1784–1838 · Germany · Romantic
Ferdinand Ries (1784–1838) was a German composer, pianist and conductor from a musical family in Bonn. He studied with Beethoven and became his secretary, toured widely, lived in London and directed the Lower Rhenish Music Festivals. Ries wrote eight symphonies, nine piano concertos, operas and chamber music.
Ferdinand Ries was born in Bonn and baptised on 28 November 1784. His grandfather Johann Ries served as court trumpeter to the Elector of Cologne, and his father Franz Anton Ries was a violinist and music director of the archbishopric. Ferdinand was the eldest son; his brother Hubert was also a violinist and composer.
His father gave him his first lessons on the piano and the violin. The cello he learned from Bernhard Romberg, who, like Franz Anton, played in the Bonn court orchestra. In childhood Ries lost the sight of one eye.
The electoral court orchestra in Bonn was dissolved, and any hope of a court post disappeared. At the end of 1798 Ries went to Arnsberg to continue his training with an organist who was a friend of his father, and then moved on to Munich. There he earned a hard living copying music and took composition lessons from Peter von Winter.
Carrying a letter of introduction, Ries moved to Vienna, where Ludwig van Beethoven welcomed him warmly. Beethoven himself had once received early lessons in Bonn from Ries's father, Franz Ries. Besides Carl Czerny, Ries was the sole pianist whom Beethoven took on as a student at that time.
Beethoven took good care of the young man: he taught him the piano, sent him to Johann Georg Albrechtsberger for harmony and composition, and helped him find posts as a piano teacher in aristocratic households. Ries soon became Beethoven's secretary as well. He handled letters to publishers, copied music, ran errands and found the composer a fine apartment in the Pasqualati House.
Ries spent part of the summers of 1803 and 1804 together with Beethoven, in Baden near Vienna and in Döbling. In 1804 he made his debut as a pianist, playing Beethoven's Third Concerto with a cadenza of his own. Beethoven had allowed him to write it himself, and the performance won glowing reviews.
Ries's duties as secretary and copyist brought him Beethoven's trust in negotiations with publishers, and a close friendship followed. A famous story about him concerns the first run-through of the Eroica Symphony. Mid-performance Ries wrongly thought that the horn had entered too soon and said so out loud, which made Beethoven furious.
In 1805 Ries left Vienna. In these years he lived by turns in Bonn and in Paris. In Bonn he composed his first piano concerto, in C major (it appeared later as No. 6), and Simrock published two piano sonatas, his Op. 1, which he dedicated to Beethoven.
In Paris he rapidly added to his list of works, mostly chamber and piano pieces, including the Septet, Op. 25, which later gained popularity. Paris gave him little success, and at moments he grew so disheartened that he thought of leaving music for government work.
On 27 August 1808 Ries came back to Vienna and renewed contact with Beethoven. He took part in preparing the charity concert of 22 December 1808, at which the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and further works were premiered. In July 1809 he left the city for a second time, because he risked being drafted into the Austrian army.
Again he sheltered in his father's Bonn. In the next year and a half he wrote a run of larger works: a first symphony, a second piano concerto in C minor (published later as No. 4, Op. 115) and a Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 24, unpublished in his lifetime.
In early 1811 Ries began a long concert tour, travelling by way of Kassel, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Stockholm to St Petersburg. He met his former teacher Bernhard Romberg there, and the two performed together in the west of Russia. He wrote two piano concertos for the tour: No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 42, and No. 3 in C-sharp minor, Op. 55.
In the summer of 1812, as Napoleon's army advanced on Moscow, Ries left Russia and began touring across Europe. He arrived in London in April 1813.
In London, Johann Peter Salomon, a friend of Haydn who had known Ries's father from the Bonn court orchestra, gave Ries support. Ries became a respected piano teacher in the affluent districts and in 1814 married Harriet Mangeon, whose family was rich. He joined the Philharmonic Society in 1815 and the same year was chosen as one of its directors.
In 1818 Ries was among the founders of the Regent's Harmonic Institution, a music publishing firm set up to raise money for the Philharmonic Society. He never lost touch with Beethoven and helped him in dealings with London publishers and with the Society.
Ries's work in the London years split into two strands. On one side he wrote most of his orchestral music: six of his eight symphonies were made for the Philharmonic Society's concerts. On the other, his piano output turned ever lighter: variations, fantasies, rondos and divertimentos, most often drawing on familiar operatic arias and popular folk tunes. Chamber music and more demanding piano sonatas almost dropped out of his output.
From 1820 onward Ries and the other directors of the Society fell out, because he thought that too few of his compositions made it into the concert programmes. He gave up the directorship in 1821, and on 3 May 1824 he gave a farewell concert in London, for which he wrote the Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 132.
In July 1824 Ries went back to the Rhineland with his family, living first in Godesberg and afterwards in Frankfurt. Down to 1837 he directed the Lower Rhenish Music Festival eight times, frequently writing music for it and conducting it himself. For these events he wrote a pair of oratorios: Der Sieg des Glaubens for the 1829 festival and Die Könige in Israel for the 1837 one. In his first year as festival director he conducted the first German performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
In Godesberg in 1825 and 1826 Ries wrote five string quartets, whereas during all his London years he had produced only three works of that kind. From April 1827 the family lived in Frankfurt, where he was drawn by its well-known opera house. His first opera, The Robber Bride, was staged there on 15 October 1828 with great success.
In 1831 Ries stayed a month in London, where he wrote the opera The Sorceress, his second; it opened on 4 August 1831 at the Royal Adelphi Theatre. His third opera dates from 1834. In 1832/33 Ries and his wife made a concert tour of Italy lasting several months, with stops in Venice, Milan, Rome and Naples. En route he wrote his final piano concerto, Op. 177, and his final piano sonata, Op. 176.
From 1834 Ries headed the Singakademie in Aachen. In the winter of 1836–37 he visited Paris, where he composed his last orchestral work, the dramatic overture L'apparition, and went briefly to London, where it was first performed on 13 March 1837 at a Philharmonic Society concert.
Late in life Ries and Franz Wegeler worked on a volume of recollections of Beethoven; it appeared in 1838 in Koblenz and counts as one of the earliest large biographies of the composer. Ries went back to Frankfurt, where an unexpected illness, brief in its course, ended his life on 13 January 1838.
By the time of his death Ries was so forgotten that none of the leading music journals published a notice of it. He is buried in the Klotz family tomb in the cemetery at Frankfurt.
Ries left behind some three hundred works. The list includes eight symphonies, nine piano concertos, a violin concerto, three operas and 26 string quartets. Stylistically his music sits between the Classical and early Romantic manner, given how close the composer was to Beethoven. His symphonies, some of the chamber works, and the violin and piano concertos are available on disc today.
For the piano Ries wrote concertos and sonatas, and in his London years more and more variations, fantasies and rondos. His piano works include the Swedish National Airs with Variations, Op. 52, and the Grand Variations on Rule, Britannia, Op. 116. Among his chamber music, the Septet, Op. 25, for piano, clarinet, two horns, violin, cello and double bass, later became a favourite. Ries wrote for voice as well: his two oratorios were composed for the Lower Rhenish festivals.
Ries's list of chamber works is wide. It includes the Grand Octet, Op. 128, scored for violin, viola, clarinet, horn, bassoon, cello, double bass and piano; the Grand Sextet, Op. 100, for two violins, viola, cello, double bass and piano; and a sextet, Op. 142, with harp, clarinet, bassoon, horn, double bass and piano. In Kassel Ries wrote the Concerto for Two Horns, WoO 19, and the Horn Sonata, Op. 34, for the brothers Johann Gottfried and Johann Michael Schuncke.
Some of the piano concertos carry titles of their own: No. 5, Op. 120, is called the Concerto Pastoral, No. 7, Op. 132, the farewell concerto for England, and No. 8, Op. 151, Gruss an den Rhein. The catalogue also contains overtures to Schiller's Don Carlos, Op. 94, and Die Braut von Messina, Op. 162, as well as nocturnes for wind sextet.
Ries's operas are Die Räuberbraut, Op. 156; Liska, oder die Hexe von Gyllensteen, Op. 164; and Die Nacht auf dem Libanon, WoO 51. Among the vocal works on the list are also the cantata Der Morgen for four voices and orchestra, Op. 27, and the scene Iphigenia in Aulis for voice and orchestra.
For anyone who wants to look deeper into Ries, there is a scholarly thematic catalogue compiled by Cecil Hill. For each work it gives the opening themes of every movement, the dedications, known early reviews and the dates of composition. The catalogue covers about three hundred works. Ries's list of works contains operas and oratorios, orchestral music, chamber ensembles, concertos and variations.
On our site you can find Ries's Wiegenlied for voice and piano (level Intermediate+). It is a convenient place to begin with this composer for players who already perform at an intermediate level.