• Gotwals, Vernon (1959) "Two Haydn Biographies" Music and Letters. xxx

• Joseph Haydn
• Ludwig van Beethoven