Most of our modern Western institutions and precepts – democracy, individualism, subjectivity, secularism, science, the nation state and the modern apparatus of war – began to germinate in the ‘long’ eighteenth century. In musical life too these were formative years. The emergence of the canon, with the associated idea of the musical ‘work’, was one such development. The rise of the virtuoso and the transformation of audiences from unwieldy and fitfully attentive to enthralled, disciplined and devout, two more. And with these developments, music’s role as a medium of social differentiation was both enhanced and qualitatively revised.

The only acceptable ringtone on my new mobile phone is the overture to the Magic Flute, unfortunately in MIDI file. I guess this is Samsung’s modest tribute to the Mozart year, but as the mobile phone does not identify the tune, its significance will probably pass most people by. One Sunday some time ago a colleague of mine was cruising on his yacht Papageno on the river Tagus facing Lisbon; as he passed a schooner he heard someone whistle ‘Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja . . .’. He whistled back, and the man waved to him. The schooner, not surprisingly, had a German flag. On the other hand, in a remote corner of northern Portugal the petrol station shop is selling the Philips complete edition of Mozart’s recorded works (though I did not have the courage to ask the attendant how many collections, or even individual discs, he had sold).

This article moves the search for the ‘ period listener ’ into new terrain, bringing literary sources into play. The argument unfolds as a case study of the writings of Jean Paul, arguably the most radical, and most radically critical, among the early romantics. The purpose of the exercise is to demonstrate that literary sources, carefully decoded through philosophical analysis, can enhance and sharpen the knowledge provided by the kinds of sources upon which music historians traditionally rely.

Hummel’s quoting of music by other composers has been mentioned briefly in a number of studies. While some of these quotations are explicit, others are a good deal more problematic. This article investigates explicit quotations that appear in two of Hummel’s string quartets dating from 1803–1804 and the finale of a piano sonata from 1807. The fourth movement of the String Quartet in G major, Op. 30 No. 2, twice quotes J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV988, the slow movement of Op. 30 No. 3 refers to Handel’s Messiah and the finale of the F minor piano sonata cultivates a complex relationship with the last movement of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony. My objective is to demonstrate the sophistication and subtlety with which Hummel manipulates the quoted material in these three cases.

Hummel’s obvious quotation of Bach and Handel in particular is related to a multi-faceted preoccupation with archaic styles and earlier works that had taken root in the later eighteenth century and that continued to expand into the nineteenth and beyond. Although England was the first nation to develop a performance tradition around the ‘ancient’ musical repertory, it was the accumulation of a didactic tradition around the keyboard works of J. S. Bach in north Germany and its steady migration to centres like Vienna that is of more direct relevance here. And when one surveys the (supposed) quotations by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Clementi of works by Bach and Handel and compares them with Hummel’s, Hummel’s remain outstanding in their exactness and also in their frequent lightheartedness of tone. Whereas many straightforward quotations or instances of modelling appear reverential or seek to exalt the basic idiom, Hummel’s either are humorous or seem calculated to reduce the potency of the original in order to assimilate the earlier idiom into the later one. The three pieces considered here illustrate the spectrum of techniques used by Hummel to manipulate quoted material in his works. The quotations in the two quartets have drawn very little comment; the references to Mozart’s ’Jupiter’ Symphony in the finale of Op. 20 have been remarked on more frequently, but the relationship between the two finales is a good deal more intricate than has previously been shown. The ‘contrapuntal deconstruction’ that takes place late in the third movement of Hummel’s Op. 20, between the most explicit reference to the ‘Jupiter’ finale and the coda, is lighthearted in character – amusing, even – and is in some ways the most ingenious and vibrant episode in the movement.

Two further unknown sacred vocal compositions by Vivaldi, a Dixit Dominus and a Lauda Jerusalem, have turned up in a collection that has already witnessed two similar discoveries in recent decades: that of the former Saxon Hofkapelle, today in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek / Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden. Like their predecessors, the newly discovered works were acquired between the mid-1750s and early 1760s from the copying shop of Iseppo Baldan in Venice, who falsified the attribution on the title page to make the composer Galuppi instead of Vivaldi. Whereas the Lauda Jerusalem is an arrangement by Vivaldi of an anonymous stile antico setting of the same psalm in his own collection (and in turn the model for his own Credidi propter quod, rv605), the Dixit Dominus, scored for choir, soloists and orchestra, is an entirely original composition of outstanding musical quality that dates from the composer’s late period. This article explores the background to the Hofkapelle’s purchases from Baldan and provides a description of the new compositions, together with several arguments (based on musical concordances, general stylistic features and notational characteristics) for their attribution to Vivaldi.

In this article I assert that our modern understanding of the singspiel as a genre has been shaped not by eighteenth-century principles but rather by nineteenth-century notions of ‘romantic’ German opera. In contrast to a later through-composed ideal, Johann Adam Hiller’s comic operas, often viewed as the prototype of the German comic genre, were designed precisely in order that the songs might easily be detached from the spoken dialogue, disseminated outside of the public opera house and sung by audiences in various other contexts. The express purpose of these songs, as articulated by librettist Christian Felix Weisse, was to promote communal singing in social circles across Germany. The genre was thus designed for circulation within what Habermas describes as the public sphere: a conceptual space between the State and the private home in which texts, ideas and musical works were circulated and debated.

Composed in what was called the German Volkston (in the manner of the Volk), Hiller’s melodies are recorded as being sung and played throughout the streets and parks of major German cities and became so popular that they became known as folksongs. This idea of the Volk as a collective entity and of the Volkston, however, was rooted in a deeper sense of the public as nation. Inspired by Le devin du village and J. J. Rousseau’s writings on politics, language and the fine arts, Weisse and Hiller’s operas employ the pastoral mode, in which idealized peasants sing in the manner of a folksong. The idyllic simplicity of these early German-language comic operas appealed to a diversified German audience by affirming their roots, the public use of their language and their morally upright character as a nation. Thus comic opera as a genre was circulated within the public sphere with the intention of transcending the boundaries of social class to unite the German nation in song.

Italian opera is increasingly receiving well deserved attention. Yet the process by which the chorus in opera seria was created remains largely unexplored. Between 1759 and 1769 Tommaso Traetta and Christoph Gluck composed path-breaking, reform-inspired opere serie for Parma’s Teatro Ducale which integrated chorus, dance and stage spectacle in the French manner. In an era when operatic choruses usually comprised amateurs and chapel singers, evidence from printed librettos and documents from Parma’s Archivio di Stato reveal that many of the Teatro Ducale’s choristers were professional singers hired from neighbouring Bologna. Perhaps in response to logistical and financial difficulties in engaging skilled personnel for Traetta’s choruses, Parma established a singing school to provide choristers for theatre. Gluck’s choruses employed a combination of students from this school and professionals. The evidence from Parma shows that the wide-ranging circuit within which Italy’s opera theatres functioned embraced not only leading soloists and other personnel, but choral singers as well. It demonstrates the impact of practical circumstances surrounding the production of Parma’s operatic choruses on the success of operatic reform in Parma.

Ignaz Holzbauer (1711–1783) is best known for his singspiel Günther von Schwarzburg (1777), a work that deeply impressed Mozart during his sojourn in Mannheim. A much earlier German opera by Holzbauer, however, has gone virtually unnoticed. In the summer or autumn of 1741 the composer’s full-length, three-act teutsche Opera entitled Hypermnestra was performed at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna. Following the death of Emperor Charles VI and the accession of Maria Theresia, the Kärntnertortheater Intendant Joseph Selliers commissioned a German-language opera, selecting Holzbauer, who had recently returned to Vienna from Moravia, to compose the music and the court printer Johann Leopold van Ghelen to write the libretto.

Although it is widely known that Holzbauer composed several operas in Italian before 1741, Hypermnestra appears to be the earliest opera by the composer for which a score survives. The music provides ample evidence of a mature composer in full command of opera seria style. Although Holzbauer had not yet found a satisfactory solution to the problem of narrative recitative, the opera nevertheless illustrates many of the virtues found in Günther von Schwarzburg: outstanding accompanied recitatives, a great variety in the treatment of da capo aria form and a rich array of orchestral colours.

Apart from the music, Hypermnestra is remarkable for historical reasons. It reveals that the composer had received a commission to compose an opera in the German language long before Günther von Schwarzburg. On the basis of current research it appears to hold the distinction of being one of the earliest, if not the first, full-length German opera produced in Vienna. Maria Theresia soon re-established the dominance of French and Italian styles. Nevertheless, Hypermnestra is an early example of an idea that would gradually gain acceptance and blossom during the reign of Joseph II.

In his article ‘Contrapunkt’ in the Musikalisches Lexikon (1802) Heinrich Christoph Koch described the intense, suspension-filled and motivically saturated style that he and his contemporaries knew from the music of J. S. Bach in a distinctly odd manner. To show how a composer might write such music, he took a relatively consonant passage in the ‘free’ style, as he called it, and then ornamented it to create a ‘strict’ appearance. By generating the strict from the free style, Koch unconsciously registered the eighteenth-century shift from intervallic counterpoint towards chordal harmony. But as he described the strict style in this and other articles in the dictionary, Koch also intimated that the ‘strict’ style meant something quite different to him than it had to theorists of preceding generations. No longer an icon of immutable law and harmony, it seemed bizarre and dissonant, knocked from its theoretical, pedagogical and symbolic pride of place. This article first examines the theoretical issues of pedagogy and style that Koch wrestled with as he sought to make the traditional terminology of the strict style fit the compositional environment of his time, then analyses the symbolic implications of Koch’s notion of the strict style. Finally, it suggests how the symbolism of the strict style, as implied by Koch, might be manifested in the chorale fantasy sung by Two Armed Men in Schikaneder and Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. The law of the Temple of Wisdom is not immutable, but rather represents the law of the old order, commanding respect but admitting change.

The image of the heroic Handel, typified by claims of immense physical and mental toughness, and rapid – even miraculous – recovery, may satisfy the credulous, but it needs considerable modification once we realize that Handel continued to suffer following the first acute paralytic attack in 1737. It is no coincidence that the onset of acute symptoms occurred during Handel’s last lengthy season of opera production and that oratorios came to dominate his composing and his shortened performance seasons thereafter.

Whatever the immediate causes for Handel’s decisions to write and publicly to perform the first few English-language works, the intensification of that practice after 1737 was due in large measure to the challenges posed by lead poisoning and its ensuing saturnine gout, and an increasing debility exacerbated by obesity. In other words, the illnesses should be considered as an integral element in the switch by Handel to writing his late works, the major oratorios.

As Empress of Russia, Catherine the Great (1729–1796) shaped not only history in general but also, as a member of its princely family, the history of Anhalt-Zerbst. Drawing upon little known eighteenth-century manuscripts housed at the Landeshauptarchiv of Saxony-Anhalt in Dessau and the Francisceumsbibliothek in Zerbst, this study assesses the impact of Catherine’s marriage in 1745 to Grand Duke Peter of Russia (1728–1762) on musical life at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst during and after the thirty-six-year tenure of Kapellmeister Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688–1758). First the role of music at the court prior to 1745 will be considered – specifically the ‘Concert-Stube’, an inventory of the Hofkapelle’s musical library prepared according to Fasch’s specifications in March 1743. The second section of this article focuses on the celebrations held at the court in 1745 on the occasion of Catherine the Great’s wedding. The Hofkapelle premiered a large-scale serenata by Fasch, the music to which has been lost. However, an examination of the extant libretto and of other music by Fasch that was performed at the court during the 1740s sheds light on the musical forces he would have employed and the compositional approach he might have taken. The Hofkapelle also performed a secular wedding cantata for bass solo and instruments by an anonymous composer as part of a spectacular fireworks display in three acts, the ‘Anhalt-Zerbstisches Freuden-Feuer’ (Fire of Joy), chronicled by Zerbst headmaster Johann Hoxa. Finally, it is possible to reconstruct a performance schedule of sacred music premiered in honour of Catherine the Great from 1746 to 1773. Despite Fasch’s death in 1758 and the Seven Years War, which led to the town of Zerbst being occupied by 16,000 Prussian soldiers for three years until 1761, new music was commissioned by the court from Fasch’s successor Johann Georg Röllig (1710–1790), Catherine the Great’s keyboard instructor at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst. He not only provided occasional compositions to commemorate her birthday and accession to the Russian throne but also composed a new cycle of Sunday cantatas to reflect the changing artistic priorities and practices of the Hofkapelle in the early 1760s.

Mozart's canons are rather inadequately represented in the Köchel catalogue and the Neue Mozart Ausgabe. The same may be said about other music for his immediate circle of friends, colleagues and patrons, as well as his dance music and his contributions to pasticcios. Neglect of these ‘minor’ genres perhaps arises at least in part from anachronistic paradigms, for instance ‘masterpieces for posterity’. And the canons suffer additionally from the peculiar nature of their sources and transmission, from uncertainty about the position of canons in the ‘canon’ of Western art music and probably also from embarrassment over some of Mozart’s texts. Mozart’s canons have been studied not only less often than his operatic, church, chamber and orchestral music, but also less well.

The problem of tempering keyboard and fretted instruments has occupied the attention of musicians and theorists for hundreds of years. Since the sixteenth century most fretted instruments such as the lute and viola da gamba have employed equal temperament (or an approximation of it based upon the 18:17 rule) or an adaptation of mean-tone tuning, but these systems suffered from ‘tempered’, or ‘impure’, intervals. In 1705 the music theorist Thomas Salmon (born London, 1648; died Mepsal [now Meppershall], Bedfordshire, 1706) proposed a system of intonation for the viola da gamba that employed divided frets (that is, the frets were not tied across the fingerboard in a straight line but were in effect cut apart and glued or inset beneath each string as required) as well as interchangeable fingerboards for different keys (much like the set of crooks for the later Inventionshorn). It was Salmon’s intention to overcome the lack of purity associated with fretting systems that ‘falsify the proportions’ and thus ‘deprive us of that satisfactory pleasure which arises from the exactness of sonorous numbers’. In his system the C major scale was constructed of large and small whole tones having ratios of 9:8 for the intervals C–D, F–G and A–B, 10:9 for the intervals D–E and G–A, and 16:15 for the semitones E–F and B–C. The two sizes of whole tones were divided 18:17:16 and 20:19:18, resulting in the following scale:

Biographical research on Mozart’s pupils that is based on archival primary sources has been sadly neglected by scholars. Except for a short and highly entertaining article by Gustav Gugitz and two publications in the 1960s, Mozart scholarship still lacks a comprehensive study on a topic that is likely to provide us with a fascinating insight into Mozart’s social background, his pedagogical methods and performance practice in eighteenth-century Vienna. I think there are two reasons for this lacuna: first, the fashionable (and comfortable) assumption that all possible research has already been done, and second, the fact that this kind of archival work is basically restricted to the archives of Vienna. Delving into the lives and careers of Mozart’s pupils Barbara Ployer and Josepha Auernhammer soon leads us to areas that are not commonly associated with musicology: basic genealogy and the identification of private venues and apartments in which Mozart performed his piano concertos. After all, the actual size of these rooms, many of which do not exist any more, has never been the subject of research. Owing to the fragmentary state of the sources and the small number of plans from the eighteenth century that have been preserved, this difficult project is still in its early stages. I will therefore try to point to future directions for documentary research and give an overview of the new biographical data that I have found.

Daniel Leeson’s intriguing suggestion that the opening ten-note theme of Cherubino’s Act 1 aria in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro is immediately taken up by Basilio in the following trio, in order to indicate that he has overheard the page sing, raises a number of very thought-provoking questions. As the clear implication of this idea is that the theme of ‘Non so più’ was composed before, or at least in conjunction with, ‘Cosa sento’, it will be interesting first to look at the original manuscripts to see if they provide any chronological support. In an honest, if perhaps slightly regret-tinged comment on the value of his work on Mozartean watermarks, Alan Tyson wrote: ‘It is the destiny of paper-evidence to be suggestive rather than conclusive.’ As it transpires, this remark sums up very effectively the sources for ‘Non so più’. Suggestive they certainly are, but, as is so often the case, a chasm remains between observable physical features such as ink colours, watermarks, paper types, corrections and revisions, and any particular theory of compositional intent that might be based on them. In this instance it would be unwise to claim that the palaeographic evidence provides direct support for Leeson’s thesis; on the other hand, it certainly poses no obstacle to it, and it raises interesting questions about the circumstances in which this very fine aria was composed.