Joseph Christoph Kessler
1800 — 1872
No external summary available for Joseph Christoph Kessler.
From the period sources
Joseph Christoph Kessler, born in 1800 and dying in 1872, was a composer whose “Grandes Etudes (op. 20)” were “greatly and deservedly esteemed,” according to A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1880). However, the same dictionary also noted that his études, alongside those of Czerny, Hummel, and others, were among an “enormous number” with “comparatively little educational and less artistic value,” often “written to the order of publishers.” Kessler was a significant teacher, with several notable pupils. Jean Baptiste Andre, a pianist and composer, studied harmony with Kessler and Dehn (A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 1900). Similarly, Adolf Gollmick, a pianist who settled in London in 1844, was a pupil of Kessler, as was Julius Sachs, a German composer and pianist (Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 1886). Heinrich Henkel, an able pianist and music teacher in Frankfort, also studied theory under Kessler and Anton Andre (Dictionary of Music, 1896). Kessler’s influence extended to Franz Severin Holzl, who studied with him and Seyfried in Vienna before becoming Kapellmeister of Fünfkirchen Cathedral (Dictionary of Music, 1908). He also taught harmony to Carl Heinrich Adolf Reiss, a pianist and later Hof-Kapellmeister at Cassel (Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, 1890). Kessler’s pedagogical reach was further demonstrated through his collaboration with Natorp, with whom he “carefully revised” a choral book for evangelical churches, published in four parts with Rink’s preludes (Biographie universelle des musiciens, 1837).