“Give way, my contemporaries! – Make room, give way! A man whose herald I must be – gladly will be, even if I ought to – bear fasces before him. For unrecognized by you, Grace and Greatness pass away, and Apollo’s pupil sighs at a century whose adornment he is.” This is the emphatic commencement of the article on Joseph Aloys Schmittbaur by Carl Ludwig Junker, who included him among the twenty composers of his pamphlet Zwanzig Komponisten published in Bern in 1776. Some 250 years later, there is still good reason to concur with the author’s judgement: the works of the Baden Kapellmeister, himself a modest, retiring man, are hidden treasures waiting to be unearthed. Joseph Aloys Schmittbaur’s life spans almost the whole of the 18th century. At the time of his death in 1809 he had reached the venerable age of 91.

Schmittbaur remained active almost to the very end of his life. By 1804, when he was nearly 85 years old, he had been pensioned off as director of court music, but even then he played an active part in court life, being honoured in 1806 with the title of “OberKapellmeister”. The aged musician of many accomplishments expired in his ninety-second year in Karlsruhe on 19 October 1809, due to “Failure of his Nature”.