Franz Hauser

Contemporary critics considered Hauser cold as an actor but approved of his pure voice. He was known for his interpretation of Weber and as Figaro (both Rossini's and Mozart's), Bertram, William Tell, and Spohr's Faust.

Hauser had many students including Jenny Lind and Henriette Sontag. He wrote a popular singing manual, Gesanglehre für Lehrer und Lernende (Leipzig, 1866) (freely available through Google books). As a composer, he was known for his songs. His correspondence with composer Moritz Hauptmann was published in two volumes in 1871.

Hauser's greatest significance today is as a collector of musical manuscripts – most notably of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach- assembling the greatest 19th century collection of that composer's manuscripts. He was a consultant for the Bach-Gesellschaft edition and prepared a thematic catalogue of Bach's works. Most of Hauser's autograph manuscripts by Bach (including 19 cantatas, the accompanied sonatas for violin, and the English suites for keyboard) were acquired by the Berlin Royal Library in 1904. Others were destroyed in 1945. Parts of his collection are also in the Darmstadt Landesbibliothek and the Harvard University Loeb Music Library.

His son, Moritz Hauser (1827–1857), became a theatre director in Königsberg and a minor composer.

• Yoshitake Kobayashi: Franz Hauser und seine Bach-Handschriftensammlung. Göttingen, University, Diss., 1975
• Dale A. Jorgenson: The life and legacy of Franz Xaver Hauser: a forgotten leader in the nineteenth century Bach movement. Carbondale, Ill., Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8093-1975-6