Ludwig Wenzel Lachnith

Ludwig Wenzel Lachnith (Prague, July 7, 1746 – Paris, October 3, 1820) was a Bohemian horn player and versatile composer influenced by Joseph Haydn and Ignaz Pleyel. Today he is chiefly remembered because of his adaptions of operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The French composer and writer Hector Berlioz immortalized him in a diatribe in his autobiography.

Zweibrücken Castle front (Modern view)

Zweibrücken Castle back (Modern view)

Lachnith was born in Prague.

After early studies with his father Franz, an able church musician in Prague, Lachnith from 1768 onwards became a member of the court orchestra in Zweibrücken.

In 1773 he went to Paris to study French horn with Johann Josef Rudolf (Rodolphe) and later composition with François-André Danican Philidor. Since 1783 he was living permanently in Paris, where his symphonies were played in the Concerts de la Reine (Marie Antoinette).

With the onset of the French Revolution he got in trouble with the new authorities and had to resign from his post at the Paris opera. He fled from the terror of the revolution in 1790, came back and henceforth eked out a meagre existence by giving private lessons and arranging operas and even oratorios for Parisian theatres. In 1801 he became instructor at the Paris Opera, but had to leave the following year, only to be reemployed in 1806. He died in Paris.

He is remembered chiefly as a composer of pasticcios, using the music of several composers in one piece. His arrangement of the music and libretto of Mozart's Magic Flute (Zauberflöte), appearing under the title Les Mystères d'Isis, was an instant success but also parodied as Les Misères d'ici. In several of his ventures he had Christian Kalkbrenner, father of the pianist and composer Friedrich Kalkbrenner, as his collaborator.

Hector Berlioz

Eminent French composer and outspoken music critic Hector Berlioz (ca. 1864-65).

Although very successful with the public, Lachnith’s adaption of Mozart’s Magic Flute met with scathing criticism already during his lifetime. Hector Berlioz for one was a fierce (and very funny) critic of such practices. Long before the terms Urtext (original text) and Werktreue (work faithfulness) were coined, Berlioz was demanding just that in a series of articles that were later incorporated into his autobiography:

Otto Jahn

Otto Jahn

For Mozart's biographer Otto Jahn Lachnith’s travesty was the "maddest chapter in the history of the Magic Flute":

Operas

Original compositions by Lachnith include the operas:

• L'Heureuse Reconciliation (1785)
• L'Antiquaire (1789)
• Eugenie et Linval (1798).

Oratorios

• Saul (1805)
• Battle of Jericho (together with Christian Kalkbrenner, 1805).

Orchestral music

• 24 symphonies
• 3 concertos for French horn and orchestra

Chamber music

• 12 string quartets
• 6 piano trios
• 30 sonatas for piano and violin

Instruction manuals

Written jointly with Louis Adam:

• Méthode ou principe général du doigté pour le forte-piano (1798)
• Exercices préparatoires pour le piano