Philipp Christoph Kayser (1755-1823)
- Sonata (Es-Dur) en symphonie (c.1784)
Performers: Roy Howat (piano); Oliver Lewis (violin); Dave Lee & Chris Davies (horns)
Further info: Philipp Christoph Kayser: Goethe Lieder Chamber Music
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German composer, active in Switzerland. The son of a Frankfurt organist,
he moved in 1775 to Zürich, where he established himself as a music
teacher. Goethe visited him there in 1775 and again in 1779, when he
asked Kayser to compose music for his Singspiel Jery und Bätely. Kayser
never set the work, but he visited Goethe in Weimar in 1781 and again
from October 1787 until June 1788 in Rome, and Goethe continued in his
hopes for Kayser’s collaboration, particularly in the revised versions
of Erwin und Elmire and Scherz, List und Rache. Kayser also brought with
him to Rome an overture to Egmont, for which (as for Erwin und Elmire)
Goethe sought instrumental music to express the emotions of the
characters. After hearing Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail Goethe
abandoned his own attempts at Singspiel, and as Kayser’s weaknesses as a
composer became apparent, the friendship and collaboration ceased.
After returning to Zürich in 1789 Kayser wrote no more music. Kayser’s
most significant works are his songs, of which he composed over 100. Of
the 19 songs published as Gesänge mit Begleitung des Claviers (1777)
five are settings of lyric poems by Goethe, including the sensitive Ein
Veilchen auf der Wiese stand and a setting of Ihr verblühet, süsse Rosen
in which he successfully adapted a Grétry melody into a da capo aria.
Kayser’s setting of a poem by H.L. Wagner inspired Goethe to fit to it
the first version of his well-known parody Füllest wieder Busch und Tal.
‘Herr! Ein Mädchen’, from Scherz, List und Rache, was scored for four
strings and oboe, perhaps in consequence of Goethe’s advice to him ‘to
keep the accompaniment modest … the expert achieves more with two
violins, viola and bass than with an entire band of instruments. Use the
winds as seasoning and singly: here a flute … there an oboe’. A
manuscript of 71 songs (a number of them unpublished) was made at
Goethe’s behest at Weimar in 1777-78.
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