Carl Friedrich Abel

Portrait of Carl Friedrich Abel by Thomas Gainsborough, 1777

Carl Friedrich Abel (December 22, 1723 June 20, 1787) was a German composer of the
Classical era. (The Chambers Biographical Dictionary gives his year of birth as 1725.) He was a
fine player on the viola da gamba, and composed important music for that instrument.
Abel was born in Cthen, the son of Christian Ferdinand Abel, the principal viola da gamba and
cello player in the court orchestra of Johann Sebastian Bach. There is no proof that Abel studied at
Thomasschule Leipzig, but it was on Bach's recommendation that in 1748 he was able to join
Johann Adolph Hasse's court orchestra at Dresden where he remained for ten years. In 1759 (or
1758 according to Chambers), he went to England and became chamber-musician to Queen
Charlotte. He gave a concert of his own compositions in London, performing on various
instruments, one of which was a five-string cello known as a pentachord, which had been recently
invented by John Joseph Merlin.
In 1762, Johann Christian Bach, the eleventh son of Johann Sebastian Bach, joined him in London,
and the friendship between him and Abel led, in 1764 or 1765, to the establishment of the famous
Bach-Abel concerts, England's first subscription concerts. In those concerts, many celebrated guest
artists appeared, and the works of Haydn received their first English performance.
For ten years the concerts were organized by Mrs. Teresa Cornelys, a retired Venetian opera singer
who owned a concert hall at Carlisle House in Soho Square, then the height of fashionable events.
In 1775 the concerts became independent of her, to be continued by Abel and Bach until Bach's
death in 1782. Abel still remained in great demand as a player on various instruments new and old.
He traveled to Germany and France between 1782 and 1785, and upon his return to London,
became a leading member of the Grand Professional Concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms in
Soho. Throughout his life he had enjoyed excessive living, and his drinking probably hastened his
death, which occurred in London on June 20, 1787.

One of the most widely known works of Abel became famous due to a misattribution: in the 19th
century, a manuscript symphony in the hand of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was catalogued as his
Symphony no. 3 in E flat, K. 18, and was published as such in the first complete edition of Mozart's
works by Breitkopf & Hrtel. Later, it was discovered that this symphony was actually the work of
Abel, copied by the boy Mozart--evidently for study purposes--while he was visiting London in
1764. That symphony was originally published as the concluding work in Abel's Six Symphonies,

Op. 7.

Edit Selected works by opus number

Op. 1: 6 Overtures or Sinfonias (1761)

Op. 2: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin and Cello (ad libitum) (1760)

Op. 3: 6 Trio Sonatas for 2 Violins and Basso Continuo (1762)

Op. 4: 6 Overtures or Sinfonias (1762)

Op. 5: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin and Cello (ad libitum) (1762)

Op. 6: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Flute (1763)

Op. 7: 6 Symphonies (1767)

Op. 8: 6 String Quartets (1768)

Op. 9: 6 Trio Sonatas for Violin, Cello and Basso Continuo (1771)

Op. 10: 6 Symphonies (1771)

Op. 11: 6 Concerti for Keyboard and Strings (1771)

Op. 12: 6 Flute Quartets (1774)

Op. 13: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin (1777)

Op. 14: 6 Symphonies (1778)

Op. 15: 6 String Quartets (1780)

Op. 16: 4 Trio Sonatas for 2 Flutes and Basso Continuo (1781)

Op. 16: 6 Trio Sonatas for Violin, Viola and Cello (1782)

Op. 17: 6 Symphonies (1785)

Op. 18: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin (1784)