Gregor Werner

Gregor Joseph Werner (28 January 1693 – 3 March 1766 ) was an Austrian composer of the Baroque period, best known as the predecessor of Joseph Haydn as the Kapellmeister of the Hungarian Esterházy family. Few of Werner’s works survive to the present day, and he is mostly remembered for his troubled relationship with Haydn. Career Werner was born in Ybbs an der Donau. at the court; previously, there had been seven years of relative inactivity following the death of Prince Joseph in 1721; his widow Maria Octavia, serving as co-regent for her young son Paul Anton, had instituted economies in the musical establishment. Robbins Landon and Jones suggest that Werner was hired at the then 17-year-old prince’s instigation. Jones discerns a bifurcated style, with most of the work taking the form of severe, “weighty” contrapuntal pieces, but a minority (written for lighter occasions such as Advent and the Nativity) that “employ a distinctly homespun idiom, invoking elements of Austrian and indeed Eastern European folk music”. which appeared in Augsburg in 1748. and the Esterházy organist Johann Novotný (1718–1765), father of Franz Nikolaus Novotny (1743–1773). Autograph scores and parts by Gr