Johann Adam Hiller

Biography

Hiller was a central figure in an underappreciated school of German opera, known simply as Singspiel. In the Hollywood movie Amadeus (1984), the word singspiel is translated “vaudeville.” Not a bad translation, since these were comedies and mass entertainments. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s first operas were well within Hiller’s mould. Mozart’s own genius, evident as early as Scipio’s Dream (1772), was the ability to unite the contributions of singspiel with those of the more high-brow court-loved operas.

But back to Hiller: though he came from a musical family, he was largely dependent upon the charity of family friends after the death of his father in 1734. In the mid 1740s he was taking lessons in keyboard and basso continuo from Gottfried August Homilius. Hiller operas include Die Verwandelten Weiber (The Wives Transformed), performed at Leipzig in 1766; Der Lustige Schuster (The Merry Cobbler) performed in the same city and year; and Die Jagd (The Hunt), at Weimar, 1770. Hiller also wrote critical and theoretical works, such as Abhandlung über die Nachahmung der Natur in der Musik (Treatise on the Imitation of Nature in Music), 1754.