Roman Hoffstetter

Biography

Roman Hoffstetter (born 24 April 1742, in Laudenbach, near Bad Mergentheim, Holy Roman Empire; died: 21 May (Baker's) or June (New Grove 2nd) 1815, in Miltenberg-am-Main, Germany; alternative spelling Romanus Hoffstetter) was a classical composer and Benedictine monk who also admired Joseph Haydn almost to the point of imitation. Hoffstetter wrote "everything that flows from Haydn's pen seems to me so beautiful and remains so imprinted on my memory that I cannot prevent myself now and again from imitating something as well as I can." In 1965, the musicologist Alan Tyson (with H.C. Robbins Landon) published the finding that the entire set of six String Quartets long-admired as Haydn's Op. 3, including the Andante cantabile of No. 5 in F Major known as Haydn's Serenade, were actually by Roman Hoffstetter. Further discoveries have purported to establish Hoffstetter's authorship of the first two of the six quartets, but not the other four. Little is known about his early training or life, though it is likely that he came from a musical family. He was a twin; the other was Johann Urban Alois Hoffstetter, who became director of the Franconian province of the Teutonic Order and also a small-time composer. Hoffstetter took his vows as Pater Romanus at Amorbach Abbey on 5 June 1763, and was ordained a priest on 10 September 1766. He succeeded in due time to the position of Regens chori (choir director), also functioning as an organist and on-call parish priest for smaller churches in the Odenwald region, although his principal position at the abbey was as culinary overseer (Küchenmeister). The majority of works written for Amorbach were lost in the dissolution of the monastery library by French forces in 1803. Following the secularization of Amorbach in 1803, Hoffstetter retired – almost completely deaf and blind – to Miltenberg-am-Main with his abbot, Benedikt Kuelsheimer. He died there 12 years later. Hoffstetter's music has the virtue of being memorable, with clear-cut

Bio from Wikipedia