1850–1922 · Romantic
Hans Sitt (1850–1922) was a violinist, violist, teacher and composer from Bohemia. Born in Prague, he later worked in Leipzig, where he held a violin professorship at the conservatory from 1884 until 1921. He wrote many teaching works for the violin and pieces for violin and piano, among them the collection 100 Etudes.
Jan Hanuš Sitt, known as Hans Sitt, was born in Prague on 21 September 1850. His father, Anton Sitt, was a well-known violin maker who came from Hungary. The boy's musical gift showed itself early, and he could have followed the career of a child prodigy, but his parents chose not to take that road.
He grew up as an ordinary schoolboy, attending a gymnasium, and was then enrolled at the Prague Conservatory. Between 1861 and 1867 his violin teachers there were Moritz Mildner and Antonín Bennewitz, while Josef Krejčí and Johann Friedrich Kittl taught him composition.
On leaving the conservatory Sitt briefly worked as a soloist. In 1867, when he was seventeen, he took the post of concertmaster with the Breslau Opera Orchestra in Wrocław; the same post in Chemnitz was his from 1873 to 1880.
He also made a name as a conductor, leading orchestras in France, Austria and Germany.
From 1884 to 1921 Sitt was Professor of Violin at the Leipzig Conservatory. He wrote several important teaching works for violin and viola, and some of them are still in use. From 1885 to 1903 he conducted the Leipzig Bach Society (Bach-Verein).
From 1883 to 1895 he played viola in the Brodsky Quartet of Leipzig, alongside Hugo Becker, Julius Klengel and the quartet's founder, Adolph Brodsky. Hans Sitt died in Leipzig on 10 March 1922.
In his own day Sitt counted among the leading violin teachers. Franco Alfano, Pablo Sorozábal and Frederick Delius, all composers, were among his best-known pupils, as was the conductor Václav Talich.
Hans's older brother, Anton Sitt the Younger, was likewise a noted violinist and served as concertmaster of the Helsinki Orchestral Society.
Alongside his teaching material, Sitt composed works for violin with orchestra, six concertos among them, and sonatas for different instruments. His surviving chamber music consists solely of two piano trios from the 1880s.
Sitt's best-known orchestration is of Edvard Grieg's Norwegian Dances, Op. 35, a work for piano duet from 1881.
The site offers the collection 100 Etudes, Op. 32, for solo violin, at the level “Beginner+”. It dates from 1889 to 1891 and was designed as a supplement to any violin method. The collection consists of five books of twenty studies each: the first book is in the first position, the second covers the second to fifth positions, the third is devoted to changing positions, the fourth to the sixth and seventh positions, and the fifth to double stopping.