The only acceptable ringtone on my new mobile phone is the overture to the Magic Flute, unfortunately in MIDI file. I guess this is Samsung’s modest tribute to the Mozart year, but as the mobile phone does not identify the tune, its significance will probably pass most people by. One Sunday some time ago a colleague of mine was cruising on his yacht Papageno on the river Tagus facing Lisbon; as he passed a schooner he heard someone whistle ‘Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja . . .’. He whistled back, and the man waved to him. The schooner, not surprisingly, had a German flag. On the other hand, in a remote corner of northern Portugal the petrol station shop is selling the Philips complete edition of Mozart’s recorded works (though I did not have the courage to ask the attendant how many collections, or even individual discs, he had sold).

This article moves the search for the ‘ period listener ’ into new terrain, bringing literary sources into play. The argument unfolds as a case study of the writings of Jean Paul, arguably the most radical, and most radically critical, among the early romantics. The purpose of the exercise is to demonstrate that literary sources, carefully decoded through philosophical analysis, can enhance and sharpen the knowledge provided by the kinds of sources upon which music historians traditionally rely.

In this article I assert that our modern understanding of the singspiel as a genre has been shaped not by eighteenth-century principles but rather by nineteenth-century notions of ‘romantic’ German opera. In contrast to a later through-composed ideal, Johann Adam Hiller’s comic operas, often viewed as the prototype of the German comic genre, were designed precisely in order that the songs might easily be detached from the spoken dialogue, disseminated outside of the public opera house and sung by audiences in various other contexts. The express purpose of these songs, as articulated by librettist Christian Felix Weisse, was to promote communal singing in social circles across Germany. The genre was thus designed for circulation within what Habermas describes as the public sphere: a conceptual space between the State and the private home in which texts, ideas and musical works were circulated and debated.

Composed in what was called the German Volkston (in the manner of the Volk), Hiller’s melodies are recorded as being sung and played throughout the streets and parks of major German cities and became so popular that they became known as folksongs. This idea of the Volk as a collective entity and of the Volkston, however, was rooted in a deeper sense of the public as nation. Inspired by Le devin du village and J. J. Rousseau’s writings on politics, language and the fine arts, Weisse and Hiller’s operas employ the pastoral mode, in which idealized peasants sing in the manner of a folksong. The idyllic simplicity of these early German-language comic operas appealed to a diversified German audience by affirming their roots, the public use of their language and their morally upright character as a nation. Thus comic opera as a genre was circulated within the public sphere with the intention of transcending the boundaries of social class to unite the German nation in song.

Italian opera is increasingly receiving well deserved attention. Yet the process by which the chorus in opera seria was created remains largely unexplored. Between 1759 and 1769 Tommaso Traetta and Christoph Gluck composed path-breaking, reform-inspired opere serie for Parma’s Teatro Ducale which integrated chorus, dance and stage spectacle in the French manner. In an era when operatic choruses usually comprised amateurs and chapel singers, evidence from printed librettos and documents from Parma’s Archivio di Stato reveal that many of the Teatro Ducale’s choristers were professional singers hired from neighbouring Bologna. Perhaps in response to logistical and financial difficulties in engaging skilled personnel for Traetta’s choruses, Parma established a singing school to provide choristers for theatre. Gluck’s choruses employed a combination of students from this school and professionals. The evidence from Parma shows that the wide-ranging circuit within which Italy’s opera theatres functioned embraced not only leading soloists and other personnel, but choral singers as well. It demonstrates the impact of practical circumstances surrounding the production of Parma’s operatic choruses on the success of operatic reform in Parma.

The image of the heroic Handel, typified by claims of immense physical and mental toughness, and rapid – even miraculous – recovery, may satisfy the credulous, but it needs considerable modification once we realize that Handel continued to suffer following the first acute paralytic attack in 1737. It is no coincidence that the onset of acute symptoms occurred during Handel’s last lengthy season of opera production and that oratorios came to dominate his composing and his shortened performance seasons thereafter.

Whatever the immediate causes for Handel’s decisions to write and publicly to perform the first few English-language works, the intensification of that practice after 1737 was due in large measure to the challenges posed by lead poisoning and its ensuing saturnine gout, and an increasing debility exacerbated by obesity. In other words, the illnesses should be considered as an integral element in the switch by Handel to writing his late works, the major oratorios.

As Empress of Russia, Catherine the Great (1729–1796) shaped not only history in general but also, as a member of its princely family, the history of Anhalt-Zerbst. Drawing upon little known eighteenth-century manuscripts housed at the Landeshauptarchiv of Saxony-Anhalt in Dessau and the Francisceumsbibliothek in Zerbst, this study assesses the impact of Catherine’s marriage in 1745 to Grand Duke Peter of Russia (1728–1762) on musical life at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst during and after the thirty-six-year tenure of Kapellmeister Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688–1758). First the role of music at the court prior to 1745 will be considered – specifically the ‘Concert-Stube’, an inventory of the Hofkapelle’s musical library prepared according to Fasch’s specifications in March 1743. The second section of this article focuses on the celebrations held at the court in 1745 on the occasion of Catherine the Great’s wedding. The Hofkapelle premiered a large-scale serenata by Fasch, the music to which has been lost. However, an examination of the extant libretto and of other music by Fasch that was performed at the court during the 1740s sheds light on the musical forces he would have employed and the compositional approach he might have taken. The Hofkapelle also performed a secular wedding cantata for bass solo and instruments by an anonymous composer as part of a spectacular fireworks display in three acts, the ‘Anhalt-Zerbstisches Freuden-Feuer’ (Fire of Joy), chronicled by Zerbst headmaster Johann Hoxa. Finally, it is possible to reconstruct a performance schedule of sacred music premiered in honour of Catherine the Great from 1746 to 1773. Despite Fasch’s death in 1758 and the Seven Years War, which led to the town of Zerbst being occupied by 16,000 Prussian soldiers for three years until 1761, new music was commissioned by the court from Fasch’s successor Johann Georg Röllig (1710–1790), Catherine the Great’s keyboard instructor at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst. He not only provided occasional compositions to commemorate her birthday and accession to the Russian throne but also composed a new cycle of Sunday cantatas to reflect the changing artistic priorities and practices of the Hofkapelle in the early 1760s.

Biographical research on Mozart’s pupils that is based on archival primary sources has been sadly neglected by scholars. Except for a short and highly entertaining article by Gustav Gugitz and two publications in the 1960s, Mozart scholarship still lacks a comprehensive study on a topic that is likely to provide us with a fascinating insight into Mozart’s social background, his pedagogical methods and performance practice in eighteenth-century Vienna. I think there are two reasons for this lacuna: first, the fashionable (and comfortable) assumption that all possible research has already been done, and second, the fact that this kind of archival work is basically restricted to the archives of Vienna. Delving into the lives and careers of Mozart’s pupils Barbara Ployer and Josepha Auernhammer soon leads us to areas that are not commonly associated with musicology: basic genealogy and the identification of private venues and apartments in which Mozart performed his piano concertos. After all, the actual size of these rooms, many of which do not exist any more, has never been the subject of research. Owing to the fragmentary state of the sources and the small number of plans from the eighteenth century that have been preserved, this difficult project is still in its early stages. I will therefore try to point to future directions for documentary research and give an overview of the new biographical data that I have found.