Biography
Fürchtegott Theodor Kirchner (10 December 1823 – 18 September 1903) was a significant German composer and pianist of the Romantic era.
He was born at Neukirchen near Chemnitz, and was an accomplished organist and pianist at the age of eight. From 1838 to 1842, he studied in Leipzig under J. Knorr (piano) and K. F. Becker (organ and theory). He subsequently was a pupil of J. Schneider in Dresden, and attended the Leipzig Conservatory for a short time. In 1843, he became organist in Winterthur, Switzerland on the recommendation of Mendelssohn. He remained there for nearly 20 years, but travelled much in Germany, befriending Robert and Clara Schumann and Brahms. Clara Schumann was very fond of him, though she wrote that 'in his character there is no stability', and it appears they had a discreet affair in the early 1860s. In 1862 Kirchner moved to Zurich as the director of the subscription concerts there. This only lasted three years. From 1862 to 1872, he was a teacher in the music school at Zurich, then became director of the Würzburg Conservatory (1873-75).
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.