REGISTER NOW AND GET • 5 FREE tracks! • 101 tracks for $9.99
Ballet
Chamber Music
Chinese Music
Concertos
Film & TV Music
Instrumental
Musicals
Opera / Operetta
Orchestral
Orchestral Backing Tracks
Sacred Choral
Secular Choral
Vocal
---------------------------- Classical Periods
Medieval
Renaissance
Baroque
Classical
Romantic/19th Century
20th Century
Contemporary
Classic Jazz
Contemporary Jazz
Fiction
Classic Fiction
Drama
Shakespeare
Others
Non Fiction
Arts-Histories
Biographies
History
Music
Philosophy
Religion
Poetry
Junior Classics
Classiscsonline Home » Composers » M » Mertz, Johann Kaspar
Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806-1856) was born to a poor family in Pressburg, the Hungarian Pozsony, now the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, where his only notable memorial is an annual competition in his name. He was a child prodigy on the guitar and flute. Little is known of his early life but by 1840 he was ensconced in Vienna, enjoying royal patronage and touring widely in Europe. In 1842 he married Josephine Plantin, a pianist whose unwise administration of strychnine in 1846 aggravated an illness from which he recovered eighteen months later. He died shortly before his magnum opus, the fifteen-volume Bardenklänge was awarded the First Prize in a competition in Brussels, organised by his great admirer Nicolai Petrovich Makaroff.