Beginnings

The influence of the Hapsburgs stretched far and wide, geographically as well as culturally. Vienna was a cultural crossroads and acted as a magnet for composers from parts of Germany, the Czech lands, present-day Slovenia and northern Italy. In the eighteenth century the region of Lombardy was a Hapsburg dominion and this goes some way towards explaining the early stylistic development of the symphony in Vienna, which owes much to the three-movement operatic overture of the type found in the work of Leo, Sammartini, Jommelli and Galuppi (this repertoire is considered in more detail in chapters 3 and 6). Their overtures during the 1740s and 1750s typically feature in their opening movements a clearly coordinated approach to thematic and tonal statement, contrast and return in which uniformity of baroque rhythmic patterning has been sacrificed for an overall symmetry of four- and eight-bar phrase and cadence schemes delineated by relatively slow and regular harmonic rhythms and an almost stereotypical functional hierarchy within the orchestration (leading melodies stated by the upper strings, perhaps reinforced by a pair of oboes, to which an energetic bass line of lower strings – perhaps with bassoon, though not necessarily a sixteen-foot string bass – acted as a counter-pole with a harmonic filler often supplied by long notes in the horns, doubled, with a dash of rhythmic activity, by the violas). While binary designs in the first movements of Italian opera overtures are still numerically in the minority (behind ritornello forms) by mid-century, such traits made no small impact on contemporary Viennese symphonists.

Contrast between two principal themes is particularly common in the work of the Italian-trained Georg Christoph Wagenseil, whose early career in Vienna was substantially as an operatic composer.⁴ Almost all of Wagenseil’s symphonies are in three movements, and the fact that many were published widely (both in France and England) shows that their appeal transcended the local circumstances of their production for the court of Maria Theresa. Among such works are his Six Simphonies a Quatre Parties Avec les Cors de Chasses Ad libitum . . . Oeuvre III . . . (Paris, c. 1760). At the foot of the title page is the comment ‘On vend les Cors de Chasses séparément’ – a token of the relative hierarchy within the orchestral texture that was to remain fundamental to the conception of the Viennese symphony for some years to come. Perhaps their popularity rested partly on their relatively slight, yet convincingly proportioned dimensions, especially in respect of thematic recapitulation, partly on the catchy and unpretentious minuet finales with which many conclude.

Wagenseil, court composer from 1739 until his death, was a crucial figure in the development of the symphony.⁵ He composed over seventy such works, the majority of which are in three movements: fast–slow–fast (typically a 3/8 time or 3/4 time minuet). In terms of formal organisation, he favoured full, rather than curtailed, recapitulations, allowing space for thematic and tonal contrast sometimes featuring subdominant recapitulations and digressions to the minor mode. That suggests a forward-looking mindset (along with his adoption of a galant idiom, especially within the central slow movements), which had consigned the undifferentiated surface and harmonic rhythms of baroque ritornello practice to the past. Ultimately, Wagenseil achieved a convincing level of segmentation within his movement forms that was to bear further fruit in the symphonies of later Viennese generations.

Wagenseil’s Viennese contemporary Georg Matthias Monn (1717–50) was perhaps less influential, both internationally and locally.⁶ None of his symphonies was published during his lifetime, though that is not a reflection of their general quality, which is comparable with Wagenseil, especially in the design of first movements, which frequently have two clearly defined and contrasting themes, a clear sense of periodic phrasing and tonal logic (including, as in Wagenseil, excursions to the minor mode) and full recapitulations. Monn’s first-movement forms arguably feature a more strongly defined developmental purpose to the material immediately following the central dominant or equivalent cadence than those of his contemporary. Monn is credited with composing the earliest-known four-movement symphony (in which the minuet comes in third place). This work in D major, dating from 1740, is however the only four-movement symphony in Monn’s surviving output of sixteen and although it survives in autograph, the designation ‘sinfonia’ is in a later hand. It must therefore be regarded as atypical, and while many of the emergent features of what may loosely be termed the ‘Viennese classical style’ are to be found in the symphonies of Monn and Wagenseil, the four-movement model apparently arose in Mannheim, where it was gradually established in the symphonies of Johann Stamitz between 1740 and 1750,⁷ works widely circulated in print across musical Europe and ultimately influential on Viennese composers too.

Developments

So far the contribution of what may be termed the ‘first-generation’ Viennese symphonists has been investigated through an assessment of constructional features, especially first movements, the organisation of which may be read in part as a record of advancing coordination in the handling of internal elements, and in part as a record of transmission of material between different genres (opera overture, but equally church sonata and partita, to symphony). That complex generic trace reflects something of the relationship of the composer with his material, either on a point-to-point scale or on a broader sweep of (usually three) successive movements. But whether constructional features such as the separation of thematic presentation into two contrasting aspects, or the coordination of thematic return with tonal return were dictated in any sense by the circumstances of their presentation in court, chamber or church we may doubt. At this stage in its development, performance settings for the Viennese symphony did not determine it compositionally to a strong degree. That is to say, for the earliest Viennese symphonists, no stable tradition of listening determined in advance their manipulation of musical materials as a response. By contrast, effects such as Haydn’s use of high horns in his Symphony No. 60, the shocking fortissimo chords in the Andante of the ‘Surprise’ Symphony, No. 94, Mozart’s theatrical late recapitulation of the opening theme (premier coup d’archet) in the first movement of the ‘Paris’ Symphony, K 297, Beethoven’s exhilarating recapitulation of the main theme over a dominant pedal in the first movement of the Symphony No. 7 – all of these are rhetorical elements of classical symphonic language and derive from usage in a concert situation in which rhetoric was expected by attentive listeners. In 1760 that was still not really the case. On the title page of Wagenseil’s Op. 3 symphonies of c. 1760 referred to above, the four (string) parts are sufficient on their own without the two horns, whose parts could be purchased separately and therefore optionally. Clearly in such a context the contribution of the horns is not so essential to the effect as it was some forty years later in the first-movement recapitulation of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. Wagenseil’s musical materials do not exist in an essential relation with their representation in sound; in Beethoven’s they most assuredly do. That observation is an interesting marker of generic difference (and distance travelled).

What we may establish as generic traits of the symphony in Vienna by c. 1760 include:

1. 1. A tendency to derive first-movement structures from binary form models, rather than ritornellos, usually involving at least two contrasting themes, both of which are recapitulated, and negligible ‘development’ of material immediately after the central double-bar.

2. 2. An emerging recognition of the importance of key contrast and the vital role of cadential punctuation in achieving this; clear separation between different kinds of thematic functionality, contained within a steadily moving harmonic rhythm; symmetry and proportion as regulative elements of the structure, which operates in an interconnected way on the levels of local phrase, sentence and paragraph. Contrast, rather than uniformity, became a key element of coherence.

3. 3. A succession of three (fast–slow–fast) rather than four movements, the third (final) movement often resembling a minuet: short, unpretentious and generally in binary form.

4. 4. A presumed hierarchy of orchestral functions, in which winds are secondary to strings, and in which horn parts are often dispensable. At this stage, details that were soon to become relatively standard, such as the four-part string basis (the bass part comprising cello, string bass and potentially a bassoon), supplemented by a pair of oboes (or flutes), and a pair of horns, were still in flux; Wagenseil’s published symphonies include his Op. 2 (1756) entitled ‘trios en symphonie’ (i.e. trio-symphonies for two violins and bass).

At this point in its development, the Viennese symphony as a genre exists somewhere between internally conceived constructional boundaries on the one hand and a plethora of contrasting performance contexts on the other. The former are emerging into quite clear patterns. By contrast, the latter must surely have detracted from the establishment of a clear generic focus. There was, as yet, no single institutional context for its presentation, and what we may call the ‘practice of public reception’ counts for a lot in this regard. While the expressive rhetoric of the later Viennese symphony was significantly shaped in the concert hall, presentations of the works of Monn or Wagenseil and their contemporaries within courtly, and primarily social, contexts tended to diminish recognition of an independent generic value. For instance, in a performance of a symphony as a kind of background music at a Viennese banquet, any guests who were paying careful attention, however fleetingly, to the symphony would probably have related what they heard to their existing social experience of music, and the likeliest connection would have been with the opera overture. Thus, their reception perspective is not likely to have exerted any strong generic impetus upon symphonic development. Likewise, the performance of symphonies – for example, the four extant Sinfonie Pastorale of Leopold Hofmann (1738–93), or his small-scale B-flat symphony of c. 1763 (Badley B♭1)⁸ – within Catholic liturgical contexts (in which the focus is on the celebration of the Eucharist, to which, momentarily, the music is a background) will not have assisted the symphony’s generic separation from the church sonata, from which, in formal terms, Viennese symphonies trace some of their material ingredients. Moreover, performance practice impinges strongly on reception: surviving (usually single) sets of manuscript playing parts, for instance in monastery libraries, repeatedly hint that the numbers of strings involved in performances of symphonies in such contexts were small (sometimes even one to a part), suggesting that there was no strong distinction to be made between a symphony and other genres of predominantly string chamber music. For example, when he first joined the musical establishment at Esterhaza (1761), Haydn’s orchestral complement amounted to a total of thirteen to fifteen players: six violins, one viola, one cello, one bass, two oboes, two horns and a bassoon (some flexibility existed within this scheme, since most of the players could offer more than one instrument: a flute, for instance is employed in Symphony No. 6, Le Matin). Subsequently, during the 1770s, the size of the Esterhaza band increased, and there are documented performances of symphonies in Vienna by the Tonkünstlersocietät (founded 1771) with sizeable numbers of performers. But the link between the symphony genre and chamber music persisted remarkably long. At the end of the century, Haydn’s ‘London’ symphonies were subsequently issued in various chamber-music arrangements by Johann Peter Salomon (most popularly for flute, string quartet and piano ad libitum). The difference between this situation (in which Haydn’s symphonies could still be a chamber-music experience) and the looser generic situation of the 1750s was that these were clearly adaptations for domestic purposes of something originally experienced in a public concert setting and whose expressive parameters were decisively dictated by that original setting. In the case of the early Viennese symphony it is not so clear from the music that there was any or much difference between a domestic and any other imaginable forum of presentation in the first place.

All of this prompts the realisation that we must look elsewhere for reception stimuli impinging upon the development of the Viennese symphonic genre. Arguably, this is to be found in an examination of influence. The institutional framework for musical instruction in eighteenth-century Vienna revolved around the choir schools (for instance, at St Stephen’s Cathedral, or the Michaelerkirche) and, ultimately, it was centred on the personnel of the Hofkapelle. Among the more important connections are these: Fux (1660–1741) was Wagenseil’s teacher; in turn Wagenseil taught at least one member of a later generation of Viennese symphonists, Leopold Hofmann; Dittersdorf’s (1739–99) teacher was the Imperial Kapellmeister, Giuseppe Bonno (1711–88); Dittersdorf is said to have contributed to Johann Vaňhal’s (1739–1813) musical training after the latter had moved to Vienna in 1760–1; Josef Leopold Eybler (1765–1846) trained initially at St Stephen’s, and subsequently with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger (1736–1809), who had received his training in the choir school of the Augustinian monastery at Klosterneuburg and subsequently as a pupil of Monn; Albrechtsberger (revered by Mozart as an organist) became a colleague of Hofmann, succeeding him as Kapellmeister at St Stephen’s in 1793; his most famous pupil was Beethoven (from 1794, his previous teacher, Haydn, having left Vienna temporarily for his second London visit). In such a close-knit environment, it is understandable that the generic hallmarks of the Viennese symphony might to a large extent have been determined internally, in a progressive, influential dialogue between professionals working with the materials of their symphonic craft and defining the genre constructionally from within. That ongoing dialogue bore fruit in the increasing sophistication with which segmented formal functions within movements (especially first movements) are handled in the work of, for instance, Hofmann, Ordonez, Vaňhal and Dittersdorf. This ultimately led to a less casual relation between the different movements, in particular to a balanced conception in which the finale was regarded as providing a firm sense of closure to the three- (or four-) movement work, a kind of counterpole to the opening movement. As a result, the finale was now far less frequently in binary form, longer, and tending towards rondo structure, or, from the 1770s, sonata-rondo (in which sonata form maps onto the tonal logic of the refrains and episodes), and occasionally fugal types or even themes and variations.

Understanding this journey is not without its frustrations, principally because the surviving sources do not allow us to piece together a reliable chronology. Almost half of Leopold Hofmann’s fifty symphonies – a significant number of which may have been primarily intended for liturgical use, to judge from the quantity of sources surviving in monasteries such as Göttweig – have four (not three) movements; he was among the earliest of Viennese composers to adopt this expanded outline (though we should remember that some of these are in a slow–fast–slow–fast sequence and that others are effectively three-movement works with slow introductions).⁹ More contemporary sources survive for Hofmann’s symphonies than for any other composer of the era save Haydn and Pleyel (like those of his teacher, Wagenseil, Hofmann’s symphonies appeared in print in Paris; four were published there by Sieber in 1760, for example). But a chronology for his symphonies is not easy to establish with certainty, and it is not safe to assume that, for instance, his three-movement works were superseded by four-movement ones. Perhaps the innovatory aspect of a four-movement plan contributed to their popularity, but it is perhaps their sure command of texture and form that guaranteed their wide appeal. Concertante elements are occasionally found, for example in the F major symphony of c. 1760 (Badley F2), a three-movement work whose second-placed minuet features a central trio specifically for solo viola, cello and bass, contrasting with surrounding tuttis (strings and oboes). Similar concertante elements are found elsewhere within the emergent Viennese symphonic tradition, notably in Haydn’s slightly later programmatic set, Le Matin, Le Midi and Le Soir (c. 1761–2) and subsequently in such works as the Larghetto of Dittersdorf’s four-movement A minor Symphony (Grave a1, c. 1770–5),¹⁰ which features prominent cello solos along with punctuating interjections for a pair of horns, and the Adagio molto of Vaňhal’s D major Symphony (Bryan D17)¹¹ of 1779 (in three, not four, movements), which may as well be the slow movement of an oboe concerto. Hofmann also preceded Haydn in the employment of a slow introduction to first movements, for example in the D major symphony of c. 1762 (Badley D4), in which the relatively lightweight and pithy character of the extremely economical Allegro molto is contextualised by a preceding Adagio of considerable gravitas. The main Allegro molto discriminates effectively between its primary, secondary, connective and cadential materials. Interestingly, there are quite clear resemblances between the second-movement Andante and the opening Adagio introduction. Interrelations between thematic elements is likewise a characteristic of the symphonies of Florian Leopold Gassmann (whose position as Imperial Kapellmeister Hofmann failed to secure on Gassmann’s death in 1774),¹² though here the references are typically between the successive themes within an exposition in a quasi-organic succession as the tonal narrative away from the opening tonic unfolds.

For the Viennese symphony emergent between c. 1760 and 1780 (the period spanned by the production of symphonies by Dittersdorf and his contemporary, Vaňhal), growing confidence in the coordination and proportioning of theme, rhythm, harmony, tonality and texture contributes substantially to the impression of an overall trend towards a narrative whose unfolding features emerge as a logical succession of elements specifically designed to be noticed by listeners: Vaňhal’s C major Sinfonia Comista (Bryan C11, c. 1775–8) affords a clear example. In the concertante Larghetto of Dittersdorf’s A minor Symphony, mentioned above, repeating cadential refrains supplied by the two horns are not simply an attractive colouristic device, contrasting with the solo cello’s episodes, but are precisely coordinated with the arrival of moments of tonal articulation upon which the overall form depends. Both sound and structure are surely meant to be recognised by a listener; an element of meaning derives from dialogue between the abstract musical conception and a listener paying attention to it in real time. That listener would also have noted the currency of Dittersdorf’s opening Vivace (which employs three horns), which is firmly in the tempestuous Sturm-und-Drang idiom that was sweeping Viennese music in the early 1770s. Sturm und Drang is a feature too of some symphonies by Vaňhal from this period. His G minor Symphony (Bryan g1), published in Paris in 1773–4, but perhaps dating from the late 1760s, is a case in point. It makes prominent use of tone colour (notably two pairs of horns tuned in G and high B flat, and concertante parts for violin and viola in the second of its four movements, Andante cantabile) in addition to the expressive harmonic colours obtainable from the minor mode, its driving syncopations and sudden dramatic contrasts of dynamic, register, texture and accentuation, reminiscent in character of more famous symphonies in G minor by Haydn (Hob. I:39) and Mozart (K 183). Moreover, Vaňhal’s orchestration is pioneering. In a D minor Symphony (Bryan d2), one of five symphonies of his advertised for sale by Breitkopf in Supplement XII (1778) of their Thematic Catalogue, he uses no fewer than five horns (in two pairs, crooked in F and D, with an additional one in A), giving him a wide range of notes and once again allowing the horns’ full participation in the exploitation of expressive harmonic potential. And several symphonies (among them Bryan D17 and C11, mentioned above, and C3, D2 and A9) use pairs of clarino trumpets.

Conclusions

Vaňhal’s output marks an important point of arrival in the development of the Viennese symphony. His are works of considerable individuality, technically assured, inventive, substantial in length and also in intellectual concentration, requiring, indeed, a certain degree of concentration on the part of the listener if they are to be satisfactorily realised. His symphony Bryan D2 (c. 1763–5) has, in its first movement, a genuine development section, which introduces a new theme during its course. Symphony A9, of uncertain date, is a single-movement symphony in three sections (fast–slow–fast), though its dimensions and expressive range far exceed those of the Italian opera overtures that were once a prototype for the earlier Viennese symphony; its opening and closing sections include unmistakable cross-references, the Finale’s closing material returning to the opening bars of the work. The majority are in four movements, a scheme within which there is purposeful regard for the overall proportions, the finales sometimes being considerably extended and typically in rondo, sonata-rondo or sonata form. They may well have been known to Haydn (ten of Vaňhal’s symphonies are preserved in the Esterházy archives) and also to Mozart (who played chamber music with Vaňhal); certainly the 62-bar slow introduction (in the minor mode) to Vaňhal’s D major symphony (Bryan D17) has strong similarities both to the introduction of the ‘Linz’ Symphony, K 425 and to that of the ‘Prague’ Symphony, K 504.

While the symphonies of Vaňhal may, in sum, be claimed to represent a maturity in the development of the Viennese classical symphony that served as a platform from which were launched the final achievements of the genre’s four greatest exponents, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, that claim requires substantial qualification. First, Vaňhal’s symphonies are exemplary of an achievement stemming from an environment of fairly loose, intertextual progress among Viennese composers generally towards mastery of technique allied to form, rather than the product of a single, paradigm-shifting individual. Secondly, an agenda of progress towards Haydn and Mozart, followed by Beethoven and Schubert and their lesser adjuncts, Czerny, Ries, Spohr, Cherubini, Gyrowetz, et al., is one whose motives (originating perhaps in a conflation of nineteenth-century political, aesthetic and especially nationalist debates) are highly questionable. Such debates redefined the symphonic genre in an act of retrospective Rezeptionsgeschichte that was bound up with the invention of a Viennese classical canon supported by institutions such as the professional concert, the complete edition, the founding of conservatoires, the discipline of musical Formenlehre and the rapid rise of serious musical criticism. As a consequence, the Viennese symphony at the turn of the nineteenth century assumed what would remain its destiny as the most prestigious among instrumental genres. Within this species of Rezeptionsgeschichte, the symphony was expected to be individual, to possess inherently dramatic qualities, to encapsulate in addition to mere technical control of its materials an aesthetic of progress beyond ‘absolute music’. In Beethoven’s symphonies, which played a pivotal role in launching the Viennese symphony into this exciting uncharted territory, the genre is once more redefined as a public demonstration – celebration, even – of topics such as the sublime (for example, the first movement of the Eroica, which at nearly 700 bars, is the longest symphonic movement Beethoven ever composed); of overarching unity in diversity, expressed cyclically in the Fifth Symphony through thematic transformation of theme, through the linking of different movements and, indeed, through the dissolution of boundaries separating movements, as the Scherzo gives way to the culminating finale; of ‘fate’ and ‘strife-to-victory’ (exemplified in some readings of the same symphony); of the naturalistic as a retreat from the dehumanising perspectives of war and industrialisation in the ‘Pastoral’ Symphony; and, in the Ninth’s Finale, the transformation of the genre through the medium of the human voice singing of an imagined redemption attainable only beyond the material realm.¹³ Poetic ideas, to be sure; and such was now expected of the symphony. Crucially, the baritone addresses the audience as ‘Friends’, directly inviting their involvement, for it is within that shared framework of endeavour that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony must have its meaning if all men are to be brothers, rejecting past agendas (as Beethoven, metaphorically, has just rejected his previous themes in turn) and striding confidently forth into joy. This moment is a turning point in the symphonic genre; the symphony as civic agency has remained a powerful reception metaphor ever since (this event is considered below in chapters 8 and 9).

One casualty of this historiographical agenda was Schubert, whose symphonies were eclipsed throughout the nineteenth century and beyond by the mighty achievement of his idol, Beethoven. Like Beethoven’s nine symphonies, Schubert’s eight travel a path away from late eighteenth-century classical purity, symmetry and elegance towards the frontier of transcendence articulated in the writings of the German Romantics, Wackenroder, Tieck, E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Schlegels. But Schubert’s ‘Beyond’ arguably lay deep within himself. His ‘Unfinished’ and ‘Great’ C major symphonies conform uneasily to early nineteenth-century expectations of the symphonic genre, and this may be a contributory cause to their painfully slow acceptance into the canon (they were only even premiered in 1839 and 1865 respectively), for they trace a path not towards the attainment of a public and civic spiritual brotherhood of all mankind, but a private and interior world of half-lights and self-doubts whose technical musical language is often not far removed from the lied. While there are no voices in Schubert’s symphonies, the vocality of his personal symphonic genre is unmistakable. In his hands, as in Beethoven’s, the Viennese symphony had travelled far.