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...