Music in Vienna in 1793--Theatre, Church and Concert-Room--A
Music-Loving Nobility--The Esterhazys, Kinsky, Lichnowsky, von
Kees and van Swieten--Composers: Haydn, Kozeluch, Förster and
Eberl.
OPERA AND CONCERTS IN VIENNA
The musical drama naturally took the first place in the musical life
of Vienna at this period. The enthusiasm of Joseph II for a national
German opera, to which the world owed Mozart’s exquisite “Entführung,”
proved to be but short-lived, and the Italian _opera buffa_ resumed
its old place in his affections. The new company engaged was, however,
equal to the performance of “Don Giovanni” and “Figaro” and Salieri’s
magnificent “Axur.” Leopold II reached Vienna on the evening of March
13, 1790, to assume the crown of his deceased brother, but no change
was, for the present, made in the court theatre. Indeed, as late as
July 5 he had not entered a theatre, and his first appearance at the
opera was at the performance of “Axur,” September 21, in the company
of his visitor King Ferdinand of Naples; but once firmly settled on
the imperial throne, Joseph’s numerous reforms successfully annulled,
the Turkish war brought to a close and his diverse coronations happily
ended, the Emperor gave his thoughts to the theatre. Salieri, though
now but forty-one years of age, and rich with the observation and
experience of more than twenty years in the direction of the opera,
was, according to Mosel, graciously allowed, but according to other
and better authorities, compelled, to withdraw from the operatic
orchestra and confine himself to his duties as director of the sacred
music in the court chapel and to the composition of one operatic work
annually, if required. The “Wiener Zeitung” of January 28, 1792,
records the appointment of Joseph Weigl, Salieri’s pupil and assistant,
now twenty-five years old, “as Chapelmaster and Composer to the Royal
Imperial National Court Theatre with a salary of 1,000 florins.” The
title Composer was rather an empty one. Though already favorably known
to the public, he was forbidden to compose new operas for the court
stage. To this end famous masters were to be invited to Vienna. A first
fruit of this new order of things was the production of Cimarosa’s
“Il Matrimonio segreto,” February 7, 1792, which with good reason so
delighted Leopold that he gave the performers a supper and ordered
them back into the theatre and heard the opera again _da capo_. It was
among the last of the Emperor’s theatrical pleasures; he died March
1st, and his wife on the 15th of May following. Thus for the greater
part of the time from March 1 to May 24, the court theatres were shut;
and yet during the thirteen months ending December 15, 1792, Italian
opera had been given 180 times--134 times in the Burg and 46 times in
the Kärnthnerthor-Theater--and ballet 163 times; so that, as no change
for the present was made, there was abundance in these branches of the
art for a young composer, like Beethoven, to hear and see. All accounts
agree that the company then performing was one of uncommon excellence
and its performances, with those of the superb orchestra, proved the
value of the long experience, exquisite taste, unflagging zeal and
profound knowledge of their recent head, Salieri. Such as Beethoven
found the opera in the first week of November, 1792, such it continued
for the next two years--exclusively Italian, but of the first order.
A single stroke of extraordinary good fortune--a happy accident is
perhaps a better term--had just now given such prosperity to a minor
theatrical enterprise that in ten years it was to erect and occupy the
best playhouse in Vienna and, for a time, to surpass the Court Theatre
in the excellence and splendor of its operatic performances. We mean
Schikaneder’s Theater auf der Wieden; but in 1793 its company was mean,
its house small, its performances bad enough.
Schikaneder’s chapelmaster and composer was John Baptist Henneberg;
the chapelmaster of Marinelli, head of another German company in the
Leopoldstadt, was Wenzel Müller, who had already begun his long list
of 227 light and popular compositions to texts magical or farcical.
Some two weeks after Beethoven’s arrival in Vienna, on November 23rd,
Schikaneder announced, falsely, the one-hundredth performance of “Die
Zauberflöte,” an opera the success of which placed his theatre a few
years later upon a totally different footing, and brought Beethoven
into other relations to it than those of an ordinary visitor indulging
his comical taste, _teste_ Seyfried, for listening to and heartily
enjoying very bad music.
The leading dramatic composers of Vienna, not yet named, must receive
a passing notice. Besides Cimarosa, who left Vienna a few months
later, Beethoven found Peter Dutillieu, a Frenchman by birth but an
Italian musician by education and profession, engaged as composer for
the Court Theatre. His “Il Trionfo d’Amore” had been produced there
November 14, 1791, and his “Nanerina e Padolfino” had lately come upon
the stage. Ignaz Umlauf, composer of “Die schöne Schusterin” and other
not unpopular works, had the title of Chapelmaster and Composer to
the German Court Opera, and was Salieri’s substitute as chapelmaster
in the sacred music of the Court Chapel. Franz Xavier Süssmayr, so
well known from his connection with Mozart, was just now writing for
Schikaneder’s stage; Schenk for Marinelli’s and for the private stages
of the nobility; and Paul Wranitzky, first violinist and so-called
Musikdirektor in the Court Theatre, author of the then popular “Oberon”
composed for the Wieden stage, was employing his very respectable
talents for both Marinelli and Schikaneder.
The church music of Vienna seems to have been at a very low
point in 1792 and 1793. Two composers, however, whose names are
still of importance in musical history, were then in that city
devoting themselves almost exclusively to this branch of the art;
Albrechtsberger, Court Organist, but in a few months (through the death
of Leopold Hoffmann, March 17, 1793) to become musical director at St.
Stephen’s; and Joseph Eybler (some five years older than Beethoven),
who had just become _Regens chori_ in the Carmelite church, whence he
was called to a similar and better position in the Schottische Kirche
two years later.
Public concerts, as the term is now understood, may be said not to have
existed, and regular subscription concerts were few. Mozart gave a few
series of them, but after his death there appears to have been no one
of sufficient note in the musical world to make such a speculation
remunerative. Single subscription concerts given by virtuosos, and
annual ones by some of the leading resident musicians, of course, took
place then as before and since. The only real and regular concerts were
the four annual performances in the Burgtheater, two at Christmas and
two at Easter, for the benefit of the musicians’ widows and orphans.
These concerts, established mainly by Gassmann and Salieri, were never
exclusive in their programmes--oratorio, symphony, cantata, concerto,
whatever would add to their attraction, found place. The stage was
covered with the best musicians and vocalists of the capital and the
superb orchestra was equally ready to accompany the playing of a Mozart
or of an ephemeral _Wunderkind_. Risbeck was told ten years before that
the number taking part in orchestra and chorus had even then on some
occasions reached 400--a statement, however, which looks much like
exaggeration.
Very uncommon semi-private concerts were still kept up in 1793. The
reader of Mozart’s biography will remember that in 1782 this great
composer joined a certain Martin in giving a series of concerts during
the morning hours in the Augarten Hall, most of the performers being
dilettanti and the music being furnished from the library of von Kees.
These concerts found such favor that they were renewed for several
years and generally were twelve in number.
Ladies of even the highest nobility permitted themselves to be
heard. The auditorium was extremely brilliant and everything was
conducted in so orderly and decent a fashion that everybody was
glad to support the institute to the best of his energies. The
receipts from the chief subscription were expended entirely on the
cost of the concerts. Later Herr Rudolph assumed the direction.
(“Allg. Mus. Zeitung,” III, 45.)
This man, still young, and a fine violin-player, was the director when
Beethoven came to Vienna, and the extraordinary spectacle was still to
be seen of princes and nobles following his lead in the performance of
orchestral music to an audience of their own class at the strange hours
of from 6 to 8 in the morning!
From the above it appears that Vienna presented to the young musician
no preëminent advantages either in opera, church-music or its public
concerts. Other cities equalled the Austrian capital in the first
two, and London was then far in advance of all in the number, variety
and magnificence of the last. It was in another field that Vienna
surpassed every competitor. As Gluck twenty years before had begun
the great revolution in operatic music completed by Mozart, so Haydn,
building on the foundation of the Bachs and aided by Mozart, was
effecting a new development of purely instrumental music which was
yet to reach its highest stage through the genius and daring of the
youth now his pupil. The example set by the Austrian family through
so many generations had produced its natural effect, and a knowledge
of and taste for music were universal among the princes and nobles
of the empire. Some of the more wealthy princes, like Esterhazy,
maintained musical establishments complete even to the Italian opera;
others were contented with hearing the mass sung in their house-chapel
to an orchestral accompaniment; where this was impossible, a small
orchestra only was kept up, often composed of the officials and
servants, who were selected with regard to their musical abilities;
and so down to the band of wind-instruments, the string quartet, and
even to a single organ-player, pianist or violinist. What has been
said in a former chapter of music as a quasi-necessity at the courts
of the ecclesiastical princes, applies in great measure to the secular
nobility. At their castles and country-seats in the summer, amusement
was to be provided for many an otherwise tedious hour; and in their
city residences during the winter they and their guests could not
always feast, dance or play at cards; and here, too, music became a
common and favored recreation. At all events, it was the fashion.
Outside the ranks of the noble-born, such as by talents, high culture
or wealth occupied high social positions, followed the example and
opened their salons to musicians and lovers of music, moved thereto for
the most part by a real, rarely by a pretended, taste for the art--in
either case aiding and encouraging its progress. Hence, an enormous
demand for chamber music, both vocal and instrumental, especially
the latter. The demand created the supply by encouraging genius and
talent to labor in that direction; and thus the Austrian school of
instrumental music soon led the world, as in the previous generation
the demand for oratorios in England gave that country the supremacy in
that branch of art.
During certain months of the year, Vienna was filled with the greatest
nobles, not only of the Austrian states, but of other portions of the
German Empire. Those who spent their time mostly in their own small
courts came up to the capital but for a short season; others reversed
this, making the city their usual residence and visiting their estates
only in summer. By the former class many a once (if not still) famous
composer in their service was thus occasionally for short periods
brought to the metropolis--as Mozart by the brutal Archbishop of
Salzburg, and Haydn by Prince Esterhazy. By the latter class many of
the distinguished composers and virtuosos resident in the city were
taken into the country during the summer to be treated as equals, to
live like gentlemen among gentlemen. Another mode of encouraging the
art was the ordering or purchasing of compositions; and this not only
from composers of established reputation, as Haydn, Mozart, C. P. E.
Bach, but also from young and as yet unknown men; thus affording a
twofold benefit--pecuniary aid and an opportunity of exhibiting their
powers.
The instrumental virtuosos, when not permanently engaged in the
service of some prince or theatre, looked in the main for the reward
of their studies and labors to the private concerts of the nobility.
If at the same time they were composers, it was in such concerts that
they brought their productions to a hearing. The reader of Jahn’s
biography of Mozart will remember how much even he depended upon this
resource to gain the means of support for himself and family. Out of
London, even so late as 1793, there can hardly be said to have existed
a “musical public,” as the term is now understood, and in Vienna
at least, with its 200,000 inhabitants, a virtuoso rarely ventured
to announce a concert to which he had not already a subscription,
sufficient to ensure him against loss, from those at whose residences
he had successfully exhibited his skill. Beethoven, remaining “in
Vienna without salary until recalled” by Max, found in these resources
and his pupils an ample income.
But this topic requires something more than the above general remarks.
Some twelve years previous to Beethoven’s coming to Vienna, Risbeck,
speaking of the art in that capital, had written:
ORCHESTRAS OF THE GREAT NOBLES
Musicians are the only ones (artists) concerning whom the nobility
exhibit taste. Many houses maintain private bands for their own
delectation, and all the public concerts prove that this field of
art stands in high respect. It is possible to enlist four or five
large orchestras here, all of them incomparable. The number of
real virtuosos is small, but as regards the orchestral musicians
scarcely anything more beautiful is to be heard in the world.
TITLED MUSIC-LOVERS IN VIENNA
How many such orchestras were still kept up in 1792-’93 it is,
probably, now impossible to determine. Those of Princes Lobkowitz,
Schwarzenberg and Auersperg may safely be named. Count Heinrich von
Haugwitz and doubtless Count Batthyany brought their musicians with
them when they came to the capital for “the season.” The Esterhazy
band, dismissed after the death of Haydn’s old master, seems not yet to
have been renewed. Prince Grassalkowitz (or Kracsalkowitz) had reduced
his to a band of eight wind-instruments--oboes, clarinets, bassoons,
horns--a kind of organization then much in vogue. Baron Braun had one
to play at dinner as at the supper in “Don Giovanni”--an accessory to
the scene which Mozart introduced out of his own frequent experience.
Prince Karl Lichnowsky and others retained their own players of string
quartets.
The grandees of the Bohemian and Moravian capitals--Kinsky, Clamm,
Nostiz, Thun, Buquoi, Hartig, Salm-Pachta, Sporck, Fünfkirchen,
etc.--emulated the Austrian and Hungarian nobles. As many of them had
palaces also in Vienna, and most, if not all, spent part of the year
there, bringing with them a few of the more skilful members of their
orchestras to execute chamber music and for the nucleus of a band
when symphonies, concertos and grand vocal works were to be executed,
they also added their contingent to the musical as well as to the
political and fashionable life of the metropolis. The astonishingly
fruitful last eight years of Mozart’s life falling within the period
now under contemplation, contributed to musical literature compositions
wonderfully manifold in character and setting an example that forced
other composers to leave the beaten track. Haydn had just returned
from his first stay in London, enriched with the pregnant experience
acquired during that visit. Van Swieten had gained during his residence
in Berlin appreciation of and love for the works of Handel, Bach and
their schools, and since his return to Vienna, about 1778, had exerted,
and was still exerting, a very powerful and marked influence upon
Vienna’s musical taste.
Thus all the conditions precedent for the elevation of the art were
just at this time fulfilled at Vienna, and in one department--that of
instrumental music--they existed in a degree unknown in any other city.
The extraordinary results as to the quantity produced in those years
may be judged from the sale-catalogue (1779) of a single music-dealer,
Johann Traeg, which gives of symphonies, symphonies-concertantes and
overtures (the last being in a small minority) the extraordinary
number of 512. The music produced at private concerts given by the
nobility ranged from the grand oratorios, operas, symphonies, down to
variations for the pianoforte and to simple songs. Leading musicians
and composers, whose circumstances admitted of it, also gave private
concerts at which they made themselves and their works known, and to
which their colleagues were invited. Prince Lobkowitz, at the time
Beethoven reached Vienna, was a young man of twenty years. He was born
on December 7, 1772, and had just married, on August 2, a daughter of
Prince Schwarzenberg. He was a violinist of considerable powers and so
devoted a lover of music and the drama, so profuse a squanderer of his
income upon them, as in twenty years to reduce himself to bankruptcy.
Precisely Beethoven’s supposed age, the aristocrat of wealth and power
and the aristocrat of talent and genius became exceedingly intimate,
occasionally quarrelling and making up their differences as if
belonging by birth to the same sphere.
The reigning Prince Esterhazy was that Paul Anton who, after the death
of his father on February 25, 1790, broke up the musical establishment
at Esterhaz and gave Haydn relief from his thirty years of service.
He died on January 22, 1794, and was succeeded by his son Nicholas,
a young man just five years older than Beethoven. Prince Nicholas
inherited his grandfather’s taste for music, reëngaged an orchestra,
and soon became known as one of the most zealous promoters of Roman
Catholic church-music. The best composers of Vienna, including
Beethoven, wrote masses for the chapel at Esterhaz, where they were
performed with great splendor.
Count Johann Nepomuk Esterhazy, “of the middle line zu Frakno,” was a
man of forty-five years, a good performer upon the oboe, and (which is
much to his credit) had been a firm friend and patron of Mozart.
Of Count Franz Esterhazy, a man of thirty-five years, Schönfeld,
in his “Jahrbuch der Tonkunst,” thus speaks: “This great friend of
music at certain times of the year gives large and splendid concerts
at which, for the greater part, large and elevated compositions are
performed--particularly the choruses of Handel, the ‘Sanctus’ of
Emanuel Bach, the ‘Stabat Mater’ of Pergolese, and the like. At these
concerts there are always a number of the best virtuosos.”
It was not the present Prince Joseph Kinsky (who died in 1798 in his
forty-eighth year) who at a later period became a distinguished patron
of Beethoven, but his son Ferdinand Johann Nepomuk, then a bright boy
of eleven years, born on December 4, 1781, upon whose youthful taste
the strength, beauty and novelty of that composer’s works made a deep
impression. Prince Carl Lichnowsky, the pupil and friend of Mozart, had
a quartet concert at his dwelling every Friday morning. The regularly
engaged musicians were Ignaz Schuppanzigh, son of a professor in the
Real-Schule, and a youth at this time of sixteen years (if the musical
lexica are to be trusted), first violin; Louis Sina, pupil of Förster,
also a very young man, second violin; Franz Weiss, who completed
his fifteenth year on January 18, 1793, viola; and Anton Kraft, or
his son Nicholas, a boy of fourteen years (born December 18, 1778),
violoncello. It was, in fact, a quartet of boy virtuosos, of whom
Beethoven, several years older, could make what he would.
The Prince’s wife was Marie Christine, twenty years of age, one of
those “Three Graces,” as Georg Förster called them, daughters of that
Countess Thun in whose house Mozart had found such warm friendship and
appreciation, and whose noble qualities are so celebrated by Burney,
Reichardt and Förster. The Princess, as well as her husband, belonged
to the better class of amateur performers upon the pianoforte.
Court Councillor von Kees, Vice-President of the Court of Appeals of
Lower Austria, was still living. He was, says Gyrowetz, speaking of a
period a few years earlier, “recognized as the foremost music-lover
and dilettante in Vienna; and twice a week he gave in his house
society concerts at which were gathered together the foremost virtuosos
of Vienna, and the first composers, such as Joseph Haydn, Mozart,
Dittersdorf, Hoffmeister, Albrechtsberger, Giarnovichi and so on.
Haydn’s symphonies were played there.” In Haydn’s letters to Madame
Genzinger the name of von Kees often occurs--the last time in a note of
August 4, 1792, which mentions that the writer is that day to dine with
the Court Councillor. This distinguished man left on his death (January
5, 1795) a very extensive collection of music.
Gottfried, Freiherr van Swieten, son of Maria Theresia’s famous Dutch
physician, says Schönfeld, is,
VAN SWIETEN AND HIS INFLUENCE
as it were, looked upon as a patriarch of music. He has taste only
for the great and exalted. He himself many years ago composed
twelve beautiful symphonies (“stiff as himself,” said Haydn). When
he attends a concert our semi-connoisseurs never take their eyes
off him, seeking to read in his features, not always intelligible
to every one, what ought to be their opinion of the music. Every
year he gives a few large and brilliant concerts at which only
music by the old masters is performed. His preference is for the
Handelian manner, and he generally has some of Handel’s great
choruses performed. As late as last Christmas (1794) he gave such
a concert at Prince von Paar’s, at which an oratorio by this
master was performed.
Neukomm told Prof. Jahn that in concerts, “if it chanced that a
whispered conversation began, His Excellency, who was in the habit of
sitting in the first row of seats, would rise solemnly, draw himself up
to his full height, turn to the culprits, fix a long and solemn gaze
upon them, and slowly resume his chair. It was effective, always.” He
had some peculiar notions of composition; he was, for instance, fond
of imitations of natural sounds in music and forced upon Haydn the
imitation of frogs in “The Seasons.” Haydn himself says:
This entire passage in imitation of a frog did not flow from my
pen. I was constrained to write down the French croak. At an
orchestral performance this wretched conceit soon disappears, but
it cannot be justified in a pianoforte score. Let the critics be
not too severe on me. I am an old man and cannot revise all this
again.
But to van Swieten, surely, is due the credit of having founded in
Vienna a taste for Handel’s oratorios and Bach’s organ and pianoforte
music, thus adding a new element to the music there. The costs of the
oratorio performances were not, however, defrayed by him, as Schönfeld
seems to intimate. They were met by the association called by him into
being, and of which he was perpetual secretary, whose members were the
Princes Liechtenstein, Esterhazy, Schwarzenberg, Auersperg, Kinsky,
Trautmannsdorf, Sinsendorf, and the Counts Czernin, Harrach, Erdödy and
Fries; at whose palaces as well as in van Swieten’s house and sometimes
in the great hall of the Imperial Royal Library the performances were
given at midday to an audience of invited guests. Fräulein Martinez,
who holds so distinguished a place in Burney’s account of his visit
to Vienna--that pupil of Porpora at whose music-lessons the young
Joseph Haydn forty years before had been employed as accompanist--still
flourished in the Michael’s House and gave a musical party every
Saturday evening during the season.
Court Councillor and Chamber Paymaster von Meyer (says Schönfeld)
is so excellent a lover of music that his entire personnel in the
chancellary is musical, among them being such artists as a Raphael
and a Hauschka. It will readily be understood, therefore, that
here in the city as well as at his country-seat there are many
concerts. His Majesty the Emperor himself has attended some of
these concerts.
These details are sufficient to illustrate and confirm the remarks
made above upon Vienna as the central point of instrumental music. Of
the great number of composers in that branch of the art whom Beethoven
found there, a few of the more eminent must be named.
FAMOUS COMPOSERS IN VIENNA
Of course, Haydn stood at the head. The next in rank--_longo
intervallo_--was Mozart’s successor in the office of Imperial Chamber
Composer, Leopold Kozeluch, a Bohemian, now just forty years of age.
Though now forgotten and, according to Beethoven, “miserabilis,” he
was renowned throughout Europe for his quartets and other chamber
music. A man of less popular repute but of a solid genius and
acquirements far beyond those of Kozeluch, whom Beethoven greatly
respected and twenty-five years later called his “old master,” was
Emanuel Aloys Förster, a Silesian, now forty-five years of age. His
quintets, quartets and the like ranked very high, but at that time
were known for the most part only in manuscript. Anton Eberl, five
years the senior of Beethoven, a Viennese by birth, had composed
two operettas in the sixteenth year of his age which were produced
at the Kärnthnerthor-Theater, one of which gained the young author
the favor of Gluck. He seems to have been a favorite of Mozart and
caught so much of the spirit and style of that master as to produce
compositions which were printed by dishonest publishers under Mozart’s
name, and as his were sold throughout Europe. In 1776 he accompanied
the Widow Mozart and her sister, Madame Lange, the vocalist, in the
tour through Germany, gaining that reputation in other cities which
he enjoyed at home, both as pianist and composer. His force was in
instrumental composition, and we shall hereafter see him for a moment
as a symphonist bearing away the palm from Beethoven!
Johann Vanhall, whose name was so well known in Paris and London that
Burney, twenty years before, sought him out in his garret in a suburb
of Vienna, was as indefatigable as ever in production. Gerber says in
his first Lexicon (1792) that Breitkopf and Härtel had then fifty of
his symphonies in manuscript. His fecundity was equal to that of Haydn;
his genius such that all his works are now forgotten. It is needless to
continue this list.
One other fact illustrating the musical tastes and accomplishments of
the higher classes of the capital may be added. There were, during
the winter 1792-93, ten private theatres with amateur companies in
activity, of which the more important were in the residences of the
nobles Stockhammer, Kinsky, Sinsendorf and Strassaldo, and of the
bookseller Schrambl. Most of these companies produced operas and
operettas.