During his sixteen years in the prince's service, Rosetti composed a substantial body of symphonies, concertos, wind partitas, and chamber music for the Wallerstein Hofkapelle. The prince's musicians formed a discernible unit within the court structure, strengthened by family and close personal bonds. Rosetti was not writing music for an anonymous ensemble of performers, but rather for personal friends and life-long associates with whom he shared the normal joys and sorrows of human existence. This chapter considers the organization and daily activities of the Wallerstein Hofkapelle during its period of greatest achievement in the 1780s, with the intent of documenting Rosetti's working environment and the social as well as musical context in which he created some of his best music.

Kraft Ernst's early attempts in the 1770s to establish a first-rate musical ensemble at Wallerstein had attracted favorable attention,1 but it was in the following decade that the Wallerstein Hofkapelle would reach its peak of refinement and recognition. Schubart, who spent part of his youth only a few miles from Wallerstein in the ancient walled city of Nördlingen, was a champion of the Wallerstein Kapelle. In his Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst of 1784–85 he wrote “since this ancient house of counts was elevated to princely rank, music flourishes there to an excellent degree.” To Schubart, the sound of the Wallerstein orchestra had “something altogether original, a certain something which is combined from Italian and German flavor and seasoned throughout with caprice.”