Haydn, Mozart and the Viennese School: 1740-1780 - Hardcover

Heartz Ph.D., Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393037126 ISBN 13: 9780393037128

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995

Synopsis

Lavishly illustrated with music examples, black-and-white reproductions, and color plates, this beautiful volume will be of the greatest interest to scholars, cultural historians, and serious music lovers.

For years, historians have described the music of the so-called "Viennese School" as directly descending from German Lutherism up to Bach's death in 1750. In this fascinating book, Daniel Heartz shows how it actually grew out of Italian Catholicism, combined with current French fashions and local traditions. Haydn and Mozart, who stand at the very center of this study, were viewed as the highest peaks on the musical horizon by their contemporaries. It is that world of perception that Professor Heartz recreates, calling upon the visual arts and the architecture of the period to support his thesis. His focus is on music as a part of cultural history in a particular time and place. Stylistic terms and a priori periods mean less to him than the common denominators of geography, the arts, and political history.

The treasure trove of hitherto unseen documents that Professor Heartz uncovered while working in the Viennese archives bears witness to the enormously rich musical life of Vienna during the four decades' reign of the Empress Maria Theresa. This enlightened monarch helped make her capital the musical center of the Western world. Full color plates, black-and-white illustrations, music examples

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Heartz, Ph.D., professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, is the recipient of Guggenheim Fellowships, two ASCAP–Deems Taylor Awards, and the Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Reviews

Heartz conducts a tour of musical Vienna during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa that involves meeting, besides the principals--Haydn and Mozart--the court composers and musicians who influenced them. To celebrate the name days of the members of the royal court and to otherwise entertain, Wagenseil (trailblazer for Haydn), Ditters, Salieri, and Gluck all composed symphonies, concerti, chamber music, theater works, operas, oratorios, and incidental music for plays. Heartz offers short biographies of these court composers and, sprinkling the text with examples from the period's major musical works, delineates the progress of musical form and style upon which Haydn and Mozart built. The survey peaks with Haydn, first in Vienna, then at Esterha{ }za, advancing the musical art of his predecessors, and ends with Mozart, who revered Haydn's compositions. Conducively to a journey that is both enjoyable and enlightening, Heartz writes in an easily read style. Alan Hirsch

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393037126
• ISBN 13: 9780393037128
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 816