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 Car lisle 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 mis attribution: 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)