When Mozart arrived in Vienna in June 1781, Europe was in the grip of a vogue for opera, and a more general enthusiasm for theatre. It was quelled somewhat in cities including Salzburg, where Joseph II was imposing reforms including theatre closures, and other limitations on musical life, evidently prompting Mozart to move permanently to Vienna. There the theatres (four of them by 1800) kept the middle- and upper-class Viennese well supplied with their favourite forms of entertainment, except during summer and Lent. The revolutionary and sentimental plots that were fashionable in literature were taken up by librettists and composers, contributing greatly to the popularity of opera, which elaborated these themes and entertained a broad audience. Mozart and his colleagues were well aware of the demand for opera, both on the stage and in the home, and strove to meet it with their compositional and career choices. So the idea of the late eighteenth century as an age of ‘Viennese Classicism’ dominated by ‘pure’ instrumental music, as proposed in traditional histories of music, is wrong-headed. Not only was opera what many people wanted to perform, attend, and discuss in late eighteenth-century Vienna; also, the instrumental music composed at this time was often informed by the aesthetics, drama, and even specifically musical elements of opera and theatre.Footnote ²

Moreover, much of the instrumental chamber music that was played in Vienna around 1800 comprised ‘chamber’ arrangements of opera – that is, translations of these large-scale vocal works for performance by a much smaller group of instrumentalists and vocalists than that originally intended, and often in domestic contexts. The period (c.1780–c.1830) covered by this book was a high point in the ‘fruitful age of musical translations’.Footnote ³ This trend was driven partly by the social and political circumstances, which made private and semi-private music-making particularly feasible and appealing, creating a demand for chamber music that was within the reach of the enthusiastic amateur. But the vogue for arrangements was also a function of the music-publishing trade and its governance (or lack of it) around 1800.

This chapter explores the vogue for opera in Vienna from the perspectives of composers, and then, through the lens of publishers’ catalogues, considers which types of opera and which composers were most liked, and how opera (in various ‘musical translations’) infiltrated into Viennese homes around 1800.

The Rage for Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century Vienna

When Mozart arrived in Vienna, he was not the pre-eminent figure he would later become. He was just one of a number of composers striving for success in the competitive world of Josephine Vienna.Footnote ⁴ There were no full-time professional orchestras, chamber groups, or regular concert series; these came about only slowly in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Public concerts were rare. They mainly took the form of composers’ benefit concerts, held in Lent, when the theatres were not occupied with their usual fare of operas and plays. When Mozart settled in Vienna, he held a number of benefit concerts, at which he performed his piano concertos in particular, and he played piano in the homes of the nobility; but he was drawn to the opera, which he heard at the principal court theatre, the Burgtheater.

The Burgtheater was a focal point in Viennese musical life, and Mozart sought entry into its institutional ranks. In 1778, Joseph II had founded a National Singspiel company, which performed at the Burgtheater. Ignaz Umlauf was appointed Kapellmeister. Umlauf’s Die Bergknappen was staged and the performance, featuring soprano Caterina Cavalieri, was highly acclaimed. This was the first Singspiel by an Austrian composer performed in Vienna. It captured the audience’s imagination, with its engaging plot, characterisation, and exceptional singers. Popular was the down-to-earth portrayal of the old miner Walcher (bass), who opposes the suit of the young miner Fritz (tenor) for the hand of his ward Sophie (soprano), whom he himself secretly wishes to marry. It also pleased the audience with the brilliance of Sophie’s part and the graphic depiction of the collapsing mine, from which Fritz saves Walcher, ensuring a happy end. In 1781, Antonio Salieri was prevailed upon to write a work (Die Rauchfangkehrer) for the National Singspiel. And on arriving in Vienna Mozart found it expedient to set about writing Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782) for the company, which became one of its most successful works. However, the majority of the Singspiel’s repertory was drawn from foreign imports, including works of Christoph Willibald Gluck, André Grétry, Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi, and Pasquale Anfossi, performed in German translation.

Ultimately, though, Italian opera buffa was what the Viennese audiences most wanted to hear, and what the Emperor ordered. Joseph II gave up his project of building a national theatre in 1783 and ordered an Italian opera company to perform at the Burgtheater. Lorenzo Da Ponte was appointed as librettist, Antonio Salieri as director, and Umlauf became Salieri’s substitute. The new company was a success. John Platoff traces the most popular opera composers and works in Vienna from 1783 to 1792, reckoned by numbers of performances, finding a strong preference for Italian composers of opera buffa.Footnote ⁵ Although some of the operatic hits were composed in and for Vienna, most were imports. The most successful opera composer of the day was Giovanni Paisiello (1740–1816), who visited Vienna only occasionally. Mozart and other non-Italians, like Englishman Stephen Storace and the Viennese Joseph Weigl, figure well down Platoff’s list. But Vicente Martín y Soler (1754–1806), a Spanish composer who lived in Vienna from 1785 to 1788, takes third place, although his works are seldom heard today. Salieri (1750–1825), in second place, was the only Italian composer of operas popular in Vienna who actually lived there. The others passed through, at most: Domenico Cimarosa (1749–1801); Guglielmi (1728–1804); Giuseppe Sarti (1728–1802); Anfossi (1727–97); Giuseppe Gazzaniga (1743–1818); Felice Alessandri (1747–98); and Vincenzo Righini (1756–1812).

Although many of these composers’ operas were not written specifically for Vienna, their characteristics clearly spoke to the Viennese: especially the plot types, character archetypes, and certain musical traits. Platoff’s list of the most popular operas in Vienna from 1783 to 1792 appears in Table 1.1, with brief summaries. This list of hits reveals much depiction of ‘real people’ (middle class or servant class), and a preference for light, comic, or pastoral plots, typically involving a love triangle. There was clear preference for lightly moralising plots, with virtuous servants, and nobles who are shown to be dishonourable (or sometimes magnanimous) and who get their just deserts. In other words, class itself becomes a theme, and class mobility is depicted time and again as a real possibility. A culture of prequels and sequels – similar characters, similar situations – is also apparent, generating a ‘family-tree’ effect (for example, when Il barbiere di Siviglia leads to Figaro), or a series of rearrangements of a familiar idea. This trend responds to an appetite for representation of ‘real life’: as in a modern sitcom, the audience understands that plots are still ‘open’ at the end. The believable characters and situations can be developed in further iterations.

Performance and performative elements were crucial to engaging the Viennese audiences with these works. Paisiello’s La molinara was typically popular, not just for its plot elements but also for its careful attention to musical characterisation, and its brilliant realisation by a cast of excellent singers. Mary Hunter notes that opera scores of this time show great attention to aspects of music that are readily accessible, immediately effective, and simply pleasurable: dynamic markings are comprehensive and change often, and articulation is detailed and varied, drawing attention to the sonorous surface. Hunter suggests that in the opera theatre the repetitive nature of the music would ensure that audiences, who might be only half paying attention, would at least partly follow the plot, and also pick up on characterisation and character development.Footnote ⁶ This repetition also made for successful arrangements for performance in the home. Performers could take pleasure in ‘playing out’ the various roles while realising textures and timbres that helped delineate characters. These operas translated well into arrangements for private or semi-private performance, in musical and dramatic terms: listeners and amateur performers could relax and enjoy the interaction between parts, since the drama unfolded at a leisurely pace.

The popularity of Paisiello’s La molinara, like the others in this list, is also evident in the number and variety of arrangements of its music. La molinara appeared quickly in editions from Simrock (Bonn) for two clarinets, two horns, and two bassoons; and one printed by Schott (Mainz) for a flute, violin, viola, and cello quartet. A number of composers wrote variations on popular arias. The Act 2 duet ‘Nel cor più non mi sento’ from La molinara was used as a basis for variations by a number of composers, including Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Beethoven (WoO 70). Beethoven also composed a set of nine variations for piano (WoO 69) on ‘Quant’è più bello’, an aria (not, however, by Paisiello) added for the revival of the opera in Vienna in 1795, which Beethoven probably heard. La molinara was also performed in German as Die schöne Müllerin and Die streitig gemachte Liebschaft, and in 1789 it was performed in Paris as La molinarella, with nine arias by Cherubini, another composer whose operas enjoyed great success in Vienna around 1800. This example illustrates the general point that arrangement and rearrangement were integral to late eighteenth-century opera.

Composers across Europe – and especially in and around Vienna – in the era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were arguably governed more by the special character of opera – its popularity and hence effect on the composers’ job security, its aesthetics, and its ontology (including arrangement and rearrangement) – than by anything else in musical culture at the time. There is strong evidence to this effect regarding each of these three composers, and also regarding Schubert. In the case of Haydn, as Jessica Waldoff and James Webster have argued, vocal music and vocally based aesthetics were a matter of personal and professional identity and pride to the composer throughout his career.Footnote ⁷ He consistently placed his vocal works ahead of instrumental works in his public statements about his oeuvre, and Griesinger reported that he recognised his own skill in vocal music and lamented that he had not written more: ‘Now and then Haydn said that instead of so many quartets, sonatas and symphonies, he should have written more vocal music, for he could have become one of the leading opera composers.’Footnote ⁸ His contemporaries agreed that Haydn had a great aptitude for vocal music, but also tended to see his instrumental music as ‘vocal’. Johann Karl Ferdinand Triest, for instance, found that it was precisely Haydn’s aptitude for song and skill at singing that underlay the music’s ‘meaningful, powerful simplicity’; its communicative power transcended the specifics of style, genre, and form.Footnote ⁹ Around 1770–6 Haydn was extensively engaged with composing and directing opera, but these works, largely written for the court of Prince Esterházy, did not have such widespread success as the operas of Mozart.

Mozart never managed to gain the coveted position of court opera composer, but he strove to be an opera composer from early in his career. Letters attest to this aspiration. In 1777, for example, he wrote to his father: ‘I have an inexpressible longing to write another opera. … For I have only to hear an opera discussed, I have only to sit in a theatre, hear the orchestra tuning their instruments – oh, I am quite beside myself at once.’Footnote ¹⁰ And the following year he complained to his father: ‘But there is one thing more I must settle about Salzburg and that is that I shall not be kept to the violin as I used to be. I will no longer be a fiddler. I want to conduct at the clavier and accompany arias.’Footnote ¹¹ He identified Vienna with the theatre and opera with satisfying composition and leadership roles; he saw it as an outlet for his creativity and for rewarding collaborations with others. His compositional activities on arriving in Vienna confirm that he was seeking a job in the field. In 1786, for example, the year that he composed Figaro, we find a typical emphasis on opera in his typically vast output, as Table 1.2 shows. Der Schauspieldirektor is even an opera about the opera house and the impresarios and divas who inhabit it. There is also a clear emphasis on chamber music in this list, another typical feature of Vienna in the era. This combination of opera fever and demand for chamber music drove the Viennese enthusiasm for arrangements of opera for the home.

In the case of Beethoven, the years that produced his middle-period quartets can be seen as a theatrical epoch in his career.Footnote ¹² During this extended period he was particularly engaged with, and sought involvement with, theatrical works and theatrical concepts. The period stretches from around Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus, Op. 43 (1800–1) to Leonore Prohaska, WoO 96 (1815), and intensifies in 1804–6 and 1809–10 in his work on Fidelio, Op. 72, and Egmont, Op. 84. Attesting to the importance to Beethoven of his work for theatre, in the middle of this period he wrote a lengthy letter to the directorate of the Hoftheater in Vienna, some time before 4 December 1807. In it he makes a case for the Imperial Court Theatre to engage him as a salaried composer.Footnote ¹³ The proposed contract entails the annual composition of one opera and one smaller theatrical work, in return for a fee, and a concert for his benefit to be held in the theatre. A contract did not materialise, but not for lack of trying. This attempt can be understood as the culmination of Beethoven’s concentrated period of career planning and compositional effort with respect to the theatre.

In Schubert’s time, the rage for Italian opera continued unabated, with Rossini at the forefront, alongside a new and distinctly Viennese development in the popular theatrical tradition, which required a more sophisticated mode of attention. Popular elements included fairy tales, historical myths, and fantasy, all of which also incorporated social and political commentary.Footnote ¹⁴ Schubert, like Beethoven and Haydn, harboured unfulfilled hopes of becoming a successful opera composer.Footnote ¹⁵ Several of his operatic works were performed in the two opera houses of the time; but lasting success eluded him, although his theatrical songs like ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’ (D. 118) were very popular. Perhaps because of Schubert’s and Beethoven’s unfulfilled hopes on the Viennese opera scene, these composers’ late quartets are characterised by songfulness (especially Schubert’s) and theatricality (especially Beethoven’s).Footnote ¹⁶

Why were these composers so keen on composing opera? This had to do not only with responding to popular demand but also with artistic dividends, as Mozart had found: he had the satisfaction of working with great poets of the time, like Lorenzo Da Ponte, and great singers like Cavalieri, Nancy Storace, Francesco Benucci, and Michael Kelly. There was also satisfaction in being able to choose texts that engaged more or less concretely with the world of ideas – for example with concepts of sentimentality, and ideas of heroism and freedom. Mozart, for instance, was enthralled by the possibilities of a comic plot, and, like Shakespeare, appreciated the variety of character types such a plot could accommodate.Footnote ¹⁷ But also, market demand was at an all-time high, so there were distinct career and financial rewards from opera and its spinoffs. In this time, when freelance musicians were seeking some kind of job security, the market factor should not be underestimated.

Other opera composers in Vienna in this era – lesser known today but extremely popular then – include Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Florian Leopold Gassmann, Paul Wranitzky (who also composed much chamber music), and Peter Winter (whose works became very popular after 1800). Also in vogue were the French operas of Gasparo Spontini (especially La vestale) and Luigi Cherubini (particularly Les deux journées). The operas and composers that were popular for domestic arrangements in Vienna at the time more or less matched those that Platoff identifies as favoured for public performance. But we will see that this emphasis changes.

The Rage for Opera Arrangements

At the time of Mozart’s death in 1791, the enthusiasm for Italian opera was continuing unabated, despite – and perhaps partly because of – the political turmoil of the French Revolution. Writing about Vienna for the Berlinische musikalische Zeitung, Johann Gottlieb Carl Spazier observed: ‘It is apparent from some recently received news about the state of theatre in Vienna how much taste there is for musical, and particularly Italian musical plays. Within a year (from November 1791, until December 1792), Italian opera was performed 180 times. A single opera seria was performed 24 times. Ballets were seen 163 times.’Footnote ¹⁸ In general, periodicals that reported on concerts elsewhere tended to turn to opera when they reported on Vienna.Footnote ¹⁹ Another Viennese correspondent, this one from Munich, observed a similar pitch of enthusiasm for opera eight years later: ‘That the public’s well-known love for the enjoyments of the stage has not decreased even during the horrors of war, but has probably risen still more, can be seen daily in the crowd at the entrances to the three favourite theatres.’Footnote ²⁰ How might one explain such a turn to opera ‘during the horrors of war’? Not only did opera afford viewers with entertainment to provide relief from the turmoil of daily life; ‘rescue opera’ and the like also afforded them a chance to understand wartime experiences and imagine possibilities of resolution.

However, the public’s voracious appetite for opera did not translate readily into jobs for Viennese composers who sought stable employment in opera: that particular career path was open to very few. Indeed, in general, composers found it difficult to make a living from composing large-scale musical works. This was not just because of the paucity of coveted positions such as that of court composer. Public concert life was not yet established as it was in other European centres like London and Paris. At this stage, concerts largely took place in private or semi-private salons of the nobility. But in late eighteenth-century Vienna it had become increasingly difficult to mount large-scale performances in such settings, for sociopolitical and economic reasons. Following Hanslick’s history of concert life in Vienna (Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien, 1869), scholars have generally accepted that the Viennese nobility maintained their own orchestras in the late eighteenth century. But as Dorothea Link has shown, the main examples from this era come from outside Vienna.Footnote ²¹ And by 1800 courtly music-making and large-scale Kapellen (ensembles) were generally on the wane. In his Yearbook of Musical Art in Vienna and Prague, 1796, Johann Ferdinand Ritter von Schönfeld noted this decline:

The Viennese correspondent for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of 1800 observed that ‘all the noble and wealthy houses that at one time had their own orchestras have disbanded them’.Footnote ²³ Schönfeld possibly hides a key reason for the general disappearance of orchestras from Vienna among the ‘other causes’ he cites. The upper-class musicians he cites, whose public and private engagement with the arts was varied and extensive, now often simply lacked the money to maintain an orchestra, owing partly to inflation associated with the Napoleonic Wars. Chamber music was much more feasible and cost-effective. Schönfeld’s Jahrbuch shows a sizeable growth in musical activity in Vienna more generally in this era, despite the disappearing orchestras.Footnote ²⁴

With the increasing paucity of orchestras, Viennese composers who failed to make it into one of the coveted positions, such as court Kapellmeister or salaried opera composer for the court theatres, might well fall back on writing chamber music to make ends meet. Mozart found himself partly reliant on it when he arrived in Vienna in the 1780s (as the list in Table 1.2 from 1786 reveals). The Viennese thirst for chamber music may also have influenced Beethoven around 1806, when he petitioned unsuccessfully to become an opera composer at the National Theatre: this was when he wrote his five middle-period string quartets (Opp. 59, 74, and 95), and quite a few other chamber works. And both Haydn and Schubert ended up writing a lot more chamber music than opera. They and other Viennese composers met the demand for chamber music with original compositions. Those are the works we usually study, especially the original string quartets and piano sonatas of canonic composers of the era. But a study of publishers’ catalogues at this time shows that the demand for chamber music was largely met by arrangements of large-scale works, scaled down for small ensembles. The extent to which the original composers produced these arrangements is explored later in this chapter and later in the book.

Overwhelmingly, opera features in contemporary music catalogues as the preferred genre to be arranged for chamber ensembles. Traeg’s 1799 catalogue also shows how opera and theatrical music infiltrates, via arrangements, into all areas of music-making – particularly from stage to salon. His catalogue bears witness to a truly opera-centric culture in what we usually think of as the era of sonatas, string quartets, and symphonies, especially in Vienna. Among opera types, opera buffa reigned, so it is hardly surprising to find many arrangements of the works listed in Table 1.1 also appearing in various arrangements in catalogues like Traeg’s. Arrangements fit well with the purposes of opera buffa – encouraging sociability, interaction, entertainment, and lightly worn learning.

These opera arrangements were ‘fruitful’ in Beethoven’s terms not only because they gave rise to more chamber repertoire. They also brought more money for composers, arrangers, and publishers; and more fame for composers, reaching more places. For listeners and amateur performers they provided greater access to opera (in forms made to measure for amateur performers); more variety in the forms that the work could take (attracting a broader audience and making performance more feasible); and a more intimate knowledge of the work (by way of education through hands-on experience). In general, opera arrangements provided for much sociability through music-making, as well as entertainment and, simply, fun. This last should not be underestimated in a time of political unrest, financial constraint, and social upheaval.

Opera and Musical ‘Translation’

Arrangement as musical ‘translation’ around 1800 often involved converting a large-scale work into a small-scale one. The scaled-down musical product afforded the consumer (the amateur musician) various benefits over the original, including repeated access to the work, which one could now rehear, perform, and even recompose (that is, rearrange) at leisure. So opera was variously translated into ‘take-home opera’, for varied domestic consumption. This prevalence and variety is evident from Traeg’s 1799 publishing catalogue.Footnote ²⁵ The catalogue shows a distinction, as well as a correlation, between those composers whose operas were popular in public performances and those whose operas were popular in arrangements. For example in Table 1.3, Paisiello, Salieri, and Martín y Soler figure in the top five opera composers of works appearing in numerous arrangements. But the two most prominent operatic composers in terms of numbers of arrangements in Traeg’s 1799 catalogue are Mozart and Weigl, both of whom had been less evident in the Viennese theatres one decade earlier.

There are several reasons for this discrepancy. First of all, some composers’ works simply translated more easily and better into arrangements. The distinction between operas that were more or less easily arranged becomes clear where opera arrangements were intended for performance by instrumental ensembles, usually, but not always, without singers (and thus published without text, as many were). In these cases, the realisation of the operatic characters could not depend on words, unless the performers decided to use the instrumental ensemble to accompany singers who used a separate libretto, score, or relied on memorisation (as several performers did). Clear-cut character delineation in ensemble writing was one hallmark of Mozart’s operas that his contemporaries recognised. After Mozart’s death, Constanze Mozart commented to Mary Novello on ‘the extraordinary difference of the melodies he has assigned to the various characters [in a single ensemble] and the wonderful appropriateness of them’.Footnote ²⁶ So Mozart’s operas ‘translate’ particularly readily and well into wordless, purely instrumental music for ensemble chamber performance.

Then, the 1799 Traeg catalogue appears roughly a decade after the period surveyed by Platoff. Tastes in opera in Vienna were changing by 1800. Mozart’s fame grew after his death in 1791 and publishers capitalised on this in reprints and arrangements. Traeg, in particular, knew Constanze Mozart and her new husband Nissen, who were working to preserve Mozart’s legacy and to gain financially through the publication and dissemination of his works. Widening distribution and repeated performance in domestic arrangements brought familiarity and further popularity, helping Constanze’s and others’ efforts to canonise the composer. As publishers joined the lucrative bandwagon, Mozart’s posthumous fame snowballed.

The main subject of operatic arrangements was clearly still Italian opera. Comparison between Platoff’s list of operatic greatest hits of the period 1783–92 and the number of arrangements of such works in Traeg’s 1799 catalogue reveals the same emphasis on opera buffa, but also a discrepancy (compare Tables 1.1 and 1.3). Local composers are favoured in the chamber arrangements of operas listed by Traeg in 1799, and especially Mozart – also Umlauf and Martín y Soler – whereas in the public performances a decade earlier, foreign (Italian) composers and their works were clearly in favour (see Table 1.4). Martín y Soler’s Una cosa rara and Mozart’s Figaro were major opera hits, as witnessed by numbers of arrangements in Traeg. Traeg’s list also reflects the popularity of Paisiello’s La molinara, widely ‘translated’ in various arrangements after its premier in 1788. Besides the reasons already given, these particular operas were preferred for varied arrangements because of their social politics (rags to riches) and sentimental plots, which appealed to a wide audience in terms of gender and class.

In general, the list of opera arrangements in Traeg’s 1799 catalogue reinforces the trends seen in Platoff’s data on public performances. But certain works and types enjoy prolonged success in private after they have faded from the sphere of public performance. Sentimental opera from the 1770s and 1780s features prominently in Traeg; this affords further insight into tastes and values in the market (upper- and middle-class Viennese amateur performers) around 1800. Quartet arrangements in this list include Niccolò Piccinni’s La Cecchina, ossia La buona figliuola and Haydn’s La vera Costanza, for example, while quintet arrangements include Mozart’s Figaro and Così fan tutte.Footnote ²⁷ These works would have appealed particularly to opera-going musical amateurs among the bourgeoisie for their memorable and singable tunes, but also for the characters portrayed, who could be realised through the interacting voices of the chamber music. As noted, writers in this genre sought to create believable, appealing characters in real-life situations. Plots were to appeal to ‘Everyman’, exciting especially pity and sympathy; heroines like Cecchina, and Nina in Paisiello’s Nina, o sia La pazza per amore, buttonholed many a middle-class operagoer, arousing admiration for the heroines’ ingratiating virtues and empathy with their moving expressions of convincing emotion. So these chamber music ‘translations’ of operas allowed participants (both performers and listeners) to engage with aesthetic and social ideals, such as sympathy and the rewarding of virtue.

Arrangements of German opera (Singspiele) are common at this time, which is also evident in Traeg. This reflects a general drive in late eighteenth-century Vienna to boost and support the National Theatre. But German-language theatre had been slow to catch on, possibly owing to some upper-class resistance to Joseph II’s politics, which pushed German-language theatre explicitly but restricted theatrical performance more generally. Dorothea Link conjectures that after Leopold II’s ascent to the throne in 1790, German-language theatre enjoyed a vogue in the salons, perhaps since they were by then no longer associated with Joseph’s social policies.Footnote ²⁸ Singspiele were for salon entertainment in the 1790s, in various guises with and without text. So the numerous arrangements of Singspiele in Traeg, notably of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, might have a sociopolitical dimension. Die Zauberflöte is the most prevalent work of all in Traeg’s catalogue, in terms of numbers of arrangements (thirty-five arrangements in total, as noted in the Introduction). More generally, the Singspiele arrangements in Traeg evidence the popular acclaim enjoyed by talented Viennese musicians who turned their attention to composing in this genre – composers like Dittersdorf, Winter, and Weigl, whose names are seldom heard today (especially Winter and Weigl).

‘Destination’ Genres

The genres that were considered the most suitable for the musical translation of opera into chamber music reflected various circumstances. Schönfeld notes that among the nobility a wind ensemble (Harmoniemusik) was a popular and much cheaper alternative to a private orchestra. It could be readily made up from the many excellent military wind and brass players in Vienna around 1800. Indeed, chamber music for Harmoniemusik was one of the most popular kinds at this time, and not just among the upper classes. Much of the music played by the wind ensembles was arrangement – Harmonie was one of the most popular ‘destination’ genres into which opera was arranged in this era.Footnote ²⁹ These wind ensemble arrangements were intended as domestic entertainment as well as outdoor music, but they were also played as dinner music, as we see in the final act of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Here a Harmonie is playing, as diegetic music, snatches of Una cosa rara, Fra i due litiganti, and Figaro while the Don and Leporello await the stone statue of the Commendatore, invited to dinner. The band plays excerpts from some of the best-known operas of the day, including Mozart’s own.

Mozart was drawing on a well-established convention of upper-class households. But among the musical middle-classes, Harmoniemusik was likewise popular for an evening’s entertainment. Marianne von Martinez (1744–1812), a blind Viennese pianist, held large musical gatherings each Sunday at which guests sang and played fortepiano (see Chapter 3); but sometimes guests could also hear Harmoniemusik there for an entire evening. The most popular size for a Harmonie was six winds, but an ensemble of eight was a close second. The most popular grouping comprised two clarinets, two horns, and two bassoons; oboe and flute also featured. Both of these groupings allowed arrangers to capture a good deal of the original texture of a large-scale work. The timbral variety they offered was useful for portraying individual characters. As for the repertoire chosen for arrangement for Harmonie, Traeg’s catalogue, among others, shows composers of Italian opera once again figuring most prominently; and operas, not symphonies or other large-scale works, generally predominate. Harmoniemusik was particularly suited to musical translations of opera numbers with a militaristic theme, like ‘Non più andrai’ from Figaro, which is heard thus transformed in the finale of Don Giovanni.

Second in popularity for chamber arrangements of operas (that is, arrangements for more than one instrument in general) were those for string quartet. Again, these were not confined to the homes of the downsizing aristocracy, but were also heard in upper-middle-class settings. So, for example, Hofrath Baron von Mayern gave quartet parties during Lent, when the theatres were closed. As with Martinez’s gatherings, we have no reported details as to what was played on these occasions. But sources like Traeg’s catalogue afford much insight into the kinds of music likely to have dominated their offerings. In addition to Traeg’s listing of string quartets, containing 1,100 works in 218 sets, he lists a further 57 sets of arrangements for works. Arrangements for quartets of music from operas and ballet are particularly numerous, with over forty-one entries, including numbers from Il matrimonio segreto by Cimarosa; Der Apotheker by Dittersdorf; Una cosa rara by Martín y Soler; Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflöte, and Le nozze di Figaro by Mozart; Il barbiere di Siviglia by Paisiello; and La grotta di Trofonio by Salieri. But just as many arrangements appear for mixed quartets (such as flute quartet) as for string quartet. This kind of quartet was probably popular for the translation of opera because distinctive timbres were useful for portraying distinct operatic characters. But these particular quartet opera arrangements also reflect the general popularity of ensembles comprising a mixture of winds and strings at this time.Footnote ³⁰

The two tables below (Tables 1.5 and 1.6) provide a new angle on the opera composers and works that Platoff cited as the most popular in Vienna in the years 1783–92. These tables show arrangements of operas by these composers, in two very popular genres for opera arrangements: string quartets and wind ensembles of eight players. Again, the entries are drawn from Traeg’s 1799 catalogue, which, as it was something of a retrospective sales catalogue, shows what was prevalent in the preceding decade. Notable here is that many of these arrangements are available in manuscript copies, rather than prints. In 1784, the opportunistic Traeg had advertised a subscription service in the Wiener Zeitung, whereby he would provide sheet music for Viennese house concerts once or twice a week; he even offered to source ‘ringers’ – skilled players of his acquaintance, to perform where needed – all of which evidences the great appetite for performing chamber music.Footnote ³¹

We can see that there are recurrent favourite operas for translation into chamber music, but also that quite a range of works by the favoured composers are translated. This suggests that arrangement was not just a way of perpetuating operatic ‘hits’. It was also a way of exploring, or becoming acquainted with works by favoured composers, in a variety of guises. Weigl is prominent (much more so than in Platoff’s list), in keeping with Traeg’s habit of promoting local composers. Mozart, who was a favourite of Traeg, is also prominent (more so than in Platoff’s list). But despite this bias in favour of Mozart, Traeg’s catalogue gives insight into the relative popularity of different destination genres, and the most popular genres that were arranged (‘origin’ genres) in Vienna around 1800.

Price is a significant category in Tables 1.5 and 1.6. The opera arrangements for Harmonie are more expensive than the opera arrangements for string quartet. This is simply explained by the sheer amount of music – the page count involved. The wind ensembles of eight parts involve approximately twice the amount of music (number of pages) found in the four-part string quartets, and so the wind ensemble arrangements are nearly double the price. There were clearly some economies of scale in the copying process, and in providing more accompanying parts, like cello and viola, which take up less page space than the typically more melodic parts, like clarinet, oboe, and first and second violin. The string-quartet arrangements are on average slightly more expensive than the original string quartets advertised elsewhere in Traeg. A set of six string quartets of comparable length averages around 4 fl. (florin), and the most expensive set of six (Pleyel quartets) costs 6 fl. But an opera arrangement for string quartet averages around 5–6 fl. Opera arrangements were certainly more expensive items to buy relative to publishing or copyist costs, and entailed for the arranger far less labour than original compositions would require from the composer. Like spin-off merchandise today (take-home postcards, T-shirts, and coffee-table books from exhibitions, for example), they can also be seen as money-spinners for their vendors.

After string quartets, solo piano works are the second most popular genre of small-scale chamber music in Vienna at this point, at least according to Traeg’s 1799 catalogue. By this time, a general trend had begun towards the piano dominating domestic music. This section in Traeg’s catalogue includes a number of arrangements of operas – a large number if we include variations on themes drawn from operas. Variations for piano are borderline in terms of the definition of arrangement at the time. Variations can be a kind of arrangement, but the resulting composition may be so far removed from the original as to be regarded as a completely separate work. They were a prevalent way of ‘translating’ opera for the home. And their apparent popularity is another index of the prevailing enthusiasm for arrangement. Opera and ballet music were common sources for their themes. The hugely popular category of marches and dances for piano in Traeg includes a few such arrangements.

Traeg’s section on sonatas for piano and violin contains several arrangements drawn from opera, the staples Una cosa rara and Die Zauberflöte coming up yet again. These operas also appear under four-hand piano music, and there are surprisingly few arrangements in this category compared with the wealth that would feature later on.Footnote ³² Indeed the keyboard section seems to contain a smaller proportion of arrangements than the section listing the rest of the chamber music. However, this is because there are so many keyboard arrangements that Traeg has categorised them in a separate section, ‘Theatre Music’. Here we find ballet and pantomime, Singspiele, oratorios, and cantatas arranged for piano; arias, duets, trios, and so forth from German, French, and Italian operas arranged for voice and piano; and even an entire journal in four volumes devoted to the latest opera arias arranged for piano. In 1802, the music lexicographer Heinrich Christoph Koch noted that theatre and chamber music were starting to merge.Footnote ³³ Traeg’s 1799 categorisation of keyboard opera arrangements as ‘Theatre Music’ (so that some chamber music is listed thus) is an aspect of this merger – as is the culture of opera arrangements c.1800 altogether.

Duets for two flutes were a particularly popular medium for opera arrangements. Duets for two violins were also popular. The two types are more or less interchangeable, the flute and violin sharing much the same range and technical capabilities. In this duo repertoire, the arrangements consist of what were originally duets and solos, whereas for representing an entire orchestral texture, quintets and quartets are much more useful. Here, too, we find arrangements comprising collections of arias or hit numbers as well as entire works. Mozart and Martín y Soler are well represented, as usual. A volume of arrangements by Johann Christian Stumpf is typical. Traeg’s note for this entry reads: ‘Favourite songs from the opera The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart arr. for 2 flutes first booklet … N.B. All new operas of the most famous composers are being published in a series of volumes, arranged for 2 flutes by Mr Stumpf (‘Favorit Gesänge aus der Opera Figaros Hochzeit von Mozart arr. für 2 Flöten erstes Heft … NB: Auf diese Art werden alle neuen Opern der berühmtesten Komponisten für 2 Flöten arrangiert von Herrn Stumpf Heftweise erschienen’). These arrangements were primarily for entertainment and sociability, but also afforded an educational overview of the music.

There is a clear preference, demonstrated in Traeg, for larger chamber arrangements of large-scale origin genres such as symphonies, operas, and ballets. Destination genres deploying the piano, such as piano trios and piano quartets, were preferred, not least because the two hands could capture much of the original texture – if not the full weight and power – of an orchestra. The exception here is the duet for two flutes or two violins, but these were intended mainly for popular entertainment, and the interaction of the two melody parts, rather than evoking orchestral texture, is the main point. String quintets and quintets of mixed winds and strings were also popular for arrangements. An entire category of quintets drawn from operas and ballets consists of such mixed quintets. String quartets are similarly given separate treatment. There is an even more sizable section specifically of quartets drawn from operas and ballets; again, these are mostly arrangements of works by local opera composers, and current operatic hits. These discrete categories in Traeg’s catalogue suggest by their relative proportions that there were fairly stable types of translations from operas and ballets to mixed quartets and quintets and string quartets. Under the larger chamber groupings are octets, septets, and sextets, including a sizable collection of sextets taken from operas by Florian Leopold Gassmann, Grétry, Salieri, and Umlauf – popular contemporary opera composers, mostly Viennese.

Traeg began as a music copyist, working on an ad hoc basis, and gradually added to his stock with printed editions from other firms. Only in 1794 did he open his own publishing arm. His first advertisement in Wiener Zeitung in 1782 emphasises the variety of opera arrangement copies on offer:

His 1799 catalogue gives a glimpse into what was in circulation in Vienna seventeen years later, and the forms it took. The prevalence of manuscript opera arrangements, coupled with relatively high prices, suggests high demand and a certain ephemerality – a culture in which people copied out arrangements, or arranged (or rearranged) current hits, chasing their transient popularity.

But the balance was shifting to favour printed over manuscript arrangements, and Traeg was changing his business model to keep up. The flow of printed arrangements from European publishing houses around 1800, including Traeg’s own, suggests the product on offer had a certain stability. Arrangements were becoming less ephemeral, more likely to be kept and reused. The time was right for publishers to cater to the vogue for chamber music with many and varied arrangements. There were no copyright laws to hamper the production of these lucrative editions, and no permission from composers was required, unless of course a publisher wished to assert, validly, the authenticity of a given arrangement. The transition to printed music only was completed by Traeg’s son in 1805, when he took over the business. Printed editions of piano music dominate his catalogue (sonatas, variations, dances, and arrangements).

This transition in music print culture in Vienna is reflected in Traeg’s 1804 supplementary catalogue. This was his first and last supplement to the 1799 catalogue, and reveals unabated and indeed mounting enthusiasm for opera arrangements. The largest sections in ‘Cammer-Music’ comprise Harmoniemusik (fifty-seven works) and string quartets (fifty-four items). Opera arrangements make up the bulk of the Harmoniemusik, and they are more expensive than in 1799, reflecting inflation and continued popularity. The composers have been updated: to Mozart, Salieri, and Weigl are added Cherubini, Ferdinando Paër, and Winter. So too the string-quartet category, where twelve arrangements from contemporary operas and ballets are listed as a separate section (a greater proportion relative to original string quartets than in 1799); there is a notable continued presence of Mozart’s later operas in this category (Così, Figaro, Tito, Don Giovanni, and Die Entführung), also Salieri (Axur), but no others from that earlier list, and now with the addition of Paër (Achilles), the Overture to Cherubini’s Eliza, and Winter’s Das unterbrochene Opferfest, complete – all priced relatively highly compared with original quartets, and typically involving more music.

But the category of solo piano music, which had occupied a fifth of the 1799 catalogue, is most altered and it now takes up one quarter. This growth is due to a higher proportion of opera arrangements. There is now an entire category devoted to opera overtures arranged for solo piano, and what is more, the scores of theatrical works (including Singspiele and French and Italian operas) are folded into the piano music category and immediately preceded by lists of piano reductions. Of the 1799 catalogue, Jones writes: ‘It is difficult to imagine a more forceful indication of the centrality of the symphony in Viennese musical life’.Footnote ³⁵ But on the numbers, both the 1799 catalogue and the 1804 supplement provide forceful evidence of the centrality of opera arrangements to Viennese musical life.

Table 1.7 takes us beyond Traeg’s catalogue and further into the nineteenth century. It shows the variety of arrangements of Mozart’s Figaro published by Carlo Artaria & Co. in Vienna from 1798 to 1806. Arrangements for piano become prominent at this stage, alongside the ever-popular quartet arrangements and the duets for two flutes or violins. It is particularly clear here that Artaria was cashing in on Mozart opera arrangements in 1806, the fiftieth anniversary of Mozart’s birth, using the title ‘Quodlibets’ (medleys) to designate collections of excerpts from favourite Mozart operas (Figaro, Don Giovanni, La Clemenza di Tito, Die Zauberflöte, and so on). The works are realised in this format in four different arrangements: for string quartet (with the possibility of substituting flutes for violins), flute quartet, flute or violin duos, and pianoforte. This packaging emphasises entertainment and sociability – the enjoyment of hit tunes with whichever musical friends happen to be available, for fun rather than serious study. Overtures were beginning to take on a life of their own in the reception history of operas. So it is no surprise that they are produced in chamber music arrangements; they also offered fans of Mozart’s chamber music a more self-contained form than the other arrangements of opera excerpts. From 1815, other composers like Rossini and Weber tend to take over in the Artaria catalogue’s opera arrangements.

Numerous publishers of this era cashed in on Mozart arrangements and built their publishing reputations around his name. It is typical of the time that less weight was placed on arrangements of his symphonies. Of the forty-one publications released by Traeg and Son (1794–1818), Traeg’s own publishing firm, nineteen are opera arrangements and only one is an arrangement of a symphony: K. 551 (‘The Jupiter’), arranged for four-hand piano. Table 1.8, showing Mozart opera arrangements published by Traeg himself, reveals other typical trends, notably the favouring of guitar, voice, and pianoforte as destination genres for opera arrangements. They were primarily for women to perform in the home (see Chapter 2). The arrangement of excerpts from operas was also standard around 1800, often of single numbers or selected hits rather than entire works. A preference for whole works, on the other hand, applied to classical symphonies.

Composers and Arrangement c.1800

In Vienna around 1800, other operas were in vogue besides the terrifically popular imports identified by Platoff. They include Una cosa rara (1786) by Martín y Soler; and also Singspiele, like Das unterbrochene Opferfest (1796) by Peter Winter, and Joseph Weigl’s Die Schweizer Familie (1807). This opens a surprising window on reception history. These are works hardly known today; yet around 1800 they were almost as popular as Mozart’s operas, sometimes more so, as witnessed by their countless arrangements. Eduard Hanslick recalled, looking back to the early nineteenth century: ‘Arrangements of overtures, symphonies and the like [for string quartet] take the place of the four-hand arrangements that are now [in 1869] common’. He even noted that in 1808 the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung was already advertising a string-quartet arrangement of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, and soon thereafter of Weigl’s Singspiel, Die Schweizer Familie.Footnote ³⁶ Of these two works, the Eroica was generally deemed lengthy and difficult, but Weigl’s Singspiel enjoyed great popularity. The appearance of the string-quartet arrangement of selections from Weigl’s Die Schweizer Familie (Chemische Druckerei, c.1810), first performed with great success on 14 March 1809 in the Theater am Kärntnertor, represents a more typical choice for arrangement than Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. By 1810, favourite selections from Die Schweizer Familie had been arranged as Harmoniemusik, in piano reduction, and for keyboard and voice, and Weigl himself arranged selections from the work as a flute quartet.

Composers derived several benefits from engaging with this culture of musical arrangements around 1800. The most prominent composers of the era, including Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, participated actively in the practice of arrangement; they could also sanction known arrangers to do the work for them. In Haydn’s correspondence with Artaria regarding the proofs of the Seven Last Words, for instance, he was concerned with the idiomatic nicety of an arrangement, but was prepared to hand over the actual task of arranging to a musician he could trust.Footnote ³⁷ In 1787 Artaria issued three versions of the Seven Last Words: the original orchestral version, a quartet arrangement prepared by the composer, and a keyboard arrangement sanctioned by him. Artistic and financial dividends from this practice have already been mentioned: varied versions of a given work meant more sales, better dissemination, and possibly fewer pirate editions – although this last could not be guaranteed. Arranging works for chamber ensemble could also help a composer to learn about composing in a particular genre. It was a typical autodidactic means of learning the art of composition, and rearranging an opera as a string quartet could help a composer learn the art of four-part composition.

But arranging was also fruitful simply as a way of creating more music. Mozart produced his earliest piano concertos by arranging keyboard sonatas by well-known contemporaries (K. 37, 39, 40, 41, all in 1767; and the three piano concertos K. 107, in 1765 or 1771); and his Flute Concerto K. 314 (1777) is an arrangement of his own Oboe Concerto K. 313 (1777–8). Most of Beethoven’s own arrangements were of his early chamber music for winds. He also endorsed third-party arrangements of this group of works. He would rearrange chamber music for wind instruments into versions for ensembles of strings and piano. Several of Wranitzky’s chamber works are arrangements from his own operas, symphonies, and incidental music. In sum, arrangers’ motivations for producing arrangements included learning the art of composition, increasing their fame or recognition (or perhaps inadvertent notoriety), financial gain, and various pedagogical purposes.

Many arrangements were anonymous, but from those that were signed we know that some of the leading musicians of the time produced numerous first-rate arrangements. Among them were, for example, Johann Peter Salomon (1745–1815), Johann Abraham Peter Schulz (1747–1800), Karl Zulehner (1770–1841), Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837), and Carl Czerny (1791–1857). Not all of them had approval from the composers whose works they arranged. For example, Zulehner in Mainz, who was prolific in opera arrangement, was blacklisted for publishing several masses wrongly attributed to Mozart and for unauthorised editions of Beethoven’s music for piano and strings. His extensive career as an arranger, which lasted into the 1830s and produced about 100 works, began in 1788 when he brought out a keyboard transcription of Grétry’s Richard the Lionheart with Schott. He subsequently completed scores, parts, and arrangements for Weber’s Freischütz, Euyanthe, and Preciosa, and in 1791 he brought out a piano reduction of Don Giovanni for Schott.Footnote ³⁸

It was alongside this wide repertoire of arrangements for varied chamber ensembles that Mozart’s operas, and many other works, were performed and received. But it could also be argued that the composition, performance, and reception of Mozart’s operas and other prominent works sat within this fruitful culture of musical arrangement. As noted, all the composers cited in this chapter engaged in arrangement in order to learn to compose. Composers and performers also arranged when they improvised, if ‘arrangement’ is understood broadly. This makes sense in relation to works such as potpourris and variations. The kind of self-borrowing by which Mozart produced (and labelled) his early concertos may seem dubious by today’s standards. But his contemporaries saw the matter quite differently. There was no clear-cut distinction between an ‘original’ work and one that was ‘derivative’; and even where this distinction was made, there was no automatic assignment of lesser value to derivative work. The devaluing of arrangements was largely the product of a later age.

The valuing and indeed intrinsic position of arrangement in the compositional process around 1800 is most obvious in the case of opera.Footnote ³⁹ With opera, arrangement could hardly be seen as a mere step towards ‘real composition’. The compositional process involved collaboration in many of its steps, as a function of opera’s collaborative nature. Composers of operas worked with librettists, performers, audiences, and even venues or locations to shape their works. So operatic numbers were rearranged to suit particular singers, venues, performers, and tastes (as in the case of insertion arias or ‘suitcase arias’), and they were designated as arrangements when composers produced their own piano reductions of their operas, or sanctioned others to do so. In this sense it is more difficult now to determine where any given operatic ‘work’ ends and the ‘arrangement’ begins. To put it another way, opera’s ontology – its status and conception as a musical ‘work’ – fit perfectly into the culture of musical arrangement around 1800.Footnote ⁴⁰