Biography

Kanne was born on 8 March 1778 in Delitzsch

Delitzsch

Delitzsch is a large district and also an important regional center in Saxony. With over 26,300 inhabitants Delitzsch is the largest city in the northern district of Saxony...

, Saxony. He studied theology and medicine it Leipzig and Wittenberg, then literature and composition in Dresden. At the end of 1804, he moved to Vienna and worked briefly as a music tutor to Franz Joseph Maximilian of the House of Lobkowicz. He met Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

 and became a friend of Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

 whom he assisted to understand the text of the Latin Mass

Latin Mass

The term Latin Mass refers to the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Mass celebrated in Latin.The term is frequently used to denote the Tridentine Mass: that is, the Roman-Rite liturgy of the Mass celebrated in accordance with the successive editions of the Roman Missal published between 1570 and 1962...

 when Beethoven worked on his Missa Solemnis

Missa Solemnis (Beethoven)

The Missa solemnis in D Major, Op. 123 was composed by Ludwig van Beethoven from 1819-1823. It was first performed on April 7, 1824 in St. Petersburg, under the auspices of Beethoven's patron Prince Nikolai Galitzin; an incomplete performance was given in Vienna on 7 May 1824, when the Kyrie,...

. He lived for a while in the inn Zum Schwarzen Kameel (The Black Camel) in Vienna's Innere Stadt

Innere Stadt

The Innere Stadt is the 1st municipal District of Vienna . The Innere Stadt is the old town of Vienna. Until the city boundaries were expanded in 1850, the Innere Stadt was congruent with the city of Vienna...

.

From 1820 until 1824 he edited the Vienna Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (General Musical Newspaper)not to be confused with the better known Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung

Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung

The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung was a German-language periodical published in the 19th century. Comini has called it "the foremost German-language musical periodical of its time"...

in Leipzig following Ignaz

Ignaz von Seyfried

Ignaz Xaver Ritter von Seyfried was an Austrian musician, conductor and composer.Seyfried was born in Vienna. According to a statement in his handwritten memoirs he was a pupil of both Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Albrechtsberger. He published Albrechtsberger's complete written works after...

 and Joseph von Seyfried. In 1829 he edited with Ignaz Franz Castelli

Ignaz Franz Castelli

Ignaz Franz Castelli was an Austrian dramatist born in Vienna. He studied law at the university, and then entered the government service....

 the Vienna Allgemeine musikalische Anzeiger (General Music Bulletin).

Kanne wrote more than a dozen opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

s and works of incidental music

Incidental music

Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....

 to plays, including La fedeltà (1803), Sappho (1805), Die Elfenköningin (1805), Orpheus and Eurydice (1807), Fernando und Miranda (1808), Mirandola oder Das Schwert der Rache (1811), Die Belagerten (1813), Deutscher Sinn (1813), Die gute Nachricht (1814), Das Schloß Theben oder Der Kampf der Flußgötter (1817), Die eiserne Jungfrau (1822), Malvina oder Putzerls Abenteuer (1823), Lindane oder Die Fee und der Haarbeutelschneider (1824), Die Zauberschminke oder das Land der Erfindungen (1825), Der Untergang des Feenreiches (1826), Philipp und Suschen oder Der falsche Jupiter (1832), Die Mainacht oder Der Blocksberg (Berlin, 1834), partly to his own libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

. His patriotic play to which he also wrote incidental music, "Die Spinnerin am Kreuz" (1822), was for many years in repertory

Repertory

Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...

 on Vienna stages. It has been suggested that the slow movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4

Piano Concerto No. 4 (Beethoven)

Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, was composed in 1805–1806, although no autograph copy survives.-Musical forces and movements:...

 is a piece of program music

Program music

Program music or programme music is a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music...

 closely based on the finale of act 1 of Kanne's Orpheus. Beethoven used a text by Kanne for his aria with chorus, "Germania" WoO 94. Kanne's further works include some symphonies, masses

Mass (music)

The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...

, piano works, and songs written to poems by Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...

, Schiller

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...

 and Schlegel.

Kanne died on 16 December 1833 in Vienna and is buried on St. Marx Cemetery

St. Marx cemetery

St. Marx Cemetery is a cemetery in the Landstraße district of Vienna, used from 1784 until 1874. It was named after a nearby almshouse.-History:...

 there.

Legacy

In 1912, the lane Kannegasse in Vienna's Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus

Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus

Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus is the 15th municipal District of Vienna, Austria . It is in central Vienna, west of Innere Stadt....

 was named after him. There is speculation that Kanne became the prototype of Kapellmeister

Kapellmeister

Kapellmeister is a German word designating a person in charge of music-making. The word is a compound, consisting of the roots Kapelle and Meister . The words Kapelle and Meister derive from the Latin: capella and magister...

 Johannes Kreisler

Johannes Kreisler

Johannes Kreisler is the name of a character in three novels by E.T.A. Hoffmann: Kreisleriana , Johannes Kreisler, des Kapellmeisters Musikalische Leiden , Lebensansichten des Katers Murr nebst Fragmentarischer Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler in Zufälligen Makulaturblättern...

 in E. T. A. Hoffmann's works.