Mannheim school

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Badge "Mannheim School" of the Kurpfälzer Meile der Innovations in Mannheim.

The Mannheim School describes the achievements of the court musicians' circle, which was formed mainly during the reign of Elector Karl Theodor in Mannheim from 1743 to 1778.

history

Although the Mannheim School is mainly associated with the Elector Karl Theodor today, his predecessor Karl III created the foundations for it . Philip of the Palatinate . In 1720 he moved the residence of his court from Heidelberg to Mannheim. In the course of this, he laid the foundation stone of what would later become the Mannheim court orchestra through a fusion of 16 musicians from Innsbruck and 26 musicians from Düsseldorf. Carlo Luigi Grua was appointed Kapellmeister .

After the death of his predecessor, his successor, Karl Theodor, devoted himself to the orchestra with the greatest care, which in his opinion was particularly suited to representing his power and wealth. For this reason he hired Johann (Anton Wenzel) Stamitz , to whom he transferred leading tasks after a short time. Today Johann Stamitz is seen as the founder of the Mannheim School. Through the training of first-class violinists, e.g. B. Christian Cannabich as well as the brothers Johannes and Carl Joseph Toeschi , who were among the best virtuosos in the orchestra, he created the basis for the exemplary “Mannheim School”, which contemporaries therefore initially used as a violin or orchestral school, but then increasingly was understood as a school of composition .

Stamitz received energetic support in the summer of 1753 from the newly engaged Kapellmeister Ignaz Holzbauer . Holzbauer now extended Stamitz's planned development work to all vocal groups in the orchestra, with the new positions being filled with foreign virtuosos, specialists in their field - a strategy that laid the foundation for the future virtuoso orchestra of the 1770s right from the start. Because these top foreigners not only stayed, but they passed their skills on to talented students during their usually twenty-five years of service. The elector also granted particularly talented students scholarships for study visits to Italy.

The earliest known evidence of the “Mannheim School” as a school of composition comes from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , who in the dedication text of his six violin sonatas (KV 301–306) to Electress Elisabeth Auguste von Pfalz-Sulzbach from 1778 makes a clear distinction between the court orchestra and the school and highlights both the large number of music composers and the numerous masterpieces of this famous school.

The most important proven instrumental and composition teachers were Johann Stamitz , Ignaz Holzbauer , Christian Cannabich , Georg Joseph Vogler and indirectly also Franz Xaver Richter .

This extensive training meant that not only bandmasters or concert masters composed, as was otherwise the case. In the Mannheim ensemble there were more virtuosos who were also important composers than in any other orchestra of the era. These include, for example, the violinists Christian Cannabich, Wilhelm Cramer , Georg Zarth, Christian Danner, Friedrich Eck, Ignaz Fränzl , Carl and Anton Stamitz , Carl Joseph and Johannes Toeschi, Peter Winter , the cellists Innocenz Danzi and Anton Fils , and the bassoonist Georg Wenzel Ritter , the flutists Johann Baptist Wendling and Georg Metzger, the horn player Franz Anton Dimmler, the oboists Friedrich Ramm and Ludwig August Lebrun and his future wife, the coloratura soprano Franziska Lebrun (née Danzi), and the (singer) bassist Giovanni Battista Zonca and the Kapell- and Vice-Kapellmeister Ignaz Holzbauer and Georg Joseph Vogler.

Mannheim school as a pioneer of the concert symphony

The dual function of composer and musician formed the basis for an orchestral and composition workshop that was unparalleled in Europe. According to Ludwig Finscher , the people of the Electoral Palatinate made a very significant contribution to the development of the great concert symphony and the classical-romantic orchestral technique. The Mannheimers relied on the stringing together of smaller melodic motifs, on contrast, variety and surprise and especially on the orchestral sound. In this context, the innovative treatment for wind instruments should be mentioned. The melodic sections were increasingly designed by the winds. In addition, there was a modern, expressive orchestral language that Hugo Riemann described in 1906 as so-called “ Mannheimer Manners ” with extra-musical ideas that have gone down in music history as Mannheimer Sigh , Mannheimer Rocket , Mannheimer Walze , Bebung, Schleifer or Vogelchen. Thanks to the technical perfection of the court orchestra, the crescendo , the sophisticated contrast dynamics (the clash of forte and piano in a very small space), the booming unison or the powerful, quickly successive chord strikes of the orchestra at the beginning of a movement had a greater effect than anywhere else. These orchestral effects were practically celebrated in the musical academies (court concerts), they had cult status. With their orchestral line-up, the solo winds (from 1758 also clarinet ) and the abandonment of the harpsichord from the 1760s, the Mannheimers created that modern sound of the so-called classical symphony orchestra that Joseph Haydn , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , Ludwig van Beethoven and other composers up to based their symphonies in the 19th century. With their more differentiated instrumentation and the associated development of new sound areas and sound possibilities, the people of Kurpfälzer gave new impulses that not only influenced orchestral music in the second half of the 18th century up to the Viennese classic, but also paved the way for orchestral compositions of the 19th century. Century.

The Mannheim Summer Academy since 2001

The Mannheim National Theater Orchestra organized annual international orchestral summer academies from 2001 to 2004 under the title "Mannheim School" . Students and graduates of music colleges and academies had the opportunity to practical and theoretical examination of the playing techniques and stylistic peculiarities of the orchestral literature of the time of the Mannheim School, the early classical period and the music of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The new "Mannheim Court Chapel"

On the occasion of the 400th birthday of the city of Mannheim, a new baroque orchestra was founded in 2007 under the name "Mannheimer Hofkapelle". The highlight of the events in the anniversary year was the reconstruction of the “Mannheim Court Chapel” on original instruments in the knight's hall of the baroque palace . The “MusikForum Mannheim - Center for Early Music” was set up in annual summer academies and a competition for historical instruments (Academia Palatina).

literature

  • Bärbel Pelker:  Mannheim School. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, subject part, volume 5 (Kassel - Meiningen). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 1996, ISBN 3-7618-1106-3 , Sp. 1645–1662 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
  • Bärbel Pelker: "The Palatinate Court Music in Mannheim and Schwetzingen (1720–1778)", in: South German court orchestras in the 18th century. An inventory , ed. by Silke Leopold u. Bärbel Pelker, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2018 (Writings on Südwestdeutsche Hofmusik, Volume 1), pp. 195–366 ( online edition )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jiří Fukač: Bohemian countries and Mannheim in the network of "Musiktrassen" (attempt to interpret a complicated interrelationship) . In: Christine Heyter-Rauland, Christoph-Hellmut Mahling (ed.): Investigations into musical relationships between Mannheim, Bohemia and Moravia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries . Schott, Mainz 1993, ISBN 3-7957-1333-1 , p. 22–34, here p. 28 .
  2. ↑ Zdeněk Vodák: Johann Stamitz, the Mannheim School and its musical legacy in Bohemia and Moravia . In: Christine Heyter-Rauland, Christoph-Hellmut Mahling (ed.): Investigations into musical relationships between Mannheim, Bohemia and Moravia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries . Schott, Mainz 1993, ISBN 3-7957-1333-1 , p. 141-152 .