Two years younger than Schubert, Jeannette Bürde (née Milder) was born in Vienna. She was the sister (younger by fourteen years) of Anna Milder Hauptmann, one of the greatest sopranos of the age. Anna Milder (who married Peter Hauptmann in 1810) was a pupil of Neukomm and Haydn; she was admired by Mozart’s librettist Schickaneder, by Salieri, Beethoven, and Schubert (who saw her as Gluck’s Iphigenia, and as Emmeline in Weigl’s Die Schweizerfamilie). When her famous sister moved from Vienna to Berlin in 1815 (Milder Hauptmann was in a huff with the Kaiserstadt, but prima donnas always displace themselves in like manner), the sixteen-year-old Jeannette followed. She had studied singing with Tomaselli and Liverati, and she built a small career in Berlin as a singer. She turned to composition in 1823, and studied with Rungenhagen. Her husband was a professor at the Academy of Arts; after his death she worked as a piano teacher.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2006