Emanuel Aloys Förster

Emanuel Aloys Förster (26 January 1748 – 12 November 1823) was a composer and music teacher, who spent most of his life in Vienna, Austria.

Early life

Emanuel Aloys Förster was born in Niedersteine bei Glatz in Bohemia (at that time in the Austrian Empire). Almost nothing is known of his family or parents except that his father was an administrator in an economics office. From his early youth, Emanuel composed several concertos and many sonatas purely from his correct musical ear. He acquired only later a copy of a theoretical work by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (probably "Versuch über die wahre Art das Klavier zu spielen", "Essay on the true art of keyboard playing"), which he copied out. When he had left school he went to work for some years in his father's office, and then he was called up into the Prussian army and spent the last two years of the Seven Years War as an oboist in the "Fouquet'schen Regiment". After that (around 1763) he went to Mittelwalde where he lived in the intimate circle of, and studied with, the (at that time) famous organist Johann Georg Pausewang.

He wrote a treatise "Anleitung zum General-Baß" (Introduction to general bass) (Vienna, 1823) on a topic in composition theory, and taught, among others, Louis Niedermeyer.