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The Influence of the Viennese Popular Comedy on Haydn and Mozart

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1973

Eva Badura-Skoda
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Extract

It is well known that during the Baroque period an important role in Vienna's cultural life was played, not only by the commedia dell'arte, but by all kinds of comedies, both Italian and German, in which music was an essential ingredient. Theatre history in Vienna during the eighteenth century cannot be separated from musical history, since music, like dance and pantomime, had been an integral part of the popular theatre for centuries. It was not at all exceptional for the operetta Der neue krumme Teufel of 1758, for which Haydn composed the music, to include a pantomime (also with music by Haydn) and an Italian intermezzo (the composer of which has not yet been identified). Also typical of most Viennese popular dramas during the eighteenth century was the traditional combination of comic and serious elements.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 100 , 1973 , pp. 185 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 ‘Music in the Viennese Popular Theatre of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, xcviii (1971–2), 101–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See Rommel, Otto, Die Maschinenkomödie (Barocktradition im österreichisch-bayrischen Volkstheater, i), Leipzig, 1935, pp. 85 ff.Google Scholar

3 For detailed information, See Zechmeister, G., Die Wiener Theater nächst der Burg und nächst dem Karntnerthor von 1747–1776 (unpublished dissertation), University of Vienna, 1969; and F. Hadamowsky, ‘Leitung, Verwaltung und ausubende Künstler des deutschen und franzosischen Schauspiels, der italienischen ernsten und heiteren Oper, des Balletts und der musikalischen Akademien am Burgtheater … und am Kärntnerthortheater … in Wien 1754–1764’, Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Wiener Theaterforschung, xii (1960), 113–33.Google Scholar

4 Allerneueste Nachricht vom Röm. Kayserl. Hof, Hanover, 1730, pp. 383–4.Google Scholar

5 Ed. Robert Haas, Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich, lxiv (Jahrgang xxxiii/1), Vienna, 1926; and ed. Camillo Schoenbaum and Herbert Zeman, ibid., cxxi (1971).Google Scholar

6 ‘Teutsche Comedie Arien’, Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, iii (1920–21), 412.Google Scholar

7 See Eva Badura-Skoda, ‘“Teutsche Comoedie-Arien” und Joseph Haydn’, Der junge Haydn: Bericht der internationalen Arbeitstagung der Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Graz, 1970, ed. Vera Schwarz (Beiträge zur Aufführungspraxis, i), Graz, 1972, pp. 59 ff.Google Scholar

8 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, codex 19063, No. 1; Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich, cxxi. 17–22.Google Scholar

9 See for example the aria ‘Verdopple deine Wuth, ach grausames Geschicke’, codex 19063, No. 3; Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich, cxxi. 30–36.Google Scholar

10 From the bound volume containing thirteen of Kurz's comedies in Vienna, Stadtbibliothek, 22200 A, No. 8.Google Scholar

11 Haydn: Two Contemporary Portraits, transl. and ed. Vemon Gotwals, Madison, Wisconsin, 1968, p. 14.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., pp. 97–98.Google Scholar

13 … ungefähr im 21. Jahre seines Alters', wrongly translated by Gotwals ‘about twenty-one years old’.Google Scholar

14 According to C. Bertuch (Bemerkungen auf einer Reise aus Thuringen nach Wien im Winter 1805–1806, Vienna, 1808, ii. 179) an Italian count was parodied and succeeded in having the opera censored or temporarily banned.Google Scholar

15 The first documented performance took place on 29 May 1753; See Hadamowsky, F., ‘Das Spieljahr 1753/54 des Theaters nächst dem Kämtnerthor und des Theaters nächst der k.k. Burg’, Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Wiener Theaterforschung, xi (1959), 8. But the date could be as early as 1751 if Haydn remembered his age correctly when reporting the story of his collaboration with Kurz to Griesinger. In favour of a date of first performance before Easter 1752, often mentioned in secondary literature, is the fact that Der krumme Teufel is not found in the contemporary Repertoire des theatres de la ville de Vienne depuis l'armée 1752 jusqu'a l'année 1757 (Vienna, 1757), where it should have been listed, had the 1753 performance been the premiere and not merely a revival.Google Scholar

16 Vienna, Stadtbibliothek, 22200 A.Google Scholar

17 Joseph Haydn, i (Leipzig, 1878), 143. Apparently following Pohl in this error are V. Helfert (‘Zur Geschichte des Wiener Singspiels’, Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, v (1922–23), 200) and the author of the most recent biography of Kurz, Ulf Birbaumer (Das Werk des Jos. F. v. Kurz-Bernardon und seine szenische Realisierung, Vienna, 1971, pp. 204 ff.).Google Scholar

18 See Drei Haydn Kataloge in Faksimile, ed. Jens Peter Larsen, Copenhagen, 1941, p. 116.Google Scholar

19 Robert Haas, ‘Die Musik in der Wiener deutschen Stegreifkomödie’, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, xii (1925), 56. Haas also discovered that Kurz borrowed Goldoni aria texts not only for the intermezzo but for the main comedy as well.Google Scholar

20 Another unsolved problem concerns the pantomime mentioned in the libretto to Der neue krumme Teufel: was it composed for the original version or for the revival?—or was a different pantomime written for each occasion ?Google Scholar

21 See Irmgard Becker-Glauch, ‘Die Kirchenmusik des jungen Haydn’, Der junge Haydn, pp. 74 ff.Google Scholar

22 Ed. H. C. Robbins Landon, London, 1961.Google Scholar

23 For a more detailed discussion of Die reisende Ceres, see Eva Badura-Skoda, ‘An Unknown Singspiel by Joseph Haydn?’, International Masicological Society: Report of the Eleventh Congress Copenhagen 1972, i. 236–9.Google Scholar

24 Various problems connected with Die reisende Ceres are still to be resolved. A libretto preserved in Lambach has a cast of five, whereas the music of the Seitenstetten manuscript calls for only four singers. The Seitenstetten version may thus be a subsequent adaptation for reduced forces. Until recently only three of the Seitenstetten voice-parts were known, but the fourth was discovered in 1974. Still missing is one page of each of the oboe parts.Google Scholar

25 Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, ed. Wilhelm A. Bauer and Otto Erich Deutsch, Cassel &c., 1962 ff., i. 254; part only in The Letters of Mozart and his Family, transl. and ed. Emily Anderson, 2nd edn., London, 1966, i. 80.Google Scholar

26 Briefe, iii. 138; Letters, ii. 751.Google Scholar

27 26 September 1781: Briefe, iii. 162; Letters, ii. 768.Google Scholar

28 The fragment is reproduced in full in Jahn, W. A. Mozart, Leipzig, 1856, ii, 515–9, and in Briefe, iv. 168–73.Google Scholar

29 See Mozart's letter to Gottfried von Jacquin, 15 January 1787: Briefe, iv. 11; Letters, ii. 904.Google Scholar