Early life in Mannheim in the eighteenth century Carl Stamitz was born at
Mannheim and baptized on 8 May 1745, the eldest son of Maria Antonia Luneborn and
Johann Stamitz, a violinist and composer of the early classical era. Johann Stamitz was the
leader of the highly-reputed court orchestra at
Mannheim Palace and he trained the orchestra to be disciplined and technically polished. The players created a sensation with their ability to play with subtlety and precision, as well as with a great
dynamic range. Carl received his first lessons in
violin and
musical composition from his father. After Johann Stamitz's death in 1757, the 12-year-old Stamitz was taught by the composer
Christian Cannabich, his father's successor as concert-master and leader of the Mannheim orchestra.
Ignaz Holzbauer, the court-director of music. The court-composer
Franz Xaver Richter also had a hand in the boy's education.
Early career By the time he was seventeen, Stamitz was employed as a violinist in the court orchestra. In 1770, he resigned from his post and began travelling. As a travelling virtuoso on the violin, the viola, and viola d'amore, Stamitz often accepted short-term engagements, but never managed to gain a permanent position with one of the European princes nor in one of the orchestras of his time. In 1770 he went to Paris, where his father had a yearlong professional stay in Paris in 1754 that had been very successful before returning to Mannheim. Initially, Stamitz went into service with
Louis, Duke of Noailles, who made him his court composer. He also appeared in the
Concerts Spirituels, sometimes together with his brother
Anton, who probably had come to Paris with him. With Paris as his base, he made frequent concert tours to a number of German cities: on 12 April 1773, he appeared in
Frankfurt; a year later he was in
Augsburg; and in 1775, he ventured as far as the Russian capital,
Saint Petersburg. In 1777, he dwelt for a time in
Strasbourg where Franz Xaver Richter was
music director. During the years 1777 and 1778, he was successful in
London, one of many Austro-German musicians, such as
Carl Friedrich Abel,
J. C. Bach, and in his last years
Haydn, to be drawn there. His stay in London may have been facilitated through his contact with
Thomas Erskine, Earl of Kellie (1753–1781), who had received lessons from Carl's father Johann during a tour of the continent. Between 1782 and 1783, Stamitz gave concerts in
The Hague and in
Amsterdam. In 1785, he returned to Germany to appear in concerts in
Hamburg,
Lübeck,
Braunschweig,
Magdeburg, and
Leipzig. In April 1786, he made his way to Berlin, where on 19 May 1786 he participated in the performance of
Handel's
Messiah, under the baton of
Johann Adam Hiller. He later travelled to
Dresden,
Prague,
Halle, and then
Nuremberg, where on 3 November 1787 he staged a
Great Allegorical Musical Festivity in Two Acts in celebration of the balloon ascent of the French
aviation pioneer
Jean-Pierre Blanchard. During the winter of 1789–90 he directed the amateur concerts in
Kassel, but failed to gain an employment with the
Schwerin court. By now married and the father of four young children, he was forced to resume a life of travelling. On 12 November 1792, he gave a concert in the
Weimar court theatre that was then under the direction of
Goethe. In 1793, he undertook a last journey along the
River Rhine to his native Mannheim, before he finally gave up travelling. Sometime in the winter of 1794–95, he moved his family to the
university town of
Jena in central Germany.
Final years During the years Stamitz spent at Jena, there was neither a town band nor an orchestra to speak of. According to some sources, he was in some way connected to the university, but this seems a matter of dispute. Stamitz gradually descended into poverty. After his death in November 1801, a substantial number of
tracts on
alchemy were found in his library. Because of this it is thought that he dabbled in attempts at making
gold. == Music ==