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.