In 1774, as the patriarch of a Huguenot family, André founded one of the first music publishing houses to be independent of a bookshop, in Offenbach am Main. Among his closest friends in Offenbach were Goethe, at the time of his engagement to Anna Elisabeth Schönemann, and he is pictured in the seventeenth book of Goethe's autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit with an Offenbach am Main background in 1775.
In 1777, André was appointed musical director at the German theatre in Berlin, the Deutsches Theater, without having to abandon Offenbach am Main, however. He composed some 30 operas, ballads and songs.
His son, Johann Anton André (1775–1842), followed his footsteps into composing and music theory. After taking over the music publishing business from his father in 1799, Johann Anton André acquired Mozart's musical legacy from Mozart's widow Constanze in Vienna. She entrusted him with writing concluding measures to the overture to Don Giovanni, so that it could be performed in concert.
He developed the music publishing business and introduced lithography for printing of notes. Musikhaus André and the Musikverlag Johann André, with their wide-ranging musical archive, still exist today in the centre of Offenbach.
