Biography (read more)
Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse was born at Altona in Holstein on 5 March 1774, then under the Danish crown, and took his early interest in music there and in Hamburg, where C. P. E. Bach was municipal director of music. At fifteen, in 1789, he was sent to live with an uncle in Copenhagen and remained there for the rest of his life. He studied with Johann Abraham Peter Schulz, who found him an unpaid internship at the Reformed Church; he was appointed its organist in 1794 on the death of the incumbent, moved to the Vor Frue Kirke after 1805, and was made court composer in 1819. He died in Copenhagen on 8 October 1842.
He was a central figure of the Danish Golden Age and is known above all for vocal music: a series of singspiele — Sovedrikken, Ludlams Hule, Floribella, Festen på Kenilworth among them — Christmas carols including Julen har bragt velsignet bud, settings of the Te Deum and the Miserere, more than thirty cantatas, and lieder on poems by Matthias Claudius, Johann Heinrich Voss and Hölty. Unlike Bach’s, his cantatas were written to follow the service rather than to sit inside it; the first Easter cantata, on words after Thomas Thaarup, was premiered at the Trinitatis Church on 22 April 1836. He also wrote seven symphonies and a large amount of solo piano music. A passage from one of his works opens the Cat’s Duet usually attributed to Rossini.
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