Franz Xaver Richter Symphony in G minor No.29

Via Wikipedia

In a sense Richter, born on this day in 1709, represents a bridge between the musical generation of J. S. Bach and the new explosion of creativity that began with Mozart.  His nearly 50 year career began in sacred music but became a prolific composer of orchestral and chamber music for the Enlightenment courts of Austria, Germany, and France.

Along the way, he met most people in the business (like Mozart's father and then the child prodigy himself).  He conducted for Marie Antoinette.  J. S. Bach's biographer wrote of him and his music.

But his music was too traditional to stay popular with the audience that was soon to be won over by Mozart.  By the 1770s, Richter was too old to adapt his style to the new popular forms, and so found himself gravitating from the bigger German musical centers to more backwater ones.  He ended in Strassbourg, where his death in 1789 immediately before the French Revolution spared him the spectacle of that blood soaked convulsion.