Fils (Filtz), Anton

Preface

Fils (Filtz), Anton – The Periodical Overture in 8 parts No. 4 (Edited by Barnaby Priest and Alyson McLamore / new print)

COMMENTARY
Born in Eichstätt, Bavaria, Anton Fils (1733–1760) joined the celebrated Mannheim orchestra in 1754 at age twenty, and by the time he was wenty-four, he had acquired a house, a wife, and a baby daughter. He had been hired as a cellist, not as a composer, and while his father was also a cellist, it is not fully clear where Fils received his training in composition. In fact, in the two years before he moved to Mannheim, Fils was enrolled at the University of Ingolstadt as a law and theology student.1 However, Fils was later described by a French publisher as being a “disciple” of Johann Stamitz (1717–1757), the pioneering leader of the Mannheim school of composition who had died before his fortieth birthday.2

Regrettably, Fils outdid his teacher by dying at age twenty-six—but not before composing an outstanding portfolio of music in numerous genres, including some forty-seven symphonies.3 Despite the brevity of his career—a mere six years in all—his output was widely admired, and six years after his passing, a journalist for a Hamburg newspaper still paid tribute to the late composer by saying, “It would have been wished that [Anton] Fils would have had a longer life. This young composer is full of spirit and fire in his symphonies, and his slow movements are full of charm and harmony.”4 Some critics were resistant to Fils’s blending of styles, finding his mixture of comic …

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