Carl Steinacker (* 1785 in Leipzig; † 18 December 1814 in Vienna) was a German composer and Kapellmeister in Vienna. The son of a Dessau merchant, Steinacker was musically educated initially in the house of his uncle, the bookseller Johann Erdmann Ferdinand Steinacker (1764-1842) in Leipzig. After his school years, he first worked as an employee of the publisher Göschen in Leipzig. Even then he was an ambitious musician and composer. However, he then went to Vienna at about the same time as Theodor Körner to devote himself entirely to the art of music. Like Körner, he participated in the Handel concert at the Winter Riding School (Alexander's Feast) in 1812, this as an assistant conductor.

With few exceptions, Steinacker's compositions belong to the realm of vocal music or musical theater. Even before his work in Vienna, he was positively praised in musical reviews in several issues of the Weimar Journal des Luxus und der Moden. As a composer of various incidental music to works by Körner, he is otherwise mentioned several times in his correspondence with his family since 1811. In the case of Körner's Singspiel 'Der vierjährige Posten,' Steinacker was the first of demonstrably at least 21 composers who set this libretto to music into the 20th century.

Like Körner, Steinacker - at the age of 30 - became a victim of the so-called wars of liberation. In a necrology, the "Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung" (Leipzig) reported that Steinacker died of "emaciation". (Source: Wikipedia)

Note: Translated from a German version of Wikipedia into English.