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24 MOZART / BEETHOVEN / SCHUBERT
Vienna in 1791 was home to the geniuses of Europe, and the
excitable city nursed an already dying Classicism.
There were the Theatre and Opera House under the auspices of the court, but also
chamber music, sheltered in the salons of princes, then symphonic music making
a timid appearance on the scene, like an echo of the envied orchestras of Paris and
Mannheim. But Vienna in the late eighteenth century was still more than that. After
the
Sturm und Drang
crisis of the years 1770-75, the city suffered from a political malaise
and the resonances of a Parisian revolution that created a climate of fear. The nascent
bourgeoisie would no longer tolerate immutable regimes.
The myth of the hero was about to be born. Alone against all comers, he became a
substitute for monarchs. One of his favourite weapons was the piano, which replaced
the harpsichord. The fortepiano and the harpsichord did not belong to the same
philosophical order. Under the fingers of Haydn andMozart, the newkeyboard cried out
for the public’s attention. Thanks to the instrument makers – Graf, Stein, Silbermann,
and soonBroadwood, Érard, and Pleyel –who loaned and sometimesmade gifts of their
creations to composers, the increased compass and power of the piano conquered new
and ever larger halls.
Concertos, sonatas, variations of all kinds were no longer written for sheer
entertainment. Musical contests, like the legendary one that pitted Mozart against
Clementi in front of the Emperor in late 1781, explored newharmonies and disclosed ever
bolder secrets.
In Vienna, Mozart discovered the fugues of Bach – ‘At last I’ve learnt
something’, he is said to have exclaimed – but also asserted a new freedom
and expressiveness
.
Empfindsamkeit
, that extreme sensibility still decked in the
galant style, stripped the artist naked. As new scores were published, the traditional
formulas began to fade.And since notes could at last be sustained, andmelodies could
sing, freed from the shackles of the Alberti bass, the Viennese composer explored a
more fluid and adventurous musical discourse.