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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.