Georg Matthias Monn

Georg Matthias Monn (born Johann Georg Mann 9 April 1717, Vienna – 3 October 1750, Vienna) was an Austrian composer, organist and music teacher whose works were fashioned in the transition from the Baroque to Classical period in music. Together with Georg Christoph Wagenseil and Josef Starzer, Monn formed the Viennese Pre-Classical movement whose composers are nowadays mostly known only by their names. However, his successful introduction of the secondary theme in the symphony was an important element for the First Viennese School (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert) that would come some fifty years later. Biography Much less is known about Monn’s life than about his musical ideas. Only his appointments as an organist are known, at first in Klosterneuburg near Vienna. Afterwards, he was appointed in the same position at Melk in Lower Austria and at the Karlskirche in Vienna’s Wieden district. He died of tuberculosis aged 33. His brother, (1726–1782), was also a composer whose works have sometimes been confused with Monn’s. The reason for this is that most of Monn’s compositions only survive in copies from the 1780s and could therefore also be the works of his younger brother. Th