If we examine into the manners, customs, and tastes of the period we are struck with many apparently absurd contradictions. Men whose nature, bred in generations of fighting, was brutal in its very essence outwardly affected a truly inordinate love of ceremony and lavish splendor. The same dignitaries who discussed for hours the fine distinctions of official precedence, or the question whether princes of the church should sit in council on green seats or red, like the secular potentates, would use language and display manners the coarseness of which is no longer tolerated except in the lowest spheres of society. While indulging in the grossest vulgarities and even vices, and while committing the most wanton cruelties, this race of petty tyrants expended thousands upon the glitter and tinsel with which they thought to dazzle the eyes of their neighbors. While this is more true of the seventeenth than of the eighteenth century, and while Europe was undergoing momentous changes, conditions were after all not greatly improved in the period of Haydn and Mozart. The graceful Italian melody which reigned supreme at the Viennese court, or the glitter of its rococo salons, found a striking note of contrast in the broad dialect of Maria Theresa and the ‘boiled bacon and water’ of Emperor Joseph’s diet. A stronger paradox than the brocade and ruffled lace of a courtier’s dress and the coarse behavior of its wearer could hardly be found.
The great courts of Europe, Versailles, Vienna, etc., were imitated at the lesser capitals in every detail, as far as the limits of the princes’ purses permitted. As George Henry Lewes says of Weimar, ‘these courts but little corresponded with those conceptions of grandeur, magnificence, or historical or political importance with which the name of court is usually associated. But, just as in gambling the feelings are agitated less by the greatness of the stake than by the variations of fortune, so, in social gambling of court intrigue, there is the same ambition and agitation, whether the green cloth be an empire or a duchy. Within its limits Saxe-Weimar, for instance, displayed all that an imperial court displays in larger proportions. It had its ministers, its chamberlains, pages, and sycophants. Court favor and disgrace elevated and depressed as if they had been imperial smiles or autocratic frowns. A standing army of six hundred men, with cavalry of fifty hussars, had its war department, with war minister, secretary, and clerk. Lest this appear too ridiculous,’ Lewes adds that ‘one of the small German princes kept a corps of hussars, which consisted of a colonel, six officers and two privates!’ Similarly every prince, great or petty, gathered about him, for his greater glory, the disciples of the graceful arts. Not a count, margrave, or bishop but had in his retinue his court musicians, his organists, his court composer, his band and choir, all of whom were attached to their master by ties of virtually feudal servitude, whose social standing was usually on a level with domestic servants and who were often but wretchedly paid. We have had occasion to refer to a number of the more important centres, such as Berlin, where Frederick the Great had Johann Quantz, Franz Benda, and Emanuel Bach as musical mentors; Dresden, where Augustus the Third had Hasse and Porpora;[38] Stuttgart, where Karl Eugen gave Jommelli a free hand; Mannheim, where Karl Theodor gathered about him that genial band of musical reformers with Stamitz at their head; and Salzburg, where Archbishop Sigismund maintained Michael Haydn, Leopold Mozart, and many another talented musician.
As for the greater courts, they became the nuclei for aggregations of men of genius, to many of whom the world owes an everlasting debt of gratitude, but who often received insufficient payment, and who, in some cases, even suffered indignities at the hands of their masters which are calculated to rouse the anger of an admiring posterity. London and Paris were, of course, as they had been for generations, the most brilliant centres—the most liberal and the richest in opportunities for musicians of talent or enterprise. At the period of which we speak the court of George II (and later George III) harbored Johann Christian Bach, Carl Friedrich Abel, and Pietro Domenico Paradies; at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette Rameau was in his last years, while Gluck and Piccini were the objects of violent controversy, while Philidor, Monsigny, and Grétry were delighting audiences with opéra comique, and while a valiant number of instrumentalists, like Gossec, Gaviniès, Schobert, and Eckhard, were building up a French outpost of classicism. Capitals which had but recently attained international significance, like Stockholm and St. Petersburg, assiduously emulated the older ones; at the former, for instance, Gustavus III patronized Naumann, and at the latter Catherine II entertained successively Galuppi, Traetto, Paesiello, and Sarti.
But Vienna was now the musical capital of Europe. It was the concentrated scene of action where all the chief musical issues of the day were fought out. There the Mannheim school had its continuation, soon after its inception; there Haydn and Mozart found their greatest inspiration—as Beethoven and Schubert did after them—it remained the citadel of musical Germany, whose supremacy was now fairly established. It is significant that Burney, in writing the results of his musical investigations on the continent, devotes one volume each to Italy and France but two to Germany, notwithstanding his strong Italian sympathies. However, the reason for this is partly the fact that Germany was to an Englishman still somewhat of a wilderness, and that the writer felt it incumbent upon him to give some general details of the condition of the country. We can do no better than quote some of his observations upon Vienna in order to familiarize the reader with the principal characters of the drama for which it was the stage.[39]
After describing the approach to the city, which reminds him of Venice, and his troubles at the customs, where his books were ‘even more scrupulously read than at the inquisition of Bologna,’ he continues: ‘The streets are rendered doubly dark and dirty by their narrowness, and by the extreme height of the houses; but, as these are chiefly of white stone and in a uniform, elegant style of architecture, in which the Italian taste prevails, as well as in music, there is something grand and magnificent in their appearance which is very striking; and even those houses which have shops on the ground floor seem like palaces above. Indeed, the whole town and its suburbs appear at the first glance to be composed of palaces rather than of common habitations.’
Now for the life of the city. ‘The diversions of the common people ... are such as seem hardly fit for a civilized and polished nation to allow. Particularly the combats, as they are called, or baiting of wild beasts, in a manner much more savage and ferocious than our bull-baiting, etc.’ The better class, of course, found its chief amusement in the theatres, but the low level of much of this amusement may be judged from the fact that rough horse-play was almost necessary to the success of a piece. Shortly before Burney’s visit the customary premiums for actors who would ‘voluntarily submit to be kicked and cuffed’ were abolished, with the result that theatres went bankrupt ‘because of the insufferable dullness and inactivity of the actors.’ By a mere chance Burney witnessed a performance of Lessing’s Emilia Galotti, which as a play shocked his sensibilities, but he speaks in admiring terms of the orchestra, which played ‘overtures and act-tunes’ by Haydn, Hoffman, and Vanhall. At another theatre the pieces were so full of invention that it seemed to be music of some other world.
Musically, also, the mass at St. Stephen’s impressed him very much: ‘There were violins and violoncellos, though it was not a festival,’ and boys whose voices ‘had been well cultivated.’ At night, in the court of his inn, two poor scholars sang ‘in pleasing harmony,’ and later ‘a band of these singers performed through the streets a kind of glees in three and four parts.’ ‘Soldiers and common people,’ he says, ‘frequently sing in parts, too,’ and he is forced to the conclusion that ‘this whole country is certainly very musical.’
Through diplomatic influence our traveller is introduced to the Countess Thun (afterwards Mozart’s patron), ‘a most agreeable lady of very high rank, who, among other talents, possesses as great skill in music as any person of distinction I ever knew; she plays the harpsichord with that grace, ease, and delicacy which nothing but female fingers can arrive at.’ Forthwith he meets ‘the admirable poet Metastasio, and the no less admirable musician Hasse,’ as well as his wife, Faustina, both very aged; also ‘the chevalier Gluck, one of the most extraordinary geniuses of this, or perhaps any, age or nation,’ who plays him his Iphigénie, just completed, while his niece, Mlle. Marianne Gluck, sang ‘in so exquisite a manner that I could not conceive it possible for any vocal performance to be more perfect.’ He hears music by ‘M. Hoffman, an excellent composer of instrumental music’; by Vanhall, whom he meets and whose pieces ‘afforded me such uncommon pleasure that I should not hesitate to rank them among the most complete and perfect compositions for many instruments which the art of music can boast(!)’; also some ‘exquisite quartets by Haydn, executed in the utmost perfection’; and he attends a comic opera by ‘Signor Salieri, a scholar of M. Gassman,’ at which the imperial family was present, his imperial majesty being extremely attentive ‘and applauding very much.’[40] ‘His imperial majesty’ was, of course, Joseph II, who we know played the violoncello, and was, in Burney’s words, ‘just musical enough for a sovereign prince.’ The entire imperial family was musical, and the court took its tone from it. All the great houses of the nobility—Lichtenstein, Lobkowitz, Auersperg, Fürnberg, Morzin—maintained their private bands or chamber musicians. Our amusing informant, in concluding his account of musical Vienna, says: ‘Indeed, Vienna is so rich in composers and incloses within its walls such a number of musicians of superior merit that it is but just to allow it to be among German cities the imperial seat of music as well as of power.’
It need hardly be repeated that Italian style was still preferred by the society of the period, just as Italian manners and language were affected by the nobility. Italian was actually the language of the court, and how little German was respected is seen from the fact that Metastasio, the man of culture par excellence, though living in Vienna through the greater part of his life, spoke it ‘just enough to keep himself alive.’ Haydn, like many others, Italianized his name to ‘Giuseppe’ and Mozart signed himself frequently Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart!
This, then, is the city in which Haydn and Mozart were to meet for the first time just one year after Burney’s account. Though the first was the other’s senior by twenty-four years their great creative periods are virtually simultaneous. They date, in fact, from this meeting, which marks the beginning of their influence upon each other and their mutual and constant admiration. Both already had brilliant careers behind them as performers and composers, and it becomes our duty now to give separate accounts of these careers.