Simon P. Keefe

The Cambridge history of eighteenth-century music

Editors preface Simon P. Keefe Prelude: 1. The musical map of Europe c.1700 STEPHEN ROSE Part I. Music for the Church: 2. Catholic church music in Italy, and the Spanish and Portuguese Empires PAUL R. LAIRD 3. Catholic sacred music in Austria JEN-YEN CHEN 4. Catholic church music in France JEAN-PAUL C. MONTAGNIER 5. Lutheran church music STEPHEN ROSE 6. Protestant church music in England and America CHARLES E. BREWER Interlude 7. Listening, thinking and writing DAVID SCHROEDER Part II. Music for the Theatre: 8. Italian opera in the eighteenth century MARGARET R. BUTLER 9. Opera in Paris from Campra to Rameau LOIS ROSOW 10. An instinct for parody and a spirit for revolution: Parisian opera, 1752-1800 MICHAEL FEND 11. German opera from Richard Keiser to Peter Winter CLAUDIA MAURER ZENCK, translated by Anke Caton and Simon P. Keefe 12. The lure of aria, procession and spectacle: opera in eighteenth-century London MICHAEL BURDEN 13. Music theatre in Spain RAINER KLEINERTZ 14. Opera in Sweden GREGER ANDERSSON Interlude 15. Performance in the eighteenth century JOHN IRVING Part III. Music for the Salon and Concert Room: 16. Keyboard music from Couperin to early Beethoven ROHAN STEWART-MACDONALD 17. The Serenata in the eighteenth century STEFANIE TCHAROS 18. Private music in public spheres: chamber cantata and song BERTA JONCUS 19. Handel and English oratorio EVA ZOLLNER 20. The Overture-Suite, Concerto Grosso and Harmoniemusik in the eighteenth century STEVEN ZOHN 21. Concerto of the individual SIMON MCVEIGH 22. Eighteenth-century symphonies: an unfinished dialogue RICHARD WILL 23. The string quartet CLIFF EISEN Postlude: 24. Across the divide: currents of musical thought in Europe, c.1790-1810 SIMON P. KEEFE Appendix 1: Personalia DAVID BLACK Appendix 2: Chronology DAVID BLACK Appendix 3: Institutions in major European cities DAVID BLACK.

The Cambridge Companion to the Concerto

Notes on the contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations The concerto: a chronology Simon P. Keefe Introduction Simon P. Keefe Part I. Contexts: 1. Theories of the concerto from the eighteenth century to the present day Simon P. Keefe 2. The concerto and society Tia DeNora Part II. The Works: 3. The Italian concerto in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Michael Talbot 4. The concerto in northern Europe to c. 1770 David Yearsley 5. The concerto from Mozart to Beethoven: aesthetic and stylistic perspectives Simon P. Keefe 6. The nineteenth-century piano concerto Stephan D. Lindeman 7. Nineteenth-century concertos for strings and winds R. Larry Todd 8. Contrasts and common concerns in the concerto 1900-1945 David E. Schneider 9. The concerto since 1945 Arnold Whittall Part III. Performance: 10. The rise (and fall) of the concerto virtuoso in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Cliff Eisen 11. Performance practice in the eighteenth-century concerto Robin Stowell 12. Performance practice in the nineteenth-century concerto David Rowland 13. The concerto in the age of recording Timothy Day Notes Selected further reading Index.

Performance practice in the music of Mozart

Until the second half of the nineteenth century composers tended to work within a lingua franca , which did not prevent their music from having a discernible individuality. Their personalities are evident both in matters of style and in peculiarities of notation and terminology. These tend to be overlooked in conservatory training, which dispenses general definitions of terminology with presumed universal validity. The primary sources of performance practice information for Mozart and other eighteenth-century musicians are the treatises, particularly those of Mozarts father on violin playing and that of C. P. E. Bach on keyboard playing. What follows is an attempt to cover the principal areas of idiomatic performance practice in Mozart. Given the constraints of space, emphasis will be placed upon the relationship between Mozarts notation and its execution. The treatment of individual domains and instruments is drawn both from the treatises and the authors study of Mozarts notational practice. Society, tempo and character Mozarts music incarnates a cosmopolitan vernacular depicting a wide range of dramatic and emotional situations, which are intimately bound up with the social conventions of his day. There is scarcely a musical gesture, from the courtly and martial march to the sighing appoggiatura, that is not related to societal relationships and functions, physical gestures, or emotional archetypes. It is Mozarts singular achievement to have enriched this universally understood vocabulary with uncanny acuity of perception in matters of human motivation and character, supported by a sophisticated control of dramatic and structural events from the smallest detail to the largest arc.

The Italian concerto in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries

The early history of the concerto is intimately linked to the early history of the orchestra in the modern sense of that word: an ensemble in which each of the string parts is taken by several players. What instrumental compositions termed concerto written before 1700 have in common, despite their great variety of structure and style, is suitability for performance with doubled parts. This suitability was not – and should not today be misinterpreted as – an explicit compulsion to perform early concertos with massed strings, but it set the defining parameters. In brief, the nascent concerto acquired defining features that drew it apart from its parent genre, the sonata. By the first decade of the eighteenth century, it had made a sufficient impact on the musical scene to become the object of transcriptions for organ by J. S. Bachs cousin Johann Gottfried Walther. Bach continued the practice himself in the following decade, and the logical point of arrival was his Italian Concerto , published in 1735: a concerto for a solo instrument (two-manual harpsichord) that mimics a solo concerto for violin in every respect except scoring.

The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia: I

List of contributors Preface Headword list A-Z general entries Appendix 1. Worklist Appendix 2. Mozart movies (theatrical releases) Appendix 3. Mozart institutions Appendix 4. Mozart organizations Appendix 5. Mozart websites.

Mozart in Vienna

On his own in Vienna for the first time, the twenty-five-year-old Mozart wrote to his father on 4 April 1781: ‘I can assure you that this here is a Magnificent place – and for my Metier the best place in the world.’ He had decided to stay, although the famous kick in the arse from the agent of Archbishop Colloredo in Salzburg did not take place until 9 June. And while his father would never be persuaded that any city was the right city if one did not have a fixed appointment, Mozart was not naive about his prospects in Vienna. Had death not cut him off just as he was emerging from four financially difficult years, he would have been proven right. In the ten years since his arrival he had obtained the coveted court appointment, he had secured the reversion of the post of Kapellmeister at St Stephens Cathedral, he had enjoyed notable, often lucrative, successes as a performer and as a composer, and he was patronized by the nobility. The present essay will examine these sources of employment and the extent to which Mozart was able to realize them. The court In 1781 the court was still the best employer in Vienna. Although Joseph II led an austere and conspicuously frugal court life, he did not dissolve the courts established musical institutions, the Hofkapelle (court chapel) and the theatre. The Hofkapelle provided music for the courts church services. In addition to the musicians, the Hofkapelle in 1781 consisted of the Hofkapellmeister Giuseppe Bonno and the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck.