Gottfried van Swieten
Encyclopedia
Gottfried, Freiherr van Swieten (Leiden, October 29, 1733 - Vienna
, March 29, 1803) was a diplomat, librarian, and government official who served the Austrian Empire
during the 18th century. He was an enthusiastic amateur musician and is best remembered today as the patron of several great composer
s of the Classical era, including Joseph Haydn
, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
, and Ludwig van Beethoven
.
birth; he was born in Leiden and grew up there to the age of 11. His father Gerard van Swieten
was a physician who achieved a high reputation for raising standards of scientific research and instruction in the field of medicine. In 1745, the elder van Swieten agreed to become personal physician to the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, and moved with his family to Vienna
, where he also became the director of the court library and served in other government posts. The young van Swieten was educated for national service in an elite Jesuit school, the Theresianum.
of Prussia
in Berlin
(1770–77).
The last posting involved serious responsibility. Frederick had previously defeated Austria in the War of the Austrian Succession
(1740–1748), seizing from her the territory of Silesia
; and had successfully defended his conquest in the Seven Years' War
(1756–1763). Van Swieten was ambassador during the First Partition
of Poland
(1772), in which much of the territory of this nation was annexed by the more powerful neighboring empires of Austria, Russia, and Prussia. Austria rather unrealistically wanted Silesia (and other territories) back as part of the terms of the partition. It was van Swieten's "thankless task" (Abert) to negotiate on this basis; according to Abert the 60-year-old Frederick replied to him: "That's the sort of suggestion you could make if I had gout
in the brain, but I've only got it in my legs." Van Swieten shifted the negotiations to his backup plan and the Partition went forward with Silesia remaining Prussian.
During this period of his career, van Swieten assiduously cultivated his musical interests. His supervisor in Brussels, Count Cobenzl, reported in 1756 that "music takes up the best part of his time." In Berlin, van Swieten studied with Johann Philipp Kirnberger, a former pupil of J. S. Bach
, and was part of the musical circle of Princess Anna Amalia
, where the music of Bach and Handel was played and admired.
As librarian, van Swieten introduced the world's first card catalog (1780). Libraries had had catalogs before, in the form of bound volumes. Van Swieten's innovation of using cards permitted new entries to be freely added in a conveniently searchable order. Card catalogs were soon adopted elsewhere, notably in Revolutionary France.
Van Swieten also expanded the library's collection, notably with books on science, as well as older books from the libraries of monasteries that had been dissolved under the decrees of Emperor Joseph II
.
, benevolent despotism), and his position in government was a critical one, considered by Braunbehrens (1990) to be the equivalent of being minister of culture.
Edward Olleson describes the political situation: "The projected reforms of the educational system ... were the most fundamental of all. Joseph's goal of building up a middle class with a political responsibility towards the State depended on great advances in elementary education, and on the universities. Van Swieten's liberal views fitted him to the task of implementing the Emperor's plans." Olleson adds that, because Joseph's reforms increased the freedom of the press, a "flood of pamphlets" was published critical of the Imperial government—thus increasing van Swieten's responsibilities in supervising the censorship apparatus of the government. His letters of the time report an extremely heavy workload.
In 1784, van Swieten proposed that the Austrian Empire should have a copyright law; such a law had already been in effect in England since 1709 (see: History of copyright). Van Swieten's suggestion was overruled by the Emperor. Nicholas Till suggests that had van Swieten's law been implemented, the career of his protégé Mozart
(see below) as an independent musician might have gone much more successfully.
Van Swieten's rise to power eventually met with obstacles and trouble. In 1787, the Emperor launched a "disastrous, futile, and costly" (Till) war against the Turks, which put Austrian society in turmoil and undermined his earlier efforts at reform. Till writes:
The Emperor was already terminally ill when he wrote the quoted letter, and died later that year. He was replaced by his more conservative brother Leopold
, which further undermined van Swieten's position. A "bitter" (Olleson) power struggle took place which Swieten ultimately lost. He was relieved of his commission post on 5 December 1791, coincidentally the day his protégé Mozart died.
opines that "the chief characteristics of [his] conservative, three-movement symphonies are tautology
and paucity of invention ... As a composer van Swieten is insignificant."
Known works include three comic operas: Les talents à la mode, Colas, toujours Colas, and the lost La chercheuse d'esprit. He also wrote ten symphonies, of which 7 survive.
s per year.
Van Swieten never married. Unlike his father, who remained a Protestant after coming to Austria, Gottfried converted to Roman Catholicism, the state religion of the empire.
Like many other prominent male Viennese (for example, as of 1784, Mozart
), van Swieten was a Freemason
.
Van Swieten owned a Vermeer
, the famous "Art of Painting
", which he inherited from his father. At the time it was not known that the painting was by Vermeer.
. This means that the composers did not work for van Swieten on salary or commission, but received payments from him from time to time in the manner of a tip
. Thus, Joseph Haydn remarked to his biographer Griesinger
that ""He patronized me occasionally with several ducats." This was a common way of paying musicians in the age of aristocracy; Haydn had received similar payments from his employer Nikolaus Esterházy
, though he also drew a salary. The patronage system also financed the early travels
of the Mozart family.
The relationship between patron and artist was not one of social equals. An 1801 letter of Haydn to van Swieten, by then his longtime collaborator, used no second person pronouns, instead addressing the Baron as "Your Excellency"; presumably this reflected their everyday practice.
Van Swieten first met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
in 1768, when he was about 33 years old and Mozart a boy of 11. The Mozart family was visiting Vienna, hoping to achieve further fame and income following the earlier completion of their Grand Tour
of Europe. According to Mozart's father Leopold
, Van Swieten was involved in the early planning of Wolfgang's ill-fated opera La Finta Semplice
(the opera was later blocked by intrigues, and could be performed only in Salzburg).
In 1781, shortly after Mozart had moved to Vienna, van Swieten met him again: at the salon of Countess Thun, Mozart played extracts from his recent opera Idomeneo
, with van Swieten and other important officials in the audience; this event help instigate Mozart's commission for the opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, his first great success as a composer.
and Handel
, which he had collected during his diplomatic service in Berlin. As Mozart wrote to his father Leopold
(10 April 1782):
Others also attended these gatherings, and van Swieten gave Mozart the task of transcribing a number of fugues for instrumental ensembles so that they could be performed before the assembled company. Mozart also sat at the keyboard and rendered the orchestral scores of Handel's oratorios in a spontaneous keyboard reduction (while, according to Joseph Weigl
, also singing one of the choral parts and correcting errors of the other singers).
It appears that encountering the work of the two great Baroque masters had a very strong effect on Mozart. Olleson suggests that the process took place in two stages. Mozart responded first with rather direct imitations, writing fugue
s and suite
s in the style of his models. These works "have the character of studies in contrapuntal
technique." Many were left incomplete, and even the completed ones are not often performed today; Olleson suggests they have "a dryness which is absent from most of [Mozart's] music." Later, Mozart assimilated Bach and Handel's music more fully into his own style, where it played a role in the creation of some of his most widely admired works. Of these, Olleson mentions the C Minor Mass (1784) and the chorale prelude
sung by the two armored men in The Magic Flute
(1791).
("Society of Associated Cavaliers"), an organization of music-loving nobles. With the financial backing of this group, he was able to stage full-scale performances of major works. Generally, these concerts were first given in one of the palaces of the members or in the large hall of the Imperial Library, then in a public performance in the Burgtheater
or Jahn's Hall
.
Mozart took on the task of conducting these concerts in 1788. He had previously been too busy with other tasks, but with a decline in his career prospects elsewhere he was willing to take up the post. In addition to having him conduct, the Gesellschaft commissioned Mozart to prepare four works by Handel
for performance according to contemporary taste:
Van Swieten was responsible for the translations from English into German of the libretti for these works, a task he would perform later on for Haydn (see below).
The Gesellschaft's concerts were an important source of income for Mozart during this time, when he was experiencing severe financial worries. Van Swieten's loyalty to Mozart at this time is also indicated by one of Mozart's letters of 1789, in which he reported that he had solicited subscriptions to a projected concert series (as he previously done with great success in the mid 1780s) and found that—after two weeks—the Baron was still the only subscriber.
's correspondence in several places mentions his "generosity". On 2 January 1793, he sponsored a performance of Mozart's Requiem
as a benefit concert for Constanze; it yielded a profit of 300 ducats, a substantial sum. He was also reported to have helped arrange for the education of Mozart's son Karl
in Prague
.
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In 1776, during a visit home to Vienna from his posting in Berlin, van Swieten offered encouragement to the 43-year-old Joseph Haydn
, who at the time was vexed by the hostile reception his work was receiving from certain Berlin critics. Van Swieten told him that his works were nevertheless in high demand in Berlin. Haydn mentioned this appreciatively in his 1776 autobiographical sketch
.
In 1790, with the death of Nikolaus Esterházy
, Haydn became semi-independent of his long-time employers the Esterházy family. He moved to Vienna and thus became more free to accept van Swieten's patronage. Olleson suggests that Haydn participated in the Handel concerts of the Gesellschaft der Associierten, and notes that already in 1793, van Swieten was trying to get him to write an oratorio (to a text by Johann Baptist von Alxinger
. In 1794, when Haydn set off for London on his second journey there, he rode in a carriage provided to him by van Swieten.
On his return the following year, Haydn and van Swieten developed a close working relationship, with van Swieten serving as his librettist and artistic adviser. The collaboration began in 1795-1796 with the small oratorio version of The Seven Last Words of Christ
. This work was composed by Haydn as an orchestral piece in 1785. In the course of his second London journey, in Passau
, he had heard a revised version amplified to include a chorus, prepared by the Passau Kapellmeister
Joseph Friebert. Liking the idea, Haydn then prepared his own choral version, with van Swieten revising the lyrics used by Friebert.
Haydn and van Swieten then moved on to larger projects: the full-scale oratorios The Creation (1798) and The Seasons
(1801). Van Swieten translated (from English to German) and adapted the source material, which came from an anonymous English libretto and James Thomson, respectively. He also translated in the reverse direction, putting the German back into English in a way that would fit the rhythm of Haydn's music. This reverse translation, though often awkward, enabled the first published editions of these oratorios to serve both German- and English-speaking audiences.
In the margins of his libretti, Van Swieten made many specific artistic suggestions to Haydn about how various passages should be musically set, suggestions which in general Haydn "observed closely" (Olleson). One example is the moving episode in The Creation in which God tells the newly created beasts to be fruitful and multiply. Van Swieten's paraphrase of Genesis reads:
Haydn's musical setting stems from a suggestion of van Swieten's that the words should be sung by the bass soloist over an unadorned bass line. However, he only partly followed this suggestion, and after pondering, added to his bass line a rich layer of four-part harmony for divided cellos and violas, crucial to the final result.
The premieres of the three oratorios The Seven Last Words, The Creation and The Seasons all took place under the auspices of the Gesellschaft der Associierten, who also provided financial guarantees needed for Haydn to undertake long-term projects.
Van Swieten was a patron and supporter of Ludwig van Beethoven
during his early years in Vienna. Beethoven's experience with van Swieten was in some ways parallel to Mozart's about 12 years earlier. He visited the Baron in his home, where there were still regular gatherings centered around the music of Bach and Handel. Beethoven's early biographer Anton Schindler wrote:
Schindler's testimony is not generally trusted by modern musicologists (for discussion, see Anton Schindler); however, in the case of van Swieten there is concrete evidence preserved in the form of a letter from van Swieten to Beethoven. The letter dates from 1794, when Beethoven was 23 years old:
Albrecht explains "nightcap" as follows: "This aspect of Swieten's invitation was as much practical and considerate as it was hospitable: if Beethoven had returned home after the citywide 9 p.m. curfew, he would have had to pay Lichnowsky's turnkey a fee to let him in the locked house doors."
Exposure to Bach and Handel's music seems to have been important to Beethoven just as it had been to Mozart. Ferdinand Ries
later wrote, "Of all composers, Beethoven valued Mozart and Handel most highly, then [J.] S. Bach. ... Whenever I found him with music in his hands, or saw some lying on his desk, it was certain to be a composition by one of these idols."
In 1801, Beethoven dedicated his First Symphony
to van Swieten.
. Bach wrote the six Symphonies for String Orchestra (1773; H. 657-662) on commission from van Swieten; according to Goodwin and Clark, the commission specified that "the composer's creative imagination might have free rein, unfettered by any regard for technical difficulties". The third set of Bach's Sonaten für Kenner und Liebhaber (1781)is dedicated to van Swieten.
Johann Nikolaus Forkel
, the first biographer of Bach, dedicated his book to van Swieten.
This shift began in van Swieten's own century. Some of the early cases of performers playing older music are pointed out by Weber: "In France the tragedies lyriques of Jean-Baptiste Lully
and his successors were performed regularly up through the 1770s. In England music of the sixteenth century was revived in the Academy of Ancient Music
, and many of the works of George Frideric Handel
remained in performance after his death in 1759." As Weber notes, van Swieten was one of the pioneers of this trend, particularly in his work reviving the music of Bach and Handel, and in his encouragement of contemporary composers to learn from the old masters and create new work that would be inspired by them.
Van Swieten expressed some of his own views about the value of earlier music in the pages of the first volume of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
:
DeNora describes the devotion to earlier masters as a "fringe" view during the 1780s, but eventually others were following Swieten's lead, particularly with the success of The Creation and The Seasons. The music publisher Johann Ferdinand von Schönfeld wrote in 1796:
A corollary of a "taste for the great and exalted" is the idea that concert audiences should maintain silence, so that each note can be heard by all. This was not the received view in the 18th century, but was clearly van Swieten's opinion. In his 1856 Mozart biography, Otto Jahn
reported the following anecdote from Sigismund Neukomm:
that van Swieten's symphonies were "as stiff as the man himself." He maintained a firm social distance between himself and the composers he patronized, a distance rooted in the system of aristocracy
still in force in the Austria in his day. Sigismund Neukomm wrote that he was "not so much a friend as a very self-opinionated patron of Haydn and Mozart." Olleson suggests that "in his own time van Swieten won little affection" (adding: "but almost universal respect."). He also was not close to his fellow aristocrats; although his public roles in music and government were prominent, he avoided salon society, and after 1795 expressed content that he lived in "complete retirement".
Concerning van Swieten's contributions to music, posthumous judgment seems most critical of his role as librettist. Olleson observes that in the three successive oratorio libretti that van Swieten prepared for Haydn, his own involvement in the writing was greater for each than in the previous one. According to Olleson, "many critics would say that this progressive originality was disastrous."
Even van Swieten's musical taste has been harshly criticized, but here the consensus is perhaps more positive. Van Swieten seems to have singled out for his favor—from among many composers whose reputation is now obscure—the composers that posterity has judged very highly. As Olleson notes, "One could scarcely quarrel with his choice of composers of the past, Sebastian Bach and Handel; and of those of his own time, Gluck, Emanuel Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven."
's famous play Amadeus
and in the Miloš Forman
film
based on it.
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, March 29, 1803) was a diplomat, librarian, and government official who served the Austrian Empire
Habsburg Monarchy
The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...
during the 18th century. He was an enthusiastic amateur musician and is best remembered today as the patron of several great composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
s of the Classical era, including Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, and Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
.
Life and career
Van Swieten was of DutchNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
birth; he was born in Leiden and grew up there to the age of 11. His father Gerard van Swieten
Gerard van Swieten
Gerard van Swieten was a Dutch-Austrian physician.Van Swieten was born in Leiden. He was a pupil of Hermann Boerhaave and became in 1745 the personal physician of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. In this position he implemented a transformation of the Austrian health service and medical...
was a physician who achieved a high reputation for raising standards of scientific research and instruction in the field of medicine. In 1745, the elder van Swieten agreed to become personal physician to the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, and moved with his family to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, where he also became the director of the court library and served in other government posts. The young van Swieten was educated for national service in an elite Jesuit school, the Theresianum.
As diplomat
According to Heartz, the young van Swieten had "excelled in his studies" and was fluent in many languages. Thus it was natural that he would pursue (following a brief stint in the civil service) a career as a diplomat. His first posting was to Brussels (1755–1757), then Paris (1760–1763), Warsaw (1763–1764), and ultimately (as ambassador) to the court of Frederick the GreatFrederick II of Prussia
Frederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
of Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
(1770–77).
The last posting involved serious responsibility. Frederick had previously defeated Austria in the War of the Austrian Succession
War of the Austrian Succession
The War of the Austrian Succession – including King George's War in North America, the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear, and two of the three Silesian wars – involved most of the powers of Europe over the question of Maria Theresa's succession to the realms of the House of Habsburg.The...
(1740–1748), seizing from her the territory of Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
; and had successfully defended his conquest in the Seven Years' War
Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War was a global military war between 1756 and 1763, involving most of the great powers of the time and affecting Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines...
(1756–1763). Van Swieten was ambassador during the First Partition
First Partition of Poland
The First Partition of Poland or First Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in 1772 as the first of three partitions that ended the existence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by 1795. Growth in the Russian Empire's power, threatening the Kingdom of Prussia and the...
of Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
(1772), in which much of the territory of this nation was annexed by the more powerful neighboring empires of Austria, Russia, and Prussia. Austria rather unrealistically wanted Silesia (and other territories) back as part of the terms of the partition. It was van Swieten's "thankless task" (Abert) to negotiate on this basis; according to Abert the 60-year-old Frederick replied to him: "That's the sort of suggestion you could make if I had gout
Gout
Gout is a medical condition usually characterized by recurrent attacks of acute inflammatory arthritis—a red, tender, hot, swollen joint. The metatarsal-phalangeal joint at the base of the big toe is the most commonly affected . However, it may also present as tophi, kidney stones, or urate...
in the brain, but I've only got it in my legs." Van Swieten shifted the negotiations to his backup plan and the Partition went forward with Silesia remaining Prussian.
During this period of his career, van Swieten assiduously cultivated his musical interests. His supervisor in Brussels, Count Cobenzl, reported in 1756 that "music takes up the best part of his time." In Berlin, van Swieten studied with Johann Philipp Kirnberger, a former pupil of J. S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, and was part of the musical circle of Princess Anna Amalia
Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia
Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia was Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg. She was one of ten surviving children of King Frederick William I of Prussia and Sophia Dorothea of Hanover.-Background:...
, where the music of Bach and Handel was played and admired.
As librarian
On his return to Vienna in 1777 van Swieten was appointed as the Prefect of the Imperial Library, which had been vacant for five years since the father's death. Van Swieten remained imperial librarian for the rest of his life.As librarian, van Swieten introduced the world's first card catalog (1780). Libraries had had catalogs before, in the form of bound volumes. Van Swieten's innovation of using cards permitted new entries to be freely added in a conveniently searchable order. Card catalogs were soon adopted elsewhere, notably in Revolutionary France.
Van Swieten also expanded the library's collection, notably with books on science, as well as older books from the libraries of monasteries that had been dissolved under the decrees of Emperor Joseph II
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I...
.
In politics
In 1780, when Joseph II came to the throne, Swieten's career reached its peak of success. He was appointed a Councillor of State and Director of the State Education Commission in 1781, then also as Director of a new Censorship Commission in 1782. Van Swieten was strongly sympathetic to the program of reforms which Joseph sought to impose on his empire (see JosephinismJosephinism
Josephinism is the term used to describe the domestic policies of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor . During the ten years in which Joseph was the sole ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy , he attempted to legislate a series of drastic reforms to remodel Austria in the form of the ideal Enlightened state...
, benevolent despotism), and his position in government was a critical one, considered by Braunbehrens (1990) to be the equivalent of being minister of culture.
Edward Olleson describes the political situation: "The projected reforms of the educational system ... were the most fundamental of all. Joseph's goal of building up a middle class with a political responsibility towards the State depended on great advances in elementary education, and on the universities. Van Swieten's liberal views fitted him to the task of implementing the Emperor's plans." Olleson adds that, because Joseph's reforms increased the freedom of the press, a "flood of pamphlets" was published critical of the Imperial government—thus increasing van Swieten's responsibilities in supervising the censorship apparatus of the government. His letters of the time report an extremely heavy workload.
In 1784, van Swieten proposed that the Austrian Empire should have a copyright law; such a law had already been in effect in England since 1709 (see: History of copyright). Van Swieten's suggestion was overruled by the Emperor. Nicholas Till suggests that had van Swieten's law been implemented, the career of his protégé Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
(see below) as an independent musician might have gone much more successfully.
Van Swieten's rise to power eventually met with obstacles and trouble. In 1787, the Emperor launched a "disastrous, futile, and costly" (Till) war against the Turks, which put Austrian society in turmoil and undermined his earlier efforts at reform. Till writes:
- Joseph attempted to pass the blame for events on to ... van Swieten. As President of the Censorship Commission, [he] had been more liberal than Joseph was willing to countenance. ... As Minister for Education [he] had aimed to strip education of any religious character; he was more concerned about the dangers of religious orthodoxy than heresy, and believed that students should be taught a system of secular values based upon 'philosophy'. But his reforms, which indicated a far more radical rejection of religious education than Joseph was really prepared to accept, had failed. In 1790, Joseph wrote to Chancellor Kolowrat expressing his discontent: 'since an essential aspect of the education of young people, namely religion and morality, is treated far too lightly, since ... no feeling for one's true duties is being developed, the state is deprived of the essential advantages of having raised right-thinking and well-behaved citizens.'
The Emperor was already terminally ill when he wrote the quoted letter, and died later that year. He was replaced by his more conservative brother Leopold
Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
Leopold II , born Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard, was Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary and Bohemia from 1790 to 1792, Archduke of Austria and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790. He was a son of Emperor Francis I and his wife, Empress Maria Theresa...
, which further undermined van Swieten's position. A "bitter" (Olleson) power struggle took place which Swieten ultimately lost. He was relieved of his commission post on 5 December 1791, coincidentally the day his protégé Mozart died.
As composer
Van Swieten's strong interest in music extended to the creation of his own compositions. While in Paris he staged a comic opera of his own composition. He also composed other operas as well as symphonies. These works are not considered of high quality and are seldom if ever performed today. The Grove DictionaryGrove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century...
opines that "the chief characteristics of [his] conservative, three-movement symphonies are tautology
Tautology (rhetoric)
Tautology is an unnecessary or unessential repetition of meaning, using different and dissimilar words that effectively say the same thing...
and paucity of invention ... As a composer van Swieten is insignificant."
Known works include three comic operas: Les talents à la mode, Colas, toujours Colas, and the lost La chercheuse d'esprit. He also wrote ten symphonies, of which 7 survive.
Other
Swieten was well off financially, though by no means as wealthy as the great princes of the Empire. He had inherited money from his father, and he was also well paid for his government posts. Braunbehrens estimates his income as about "ten times Mozart's", which would make it (very roughly) 20,000 florinAustro-Hungarian gulden
The Gulden or forint was the currency of the Austrian Empire and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1754 and 1892 when it was replaced by the Krone/korona as part of the introduction of the gold standard. In Austria, the Gulden was initially divided into 60 Kreuzer, and in Hungary, the...
s per year.
Van Swieten never married. Unlike his father, who remained a Protestant after coming to Austria, Gottfried converted to Roman Catholicism, the state religion of the empire.
Like many other prominent male Viennese (for example, as of 1784, Mozart
Mozart and Freemasonry
For the last seven years of his life Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a Mason. The Masonic order played an important role in his life and work.-Mozart's lodges:...
), van Swieten was a Freemason
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
.
Van Swieten owned a Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime...
, the famous "Art of Painting
The Art of Painting
The Art of Painting, also known as The Allegory of Painting, and or Painter in his Studio, is a famous 17th century oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer. Many art historians believe that it is an allegory of painting, hence the alternative title of the painting...
", which he inherited from his father. At the time it was not known that the painting was by Vermeer.
Relation to classical composers
The evidence suggests that Van Swieten's relationship with the great composers of his day was primarily one of patronagePatronage
Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings or popes have provided to musicians, painters, and sculptors...
. This means that the composers did not work for van Swieten on salary or commission, but received payments from him from time to time in the manner of a tip
Tip
A tip is an extra payment made to certain service sector workers in addition to the advertised price of the transaction. Such payments and their size are a matter of social custom. Tipping varies among cultures and by service industry...
. Thus, Joseph Haydn remarked to his biographer Griesinger
Georg August Griesinger
Georg August von Griesinger was a tutor and diplomat resident in Vienna during the late 18th and 19th centuries. He is remembered for his friendships with the composers Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and for the biography he wrote of Haydn....
that ""He patronized me occasionally with several ducats." This was a common way of paying musicians in the age of aristocracy; Haydn had received similar payments from his employer Nikolaus Esterházy
Nikolaus Esterházy
Nikolaus Esterházy was a Hungarian prince, a member of the famous Esterházy family. His building of palaces, extravagant clothing, and taste for opera and other grand musical productions led to his being given the title "the Magnificent"...
, though he also drew a salary. The patronage system also financed the early travels
Mozart family grand tour
The Mozart family grand tour was a journey through western Europe, undertaken by Leopold Mozart, his wife Anna Maria, and their musically gifted children Maria Anna and Wolfgang Amadeus from 1763 to 1766. At the start of the tour the children were aged eleven and seven respectively...
of the Mozart family.
The relationship between patron and artist was not one of social equals. An 1801 letter of Haydn to van Swieten, by then his longtime collaborator, used no second person pronouns, instead addressing the Baron as "Your Excellency"; presumably this reflected their everyday practice.
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
in 1768, when he was about 33 years old and Mozart a boy of 11. The Mozart family was visiting Vienna, hoping to achieve further fame and income following the earlier completion of their Grand Tour
Mozart family grand tour
The Mozart family grand tour was a journey through western Europe, undertaken by Leopold Mozart, his wife Anna Maria, and their musically gifted children Maria Anna and Wolfgang Amadeus from 1763 to 1766. At the start of the tour the children were aged eleven and seven respectively...
of Europe. According to Mozart's father Leopold
Leopold Mozart
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a German composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.-Childhood and student years:He was born in Augsburg, son of...
, Van Swieten was involved in the early planning of Wolfgang's ill-fated opera La Finta Semplice
La finta semplice
La finta semplice , K. 51 is an opera buffa in three acts for soloists and orchestra, composed in 1769 by then 12-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by the court poet Marco Coltellini based on an early work by Carlo Goldoni...
(the opera was later blocked by intrigues, and could be performed only in Salzburg).
In 1781, shortly after Mozart had moved to Vienna, van Swieten met him again: at the salon of Countess Thun, Mozart played extracts from his recent opera Idomeneo
Idomeneo
Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante is an Italian language opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, which had been set to music by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712...
, with van Swieten and other important officials in the audience; this event help instigate Mozart's commission for the opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, his first great success as a composer.
Sharing works by Bach and Handel
By 1782, van Swieten had invited Mozart to visit him regularly, in order to inspect and play his manuscripts of works by J. S. BachJohann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
and Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
, which he had collected during his diplomatic service in Berlin. As Mozart wrote to his father Leopold
Leopold Mozart
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a German composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.-Childhood and student years:He was born in Augsburg, son of...
(10 April 1782):
- I go every Sunday at twelve o'clock to the Baron van Swieten, where nothing is played but Handel and Bach. I am collecting at the moment the fugues of Bach--not only of SebastianJohann Sebastian BachJohann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, but also of EmanuelCarl Philipp Emanuel Bachright|250pxCarl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a German Classical period musician and composer, the fifth child and second son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach...
and FriedemannWilhelm Friedemann BachWilhelm Friedemann Bach , the second child and eldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach, was a German composer and performer...
.
Others also attended these gatherings, and van Swieten gave Mozart the task of transcribing a number of fugues for instrumental ensembles so that they could be performed before the assembled company. Mozart also sat at the keyboard and rendered the orchestral scores of Handel's oratorios in a spontaneous keyboard reduction (while, according to Joseph Weigl
Joseph Weigl
Joseph Weigl , was an Austrian composer and conductor.The son of Joseph Franz Weigl , the principal cellist in the orchestra of the Esterházy family, he was born in Eisenstadt and studied music under Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri...
, also singing one of the choral parts and correcting errors of the other singers).
It appears that encountering the work of the two great Baroque masters had a very strong effect on Mozart. Olleson suggests that the process took place in two stages. Mozart responded first with rather direct imitations, writing fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
s and suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...
s in the style of his models. These works "have the character of studies in contrapuntal
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
technique." Many were left incomplete, and even the completed ones are not often performed today; Olleson suggests they have "a dryness which is absent from most of [Mozart's] music." Later, Mozart assimilated Bach and Handel's music more fully into his own style, where it played a role in the creation of some of his most widely admired works. Of these, Olleson mentions the C Minor Mass (1784) and the chorale prelude
Chorale prelude
In music, a chorale prelude is a short liturgical composition for organ using a chorale tune as its basis. It was a predominant style of the German Baroque era and reached its culmination in the works of J.S. Bach, who wrote 46 examples of the form in his Orgelbüchlein.-Function:The liturgical...
sung by the two armored men in The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
(1791).
The Gesellschaft der Associierten
The keyboard-accompanied, one-on-a-part performances of Handel oratorios in van Swieten's rooms whetted the interest of van Swieten and his colleagues in full-scale performances of these works. To this end, in 1786 van Swieten organized the Gesellschaft der AssociiertenGesellschaft der Associierten
The Gesellschaft der Associierten was an association of music-loving noblemen centered in Vienna and founded by Baron Gottfried van Swieten in 1786...
("Society of Associated Cavaliers"), an organization of music-loving nobles. With the financial backing of this group, he was able to stage full-scale performances of major works. Generally, these concerts were first given in one of the palaces of the members or in the large hall of the Imperial Library, then in a public performance in the Burgtheater
Burgtheater
The Burgtheater , originally known as K.K. Theater an der Burg, then until 1918 as the K.K. Hofburgtheater, is the Austrian National Theatre in Vienna and one of the most important German language theatres in the world.The Burgtheater was created in 1741 and has become known as "die Burg" by the...
or Jahn's Hall
Jahn's Hall
Jahn's Hall was a concert hall in late 18th century Vienna. It was the property of a restaurateur/caterer named Ignaz Jahn, and seated "400 at the most". It is remembered as a performance venue for works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.-Ignaz Jahn:Jahn was born in Hungary in...
.
Mozart took on the task of conducting these concerts in 1788. He had previously been too busy with other tasks, but with a decline in his career prospects elsewhere he was willing to take up the post. In addition to having him conduct, the Gesellschaft commissioned Mozart to prepare four works by Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
for performance according to contemporary taste:
- Acis and Galatea, performed in (approximately) November 1788 in Jahn's HallJahn's HallJahn's Hall was a concert hall in late 18th century Vienna. It was the property of a restaurateur/caterer named Ignaz Jahn, and seated "400 at the most". It is remembered as a performance venue for works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.-Ignaz Jahn:Jahn was born in Hungary in...
. - The oratorioOratorioAn oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
MessiahMessiah (Handel)Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
, for which Mozart wrote new parts for flutes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trombones, as well as more notes for the timpani (1789). - the Ode for St Cecilia’s Day (1790)
- Alexander’s FeastAlexander's Feast (Handel)Alexander's Feast is an ode with music by George Frideric Handel set to a libretto by Newburgh Hamilton. Hamilton adapted his libretto from John Dryden's ode Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Music which had been written to celebrate Saint Cecilia's Day...
(1790)
Van Swieten was responsible for the translations from English into German of the libretti for these works, a task he would perform later on for Haydn (see below).
The Gesellschaft's concerts were an important source of income for Mozart during this time, when he was experiencing severe financial worries. Van Swieten's loyalty to Mozart at this time is also indicated by one of Mozart's letters of 1789, in which he reported that he had solicited subscriptions to a projected concert series (as he previously done with great success in the mid 1780s) and found that—after two weeks—the Baron was still the only subscriber.
Mozart's death and aftermath
When Mozart died (in the middle of the night of December 5, 1791), van Swieten showed up at his home and made the funeral arrangements. He may have temporarily helped support the surviving Mozarts, as ConstanzeConstanze Mozart
Constanze Mozart was the wife of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.-Early years:Constanze Weber was born in Zell im Wiesental. Her mother was Cäcilia Weber, née Stamm. Her father Fridolin Weber worked as a "double bass player, prompter and music copyist." Fridolin's half-brother was the father of composer...
's correspondence in several places mentions his "generosity". On 2 January 1793, he sponsored a performance of Mozart's Requiem
Requiem (Mozart)
The Requiem Mass in D minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composed in Vienna in 1791 and left unfinished at the composer's death. A completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had anonymously commissioned the piece for a requiem Mass to commemorate the...
as a benefit concert for Constanze; it yielded a profit of 300 ducats, a substantial sum. He was also reported to have helped arrange for the education of Mozart's son Karl
Karl Thomas Mozart
Karl Thomas Mozart was the second son, and the elder of the two surviving sons, of Wolfgang and Constanze Mozart. The other was Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart....
in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
.
Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
, who at the time was vexed by the hostile reception his work was receiving from certain Berlin critics. Van Swieten told him that his works were nevertheless in high demand in Berlin. Haydn mentioned this appreciatively in his 1776 autobiographical sketch
Autobiographical sketch (Haydn)
Joseph Haydn's Autobiographical sketch is the only autobiographical document ever prepared by this composer. Haydn wrote the sketch, which is about two pages long, at the request of Ignaz de Luca, who was preparing a volume of brief biographies of Austrian luminaries entitled Das gelehrte...
.
In 1790, with the death of Nikolaus Esterházy
Nikolaus Esterházy
Nikolaus Esterházy was a Hungarian prince, a member of the famous Esterházy family. His building of palaces, extravagant clothing, and taste for opera and other grand musical productions led to his being given the title "the Magnificent"...
, Haydn became semi-independent of his long-time employers the Esterházy family. He moved to Vienna and thus became more free to accept van Swieten's patronage. Olleson suggests that Haydn participated in the Handel concerts of the Gesellschaft der Associierten, and notes that already in 1793, van Swieten was trying to get him to write an oratorio (to a text by Johann Baptist von Alxinger
Austrian literature
Austrian literature is the literature written in Austria, which is mostly, but not exclusively, written in the German language. Some scholars speak about Austrian literature in a strict sense from the year 1806 on when Francis II disbanded the Holy Roman Empire and established the Austrian Empire...
. In 1794, when Haydn set off for London on his second journey there, he rode in a carriage provided to him by van Swieten.
On his return the following year, Haydn and van Swieten developed a close working relationship, with van Swieten serving as his librettist and artistic adviser. The collaboration began in 1795-1796 with the small oratorio version of The Seven Last Words of Christ
The Seven Last Words of Christ
The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour On the Cross is an orchestral work by Joseph Haydn, commissioned in 1785 or 1786 for the Good Friday service at Cádiz Cathedral in Spain...
. This work was composed by Haydn as an orchestral piece in 1785. In the course of his second London journey, in Passau
Passau
Passau is a town in Lower Bavaria, Germany. It is also known as the Dreiflüssestadt or "City of Three Rivers," because the Danube is joined at Passau by the Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north....
, he had heard a revised version amplified to include a chorus, prepared by the Passau Kapellmeister
Kapellmeister
Kapellmeister is a German word designating a person in charge of music-making. The word is a compound, consisting of the roots Kapelle and Meister . The words Kapelle and Meister derive from the Latin: capella and magister...
Joseph Friebert. Liking the idea, Haydn then prepared his own choral version, with van Swieten revising the lyrics used by Friebert.
Haydn and van Swieten then moved on to larger projects: the full-scale oratorios The Creation (1798) and The Seasons
The Seasons (Haydn)
The Seasons is an oratorio by Joseph Haydn .-Composition, premiere, and reception:Haydn was led to write The Seasons by the great success of his previous oratorio The Creation , which had become very popular and was in the course of being performed all over Europe...
(1801). Van Swieten translated (from English to German) and adapted the source material, which came from an anonymous English libretto and James Thomson, respectively. He also translated in the reverse direction, putting the German back into English in a way that would fit the rhythm of Haydn's music. This reverse translation, though often awkward, enabled the first published editions of these oratorios to serve both German- and English-speaking audiences.
In the margins of his libretti, Van Swieten made many specific artistic suggestions to Haydn about how various passages should be musically set, suggestions which in general Haydn "observed closely" (Olleson). One example is the moving episode in The Creation in which God tells the newly created beasts to be fruitful and multiply. Van Swieten's paraphrase of Genesis reads:
- Seid fruchtbar alle,
- Mehret euch!
- Bewohner der Luft, vermehret euch, und singt auf jedem Aste!
- Mehret euch, ihr Flutenbewohner
- Und füllet jede Tiefe!
- Seid fruchtbar, wachset, und mehret euch!
- Erfreuet euch in eurem Gott!
- Be fruitful all
- And multiply.
- Dwellers of the air, multiply and sing on every branch.
- Multiply, ye dwellers of the tides,
- And fill every deep.
- Be fruitful, grow, multiply,
- And rejoice in your God!
Haydn's musical setting stems from a suggestion of van Swieten's that the words should be sung by the bass soloist over an unadorned bass line. However, he only partly followed this suggestion, and after pondering, added to his bass line a rich layer of four-part harmony for divided cellos and violas, crucial to the final result.
The premieres of the three oratorios The Seven Last Words, The Creation and The Seasons all took place under the auspices of the Gesellschaft der Associierten, who also provided financial guarantees needed for Haydn to undertake long-term projects.
Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
during his early years in Vienna. Beethoven's experience with van Swieten was in some ways parallel to Mozart's about 12 years earlier. He visited the Baron in his home, where there were still regular gatherings centered around the music of Bach and Handel. Beethoven's early biographer Anton Schindler wrote:
- The evening gatherings at Swieten's home had a marked effect on Beethoven, for it was here that he first became acquainted with the music of Handel and Bach. He generally had to stay long after the other guests had departed, for his elderly host was musically insatiable and would not let the young pianist go until he had 'blessed the evening' with several Bach fugues.
Schindler's testimony is not generally trusted by modern musicologists (for discussion, see Anton Schindler); however, in the case of van Swieten there is concrete evidence preserved in the form of a letter from van Swieten to Beethoven. The letter dates from 1794, when Beethoven was 23 years old:
- Monday, December 15
- Herr Beethoven
- Alstergasse' No. 15
- c/o Prince Lichnowsky
- If you are not hindered this coming Wednesday, I wish to see you at my home at 8:30 in the evening with your nightcap in your bag. Give me your immediate answer.
- Swieten
Albrecht explains "nightcap" as follows: "This aspect of Swieten's invitation was as much practical and considerate as it was hospitable: if Beethoven had returned home after the citywide 9 p.m. curfew, he would have had to pay Lichnowsky's turnkey a fee to let him in the locked house doors."
Exposure to Bach and Handel's music seems to have been important to Beethoven just as it had been to Mozart. Ferdinand Ries
Ferdinand Ries
Ferdinand Ries was a German composer.- Life :Born into a musical family of Bonn, Ries was a friend and pupil of Beethoven who published in 1838 a collection of reminiscences of his teacher, co-written with Franz Wegeler...
later wrote, "Of all composers, Beethoven valued Mozart and Handel most highly, then [J.] S. Bach. ... Whenever I found him with music in his hands, or saw some lying on his desk, it was certain to be a composition by one of these idols."
In 1801, Beethoven dedicated his First Symphony
Symphony No. 1 (Beethoven)
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21, was dedicated to Baron Gottfried van Swieten, an early patron of the composer. The piece was published in 1801 by Hoffmeister & Kühnel of Leipzig...
to van Swieten.
Other associations
Earlier in his career, while in Berlin, van Swieten had also supported the career of Carl Philipp Emanuel BachCarl Philipp Emanuel Bach
right|250pxCarl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a German Classical period musician and composer, the fifth child and second son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach...
. Bach wrote the six Symphonies for String Orchestra (1773; H. 657-662) on commission from van Swieten; according to Goodwin and Clark, the commission specified that "the composer's creative imagination might have free rein, unfettered by any regard for technical difficulties". The third set of Bach's Sonaten für Kenner und Liebhaber (1781)is dedicated to van Swieten.
Johann Nikolaus Forkel
Johann Nikolaus Forkel
Johann Nikolaus Forkel , was a German musician, musicologist and music theorist.-Biography:...
, the first biographer of Bach, dedicated his book to van Swieten.
Van Swieten and the social customs of music
Van Swieten is thought to have played a role in changing the social customs of music. As William Weber points out, in van Swieten's time, it was still the normal practice for performers to play mostly newly composed music; often music that had been written by the performers themselves. The practice of cultivating the music of previous decades and centuries only gradually increased. By about 1870, older works had come to dominate the scene.This shift began in van Swieten's own century. Some of the early cases of performers playing older music are pointed out by Weber: "In France the tragedies lyriques of Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...
and his successors were performed regularly up through the 1770s. In England music of the sixteenth century was revived in the Academy of Ancient Music
Academy of Ancient Music
The Academy of Ancient Music is a period-instrument orchestra based in Cambridge, England. Founded by harpsichordist Christopher Hogwood in 1973, it was named after a previous organisation of the same name of the 18th century. The musicians play on either original instruments or modern copies of...
, and many of the works of George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
remained in performance after his death in 1759." As Weber notes, van Swieten was one of the pioneers of this trend, particularly in his work reviving the music of Bach and Handel, and in his encouragement of contemporary composers to learn from the old masters and create new work that would be inspired by them.
Van Swieten expressed some of his own views about the value of earlier music in the pages of the first volume of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung was a German-language periodical published in the 19th century. Comini has called it "the foremost German-language musical periodical of its time"...
:
- I belong, as far as music is concerned, to a generation that considered it necessary to study an art form thoroughly and systematically before attempting to practice it. I find in such a conviction food for the spirit and for the heart, and I return to it for strength every time I am oppressed by new evidence of decadence in the arts. My principal comforters at such times are Handel and the Bachs and those few great men of our own day who, taking these as their masters, follow resolutely in the same quest for greatness and truth.
DeNora describes the devotion to earlier masters as a "fringe" view during the 1780s, but eventually others were following Swieten's lead, particularly with the success of The Creation and The Seasons. The music publisher Johann Ferdinand von Schönfeld wrote in 1796:
- [Van Swieten is], as it were, looked upon as a patriarch of music. He has taste only for the great and exalted. ... When he attends a concert our semi-connoisseurs never take their eyes off him, seeking to read in his features, not always intelligible to every one, what ought to be their opinion of the music.
A corollary of a "taste for the great and exalted" is the idea that concert audiences should maintain silence, so that each note can be heard by all. This was not the received view in the 18th century, but was clearly van Swieten's opinion. In his 1856 Mozart biography, Otto Jahn
Otto Jahn
Otto Jahn , was a German archaeologist, philologist, and writer on art and music.He was born at Kiel...
reported the following anecdote from Sigismund Neukomm:
- [He] exerted all his influence in the cause of music, even for so subordinate an end as to enforce silence and attention during musical performances. Whenever a whispered conversation arose among the audience, his excellence would rise from his seat in the first row, draw himself up to his full majestic height, measure the offenders with a long, serious look and then very slowly resume his seat. The proceeding never failed of its effect.
Assessment
Van Swieten has not fared well in assessments of his personal demeanor. In a frequently reprinted remark, Haydn remarked to Georg August GriesingerGeorg August Griesinger
Georg August von Griesinger was a tutor and diplomat resident in Vienna during the late 18th and 19th centuries. He is remembered for his friendships with the composers Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and for the biography he wrote of Haydn....
that van Swieten's symphonies were "as stiff as the man himself." He maintained a firm social distance between himself and the composers he patronized, a distance rooted in the system of aristocracy
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
still in force in the Austria in his day. Sigismund Neukomm wrote that he was "not so much a friend as a very self-opinionated patron of Haydn and Mozart." Olleson suggests that "in his own time van Swieten won little affection" (adding: "but almost universal respect."). He also was not close to his fellow aristocrats; although his public roles in music and government were prominent, he avoided salon society, and after 1795 expressed content that he lived in "complete retirement".
Concerning van Swieten's contributions to music, posthumous judgment seems most critical of his role as librettist. Olleson observes that in the three successive oratorio libretti that van Swieten prepared for Haydn, his own involvement in the writing was greater for each than in the previous one. According to Olleson, "many critics would say that this progressive originality was disastrous."
Even van Swieten's musical taste has been harshly criticized, but here the consensus is perhaps more positive. Van Swieten seems to have singled out for his favor—from among many composers whose reputation is now obscure—the composers that posterity has judged very highly. As Olleson notes, "One could scarcely quarrel with his choice of composers of the past, Sebastian Bach and Handel; and of those of his own time, Gluck, Emanuel Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven."
Van Swieten in popular culture
Unlike his protégés Mozart and Beethoven, van Swieten is seldom portrayed in works of modern popular culture. He does appear as a minor character in Peter ShafferPeter Shaffer
Sir Peter Levin Shaffer is an English dramatist and playwright, screenwriter and author of numerous award-winning plays, several of which have been filmed.-Early life:...
's famous play Amadeus
Amadeus
Amadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer.It is based on the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, highly fictionalized.Amadeus was first performed in 1979...
and in the Miloš Forman
Miloš Forman
Jan Tomáš Forman , better known as Miloš Forman , is a Czech-American director, screenwriter, professor, and an emigrant from Czechoslovakia. Two of his films, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, are among the most celebrated in the history of film, both gaining him the Academy Award for...
film
Amadeus (film)
Amadeus is a 1984 period drama film directed by Miloš Forman and written by Peter Shaffer. Adapted from Shaffer's stage play Amadeus, the story is based loosely on the lives of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, two composers who lived in Vienna, Austria, during the latter half of the...
based on it.
See also
- FugueFugueIn music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
- The Seasons (Haydn)The Seasons (Haydn)The Seasons is an oratorio by Joseph Haydn .-Composition, premiere, and reception:Haydn was led to write The Seasons by the great success of his previous oratorio The Creation , which had become very popular and was in the course of being performed all over Europe...
-- The "Frenchified trash" episode; a quarrel between Haydn and van Swieten.
Other cited references
- Abert, Hermann (2007) W. A. Mozart. Translated by Stewart Spencer with additions by Cliff Eisen. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300072236, 9780300072235.
- Albrecht, Theodor (1996) Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803210337, 9780803210332.
- Clive, Peter H. (2001) Beethoven and his world: a biographical dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198166729, 9780198166726.
- DeNora, Tia (1998) Beethoven and the construction of genius: musical politics in Vienna, 1792-1803. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0520211588, 9780520211582.
- Clive, Peter (1993) Mozart and his circle. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Deutsch, Otto Erich (1965) Mozart: A Documentary Biography. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
- Goodwin, A. and G. N. Clark (1976) The New Cambridge modern history. Cambridge University Press Archive. ISBN 0521291089, 9780521291088.
- Griesinger, Georg AugustGeorg August GriesingerGeorg August von Griesinger was a tutor and diplomat resident in Vienna during the late 18th and 19th centuries. He is remembered for his friendships with the composers Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and for the biography he wrote of Haydn....
(1810) Biographical Notes Concerning Joseph Haydn. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. English translation by Vernon Gotwals, in Haydn: Two Contemporary Portraits, Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press. - Halliwell, Ruth (1998) The Mozart Family: Four Lives in a Social Context, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198163711.
- Heartz, Daniel (2008) Mozart, Haydn and early Beethoven, 1781-1802. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393066347, 9780393066340.
- Hughes, Rosemary (1970) Haydn. London: Dent.
- Keefe, Simon P. (2003) The Cambridge companion to Mozart. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521001927, 9780521001922.
- Larsen, Jens Peter and Georg Feder (1997) The New Grove Haydn. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393303594, 9780393303599
- Kramer, Richard (2008) Unfinished Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195326822, 9780195326826.
- Petschar, Hans (n.d.) "History of the Austrian National Library: A multimedia Essay." Formerly posted on the website of the Austrian National Library (the successor institution to the Imperial Library) at www.onb.ac.at/ev/about/history/history_text.htm. Retrieved 1/31/2008 from Google cache.
- Robbins Landon, H. C. (1959) The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn. London: Barrie and Rockliff. Scanned version of text available on line at http://www.archive.org/stream/collectedcorresp007831mbp/collectedcorresp007831mbp_djvu.txt.
- Schindler, Anton (1860/1996) Beethoven As I Knew Him, 3rd edition. Translated by Constance S. Jolly. Courier Dover Publications. ISBN 0486292320, 9780486292328.
- Shaffer, Peter (2003) Amadeus. Samuel French. ISBN 9780573605727
- Solomon, Maynard (1995) Mozart: A Life. Harper Collins.
- Till, Nicholas (1995) Mozart and the Enlightenment: truth, virtue, and beauty in Mozart's operas. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393313956, 9780393313956.
- Tomita, Yo (2000) Bach Reception in Pre-Classical Vienna: Baron van Swieten's Circle Edits the 'Well-Tempered Clavier. Music & Letters 81:364-391.
- Waldoff, Jessica Pauline (2006) Recognition in Mozart's operas. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195151976.
- Weber, William (1984) "The Contemporaneity of Eighteenth-Century Musical Taste," The Musical Quarterly LXX(2):175-194.
- Webster, James (2005) "The sublime and the pastoral in The Creation and The Seasons," in Caryl Leslie Clark, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Haydn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521833477.
- Williams, Henry Smith (1907) The Historians' History of the World. The History association.
Further reading
- Braunbehrens, Volkmar (1990) Mozart in Vienna. Translated from the German by Timothy Bell. New York: Grove and Weidenfeld. Includes a chapter covering van Swieten and his times.
- Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, online edition, article "Gottfried van Swieten". Copyright 2008 by Oxford University Press. The article is written by Edward Olleson.
- Olleson, Edward (1963) "Gottfried van Swieten: Patron of Haydn and Mozart," Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 89th Sess. (1962–1963), pp. 63–74. Available online from JSTORJSTORJSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...
.
External links
- Program notes on Mozart's version of Handel's Messiah, from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra
- Program notes on the Proms 2006 performance of Mozart's version of Handel's Alexander’s Feast, from The English Concert written by the conductor Andrew ManzeAndrew ManzeAndrew Manze is an English violinist and conductor.As a guest conductor Manze has regular relationships with a number of leading international orchestras including the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Munich Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra,...