The Bohrer family were of sufficient repute in the 19th century to earn an entry in the first edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Their story begins, however, in the second half of the 18th century with Caspar Bohrer, a trumpeter in the court of Mannheim but also a renowned performer on the double bass. Travelling to Munich in 1778, Caspar spent the rest of his life in Bavaria, where he became father to sons Antoine (born 1783) and Max (1785).
Both became full time musicians. Antoine learned violin in Paris with Rodolphe Kreutzer before playing in the Munich court orchestra, while studying composition with Peter von Winter and Franz Danzi. He was well connected, earning a dedication from Paganini in 1818 for the eighteenth of his 24 Caprices, Op. 1.
The Bohrer brothers formed a string quartet which became one of the first ensembles to bring Beethoven’s ‘Razumovsky’ and late quartets to the concert-going public, with notable performances in Paris during 1830 and 1831.
As a solo composer Antoine is credited with two Grand Trio Brillants, variations for string quartet and a Violin Concerto. With Max he completed several books of duos for violin and cello, a String Quartet and two works entitled Trio concertant. Yet their biggest collaboration was that of a ‘Grande Symphonie militaire pour le violon et violoncelle, avec accompagnement de grand Orchestre, par les frères Bohrer’, thought to have been published in 1820. Antoine Bohrer died in 1852.
