Johann Adam Hiller

Johann Adam Hiller (25 December 1728 – 16 June 1804) was a German composer, conductor and writer on music, regarded as the creator of the Singspiel, an early form of German opera. In many of these operas he collaborated with the poet Christian Felix Weiße. Hiller was a teacher who encouraged musical education for women, his pupils including Elisabeth Mara and Corona Schröter. He was Kapellmeister of Abel Seyler’s theatrical company, and became the first Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Biography By the death of his father in 1734, Hiller was left dependent to a large extent on the charity of friends. He came from a musical family, and also learned the basics of music from a school master in his home town, Wendisch-Ossig. From 1740 to 1745, he was a student at the Gymnasium in Görlitz, where his fine soprano voice earned him free tuition. He died at the age of 75 in Leipzig in 1804. He was the father of the composer Friedrich Adam Hiller (c. 1767–1812), but he was not related to the musician Ferdinand Hiller. Operas A theme from Hiller’s opera Der Aerndtekranz (1771) was the basis for Max Reger’s orchestral Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Hiller (1907). Literary