Ernst Christoph Dressler

Ernst Christoph Dressler (23 September 1734 – 6 April 1779) was a German composer, operatic tenor, violinist and music theorist. He began his career as a self taught singer and violinist, but eventually received vocal training from the renowned Italian opera singer Maria Giustina Turcotti. He became a musician at several courts before he moved to the Court Opera in Vienna and finally to Kassel. He is known for a march on which Beethoven based his first published composition.

Life Born in Greußen, near Sondershausen in Thuringia, to Christian Ludwig Dressler and Catherine Elizabeth Renner, Dressler studied theology, jurisprudence and German poetry at the universities of Halle, Jena and Leipzig. In Leipzig, he educated himself in playing the violin and in singing. He moved to Bayreuth, where he took lessons from the singer Maria Giustina Turcotti, training his tenor voice, and subsequently worked as a chamber musician, court singer and secretary for Margrave Friedrich Christian. He was a talented violinist, composer and writer, in addition to his ability as a tenor. He disapproved of the then in vogue at Gotha, and in November 1766 he resigned In 1771, the prince returned to Bohemia; Dressler chose not to go with him.

Dressler married Wilhelmine Christiane Zeitz.

In his works on music theory, he supported efforts to create a distinct German opera independent of Italian opera. This required the establishment of permanent opera houses in Germany, rare in Germany at the time. He considered Anton Schweitzer's 1773 opera Alceste (with a libretto by Christoph Martin Wieland) a paradigm of German opera.

Publications Song collections (Melodious songs for the fair sex). Frankfurt, 1771 (Friendship and love). Nuremberg, 1774

Music theory (Fragments of ideas of the musical spectator, regarding a better reception of music in Germany). Gotha, 1767 (Thoughts on the performance of Alceste, a German serious singspiel). Erfurt, 1774 (A theatre school for the Germans, concerning the serious sung drama). Hanover, 1777