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The Concerto at Mannheim c. 1740–1780

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Peter Ward Jones
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Extract

The first necessity in a paper of this nature is to offer some definition of the term ‘Mannheim concerto’. In the past there has been some tendency to view the musicians working at the Palatinate court during the reign of the Elector Karl Theodor from 1743 to 1778, and the last years of his predecessor Karl Phüipp, as a somewhat isolated school. It is clear, however, from the studies of Hugo Riemann and more recently Gerhard Croll, that not only did the orchestral personnel come from many different parts of Europe, including Düsseldorf, Innsbruck, Vienna, Bohemia and Italy, over a period of many years, but that they were also constantly leaving Mannheim for posts elsewhere, or else going on often lengthy concert tours, especially to Paris, which throughout the period remained the great centre of attraction for the Mannheimers in view of its important publishing trade and flourishing concert life, both public and private. In addition, the Elector, who in musical matters was certainly among the more enlightened and generous rulers of his day, was continually sending promising young musicians off on study tours to Italy to complete their musical education. Among such musicians can be counted Christian Cannabich, Johann Ritschel and Georg Joseph Vogler. Thus the musical contacts with the outside world were indeed wide, and it is often impossible to tell whether particular concertos were composed for Mannheim, Paris or elsewhere, especially as the Mannheim court music library has long since totally disappeared, and we now rely on the relatively few printed sources and the manuscript copies to be found distributed throughout Europe. For present purposes the term ‘Mannheim concerto’ will be taken to include all concertos by composers whose activities were centred for a substantial time at the Mannheim court, and will thus include the works of those such as Carl and Anton Stamitz, the sons of Johann, who spent their formative years within the Mannheim circle, even though they both left Mannheim in 1770.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 96 , 1969 , pp. 129 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Prefaces to Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Bayern, iii/1 and vii/2, Leipzig, 1902, 1907.Google Scholar

2 ‘Zur Vorgeschichte der Mannheimer’, Bericht über den siebenten internationalen musikwissenschqftlichen Kongress Köln 1958, Cassel, 1959, pp. 82–83.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Michel Brenet, Les concerts en France sous l'ancien régime, Paris, 1900; Barry S. Brook, La symphonie française dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle, 3 vols., Paris, 1962, i. 19–40.Google Scholar

4 Cf. Friedrich Walter, Geschichte des Theaters und der Musik am kurpfälzischen Hofe, Leipzig, 1898, pp. 199–206.Google Scholar

5 The exact attribution of such works within members of this and other families is complicated by the frequent appearance of only the family name in the sources.Google Scholar

6 An example is the bassoon concerto in F major by Carl Stamitz, which also existed in the eighteenth century in versions for cello and for flute, both in D major.Google Scholar

7 Cf. Franz Waldkirch, Die konzertanten Sinfonien der Mannheimer im 18. Jahrhundert, Ludwigshafen, 1931; Barry S. Brook, ‘The Symphonic Concertante: an Interim Report’, The Musical Quarterly, xlvii (1961), 493–516.Google Scholar

8 Cf. Malcolm S. Cole, ‘The Vogue of the Instrumental Rondo’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, xxii (1969), 425–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Occasionally the third tutti may begin in the subdominant, as in Innocenz Danzi's cello concerto in G major (West Berlin Staatsbibliothek (Dahlem), Mus. Ms. 4485). The tonal scheme is less regular in the concertos in minor keys, which constitute fewer than five per cent of the total.Google Scholar

10 See, for example, the harpsichord concerto in F major by Carl Stamitz, ed. G. Rhau, Wiesbaden, 1948.Google Scholar

11 Flötenkonzerte der Mannheimer Schule, ed. W. Lebermann (Das Erbe deutscher Musik, li), Wiesbaden, 1954, pp. 29–33.Google Scholar

12 Under the title of Romance the rondo form also attains popularity in the slow movements of this third generation of composers.Google Scholar

13 On the development of the cadenza see Heinrich Knödt, ‘Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Kadenzen im Instrumentalkonzert’, Sammelbände der internationalen Musikgesellschaft, xv (1913–14), 375–419.Google Scholar

14 Examples in Johann Stamitz's flute concerto in G major (Das Erbe deutscher Musik, li. 41–56) and Christian Cannabich's flute concerto in D major (Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Mus. Hs. 66).Google Scholar

15 Schubart, C. F. D., Gesammelte Schriften, Stuttgart, 1839, i. 151.Google Scholar