Johann Kaspar Mertz's Biography

Johann Kaspar Mertz was born in 1806 Pressburg, the Hungarian Pozsony, now the Slovakian capital, Bratislava. He learned the guitar and flute. Little is known of his early life but by 1840 he was established in Vienna, enjoying royal patronage and touring widely in Europe. He had an active artistic life in Vienna (c.1840~1856), which had been home to various important figures in the guitar world, including Anton Diabelli, Mauro Giuliani, Wenceslaus Matiegka and Simon Franz Molitor.

When touring in Dresden, he met Josephine Plantin, whom he married in December 1842. In 1846 an illness struck Mertz and due to his wife’s unwise administration of strychnine his condition was worse. He recovered eight months later. Some speculation may lead one to the conclusion that listening to his wife performing the Romantic piano pieces of the day during his period of recovery may have had an influence on the sound and unusual right hand technique he adopted for the Bardenklange (Bardic Sounds) Op.13.

Mertz is now considered one of the finest guitarist-composers of the nineteenth century, his guitar music, unlike that of most of his contemporaries, following the pianistic models of Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schubert and Schumann, rather than the classical models of Mozart and Haydn (as did Fernando Sor and Dionisio Aguado), or the bel canto style of Rossini (as did Giuliani).The Bardenklänge (1847) are probably Mertz's most important contribution to the guitar repertoire—a series of deceptively difficult character pieces in the mould of Schumann.

Mertz played a ten-string guitar, which was not uncommon at the time - Carulli and Makaroff also played such an instrument, Regondi and Legnani played eight-string guitars, and Coste played a seven-string. Mertz’s works are nevertheless playable on the modern six-string.

After performing for Ludwig of Bavaria in 1855, he died shortly after he was won the Brussels guitar composition contest in 1856 (organized by his great admirer Nicolai Petrovich Makaroff), with his fifteen-volume Bardenkläng.

Annually, a memorial competition is held in his native town – Pressburg.