Joseph Küffner
German musician and composer

Joseph Küffner (Kueffner) (31 March 1776 in Würzburg – 9 September 1856 in Würzburg) was a German musician and composer who, among other achievements, contributed significantly to the guitar repertory, including chamber music.
Life
He was a violinist with the Würzburg court orchestra, and was later, when Würzburg became part of Bavaria (1802), assigned to take charge of military music. At this point he became bandmaster with a Bavarian Army regiment.
Music
A quintet of Küffner's for clarinet and strings was once attributed to Carl Maria von Weber, and is still recorded in collections of Weber's music. He composed seven symphonies and a large number of works for various chamber music combinations. His output also contains a substantial quantity of music for classical guitar (some of it being available in modern editions).
Compositions
Symphonies
First Symphony op. 75 (pub. Schott, 1818)
Second Symphony op. 76 (Schott)
Third Symphony op.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joseph Küffner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.