The World of the
Eighteenth-Century Symphony
The symphony in its various guises was cultivated by composers of every
nation, state and principality during the eighteenth century. From Austria to
the Americas, from Mannheim to Moscow, symphonies were penned in their
thousands by geniuses, dullards, itinerant virtuosi and amateurs, both talented
and untalented. Over 16,000 symphonies have been identified to date, of which
those of Haydn and Mozart account for around 1%. Even when the names of
important secondary figures are added, such as Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach,
Johann Christian Bach, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Johann Baptist
Vaňhal, the percentage of this repertoire which is in any way familiar is
minuscule. Naxos is committed to changing this and its landmark series The
Eighteenth Century Symphony, undertaken in conjunction with the New
Zealand publishing house Artaria Editions, is already proving a veritable
treasure trove of wonderful, unknown music.
History is selective though cruel. Many of the composers represented on
this recording are unfamiliar to audiences today and yet, in their own
lifetimes, they were considered major musical figures. Their works often
rivalled those of Haydn and Mozart in popularity and each composer in his own
way made a distinctive and important contribution to the evolution of the
genre.
This recording focuses
principally on composers who worked in Mannheim and Vienna, although it also
includes works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the foremost representative of the
North German symphonic tradition, Johann Christian Bach, whose sunny Italianate
style captivated the young Mozart, and Joseph Martin Kraus, a man both Haydn
and Gluck considered a blazing genius and whose best work was written for the
glittering court of Gustav III in Stockholm.
Mannheim & Paris - The Virtuoso Orchestra
While the fully-fledged classical symphony was ultimately a Viennese
achievement, during the middle decades of the eighteenth century many of the
most influential symphonists were working at the court of the Elector Palatine,
Prince Karl Theodor, at Mannheim.
Among the first generation of composers working at Mannheim were Johann
Stamitz, Franz Xavier Richter and Ignaz Holzbauer, all of whom wrote large
numbers of symphonies. Together they established a high reputation for the
musical activities of the court and carefully nurtured its continuation through
a second generation of composers, among whom were Stamitz's sons Carl and
Anton, his star pupil Franz Ignaz Beck, who worked most of his life in France,
and his successor as director of the court orchestra, Christian Cannabich. As
gifted players and accomplished composers, these two generations of musicians
developed an orchestra and style of orchestral playing that was widely regarded
as being without peer. Much of our modern orchestral performance practice can
be traced to this famous orchestra.
More important than the size and discipline of the Mannheim orchestra
was the way composers wrote for it. The use of wind instruments in the orchestra
may have come to Mannheim via Paris but the local composers were singularly
adept at using them. Even more striking was the stock of orchestral effects
refined and exploited by the Mannheimers such as the thrilling crescendo, heard
on this recording in the example by Johann Stamitz. The Mannheimers also
evolved certain stock melodic patterns, among them the vigorous rising triadic
figure colourfully described as the 'Mannheim Rocket', used to great effect
here by François-Joseph Gossec. This predilection for orchestral display in the
symphonies of the Mannheim composers was encouraged by another critical factor
in its development: the practice of composing works for performance in front of
a large, public audience.
The Mannheim style was
particularly popular in Paris and local publishers issued works by most of its
leading exponents. The origins of this popularity may be traced to Stamitz's
residence in Paris for a season in the mid-1750s, although it is likely that
many of his works were well-known there before this date. One Paris resident
who certainly fell under his spell was the young Walloon composer Gossec, who
played for a time in Stamitz's orchestra.
The Sons of Bach - The
North-South Divide
The two most
influential sons of J.S. Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian,
represent the North-South divide of the eighteenth-century symphonic tradition.
The north of Germany
was a relative backwater in the evolution of the symphony. North German writers
on music, reflecting a long tradition of serious-mindedness, regarded the new
genre - and indeed the new style in general - with contempt, considering it
frivolous and indulgent. The very greatness of their own musical tradition
blinded many critics and composers to the importance of the revolution
occurring elsewhere. Through a combination of natural conservatism,
stubbornness and pride, the north of Germany slid into a lingering Baroque
twilight.
In 1768 C.P.E. Bach
managed to secure his release from the stifling court of Frederick the Great,
where he had spent the last 28 years as court harpsichordist, to take up the
coveted post of music director in Hamburg. After Berlin and Potsdam, Hamburg
came as a breath of fresh air to Bach and, free of the blinkered, conservative
tastes of the King, he was able to adopt a lighter, freer style of composition.
The 'Hamburg'
Sinfonias date from 1773 and were commissioned by the future patron of Haydn
and Mozart, Baron Gottfried van Swieten. Many of C.P.E. Bach's most
characteristic touches can be found in these symphonies; energetic tuttis abound;
there are sudden contrasts of mood, extreme modulations and abrupt closes,
hallmarks of the so-called Empfindsamer Stil of which Bach is the
supreme representative.
Emanuel Bach possessed
one of the most original musical minds of the century, albeit it one that
reflected local attitudes. In some respects his musical style represents a
brilliant dead end but its influence on Haydn and later on Beethoven ensured
that its spirit eventually triumphed.
In terms of the
eighteenth-century symphony it is hard to imagine a greater contrast than
between the nervous, flighty brilliance of Emanuel Bach's works and the suave,
polished, worldliness of those of his youngest brother and former pupil, Johann
Christian.
Like many musicians of
the period - but unlike members of his own family - Johann Christian Bach was
attracted by Italy. In 1756 he became a pupil of Padre Martini in Bologna and,
after converting to Catholicism, was appointed organist at Milan Cathedral.
Bach very quickly turned his attentions to opera and consequently to the
Italian opera sinfonia. In 1762 he moved to London where he won great success
as a composer of opera and as music master to Queen Sophie Charlotte. Bach's
famous concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms, mounted in partnership with the
German composer and viola da gamba virtuoso Carl Friedrich Abel, were the
finest in London.
Christian Bach's early
professional exposure to Italian opera and instrumental composition left an
indelible mark on his style. He was an unrivalled exponent of the galant style
and his extraordinary melodic gifts, coupled with clear, concise formal
thinking and sparkling orchestration, struck an immediate chord with Mozart.
The Six Symphonies,
Op. 3, also known as Overtures, were published in 1765 in London and
also circulated widely on the Continent. Short in duration but rich in
invention, the Op. 3 Symphonies are miniature masterpieces of their
kind.
Vienna -Development
and Expansion
While the Mannheim
fever was sweeping Paris and Christian Bach was writing his stunning Italianate
symphonies in post-Handelian London, a generation of young Viennese composers
clearly believed that the symphony as a genre was capable of radical
development and expansion.
In spite of the fame
of the Mannheim court and its leading composers, the Mannheim style did not
exert a strong influence on the developing Viennese symphony. From a
comparatively early date it appears as if Viennese composers recognized that
there was a limit to the number of times the same old bag of orchestral tricks
could be employed and that the future of the genre lay less in surface effect
than in musical substance. The greatest symphonist of the period, Haydn, has
been largely given the credit for transforming the symphony from light
entertainment music into a vehicle capable of expressing the most profound
musical thoughts. While he was the most spectacularly successful in this he was
not alone in his endeavours.
Among Haydn's
immediate Viennese contemporaries three composers stand out: Leopold Hofmann,
Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Johann Baptist Vaňhal. Hofmann's career
as a composer was relatively short but in the early 1760s he was a highly
influential figure in the development of the symphony. He was the first
composer to write four-movement symphonies with slow introductions and he also
experimented with other structural devices and orchestral effects. The work on
this recording, for example, links the first two movements together and has a
real trio to the Menuet, scored for solo viola, cello and bass, in place
of a fully scored section. Hofmann' s symphonies are short - a reflection of
the fact that many were intended to be played in church during services - but
they are very attractive and highly resourceful in their small-scale musical
organization.
Dittersdorf, by
comparison, wrote many more symphonies than Hofmann and over a much longer
period. There is a huge stylistic range in his works from descriptive and
programmatic symphonies like those based on Ovid's Metamorphoses, to
powerful, absolute works like the G minor Symphony of around 1768.
Dittersdorf was also an inveterate experimenter with structure. In this
symphony he anticipates the Finale by incorporating a close simulation
of its development section in the analogous place in the first movement. What
seems bizarre at the beginning of the work is revealed as supremely logical at
the end!
Johann Baptist
Vaňhal was also a prolific symphonist and his finest works can easily be
compared to those of Haydn. Vaňhal worked as a freelance composer and
teacher in Vienna and this dictated to a certain extent what he composed.
During the prosperous 1760s many wealthy noblemen maintained standing
orchestras and there was, as a consequence, an insatiable demand for new
symphonies. Vaňhal, like Hofmann, Dittersdorf and others, was only too
happy to oblige. As the economy weakened and many of Vienna's private
orchestras were disbanded, the demand for new symphonies tailed off. Hofmann
stopped writing them in the early 1770s at the very latest and Vaňhal's
last essays in the genre were written around 1778, even though he was to live -
and continue to compose - until 1813.
The symphony on this
recording is one of the last three Vaňhal published and dates from the
late 1770s. The slow introduction, a very Viennese feature as we have seen, is
extraordinarily beautiful and it surely cannot be coincidental that Mozart, who
knew Vaňhal well, quotes part of it in both his Symphony No. 36
"Linz" and No. 38 "Prague". The ensuing Allegro
is infused with Vaňhal's characteristic rhythmic energy and the
scoring, with high trumpets (clarini) in place of the more common horns, is
brilliantly effective. As in the Dittersdorf example, we now have a first
movement of great musical complexity which is almost as long as an entire
symphony by Cannabich or J.C. Bach.
Stockholm - Northern
Genius
While the north of
Germany was conservative, further north, in Stockholm, the situation was quite
different. The court of Gustav III was one of the great intellectual centres of
Europe in the late eighteenth century, and his assassination at a masked ball
in 1792 was a great blow to civilized Europe.
The leading composer
at Gustav's court was a German, Joseph Martin Kraus, a remarkable man who was
not only a great composer but also a man of letters. Kraus had studied with
Richter in Mannheim as a youth and was, therefore, well-versed in the great
Mannheim traditions. His own music, however, has a depth and complexity which
is more Viennese than South German. Haydn kept a score of one of Kraus's
symphonies as a 'memento of one of the greatest geniuses I have met'.
The Symphony in C 'Violin
obligato' dates from Kraus's first years in Stockholm, 1778-1779. The most
unusual feature of the work is the solo violin part: less than one would expect
in a concerto but greater than a normal obbligato part. It is, in Bertil
van Boer's view, 'the eighteenth-century equivalent of Berlioz's Harold in
Italy, in which the soloist interacts with the orchestra throughout,
sometimes as a soloist and others as a primus inter pares.' Kraus's rich
harmonic vocabulary and contrapuntal ingenuity, a legacy of his years with
Richter, add depth and complexity to this marvellous hybrid symphony.
Dr Allan Badley