Christian Gottlob Neefe

Biography

According to one authority, [Alexander Wheelock Thayer], Neefe is an example of a man whose career in music was “determined by the beauty of his voice in childhood.” Neefe was in the chorus of his town’s principal church from a very young age. The town in question was Chemnitz, in Saxony, and Neefe learned well from the experience, so well that as a young man he began making a living as a music teacher. In 1777, though, he became musical director of a well-known theatrical company, succeeding in that post Johann Adam Hiller. His works include ten operas, of which the first Der Dorfbarbier (The Village Barber), a comic piece, set to a libretto by Christian Felix Weisse, was co-composed with Hiller. Surely Neefe’s largest role in musical history, though, is that in the 1780s he was giving lessons in composition to a young Ludwig Beethoven.