Vienna School (pre-classical)

Vienna School is the name for a group of composers and their musical style in the second half of the 18th century between late baroque and Viennese classic .

The Viennese School around 1750, together with the Mannheim School, played a pioneering role in the Viennese classicism . The style of both groups, together with some of the sons of Bach and other composers, are simply referred to as the pre-classical or early classical.

But this usual classification is arbitrary: is it a “no longer” of the baroque or a “not yet” of the classical period? Or should terms such as sensitive and gallant style be used? In any case, this time is characterized by diversity, character of departure , turmoil and contradictions, both in the cultural as well as socio-political area (compare Second Viennese School ).

Until then, traditional baroque music was shaped by Bach and Handel, as well as a simple farmer's son from Styria, Johann Joseph Fux . He rose from organist at the Schottenkirche in Vienna to “ kk court composer” and teacher of Maria Theresa . His influence on the young composers came not only from his masterpieces but also from the textbook Gradus ad Parnassum , which is the basis of counterpoint lessons to this day .

The young Viennese composers

In the second half of the 18th century, a group of young composers - among them Georg Christoph Wagenseil , Reutter the Younger and Georg Matthias Monn - wanted to counter the pompous baroque music with a new, sensitive style . They founded the Viennese School, in which the style and harmony of the later Classics already echo. Several other musicians followed them in these efforts, among them Leopold Mozart .

First of all, Georg Christoph Wagenseil and Georg Matthias Monn are the most important representatives of the Viennese style. They want to dissolve the severity of the late baroque and its “sultriness” and gallantly help the freer, more graceful style to break through. You deal here with the renewal of sonata form by the second issue and the implementation expand. Joseph Haydn later perfected these features. Better known than Monn is his student Johann Georg Albrechtsberger , an exact contemporary of Haydn. Leopold Mozart is also associated with the Vienna Pre-Classical School , as is Antonio Salieri at times .

New forms of the sonata - Bach, Mannheim and Vienna

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach , of J.-G. , also contributed to the development of the classic Viennese sonata form. Attributes this invention to Prod'homme . E. Reischl, on the other hand, notes that in many of his sonatas the recapitulation is incomplete or missing and that Bach did not follow a strict formal scheme.

This is more true of his contemporary Johann Stamitz , who founded the Mannheim School in 1750 with Franz Xaver Richter and Ignaz Holzbauer . It develops the modern form of the sonata main movement and the symphony. In fact, Stamitz calls the symphonies composed for his top orchestra sonata for orchestra because their structure is the same.

Through the mutual stimulation of the Viennese and Mannheim composers and a north German school, Vienna developed into a new stronghold of music, not least through Joseph Haydn and WA Mozart . Formally, her chamber music and piano sonatas and the symphonies are not new, but consist in a masterful variation of the early classical Mannheim form. The Viennese classics know how to fill the three-movement sonata form with appealing and surprising content.

In the field of opera , too , completely new paths are being broken: with the so-called reform operas Orpheus and Euridike , Alceste and Paris and Helena , Christoph Willibald Gluck succeeds in combining the classic aesthetics of clear, simple forms with a dramatic style. He will find admirers and imitators up to Hector Berlioz , Richard Wagner , Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy .

Further composers of the pre- and early classical period

• in the Mannheim group of J. Stamitz also Christian Cannabich , Karl Joseph Toeschi , Franz Xaver Richter, Ignaz Holzbauer, Anton Fils and Carl Stamitz ;
• In the Viennese School, alongside Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, the very diverse composing Albrechtsberger and the somewhat younger Michael Haydn , while the works of Joseph Haydn can be stylistically divided into early and high classics.
• Most of the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach and are also considered early classical
• the late works of Georg Philipp Telemann . There are also some forgotten names such as Agricola , Graun or Keizer .

Only a few decades later these contributions culminate in the Viennese Classic with the triumvirate of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Vienna finally becomes the music capital, supported by rich royal courts ( Esterházy , Lichnowsky , Lobkowitz , Rasumowski ) and by the up-and-coming middle class . Led by the now Papa Haydn , the three complete the sonata form and the genres of symphony, string quartet and sonata. Her sacred music, oratorios and operas also become the most frequently performed works in Western music.