Anton Stadler

Who was Anton Stadler?

Anton Paul Stadler was an Austrian clarinet and basset horn player for whom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote both his Clarinet Quintet and Clarinet Concerto.

He was reputed to be able to produce a beautiful tone, with exceptional mastery of the low register of the basset clarinet and distinctive basset horn playing. A contemporaraneous Viennese critic, referring to Stadler, wrote, “I would not have thought that a clarinet could imitate the human voice so deceptively as you imitate it. Your instrument is so soft, so delicate in tone that no-one who has a heart can resist it." A noted virtuoso, he played second clarinet to his younger brother Johann Nepomuk Stadler in the Vienna Court Orchestra. It was possibly this specialism in second clarinet along with the basset horn that led to his collaboration with Theodor Lotz, a clarinet maker. His idea was to add an extension to his B-flat and A clarinets – in the same vein as the basset horn – an extra major third to a low C. It was for this extended clarinet that the Clarinet Concerto and possibly the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings were written.