Francesco Antonio Rosetti (c. 1750 – 30 June 1792) was a classical era composer and double bass player, and was a contemporary of Haydn and Mozart. There is considerable confusion regarding his name. The occasional mention of a supposed, but non-existent, "Antonio Rosetti born 1744 in Milan", is due to an error by Ernst Ludwig Gerber in a later edition of his Tonkünstler-Lexikon[1] having mistaken Rosetti for an Italian in the first edition of his own Lexikon, and therefore including Rosetti twice - once as an Italian, once as a German-Czech.[2] Many sources claim that he was born Franz Anton Rösler, and changed his name to an Italianate form by 1773, but according to a 1792 article by Heinrich Phillip Bossler, who knew Rosetti personally, he was named Rosetti from his birth. [3]
- ^ Ernst Ludwig Gerber, Neues historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkunstler (4 vols, Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1790-92), 1750 DIED: Ludwigslust, June 30, 1792 Antonio Rosetti--not to be confused with Antonio Rosetti (1744-after 1780)-- was born north of Prague in the Vltava town now called Litoměřice of German stock and baptized Franz Anton Rösler
- ^ Music and letters Arthur Henry Fox Strangways, JSTOR (Organization), Project Muse - 1977 "lexicographer has mistaken the Italian Antonio Rosetti for the Bohemian composer .' Gerber himself made this error ... first edition of his Tonkunstler-Lexikon, where he identified the Wallerstein Rosetti as 'born in Milan around 1744' :
- ^ https://rosetti.de/index_eng.html, under "Who was Antonio Rosetti?": "There is likewise no evidence to support the oft-cited claim that Rosetti was born Anton Rös(s)ler. In the above cited article it is emphasized that he was never called "Rössler, but from birth Rosetti." "