WAGENSEIL, Georg Christoph (1715-1777) - Concerto für Trombone

Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777) - Concerto (Es-dur) für Trombone, IGW 69

Performers: Hаns Böttlеr (trombone); Concеntus Musicus Wiеn; Nicolаus Hаrnoncourt (1929-2016, conductor)

Painting: Bernardo Bellotto (1722-1780) - Entrance to a Palace or Architectural Capriccio with a Portrait of Voivod Franciszek Salezy Potocki

Further info: Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777) - Orgelkonzert C-Dur, Nr.1

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Georg Christoph Wagenseil

(Vienna, 29 January 1715 - Vienna, 1 March 1777)

Austrian composer, keyboard player and teacher. He can be considered one of the pivotal figures in the development of the Classical style in Vienna with a compositional career that spanned a period from Fux, his teacher, to Haydn and W.A. Mozart, for whom he served as a precursor. Wagenseil’s father and maternal grandfather were functionaries at the Viennese imperial court. In his teens he began to compose keyboard pieces and to receive keyboard instruction with the organist of the Michaelerkirche in Vienna, Adam Weger. His accomplishments brought him to the attention of the court Kapellmeister, Johann Joseph Fux, who recommended him for a court scholarship in 1735; for the next three years he received intensive instruction in keyboard playing, counterpoint and composition from his sponsor and from Matteo Palotta. As a result of an enthusiastic endorsement from Fux, Wagenseil was appointed composer to the court on 6 February 1739, a post he held until his death. He also served as organist from 1741 to 1750 in the private chapel of Empress Elisabeth Christine (widow of Charles VI), and in 1749 became Hofklaviermeister to the imperial archduchesses. To the latter he dedicated four sets of divertimentos, which were engraved and issued as opp.1-4 by Bernardi of Vienna (1753-63). Wagenseil travelled to Venice in 1745 to supervise the production of his first opera, Ariodante, and in 1759-60 he was in Milan for a performance of Demetrio. In the mid-1750s uncommonly generous publication privileges granted by Parisian printers brought about a flood of instrumental compositions, particularly symphonies, which raised him to international prominence, and which were undoubtedly responsible for Burney’s high opinion of him. Among those acquainted with his music was the young Mozart, who played one of Wagenseil’s concertos before Maria Theresa in 1762 and several keyboard pieces at the English court in 1764. Haydn was likewise familiar both with numerous instrumental works, as entries in the so-called Quartbuch show, and with Wagenseil’s operas, which found their way to Eisenstadt. Wagenseil was also renowned as a keyboard virtuoso, and elicited the highest praise from contemporaries such as C.F.D. Schubart (who remarked that Wagenseil ‘played with extraordinary expressive power and was capable of improvising a fugue with great thoroughness’). But from about 1765 steadily worsening lameness and an attack of gout which affected his left hand curtailed his activities at court and eventually confined him to his quarters where, according to Burney, who visited him on several occasions, he continued to compose and to teach. Among Wagenseil’s pupils were Leopold Hofmann, J.A. Štěpán, F.X. Dušek, Johann Gallus-Mederitsch, G.A. Matielli, P. le Roy, the brothers Franz and Anton Teyber, and J.B. Schenk. The last, who began instruction in 1774, provided in his autobiography a detailed account of his mentor’s teaching methods which, not surprisingly, were based on Fux (a legacy Schenk was then to transmit to Beethoven later in the century) but which were also remarkable for their time in drawing on Handel and Bach.

WERNER, Gregor Joseph (1693-1766) - Missa Contrapunctata a 4 voci (1756)

Gregor Joseph Werner (1693-1766) - Missa Contrapunctata a 4 voci (1756)

Performers: Schola Cantorum Budapestiensis; János Mezei (conductor)

Painting: Joos van Winghe (1544-1603) - Allegorie der Musik

Further info: Gregor Joseph Werner (1693-1766) - Concerto per la camera à 4

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Gregor Joseph Werner

(Ybbs an der Donau, 28 January 1693 - Eisenstadt, Burgenland, 3 March 1766)

Austrian composer. From 1715 to 1716 (or possibly 1721) he was organist at Melk Abbey. He married in Vienna (where he may have been a pupil of J.J. Fux) on 27 January 1727, and moved from Vienna to Eisenstadt to take up an appointment as Kapellmeister at the Esterházy court on 10 May 1728. As successor to the post of Wenzel Zivilhofer he received a salary of 400 gulden in addition to 28 gulden lodging money per year, increased in 1738 and, on his son’s joining the establishment as alto singer, in 1740. Werner also taught some musicians in Eisenstadt, including Johann Novotný and S.T. Kolbel. According to a decree issued by 1 May 1761, Haydn took over the princely musical establishment which Werner had brought to a high standard. However, Werner remained as Oberhofkapellmeister and was entrusted with the sacred music, which had always been of primary interest to him. Predictably, strained relations arose between Werner and the much younger Haydn. In a petition of October 1765 to Prince Nikolaus von Esterházy, Werner complained of negligence in the castle Kapelle and the decayed state of the once strong musical establishment, blaming this on Haydn’s indolence; Werner made known that because of his great age he was unable to take matters into his own hands but had to rely on the intervention of others. He also pleaded for additional supplies of wood to enable him to survive the winter. Clearly he thought his death was imminent, and in fact he died at the end of that winter. This bitter letter shows the depth of his resentment towards Haydn, whom he is said to have called a Gsanglmacher (‘little song-maker’). Haydn was called to order by the princely administrator; the accusations of laziness caused him to keep his own thematic catalogue from then on. In his old age Haydn left a memorial to his former Oberhofkapellmeister with his edition (1804) of six introductions and fugues for string quartet, taken from Werner’s oratorios. Werner’s music reflects several different tendencies. In church music, which occupied him until his last years, he composed a cappella masses in a strict contrapuntal style but also works with string and wind accompaniments markedly influenced by the Neapolitan tradition. He was, however, a capable contrapuntist and a composer who thought naturally in contrapuntal terms. Although his melodic style was sometimes angular, in a manner reminiscent of Zelenka’s, he could also produce, as in his secular cantatas and his Christmas pieces (which include pastorals for organ with strings and oboes), themes of a simple, folksong-like character. His symphonies and trio sonatas follow the conventional three- and four-movement patterns of his time; but he also composed works, notably the Musicalischer Instrumental-Calender, using representational effects.

ARRIAGA, Juan Crisóstomo (1806-1826) - Sinfonía en re menor (c.1824)

Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga (1806-1826) - Sinfonía en re menor (c.1824)

Performers: Orquesta Filarmonia de España; Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos (1933-2014, director)

Painting: Luis Paret y Alcázar (1746-1799) - View of El Arenal in Bilbao (c.1783)

Further info: Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga (1806-1826) - Stabat Mater Dolorosa & Obertura

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Juan Crisóstomo (Jacobo Antonio) de Arriaga y Balzola

(Bilbao, 27 January 1806 - Paris, bur. 17 January 1826)

Spanish composer. His father, Juan Simón Arriaga, had been organist, royal clerk and schoolteacher at Guernica, and had become associated with members of the Real Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del Pais, a society upholding the ideals of the Enlightenment, before moving to Bilbao in 1804 to become a merchant and shipowner. Arriaga's brother Ramón Prudencio, his senior by 14 years, played the violin and guitar. Both father and brother seem to have groomed the child for a musical career. They established contacts with musical amateurs and professionals, such as the aficionado José Luis Torres and José Sobejano, sometime organist and maestro de capilla at Santiago, Bilbao; with influential men of letters and musicians from Madrid court circles, such as the poet Alberto Lista and the violinist Francesco Maria Vaccari; and with the famous singer Manuel García. Reports on Arriaga's opera in the Spanish press presumably appeared on the initiative of his father and brother. The choice of texts for two patriotic hymns and the idea to set a Spanish opera also reflect the influence the family had on the boy. By September 1821 Arriaga had produced about 20 works, only some of which are now extant. According to his father, Arriaga wrote his first piece at the age of 11, and the autograph of 'Nada y mucho' seems to confirm this. Originally a trio for violins, the piece was revised by the addition of a bass and a text to the upper part. In 1818 he composed an overture (op.1) for nonet which, surprisingly, already shows many of the characteristic compositional strategies used in later works. In 1819 he wrote his opera 'Los esclavos felices', of which only the overture and fragments of several arias remain.

The motets Stabat mater and O salutaris hostia were probably composed for the capilla. The texts of the patriotic hymns 'Ya luce en este hemisferio' and 'Cantabros nobles' fit the political situation of the trienio liberal (1820-23). In September 1821 Arriaga went abroad. He was introduced by García and Justo de Machado (the Spanish ambassador in Paris) to Cherubini, who was at that time one of the inspectors of the Paris Conservatoire. Arriaga was admitted to Fétis's newly created class of counterpoint and fugue and to the violin class of Pierre Baillot and his assistants. He won prizes for counterpoint and fugue in 1823 and 1824, and in the latter year Fétis made him teaching assistant. A symphony, showing the influence of Beethoven and uncannily reminiscent of Schubert's Fourth Symphony, was one of Arriaga's last works. Pedro Albéniz's letter to Arriaga's father and Fétis's report lead to the conclusion that Arriaga died from exhaustion and a pulmonary infection. After his death his belongings were sent to Bilbao and on the death of his father in 1836 his papers were divided between the five heirs. Arriaga's short career was heavily marked by a strong sense of competition. A dramatic impetus coupled with a flair for finding remarkably well-poised musical structures pervades all of his works, both vocal and instrumental. Melodies always seem to have come easily to him; a remarkable progression in the handling of accompaniment and orchestration can be seen. In his Parisian period Arriaga discovered a technique of continuous transformation of musical material. He was always fond of chromaticisms and used a chromatic idée fixe in most of his works from the very beginning. 

HAYES, William (1708-1777) - O Worship The Lord

William Hayes (1708-1777) - O Worship The Lord

Performers: Choir of New College Oxford; Edward Higginbottom (conductor)

Painting: John Cornish (fl. 1751-1765) - William Hayes

Further info: William Hayes (1708-1777) - Orpheus & Euridice (1735)

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William Hayes

(Gloucester, bap. 26 January 1708 - Oxford, 27 July 1777)

Composer, organist and singer. He showed an early talent for music and in 1717 became a chorister of Gloucester Cathedral under William Hine, to whom he was later articled. In 1729 he was appointed organist of St Mary’s, Shrewsbury, and in 1731 he obtained the post of organist of Worcester Cathedral. Three years later he succeeded Thomas Hecht as organist and informator choristarum of Magdalen College, Oxford. On 8 July 1735 he received the BMus, for which he wrote the ode When the fair consort, and he was unanimously elected to the professorship of music on 14 January 1741, after the death of Richard Goodson, whom he also succeeded as organist of the university church. Burney considered him to have been ‘a very good organ player’ and a ‘studious and active professor’. A notable event of his tenure of the professorship was the opening of the Holywell Music Room in 1748, in which weekly concerts were presented under Hayes’s direction. He received the DMus on 14 April 1749 during the celebrations marking the opening of the Radcliffe Library, which included the first known performance in Oxford of Handel’s Messiah. Hayes was an ardent Handelian, and was one of the most active conductors of the composer’s oratorios and other large-scale works outside London. He was musical director of the meetings of the Gloucester Music Meeting in 1757, 1760 and 1763, and often combined the roles of conductor and tenor soloist. He was one of the first enrolled members of the Fund for the Support of Decay’d Musicians (later the Royal Society of Musicians), and advanced plans for a scheme, funded by the Society, to establish a co-educational music academy for the training of gifted young musicians for a period of 14 years from the age of seven or eight. In 1765 he was elected a ‘priviledged member’ of the Noblemen’s and Gentlemen’s Catch Club, having already won several of the prize medals offered by the club. 

Of his children, three sons and three daughters survived infancy. His wife, Anne, died on 14 January 1786. A portrait by John Cornish is in the Oxford University Faculty of Music. Hayes’s musical style is much indebted to Handel, especially in his large-scale works. Nevertheless, his vocal music shows a typically English preference for non-da capo aria forms, and his contemporary reputation as a composer was founded on genres largely ignored by Handel: English cantatas, organ-accompanied anthems, and convivial vocal music. A firm command of both harmonic and contrapuntal writing characterizes all his music, which is never less than technically assured. A self-consciously learned strand in his music can be observed in his assiduous cultivation of the full anthem, his many ingenious canons, and the strict fugal movements of his concertos and trio sonatas. Although he chose to publish little of his instrumental music, it is generally of high quality. Several of his trio sonatas seem to have been designed for orchestral performance and mix movements in a late Baroque style with others which show a clear awareness of galant idioms (including small-scale sonata forms). The early G major harpsichord concerto is remarkable for the detailed written-out ornamentation and cadenzas of its slow movement, and his concerti grossi depart from usual English practice in their addition of a viola to the usual concertino trio of two violins and cello. His odes, oratorios and masques demonstrate a sure command of large-scale resources, and the ode The Passions, the one-act oratorio The Fall of Jericho, and the Six Cantatas confirm that Hayes deserves to be regarded highly among English composers of the 18th century. His sons Philip Hayes (1738-1797) and William Hayes (1741-1790) were also singers and composers.

DER GROSSE, Friedrich (1712-1786) - Sinfonia in D-Dur (1747)

Friedrich der Grosse (1712-1786) - Sinfonia in D-Dur (1747)

Performers: Emil Seiler Chamber Orchestra; Carl Gorvin (1912-1991, conductor)

Painting: Christoph Friedrich Reinhold Lisiewski (1725-1794) - Bildnis Friedrich des Großen (1772)

Further info: Friedrich der Grosse (1712-1786)

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Frederick II [Friedrich der Grosse; Frederick the Great]

(Berlin, 24 January 1712 - Potsdam, 17 August 1786)

German monarch, patron of the arts, flautist and composer. His father, Friedrich Wilhelm I, was alarmed at his son’s early preference for intellectual and artistic pursuits over the military and religious. In spite of being supervised day and night and in the face of his father’s rages and corporal punishments, Frederick managed, partly through the complicity of his mother and his older sister Wilhelmina, to read forbidden books, to affect French dress and manners and to play flute duets with his servant. As a seven-year-old he was permitted to study thoroughbass and four-part composition with the cathedral organist Gottlieb Hayne. Wilhelmina, also musically talented, joined him in impromptu concerts. On a visit to Dresden in 1728 the prince was overwhelmed at hearing his first opera, Hasse’s Cleofide; there he also first heard the playing of the flautist J.J. Quantz, who soon thereafter began making occasional visits to Berlin to give Frederick flute lessons. The king tolerated such amusements for a while, but by 1730 his disapproval had hardened to prohibition. On 4 August 1730, in his 18th year, Frederick attempted to escape to England. The result was his imprisonment and the beheading of one of his ‘accomplices’ in his presence. Instead of breaking, the prince became more sober and orthodox. In 1733 he reluctantly married the bride chosen for him, Elisabeth Christina of Brunswick. He took command of a regiment and immersed himself so thoroughly in statecraft that he eventually won the confidence of even his father. But he had no intention of giving up his interests: at his residence in Ruppin he maintained a small group of instrumentalists; the occasional lessons with Quantz continued; he appointed C.H. Graun as general court musician in 1735; and in 1736, when he moved to Rheinsberg, 17 musicians moved with him, including C.H. and J.G. Graun, Franz and Johann Benda, Christoph Schaffrath and J.G. Janitsch. Among his visitors were Algarotti, Maupertius, Fontenelle, Lord Baltimore, Gravesande and Voltaire. 

When Frederick finally acceded to the throne on 31 May 1740 he plunged into social and political reforms, military conquest and the rehabilitation of Prussian arts and letters, all at once. Other agents, such as Voltaire and Algarotti, were commissioned to engage actors and dancers in Paris and more singers from Italy, along with machinists, costumiers and librettists. Amid this ferment, when the Emperor Charles of Austria died on 20 October, Frederick immediately began plans which culminated in his invasion of Silesia, the first of the many military campaigns through which he transformed Prussia into a great modern state. When Graun returned to Berlin with his Italian troupe of singers in March 1741, Frederick was on the battlefield. Indeed, in the first years of his reign Frederick enlarged both Prussia’s geographical and cultural boundaries, with equal verve. C.P.E. Bach, having already performed regularly at Rheinsberg, joined the court orchestra officially in 1740 as first cembalist; Quantz, released from his position in Dresden, was appointed in 1741. Christoph Nichelmann was retained in 1744 as second cembalist. In 1754 some 50 musicians, excluding singers for court intermezzos and members of the opera chorus, were in Frederick’s employ. In addition to C.H. Graun as Kapellmeister and chief composer for the opera, and J.F. Agricola as court composer. The new opera house on the avenue Unter den Linden, whose replica still stands in Berlin, was opened on 7 December 1742. From that date to the outbreak of the Seven Years War in 1756, the standard season featured two new operas by Graun and an occasional work by Hasse, composers who were the foremost representatives of Italian opera in Germany. In the successful but bitter Seven Years War (1756-63) Frederick gradually became ‘der alte Fritz’, inflexible and reactionary. Instrumental music at the court stagnated: Nichelmann left in 1756, C.P.E. Bach in 1767. From March 1756 to December 1764 no operas were produced at the Berlin Opera House; and from the end of the war to Frederick’s death in 1786 almost all the opera productions there were revivals of pre-war works.