Scribe or Copyist

(Florian)

Member of Elssler family

(b Eisenstadt, bap. May 3, 1769; d Vienna, Jan 12, 1843). Austrian music copyist, son of Joseph Elssler. Elssler himself said that he was Haydn’s personal copyist and valet for 22 years until the composer’s death (i.e. from 1787; in ‘Tages-Ordnung’, see below); however, he was presumably his valet only from the early 1790s (Schmieder, 1937, p.426). The widely held assumption that Elssler could have entered Haydn’s service before 1787 clearly results from false attribution: the manuscripts of the so-called Esterházy copyist Anonymous 63 (Peter Rampl) were long thought to be Elssler’s, and Landon has proposed that Anonymous 48 and the young Johann Elssler were identical (Soundings, ii, 1971–2, p.15). Like other authentic copies, those definitely originating with Elssler bear no date, though for his there are some clues to chronology, for example the use for some manuscripts of English paper (Elssler accompanied Haydn on the second journey to London in ...

Member of Elssler family

(b ?Kiesling, Silesia, 1738/9; d Eszterháza, Oct 26, 1782). Prince Nikolaus Esterházy’s Austrian music copyist from August 1764 to October 1782. He was a friend of Haydn, who witnessed his marriage (1766) to Eva Maria Köstler (d 1806) and was godfather to all the children of this marriage. Joseph made fewer copies of Haydn’s works than his son Johann Elssler, but they are a no less valuable part of the source tradition of Haydn’s music; they occur particularly in the Esterházy collection at Budapest, and in Vienna, Berlin, Frankfurt and St Florian (von Zahn, 1988, pp.140ff). The magnificent manuscript volumes of baryton trios dedicated to Prince Esterházy deserve special mention, as does Joseph Elssler’s role in the preparation of Haydn’s ‘Entwurf-Katalog’ (EK), which was begun about 1765 (facsimile in Larsen, 1941; further specimens in Landon, 1955...

[Franz, Franciscus]

Member of Flori family

(b ?Maastricht; d Munich, 1588). Dutch music copyist and composer. He entered the Munich court chapel in 1556 and in April 1557 received a lifelong appointment there as a singer. From about 1565 he worked as a scribe alongside the court copyist Johannes Pollet, and he took over from him in ...

[Frater Jordanus PasetusFra Jordan]

(b Venice, c1484; d Padua, 8 Nov 1557). Italian composer. He was a Dominican friar at the church of SS Giovanni e Paolo in Venice at a time when the maestro di cappella was Petrus Castellanus, Petrucci’s editor. A Credo of his was sent to Ercole d’Este by the Ferrarese ambassador in Venice in 1504, with the remark that he was ‘very gifted in these things’; the mass followed shortly thereafter. An organist, he was given permission to play at the nunnery of Santo Spirito in Venice in 1505, and in 1509 he became organist in SS Giovanni e Paolo. He was elected maestro di cappella at the Cathedral of Padua in 1520, and held this position until shortly before his death. He is chiefly remembered as the composer of a set of madrigals a voce pare printed in 1541 (dedicated to a cathedral canon, Benedetto Contarini): this is the only 16th-century print of secular works known to contain exclusively pieces for equal voices (in this case low, or men’s, voices). Passetto’s vesper psalms are all for double choir, with the second choir consisting of voices of low range....

[LudevicusLudovicus]

(b ?Basle or Zurich, 1489, 1490, or 1491; d Munich, between Jan and March 1543). Swiss composer, singer, and copyist; he was one of the most significant representatives of motet and lied composition in German-speaking regions at the time of the Reformation.

Owing to differing contemporary statements, the discussion on Senfl’s birthplace is far from being settled. He was either born in Basle (K. Peutinger in Liber selectarum cantionum, Augsburg, 1520; S. Minervius in Varia carminum genera, Nuremberg, 1534) or in Zurich (F. Sicher in CH-SGs 530; H. Glarean, Dodekachordon, Basle, 1547). However, he might have been born in Basle and raised in Zurich (Geering, 1956), which makes it unlikely that a certain Bernhart Senfly who lived in Zurich from 1488 was his father. The earliest document that probably refers to Senfl is a payment notification by the later Emperor Maximilian I, dating from July 23, 1498...