(b Bonn, bap. 28 Nov 1784; d Frankfurt, 13 Jan 1838). German pianist and composer. He was the eldest son of the violinist Franz (Anton) Ries (1755-1846), Beethoven's teacher. He studied the piano with Beethoven in Vienna (1802-4), often acting as his secretary and copyist, and after a time in Paris and on tour moved to London (1813-24), where he or his works were often heard at Philharmonic Society concerts and where he acted for Beethoven in dealings with London publishers. In his native Rhineland from 1825 he composed and conducted, also collaborating on an early biography of Beethoven (with F. G. Wegeler, 1838). His prolific output consists chiefly of salon pieces and songs. His brother Hubert (1802-86) was a distinguished violinist in Berlin.
Ferdinand Ries came from a line of German musicians of the Rhine region who are traced back to Johann Ries (1723-1784), a trumpeter in Bonn. His first son, Franz Anton Ries (1755-1846), a child prodigy on violin who chose to remain in Bonn, was Beethoven's teacher, and lived long enough to be honored as such when he was ninety and attended the unveiling of the famous statue to Beethoven there.
Ferdinand Ries was Franz Anton's eldest son, who was also his first piano and violin teacher. At the age of five he was also sent to study cello with B.H. Romberg. The boy was so accomplished that he was slated for a job playing in the elector's orchestra. But in 1794 the electoral court was dissolved, and the position never materialized. Ferdinand continued to study with his father. In 1797 he went to Arnsberg for more violin study, found out he was better than his intended teacher, and stayed to give him lessons.
In 1801 he moved to Munich and studied for a short time with Peter von Winter. He also earned money as a music copyist. Working very hard and living frugally, he saved up enough to go to Vienna in October of the same year. Beethoven was glad to see the son of his old teacher, and took him on as a piano pupil and as a secretary and copyist. Beethoven referred him to Albrechtsberger as a composition teacher.
Beethoven also secured for him a job as pianist on the staff of Count Browne in Baden in 1802, and with Prince Lichnowsky in the summer of 1805.
In 1804 Ries made his debut as a pianist. Beethoven turned out to be a nervous teacher, worried about his pupil's success. He advised Ries to simplify a particular difficult passage, but Ries played it as written, and perfectly, much to Beethoven's delight.
As a citizen of Bonn, Ries in 1805 became subject to conscription into the French army. To avoid this, he moved to Koblenz. This is a rather strange turn of events, since he had lost the sight of one eye in childhood to a smallpox infection. When he was actually rejected for military service, he moved to Paris. He lived poorly there.
He moved back to Vienna in 1808, but he had a temporary breach with Beethoven due to a misunderstanding. In 1809, he went on an extended series of tours that lasted nearly four years in Northern Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia. The tour was quite lucrative, and by 1813 brought him to London. There he met the famous impresario J.P. Salomon (who was another teacher of his father's), who arranged his first appearance with the Philharmonic Concerts in March 1814. He remained in London for 11 years. His music was very popular there, and frequently appeared on concert and recital programs. In July 1814 he married Harriet Mangean, an English lady.
He was a prolific composer, but there is little originality in his music, charming as it often was. Beethoven rather tactlessly but with considerable accuracy commented, "He imitates me too much." Very little of it is played today.
Ries had earned enough to retire in 1824, and returned in the Rhineland, finally moving to Frankfurt am Main in 1827. Although he toured no more, he did accept a position as head of the orchestra there and conductor of the Singakademie of Aachen. He was a co-author of one of the most important early biographies of Beethoven. He also did much in establishing the Lower Rhine Music Festivals. ~ Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide
Ferdinand Ries (Bonn, baptised November 28, 1784 – January 13, 1838), from a musical family of Bonn,[1] was a friend and pupil of Beethoven who published in 1838 a collection of reminiscences of his teacher, co-written with Franz Wegeler. He was also a composer who left eight symphonies, a violin concerto and nine piano concertos, and numerous other works in many genres, including 26 string quartets. Of these the symphonies, some chamber works — most of them with piano — and his piano concertos have been recorded, demonstrating a style which is not surprisingly somewhere between that of the Classic and early Romantic eras.
The French dissolved the Electoral court of Bonn and disbanded its orchestra, but in the early months of 1803 the penniless Ries managed to reach Vienna, with a letter of introduction to Beethoven, who had received some early instruction at Bonn from Ries' father, Franz Anton. Beethoven took great care of the young man, teaching him piano, sending him to Albrechtsberger for harmony and composition and securing for him positions as piano tutor in aristocratic households in Baden and Silesia. Ries made his public debut as a pianist in July 1804, playing Beethoven's C minor concerto, Op. 37, with his own cadenza, to glowing reviews.
Ries worked for Beethoven as secretary and copyist, winning Beethoven's confidence in negotiations with publishers and becoming a fast friend. But he feared conscription in the French occupying army, though he was blind in one eye and fled Vienna (September 1805), then spent two years in Paris before returning to Vienna, then concertized his way about Europe, landing in London in 1813. There he spent the next eleven years. Johann Peter Salomon, the great friend and patron of Haydn— who had formerly played with Franz Anton Ries in the court orchestra at Bonn—included Ries regularly in his Philharmonic concert series,[2] where a review praised his "romantic wildness".
During these London years he never lost touch with Beethoven and had a role in the London publications of many works of Beethoven after the peace of 1815, including the 1822 commission from the Philharmonic Society that resulted in the Choral Symphony.
in 1824 Ries retired to Germany with his English wife, Harriet Mangeon, but returned to musical life in Frankfurt am Main as composer and conductor. In 1834 he was appointed head of the city orchestra and Singakademie in Aachen, for whom he wrote two oratorios, Der Sieg des Glaubens (1829) and Die Könige in Israel (1837), the latter of which has been recorded. In addition to that he was for eight times festival director of the Lower Rhenish Music Festival between 1824 and 1837.
Cecil Hill wrote a scholarly thematic catalog, listed below, of this composer's works: for each work he provided incipits (opening themes) for each movement, dedications, known early reviews, and known dates of composition.
While one of the few widely-circulated recordings of Ries' music was for some time that of his third piano concerto, all of his symphonies and a number of chamber works are now available on compact disc and his surviving music for piano and orchestra and chamber works are the focus of ongoing projects on various record labels as well.
^ Hill (1982): xxviii asserts this work was written before op. 146
References
Hill, Cecil. Ferdinand Ries: A Thematic Catalogue. Armidale, NSW: University of New England. 1977. ISBN 0-85834-156-5.
Cecil Hill, "Ferdinand Ries" in The Symphony: Ferdinand Ries London: Garland Publishing (1982)
Ries, Ferdinand. Beethoven Remembered: The Biographical Notes of Franz Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries (translated from the German.) Arlington, VA: Great Ocean Publishers. 1987. ISBN 0-915556-15-4.
Zanden, Jos van der. 'Ferdinand Ries in Vienna. New Perspectives on the Notizen', in: The Beethoven Journal, 2004.
