(b Hungary, 11 Nov 1717; d Vienna, 31 July 1798). Austrian publisher of Hungarian birth. He was the leading music publisher and retailer in Vienna between 1770 and 1790. He arrived there in 1739, and worked as a journeyman in Van Ghelen’s printing office before buying J.J. Jahns’s business in 1748. Subsequently he became court bookseller (1751) and court printer (1754). The numerous privileges resulting from the Empress Maria Theresa’s patronage and his own efficiency and business acumen helped his firm to flourish. The house he bought in Alt-Lerchenfeld in 1759 was transformed into a ‘typographical palace’; in 1773 he bought the Freisingerhof on the Graben and built the new Trattnerhof there in 1777. His standing is strikingly demonstrated by the fact that the future Emperor Joseph II learnt printing from him.
Trattner started advertising music in the Wiener Diarium in 1756, but only on a small scale before 1764; the firm’s Catalogus universalis liborum (1765) and further catalogues (1776, 1777, 1780, 1784) indicate increased activity. His fame as a music publisher rested particularly on the scores of two works by Gluck, Alceste (1769) and Paride ed Elena(1770). He was also responsible for the Missale romanum of 1758. Mozart lived in the Trattnerhof from 23 January to 29 September 1784, and taught Trattner’s second wife, Theresia, to whom he dedicated the Fantasy and Sonata k475 and 457. He gave three concerts in Trattner’s concert hall.
In 1793 Trattner made his grandson Johann Thomas Trattner the younger a partner; the latter carried on the business after Trattner’s death. In 1805 the printing office was sold to the manager Georg Überreuter and the bookshop to Josef Tendler. Überreuter’s press has become part of the Viennese firm of Salzer.
WeinmannWM
A. Mayer: Wiens Buchdrucker-Geschichte, 1482–1882, ii (Vienna,1887)
H. Cloeter: ‘Johann Thomas von Trattner’, Jb des Vereines für Geschichte der Stadt Wien, i (1939), 82–102
E. Castle: Geschichte einer Wiener Buchdruckerei 1548–1948 (Vienna,1948)
H. Cloeter: Johann Thomas Trattner: ein Grossunternehmer im theresianischen Wien (Graz, 1952)
H. Gericke: Der Wiener Musikalienhandel von 1700 bis 1778 (Graz and Cologne,1960)
A. Weinmann: Wiener Musikverlag ‘Am Rande’ (Vienna, 1970), 78
O. Hafner: ‘Mozart in steirischen Musikalienhandel vor 1800’, Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, xxix (1982), 29–33
ALEXANDER WEINMANN