Johann Baptist Wanhal
Johann Baptist Wanhal (12 May 1739 – 20 August 1813)
Name
Wanhal and at least one of his publishers used the spelling Waṅhal, the dot being an archaic form of the modern
Biography
Birth and youth in Bohemia: 1739–1760/61
Wanhal was born in Nechanice, Bohemia, into
First period in Vienna: 1760/61–1769
By the age of 21 Wanhal must have been well under way to become a skilled performer and composer, as his patron, the Countess
Journey to Italy: 1769–1771
The details of Wanhal's journey to Italy are scant, but it is known that he met his fellow Bohemians
Vienna and Varaždin: 1771–1780
After his journey to Italy, Wanhal returned to Vienna rather than to go to Riesch in Dresden. Claims have been made that Wanhal became heavily depressed or even insane, but these claims are likely to have been overstated. During this period he is supposed to have acted occasionally as a de facto Kapellmeister for Count Erdődy in Varaždin, although the small number of compositions by him remaining there suggests that this was not the full-time role that would have been expected if he had worked with Riesch; Vanhal might have preferred such employment with the Count precisely because of its part-time nature. There is no evidence of visits after 1779.[8]
Return to Vienna and final years: 1780–1813
Around 1780, Wanhal stopped writing symphonies and string quartets, focusing instead on music for piano and small-scale chamber ensembles, masses and other church music. The former, written for a growing middle class, supplied him with the means to live a modest, economically independent life; for the last 30 years of his life he did not work under any patron, probably being the first Viennese composer to do so. During these years, more than 270 of his works were published by Viennese printers. In the 1780s he was still an active participant in Viennese musical life. In 1782 he met
Style
Wanhal had to be a prolific writer to meet the demands made upon him, and attributed to him are 100 quartets, at least 73 symphonies, 95 sacred works, and a large number of instrumental and vocal works. The symphonies, in particular, have been committed increasingly often to compact disc in recent times, and the best of them are comparable with many of Haydn's. Many of Wanhal's symphonies are in minor keys and are considered highly influential to the "Sturm und Drang" movement of his time. "[Wanhal] makes use of repeated semiquavers, pounding quavers in the bass line, wide skips in the themes, sudden pauses (fermatas), silences, exaggerated dynamic marks ... and all these features ... appear in Mozart's first large-scale Sturm und Drang symphony, no. 25 in g minor (K. 183) of 1773."[11] This kind of style also appears in Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 83 in g minor, The Hen (1785), and Muzio Clementi's Sonata in g minor, Op.34, No.2 (circa 1795).
Around 1780 Wanhal seems to have stopped writing large-scale instrumental music, and rather contented himself with writing piano music for the growing middle class, and church music. In the former category his programmatic pieces, often related to recent events such as "the Battle of Würzburg", "the Battle of Abukir", and "the Return of Francis II in 1809". Judging from the number of extant manuscripts available, these works must have been highly popular. Wanhal was also the most prolific writer of Masses and other Catholic church music of his generation in Vienna.[12] Despite this, it appears that he was never in the employ of any religious institution. This means that his late Masses are both testaments to a genuine personal faith, and evidence of how lucrative his focus on incidental piano music must have been.
Robert O. Gjerdingen sees a change in Wanhal's style as he redirected his attention towards the middle class, his music becoming didactic in the sense that it employed musical figures in a clear and self-referential manner, rather than the seamless continuity from figure to figure that had characterized his earlier pieces. In this, Gjerdingen sees Wanhal as prefiguring Beethoven.[13]
Such was his success that within a few years of his symphonies being written, they were being performed around the world, and as far distant as the United States.[14] In later life, however, he rarely moved from Vienna, where he was also an active teacher.
References
- ^ "His Life and Works". Johann Wanhal. Duke University Libraries. Archived from the original on 31 May 2012. Retrieved 10 May 2018.
- ^ "Johann Baptist Vanhal". Discogs. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
- ^ Bryan 1997, p. 18 "Wanhal obviously preferred the German spelling himself, but it should instead be recognized as a logical and ... use of the old Bohemian dot-over-the-n (= modern day háček) as part of his germanized signature." "and he strenuously maintained the use of the háček (Weichheitszeichen) in the form of a dot over the n in the first editions issued by his chief Viennese publisher, Ignaz Sauer."
- ^ a b "He himself spelt his name Johann Baptist Waṅhal; his Viennese contemporaries and most scholars until World War II used the spelling Waṅhal, but later in the 20th century a modern Czech form, Jan Křtitel Vaňhal, was erroneously introduced." Paul Robey Bryan, "Vanhal, Johann Baptist [Jan Křtitel]" in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001), 19:592.
- ^ "Johann Baptist Wanhal Association". wanhal.org. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
- ^ Bryan 1997, pp. 15–18
- ^ Bryan 1997, pp. 17–18
- ^ Bryan 1997, pp. 18–25
- ^ "Johann Baptist Vanhal | Biography & History". AllMusic. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
- ^ Bryan 1997, pp. 25–26
- ISBN 0-500-01506-6), 48.
- ^ MacIntyre 1986, p. 8
- ^ Gjerdingen 2007, pp. 278–282
- ^ Bryan 1997, p. 245 To give one example, a 19th-century manuscript set of all the parts (except the trumpet) of the Symphony in C major, Bryan C6, was found in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Further reading
- Bryan, Paul Robey (1997). Johann Waṅhal, Viennese Symphonist: His Life and His Musical Environment. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press. ISBN 9780945193630.
- Gjerdingen, Robert O. (2007). Music in the Galant Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195313710.
- MacIntyre, Bruce C. (1986). The Viennese Concerted Mass of the Early Classical Period. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press.
- Weinmann, Alexander (1987). Themen-Verzeichnis der Kompositionen von Johann Baptiste Wanhal (two volumes). Wiener Archivstudien. Vol. 1. Vienna: Ludwig Krenn Verlag.
External links
- www.wanhal.org the Johann Baptist Wanhal Association
- Duke University website
- Dr. Paul Bryan: Thematic Catalog of Wanhal's music.
- www.klassika.info/Komponisten/Vanhal/wv_gattung.html
- www.klassika.info/Komponisten/Vanhal/index.html
- Johann Baptist Wanhal (Vanhal) on NAXOS.com
- Karadar Classical Music Dictionary, archived from the original on 15 May 2009
- www.classical-composers.org/comp/vanhal
- Wanhal works at Artaria Editions
- Scores
- Works by Wanhal at the Mutopia project
- Free scores by Johann Baptist Vanhal at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)