Musicatlas
Music
- Cantata: ‘Hymne auf die Natur’
- Songs for voice and piano (1788)
- Opera: ‘Fernando und Yariko’
- Church Music (masses)
- Chamber music
Life
Neubauer apparently studied in Prague and subsequently became an itinerant violinist in Bavaria. There is also documentary evidence that he visited a number of monasteries and was given food and lodging for his services as performer and composer.
In early 1786, he briefly visited Zurich where he played for the members of the Zurich ‘Musikgesellschaft zur mehreren Stadt’ and before leaving he sold one of his masses to the Society for 15 gulden. Neubauer then moved on to nearby Winterthur where he apparently composed his cantata ‘Hymne auf die Natur’.
In 1790 he was appointed Kapellmeister to the Prince of Nassau-Weilburg and was there until the dissolution of the Weilburg orchestra four years later.
He is believed to have been in Hanover in 1794, the year in which he joined the court of Princess von Schaumburg-Lippe in Buckeburg where the current Kapellmeister was J.C.F. Bach (a younger son of Johann Sebastian).
After J.C.F. Bach’s death in January 1795, Neubauer succeeded him, but he died only nine months later on 11th October, 1795.
(I am indebted for this information to Chris Walton: ‘Pocahontas in the Alps: Masonic traces in the stage works of Franz Christoph Neubauer’ in ‘The Musical Times’ Vol. 146 No. 1892 — Autumn 2005).