Nikolaus Zmeskall

Count Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz (20 November 1759, Leštiny, Kingdom of Hungary (present day Slovakia) – 23 June 1833, Vienna, Austria) was an official in the Hungarian Court Chancellery, living in Vienna. He was a musician and friend of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Life

Zmeskall was educated at Neusohl (now Banská Bystrica in Slovakia), and studied philosophy and law at the universities of Trnava and Pest. After qualifying as a lawyer he moved to Vienna in 1784, where he was a civil servant at the Hungarian Court Chancellery.

He was an amateur musician, and according to his own account he had lessons in composition from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Georg Albrechtsberger. He was a founding member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, and was a member of its committee from 1813 to 1825. His compositions include string quartets, a piano rondo and several cello sonatas; they are in the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Beethoven dedicated his String Quartet No. 11 in F minor (published in 1816) to Zmeskall.

In May 1824 Zmeskall, despite being in poor health, was present at the premiere of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. Beethoven, a month before his death, wrote his last letter to Zmeskall, in which he hoped they would both be restored to health.