Wenzel Müller

Biography

Wenzel Müller (26 September 1767 – 3 August 1835) was an Austrian composer and conductor. He is regarded as the most prolific opera composer of all time with his 166 operas.

Life and career

Müller was born in Markt Türnau, in Moravia. He studied with Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and performed as a theatre musician in his youth. In 1786 he became Kapellmeister at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt in Leopoldstadt, Vienna. After several years at the German theatre in Prague from 1807 until 1813, he returned to Leopoldstadt, where he worked until 1830. Under his leadership, the theatre became one of the most important venues in Viennese musical life. He died in Baden bei Wien.
He was a popular and prolific composer, producing more than 250 works. Although he wrote several popular stage works (mostly Singspiele), his art songs are his enduring legacy. Often possessing witty music and lyrics or expressing a great deal of tenderness, Müller's songs were immensely popular, and some of the works he wrote with Ferdinand Raimund remain in the Viennese repertory. His opera Die Schwestern von Prag provided the theme for Beethoven's "Kakadu Variations" for piano trio, Opus 121a. He is said to have composed what has been falsely known as Mozart's Twelfth Mass, K. Anh. 232, the Missa in G major K. Anh. 232 (C1.04).
Müller was married three times; in 1787 he married singer Magdalena Reinigsthal (1770-1794). Their daughter Therese (1791–1876) had three children Caroline (1814–1868), Ottilia (1816–1817), Carl (born 1815) and Joseph (born 1816), all of whom became opera singers. Müller's second wife was the actress Anna Trautmann; they married in 1803, and she died in 1812. Having lived together since 1824, in 1830 he married the actress and singer Rosa Caroline Dillenthaler. On 3 August 1835, Müller died of natural causes in Baden bei Wien, Austria, at the age of 67.