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!