Joseph Kaspar Mertz was the leading Austrian guitarist during the middle of the nineteenth century. He was born on August 17, 1806 in Pressburg, Hungary, (now Bratislava, capitol of the Slovak Republic) to poor parents. He began to play the guitar and flute as a youth and was compelled to give music lessons at an early age. Mertz left his birthplace in 1840 to establish himself in Vienna. At that time, Tobias Haslinger began to publish guitar music of Mertz. Mertz appeared in a concert at the Hofburgtheater in Vienna in November 1840 under the patronage of the Empress Carolina Augusta. The success of this concert introduced Mertz to the Viennese social and artistic elite.

He embarked on a concert tour in 1841, playing concerts in Austria, Poland, Russia, and Berlin. In 1842 Mertz met the pianist Josephine Plantin in Dresden whom he married on December 14 of that year in Prague. They returned to Vienna where they were both active as teachers, composers, and concert artists, often performing duets of their own composition for guitar and piano. Mertz was diagnosed with neuralgia in 1846, for which he was prescribed strychnine. Having no familiarity with the drug, Josephine dispensed the entire prescription in one does and Mertz’s health weakened. After nearly 18 months of care Mertz regained his health and resumed his concert career in February of 1848. The composer was apparently able to continue preparing material for publication during his illness. In 1846 and 1847 Haslinger published the first 10 Hefte of Mertz’s Bardenklange, Op. 13, and his Schule fur die Guitarre in addition to Opern-Revue, Op. 8, nos. 10-19, and VI Landler, Op. 12.

Josephine Mertz recounted that during one of their concert tours in 1855, a customs official suspected Mertz of selling music supplies, because he was traveling with two guitars and a vast quantity of strings. Mertz explained to the official that he had devised a new method with which he plays the strings with his fingernails and that they provide a superior tone but at the same time cause the strings to deteriorate too quickly. Taken literally, this report provides evidence that Mertz at this time preferred the use of nails, a topic of debate among guitarists throughout the nineteenth century. As for the need for two guitars, it is probable that one was a terz guitar for duets with piano and the other a 10-string guitar for solo music.

Suffering from heart disease and general frail health, Mertz passed away on October 14, 1856, shortly after returning to Vienna from a concert tour. On December 10, 1856 Mertz was posthumously awarded first prize for his Concertino (the composer’s last work, according to Frau Mertz) in a guitar composition and construction competition in Brussels organized by the Russian nobleman and guitarist Nikolai Makaroff (1810-1890). Josephine Mertz remained in Vienna until her death in 1903 at 84 years of age.

Joseph Kaspar Mertz was a prolific composer for solo guitar, guitar duo, and (often in collaboration with his wife) guitar and piano duo. He also wrote works for voice and guitar (or piano) and trio for violin (or flute), viola and guitar, as well as several works for kindred instruments to the guitar, the zither and mandolin. In addition to Haslinger, Mertz’s music was published by Hoffmann (Prague), Aibl (Munich), and Ricordi (Milan), with opus numbers reaching 100, although many works with opus numbers are missing. Reacting to musical trends prevalent in Europe during the mid-nineteenth century, the compositions of Mertz depart from the traditional forms preferred by previous guitar composers. The influence of piano music by Mendelssohn, Chopin, and early Liszt, as well as diversity of opera composers and idioms, all inform the music of Mertz. His concert works and operatic fantasies are expansive and rhapsodic, and his miniatures are poetic and descriptive. The dance forms of Mertz, primarily Landler, polonaises, mazurkas, and Hungarian dances exemplify a more traditional formal treatment, usually a binary form and often with a minuet-trio format.