1806–1856 · Austria · Classical
Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806–1856) was an Austrian guitarist, composer and teacher. He learned to play guitar and flute in his native Pressburg, and from 1840 lived in Vienna, where he performed as a virtuoso and toured Germany, Poland and Russia. His largest work is the thirty-piece cycle Bardenklänge (Sounds of the Bards), written in the romantic spirit of its time.
Johann Kaspar Mertz was born on 17 August 1806 in Pressburg, now Bratislava, in the Austrian Empire; at that time Pressburg was the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary. The family he grew up in was poor. As a child Mertz learned to play guitar and flute, and by the age of twelve he had begun giving lessons on these instruments himself.
Mertz stayed in Pressburg until 1840, earning his living from teaching — among other things, giving lessons at the school run by the Pressburg church-music society.
Moving to Vienna in 1840 proved decisive for Mertz: there he made his name as a virtuoso performer and composer. He gave his first solo concert at the Burgtheater, and that same year the publisher Tobias Haslinger brought out his debut work. Mertz later toured Germany, Poland and Russia, travelled to Moravia as well, and performed in Berlin and Dresden.
In the early 1840s Mertz played an eight-string guitar, and later switched to a ten-string instrument made by I. G. Scherzer: the extra bass strings of such a guitar were tuned in a descending row of D-C-B-A and ran close to the neck, so they could only be played open, without pressing them onto the frets. Vienna, where Mertz performed and taught, was a city where other notable guitarists had already worked before him — Mauro Giuliani, Simon Molitor, Wenceslaus Matiegka and Anton Diabelli.
In Dresden Mertz met the pianist Josephine Plantin and married her in December 1842. After the wedding the couple performed together as a duo: Mertz on guitar and Plantin on piano.
In 1846 Mertz was prescribed an excessive dose of strychnine to treat his neuralgia, and he nearly died. Over the following year Mertz recovered his health at his wife's side.
Opinions of Mertz's concerts in Vienna varied: Regondi's concerts of 1840 were still remembered and had set a high standard, while almost every review called the guitar an unrewarding instrument, so it was almost impossible for a musician to make a living from performing alone. Mertz supported himself mainly through teaching, and besides guitar he also had to teach zither and flute. The financial situation of the Mertz couple in Vienna was difficult.
In the second half of the century, Mertz and Johann Dubez remained the only notable representatives of the guitar in Vienna. Later, in 1902, Mertz's wife Josephine published a biography of her husband in the journal Der Guitarrefreund, in which she named Dubez as his student.
After 1848 Mertz's performances declined along with the wider fading of interest in the guitar. Mertz sent his Concertino for guitar to the international guitarists' competition in Brussels shortly before his death, in 1856; it was organised by the Russian guitarist Nikolai Makarov.
Johann Kaspar Mertz died on 14 October 1856 in Vienna. His Concertino won the competition's first prize, coming ahead of the piece submitted by Napoléon Coste.
After Mertz's death his wife Josephine sold her husband's manuscripts and instruments. A considerable part of the works thus came into the possession of the Swedish engineer Carl Oscar Boije af Gennäs, who after his own death passed the material to the Swedish Music Collection.
In the history of the guitar Mertz remained known as a composer: the revival of interest in the guitar around 1900 turned once again to his works.
Among Mertz's many guitar compositions, the cycle Bardenklänge (Sounds of the Bards) stands out — thirty pieces from 1846–1847. It came out in separate booklets: the first ten were printed in 1847, three more in 1850, and into the twelfth and thirteenth booklets Mertz put his own arrangements of polonaises by Michał Kleofas Ogiński. The pieces echo the romantic music of their day and at times recall the works of Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann. Mertz also left arrangements for solo guitar — among them, six songs by Franz Schubert.
In style, Mertz's guitar writing leaned toward the piano idiom of his own time, above all Chopin, Mendelssohn and Schumann. Many of his contemporaries — Fernando Sor and Dionisio Aguado among them — stayed closer to the classical models of Mozart and Haydn. Besides his own pieces, Mertz's output also includes arrangements of other composers' music for solo guitar, among them several opera arias.
Solo guitar was not the only line-up Mertz wrote for: a notable part of his output is duets for terz guitar and regular guitar, and among his chamber pieces is one where the guitar is joined by violin (or flute) and viola. For performances with his wife he also composed pieces for guitar and piano.
Mertz's output also includes a good number of opera arrangements: the collection Portefeuille für Guitarre-Spieler brings together his arrangements of excerpts from operas by Flotow, Meyerbeer, Mozart and Verdi, while Fantasie über Linda di Chamounix and Divertissement über Don Pasquale are built on music by Donizetti. Mertz also wrote dance pieces — among them 6 Ländler, Erinnerung an Ischl and Original Steyrer Tänze.
The site currently holds one Mertz edition — the Etude in A minor for solo guitar, at the intermediate level — a good place to start with his music.