Józef Antoni Franciszek Elsner was born on 1 June 1769 at Grodków in the Duchy of Nysa, near Wrocław in Prussian Silesia, to German Silesian Catholic parents. He was educated for the priesthood at a Dominican monastery school, St Matthew’s Gymnasium and a Jesuit college in Breslau before choosing music, played violin at Brno, and in 1792 became second Kapellmeister at the German Opera in Lemberg, where he married Klara Abt in 1796; she died a year later. In 1799 he moved with Wojciech Bogusławski to Warsaw as principal conductor, first of the German Theatre and then of the Polish National Theatre. He met E. T. A. Hoffmann in Poznań and founded the Musikressource with him in 1805, married Karolina Drozdowska in 1802, and resigned from theatre work after complaints that he favoured Germans. He went on calling himself a Silesian rather than adopting a national identity, and died on 18 April 1854 at his estate of Elsnerów, now inside Warsaw.

He was among the first composers in Poland to work folk material into art music, and left a very large catalogue: thirty-eight operas, more than a hundred religious works — masses, offertories, oratorios, cantatas — eight symphonies, three concertos, three ballets, and chamber, solo and vocal-instrumental pieces, with the operas Leszek Biały and Król Łokietek and the Passion oratorio among the best known. He was principal conductor at the Warsaw National Theatre from 1799 to 1824 and taught at the Warsaw Lyceum. He taught Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński and, from 1823 to 1829, Chopin — his only composition teacher — of whom he wrote in the register: “Chopin, Fryderyk, third-year student, amazing capabilities, musical genius.” Chopin dedicated his First Piano Sonata, Op. 4, to him.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Elsner
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q471647