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Music in the ViennesePopular Theatre ofthe Eighteenth andNineteenth CenturiesPeter BranscombePublished online: 28 Jan 2009.

To cite this article: Peter Branscombe (1971) Music in the ViennesePopular Theatre of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 98:1, 101-112, DOI:10.1093/jrma/98.1.101

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Music in the Viennese PopularTheatre of the Eighteenth and

Nineteenth Centuries

PETER BRANSCOMBE

WHEN IN I 710 or 1711 Joseph Anton Stranitzky's company ofGerman actors took over the recently built Theater nachstdem Karntnertor in Vienna they established a tradition ofplays with music that was to last for a century and a half.They were themselves heirs to various traditions—mostnotably the companies of strolling players {englische Comodian-ten) that had been popular in German lands from Shakespeare'stime, but also assimilating features from the commedia dell'arteand the Parisian theatres de la foire, and imitating (and fre-quently parodying) the Italian court opera, as well asdeveloping even further the extensive comic scenes andintermezzi both of the opera and of the Jesuit drama. Musicwas an important component in the Viennese Jesuit dramasa n d t h e theatres de la foire, a n d co l l e c t i ons l i ke t h e EngelischeComedien und Tragedien . . . o f 1620 a n d Liebeskampf oder AnderTheil der Engelischen Comoedien und Tragoedien . . . o f 1630 ,containing the tunes as well as the words of a number ofsongs, indicate the extent to which music was readily availablefor ambulant troupes in seventeenth-century Germany.Parallel to the use of music in German plays at this time is theextent and nature of the comic scenes in operas and Jesuitdramas in Vienna. J. B. Adolph's carnival play of 1700,Carnisprivium proscriptum, with music by J. B. Staudt, includesthree large-scale musical sequences, a light-hearted Germansong in praise of the joys of angling, and also a vernacularparody of a Latin lament.1 During the reign of Amalteo ascourt poet, and even more during that of Minato (1669-98),comic scenes and dialect interpolations reached such a heightthat the reforms of Zeno and Metastasio became entirelynecessary. One example of Minato's methods must serve formany: in the Minato/Draghi La lira d'Orfeo of 1683 Orpheusis by no means Euridice's only admirer. When he leaves herafter a tiff, she is forced to admit: 'Lassa! Perdendo vo tutti

1 Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, codex 9810,6th play.

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102 MUSIC IN THE VIENNESE POPULAR THEATRE

gli Amanti'.*By Stranitzky's time, comedy had been largely banished

from Viennese opera seria, or confined to intermezzi. Theworks that Stranitzky adapted for his own company were forthe most part wholly serious, stilted Italian libretti of noparticular modernity. His method was to simplify and reducethe number of aria texts of the original, and to add a numberof broad comic scenes for himself, in the role of Hanswurst,plus one or two male and one or two female companions;these scenes were almost entirely extemporized, and the sur-viving manuscripts contain no evidence as to whether theyincluded songs. It is however totally misleading to state thatthere was no music, or at best very little music, in the Germancompany's performances, as has been done by two outstandingtwentieth-century authorities on the Viennese theatre.Robert Haas sums up the principal endeavour of Stranitzky'stheatre as being 'to make opera, the preserve of the courtcircle, available to the middle class public without music',3

whilst Otto Rommel (frequently confused when discussingmusic), arguing against the viewpoint that Stranitzky'scomedies were intended to rival the court operas, states: 'Themain attraction of these operas lay in the music, of course, and—this must not be overlooked—in the ballet-intermezzi . . .But both opera music and ballet were forbidden toStranitzky'.'

It is clear from external and internal evidence that, on thecontrary, music was an important ingredient of Stranitzky'sbill of fare. The good music of his company was one of thefactors singled out by the Lower Austrian government in itsrecommendation that the German troupe should be preferredto the Italian when the lease of the theatre was being discussedin 1709,* and corroborative documents may be cited from1712," 1720' and 1726/7.' Further, it may be demonstratedfrom surviving playbills that ballets were included in per-formances of the German troupe,' and Act II, scene 2 of

1 Scene 6: copy oflibretto in Vienna, Nationalbibliothek.' 'Die Musik in der Wiener deutschen Stegreifkomodie', Studien zur

Musikwissenschafl, xii (1925), 20.4 Die Alt-Wiener Volkskomodu, Vienna, 1952, p. 233.6 Vienna, Archiv des Ministeriums des Innern, IV, M. 6, 1709, Nr. 17;

quoted by C. Glossy, 'Zur Geschichte der Wiener Theatercensur',Jahrbuch der Grillparzer-Gesellschaft, vii (1897), 244.

* Wiener Haupt- wtd Staatsaktionen, ed. R. Payer von Thurn (Schriften desLiterarischen Vereins in Wien, x & xiii), Vienna, 1908-10, i, p. xxvii.

' O. Teuber, Das K. K. Hofburgtheater seit seiner Begruendung (Die TheaterWiens, ii/ij, Vienna, 1896, pp. 27-28.

* A. von Weilen, Das Theater, Vienna, 1917, p. no .* E.g. one reproduced in von Weilen, op. cit., p. 104.

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MUSIC IN THE VIENNESE POPULAR THEATRE 103

Stranitzky's Tarquinius Superbus contains a sizable ballet.10

As for the songs, Rommel11 has shown that the identifiedoperas on which Stranitzky's plays were based had between34 and 74 arias, and that Stranitzky reduced this number byroughly two thirds. Thus we find that a typical Hanswurstplay, Gordianus der Grosse,1* with fourteen solo numbers plusa finale, was very much a Singspiel, even though most of thesongs must have been very brief, to judge from the shortnessof the texts. These brief verse interpolations in prose playswould have made no effect if merely spoken, as Rommelimplies they were, and further, they come exactly where theconventions of Baroque opera would lead us to expect anaria: at the entrance, and more especially before the exit, ofa principal; or at an emotional climax. Even though someof these aria-texts are headed 'Vers' in the manuscripts, it isclear from the end of Act I of Adalbertus that the 'Vers' wassung. Hans Wurst is undressed and roundly smacked by acoven of witches, who . . .

sing the following verses to the tune of whichever aria is most familiarto them. As they keep time, so they tug at [Hanswurst's] clothes untilhe is left with only his shirt on; finally they lay him down, each ofthem gives him one on the podex, and they all run off"

—leaving him to sing a brief solo conclusion.Not a note of music for the German theatre company seems

to have survived until the mid-i75os, but the survivinglibretti and documentary evidence leave us in no doubt aboutthe greatly extended musical content of the popular theatrefrom the 1730s. Following the death of Stranitzky in 1726there was some confusion before the German company, nowled by Gottfried Prehauser as Hanswurst, was confirmed inthe Karntnertortheater and was even permitted to makehigher entrance charges when they wished to give 'Comedieswith especially expensive "Intermediis", musical arias andtheatre decors'.1* From the early 1730s we have the librettiof comic Singspiels on a considerable scale—Rademin'ssplendidly named Runtzvanscad, Konig derm Menschenfressernoder: Der Durchlauchtigste Gartner of 1732 includes four choruses,five duets and two dozen arias, six of them for Hanswurst.Once Joseph von Kurz, known as Bernardon, had joined

10 Wiener Haupt- und Staatsakliontn, 11. 87-88.11 Op. cit., p. 235.18 Wiener Haupt- und Staatsaklianen, i. 1-67." Ibid., ii. 208.14 Teuber, op. cit., p. 28.

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the company, music became still more important in thepopular theatre. Not only was Kurz a talented musicianhimself; he also chose wives and fathered children who couldsupport him in his endeavours. The cast-list of an operettaOrmechus, ein Tyrranischer Neben-Buhler seines Sohnes Cosroemakes it clear that Kurz himself took the parts of

Ormechus Konig aus Armenien (singt den Pass)Cosroe sein Sohn (singt den Tenor)Phamaces Feld-herr (singt den Discant)NB. Diese 3 Personen werden von Bernardon vorgestellet.15

Kurz sang three bass arias, two tenor arias, two falsetto arias,and two duets; judicious use of his female partner saved himfrom singing in more than two consecutive numbers, and heresisted the temptation to sing a duet with himself. His firstwife, who may have been his partner in this operetta, isspoken of as having possessed a talent for putting acrosssentimental songs,18 and his second wife, Teresina Morelli,was good enough as singer and dancer to be chosen in 1770,twelve years after her marriage to Kurz, to create the role ofAmor in Gluck's Paride ed Elena.

Examination of the thirteen Bernardon plays (hat survive(not quite complete) in a bound volume in the ViennaStadtbibliothek17 shows that there was an average of just overfourteen sung numbers per work. Of 183 numbers, arias asexpected are in the preponderance: there are 127, that isroughly two thirds of the total. There are also three in-dependent recitatives, 22 duets, seven trios, three quartets,three quintets and eighteen choruses or large ensembles.The distribution of numbers and types of number variesconsiderably between one play and another—hardly any ofthem can be accurately dated, unfortunately. Quite excep-tional is Das zerstohrte Versprechen des Bernardons; it only has ninenumbers, but these are two arias, two duets, one trio, onequartet and three quintets. In only one case is the composernamed—on the last page of the libretto (probably printed fora revival in 1758) of Der neue krumme Teufel we read: 'NB.Die Musique sowohl von der Opera-Comique, als auch derPantomime18 ist componiret Von Herrn Joseph Heyden'.

16 Libretto in bound volume of Bernardoniaden, Vienna Stadtbibliothek.16 F. Raab, Johann Josef Felix von KUTZ, genannt Bernardon, Frankfurt, 1899,

p. iog.17 Shelf-mark 22200 A.18 By implication therefore not necessarily also of the 'Intermezzo, intitolato:

II vecchio ingannato'.

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MUSIC IN THE VIENNESE POPULAR THEATRE 105

The 38 numbers include 32 arias, one duet, one trio, threechoruses and an extended piece embracing two recitativesand a duet.

Apart from Haydn, no composer has hitherto beenauthoritatively identified as having definitely composedmusic for the popular theatre up until 1769, when the oldextempore actors finally gave way to the regular companyout of which the Burgtheater grew. The surviving courttheatre accounts for the season 1753/4, however, show thatJoseph Ziegler was paid for the composition of arias for fourplays, and a musician called Eder received a sum for supplyingadditional music to one of these;18 both Ziegler and Ederwere violinists in the German theatre orchestra, though thelist in the Repertoire des Theatres de la Ville de Vienne™ namesthe former 'Figler'. In addition printed texts survive ofF. W. Weiskern's Bernardon der verhebte Weiber-Feind (Vienna,1752), in which Fauner is named as the composer, and moreinteresting, of the same author's Arlekin ein Nebenbuhler seinesHerrn (Vienna, 1746),2' set by 'Holtzbauer'—Ignaz Holzbauer,by this time already director of the Vienna opera orchestraand composer of the ballets for Hasse's Ipermeslra, has nothitherto been known to have had connections with thepopular theatre.

The only music that seems to have survived from thistheatre and period is the collection of 33 'Teutsche ComedieArien' found in the music collection of the Vienna National-bibliothek.22 Though the music is rarely more than com-petent, tuneful and harmonically simple, with neat butsparing orchestration (the second volume uses a ratherlarger orchestral palette), Haas makes out quite a strong casefor Haydn's authorship of some of the numbers.28 WhatHaas could not have known was that the score of Haydn'sconsiderably later marionette opera Die Feuersbrunst (Dasabgebrannte Haus) would come to light;24 some of the musicit contains is similar in vein and quality to the Germancomedy arias and may well be held to strengthen the casefor Haydn's authorship of these earlier works.18 F. Hadamowsky, 'Das Spieljahr 1753/54 des Theaters nachst dem Karnt-

nerthor und des Theaters nachst der k.k. Burg', Jahrbuch der Gesellschaftfur Wiener Theaterforschung, xi (1959), 5 -6 .

20 Vienna , r 757, unpag ina t ed .21 Both texts are preserved in the Vienna Stadtbibliothek.22 Shelf-mark 19062 a n d 19063; t h e contents of the first volume have been

published by R. Haas, DenkmdUr der Tonkunst in Osterreich, lxiv (1926).28 Studien zur Musikwissensckqft, xii (1925), 58-62.24 Ed. H. C. Robbins Landon, London, 1963.

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By 1776/7, the most likely date for the composition ofDie Feuersbrunst," a Hanswurst Singspiel was already an anach-ronism, albeit a lively and ingratiating one. It is not clearwhether the preponderance of arias (21 out of 27 numbers)is to be attributed to Haydn's willingness to return to thearia-dominated pattern of Der neue krumme Teufel, or to thepreference of the puppeters for predominantly solo numbers(as is suggested by the surviving material for the Esterhazypuppet theatre).*' Typical of the short, attractive numbers inHaydn's score is Colombina's B-flat binary-form aria fromearly in Act II.a

Hanswurst Prehauser died early in 1769, thus ending anera—he was the last of the great extemporizers of the oldtradition, even if he grew tame towards the end of his longlife. Joseph von Sonnenfels, follower of Gottsched and un-popular leader of the Viennese Enlightenment, rejoicedexceedingly—excessively, even—at Prehauser's passing:

He is dead, great Pan: proclaim it to the islands, ye forests, and echoit to the firm land! The mainstay of the burlesque is fallen, its kingdomis destroyed. What pleasure for me, who can to some extent considermyself the begetter of this revolution which is bound to have thehappiest consequences for taste!27

Alas for Sonnenfel's hopes, Hanswurst soon returned in newguises, most successfully with Johann La Roche's assumptionof the role of Kasperl. And following the Spektakelfreiheit of1776—the lifting of the ban on the establishment of newtheatres in Vienna—the way was clear for the opening of thenew suburban theatres that in respect of music as well as ofpopular comedy would bring in a new era. Three of the fivepermanent theatres built in the late '70s and '80s becameinstitutions. The most important was the theatre in theLeopoldstadt suburb, which was opened in 1781. WenzelMiiller became its director of music in 1786, soon to be joinedby Ferdinand Kauer, whose music for Hensler's DasDonauweibchen in particular brought him not only greatpopularity but a modest niche in Goethe's novel DieWahlverwandlschaften;" Kauer was responsible for the institution

25 Only a t this t ime were clarinets, included in two numbers in the score,available in the Esterhazy orchestra. See H . C. Robbins Landon,'Haydn ' s Marionette Operas and the Repertoire of the MarionetteThea t r e a t Esterhaz Castle' , Haydn Tearbook, i (1962), 154-5.

26 See L a n d o n , op . ci t . , p p . 168—89.27 J . v o n Sonnenfels, Brufe uber die Wienerisdu Schaubiihne (Wiener Neudrucke ,

vii), Vienna, 1884, iv. 13.28 Part II, chapter 4; the 'Donauweibchen' is localized as the 'Saalnixe'.

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MUSIC IN THE VIENNESE POPULAR THEATRE IO7

of a choir-school attached to the theatre with a view to pro-viding it with trained personnel for its opera and Singspielperformances—which were frequent and popular in the late'80s and '90s, the shrewd director Marinelli perceiving that theclosure of the Nationabingspiel at the Karntnertortheater in1787 left a sizable section of the populace in need of undemand-ing Singspiels of the type exemplified by Dittersdorf, Martiny Soler, Schenk, and the best of Miiller's own works.

The chief rival to the Leopoldstadt theatre was the Theaterauf der Wieden which was opened in 1787 and of whichEmanuel Schikaneder became director two years later.Schikaneder cast his net wider in his search for composers forhis theatre, though he had reliable directors of music inHenneberg and later Ignaz von Seyfried. He also receiveda number of successful scores from two singers in his company:Benedikt Schack, the first Tamino, and Franz Xaver Gerl,the first Sarastro. It was for their heroic-comic opera DerStein der Weisen that Mozart orchestrated, perhaps even com-posed, the duet K.5g2a, 'Nun, liebes Weibchen, ziehst mitmir', just over a year before the premiere of Die ̂ auberflote.The fact that there is still no certainty as to whether thischarming Andantino is by Schack or Mozart indicates howhigh the standard was in the theatres in Vienna at this time,at least in short and gently characterized numbers. In thisduet, Lubano (Schikaneder) asks his wife Lubanara (BarbaraGerl, the first Papagena) to come with him to their hut; sheis however under one of the temporary spells so beloved ofViennese dramatists, and can only miaow like a cat.b

The third suburban theatre of lasting significance was thetheatre in the Josefstadt. It is still in use to this day, but onlyintermittently after its opening in 1788 did it achieve a sus-tained high standard, as when Konradin Kreutzer wasmusical director in the mid-i83os, and Suppe in the '40s.

The quantity of music composed for the suburban theatreswas enormous. Of the three dramatists who dominated thescene from the early years of the nineteenth century into the1820s and beyond, Gleich called for music in 83 per cent ofhis 226 plays; Meisl in 61 per cent of his 186; and Bauerlein 61 per cent of his 77. The amount of music in a play variedconsiderably—Tuczek had to provide 31 numbers for Gleich'sDie vier Heymonskinder in 1809, v e t a t m e other end of the scalethe Bauerle/Drechsler Der Tausendsasa of 1820 had a merefour numbers without forfeiting the familiar title of 'lokal-komische Posse mit Gesang'. Many a play with as few as four

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numbers did not count as a play with music. A representativeselection shows Gleich averaging sixteen sung numbers perwork (plus incidental music), Meisl just over fifteen, andBauerle twelve or thirteen. Ferdinand Raimund showscomparable figures for the 1820s and early '30s, and JohannNestroy the slightly lower average of ten or eleven in the 40works up to and including Das Madl aus der Vorstadt of 1841.Thereafter, starting with the well-known Einen Jux will er sickmachen (1842), Nestroy drastically cut down on the numberof songs in his works. His later operatic parodies (of Martha,Tannhauser and Lohengrin) and the Offenbach-based operettaHduptling Abendwind at the end of his life are the only worksamong his last 40 to have more than just a sprinkling of songs.The chorus almost entirely disappears.

The change in the quantity and type of music in the populartheatre in the 1840s is probably not to be ascribed to theprofound changes that affected every aspect of life in Viennathough there can be no doubt that the popular theatretradition was already nearing its end—partly owing to thefact that no new major playwrights emerged after Nestroy,partly owing to the growing influence and popularity ofFrench vaudeville and the emergent Viennese operetta.Vienna almost doubled in size between 1812 (under 225,000inhabitants) and 1851 (431,000);" the period of maximumgrowth—bringing with it the loss of local patriotic feeling andidentity in the suburbs with the popular theatres—occurredin the 1820s and especially in the 1840s. The first tidal wavecould be absorbed, the second and larger could not.

Financial considerations certainly do not provide a satis-factory explanation for the decline in the quantity and im-portance of music in the popular theatres. The size of thechorus in the theatres in which Nestroy's plays were given—roughly 25—hardly varies between the mid-'3os, when aNestroy work might have ten or eleven choral numbers, andthe mid-'40s and '50s, when he did not use the chorus at all.Furthermore, the orchestra had to be in attendance, and to bepaid, whether it played 30 numbers or merely the one songin each act that Nestroy gave himself from 1842. Professionaljealousy is not a convincing explanation—Nestroy was agenerous man; and there is no suggestion that his own vocalabilities deserted him, even though he sang less as the yearspassed. The only convincing explanation is an artistic one:

29 Statistisches Jahrbuch der Stadl Wienfur dasjahr 1883, Vienna, 1885, p. 20.

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MUSIC IN THE VIENNESE POPULAR THEATRE 109

Nestroy ceased to regard vocal music in his works as decora-tion and came to stress the value of music for heightening theeffect of his own satirical, equivocal attacks on the foiblesof his day. These couplets tend to have a restricted melodic andharmonic interest but they do help sustain the trenchancy ofhis monologues. The entry-song of the grocer's assistant fromEinen Jux will er sick machen is a typical example, thoughAdolf Muller's music requires a more pungent delivery than itcustomarily receives.0

More typical of the older Volkstheater, and understandablywell-loved, are the simple, sentimental tunes poured out withremarkable consistency by an earlier generation of musicians.Many of them have become folksongs, their origins forgotten.And commentators in the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies detected folksong origins for many of the populartheatre melodies. An interesting evaluation of Wenzel Miillerin the 1796 Jahrbuch der Ton-Kunst von Wien und Prag30 callshim a 'Volkskompositeur', says how agreeable it is to meet oldfriends (i.e. familiar 'themes and passages') in a pleasantsetting, and praises Muller's taste and skill in exploiting'these permissible resources'. We can find similar commentsnearly four decades later, at the end of Muller's life. It wouldbe a mistake to criticize the music of the Viennese populartheatre for lack of depth, originality, harmonic boldness.Even in the innumerable opera parodies from about 1800onwards, one seldom meets with the attempt to make asustained critical point at the expense of the original composer,at least until the best parody scores of Adolf Muller and CarlBinder. Melodies from the original are quoted, and if a comicpoint emerges, it is more because of alterations to the originalwords than of any parodistic skill on the part of the composer.Even though some of the most successful popular plays withmusic had a stage life of half a century, the music was con-sidered ephemeral. A certain amount survives in the printedseries of theatre songs published by Diabelli, Steiner, Cappi,Mollo, Haslinger, Spina and others, but most of the musicsurvives if at all in manuscript copies. That there was con-siderable demand for it at the time is indicated by the factthat Adolf Muller, the busiest and most indestructible of all thetheatre musicians—he wrote well over 600 scores in a careerspanning half a century—himself wrote out at least four

30 No place of publication named; pp. 43-44.

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beautifully neat copies of his full score to Hutmacher undStrumpfwirker (overture plus a dozen vocal numbers).31

The popular music of the day, whatever its provenance,spread very rapidly throughout the populace. Joseph IIfancied himself in one of Kasperl La Roche's arias, as apassage in Dittersdorf's autobiography tells us;32 and welearn from such passages as the following in the satiricalEipeldauer-Briefe that one could rely on hearing all the bestnumbers from a new opera very quickly (in this case theSchikaneder/Sussmayr Der Spiegel von Arkadien): 'But there'sno need for me to spend my money on it: for you can alreadyhear all the songs in every street, and in a few days the tavernmusicians will play you the whole opera for a kreuzer'.33

A visitor to Vienna in the same year (1794) vvas amazed tohear the prisoners in the military penitentiary sing the duet'Pace, caro mio sposo' from Una cosa rara, followed by anequally moving rendering of a song by Mozart's friendGottfried von Jacquin." Then there is hardly any need tomention the fact that Mozart, Beethoven, Hummel and manyothers wrote highly popular sets of variations on the favouritetunes of the day, many of them from the suburban theatres.

Where do musical numbers appear in these works, and howare they introduced? The commonest situations for songs,as in the earlier Hanswurst plays, are at the appearance of aprincipal comic character (the Auftrittslied, in which heintroduces himself; Papageno's 'Der Vogelfanger bin ich ja 'is of this type), and more often still at his exits. Solo songs areeasily the commonest musical form, and only rarely doesanother character invite a song by means of the device ofactually asking for one. Songs are normally strophic, short andsimple—though occasionally a genuine aria occurs, par-ticularly in an operatic situation. An amusing convention alsoarose whereby a character makes as if to sing, and then for avariety of reasons fails to do so, or is interrupted—an earlyexample occurs in Haydn's Der neue krumme Teufel (1.2), awitty late one in the Hopp Freischutz parody (1867) when the

31 Two in the Vienna Nationalbibhothek, shelf-marks S.m. 25397 a n dS.m. 6727, one in the Vienna Stadtbibliothek, shelf-mark H2184Cand one in the possession of the author. JT

32 Karl Ditters von Ditlersdorf. Lebensbeschrcibung, ed. N. Miller, Munich,1967, pp. 229-30.

33 Briefe tines Eipeldauers an seinen Herrn Vetter in Kakran ( V i e n n a , 1794) , e d .E. von Paunel (Denkwiirdigkeiten aus Alt- Osterreich, xvii and xvin),Munich, 1917-18, i. 248.

94 Wiener Theater-Almanach fur das Jahr 1794, pp. 175—6.

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MUSIC IN THE VIENNESE POPULAR THEATRE 11 I

Agathe, played by a well-known actress with no singing voiceat all, hears the orchestra play her introductory music twice,and is saved from disaster only by the timely arrival of thehermit.

Duets and small ensembles are very common, though it israre for more than one voice to be characterized. A typicaland well-loved example is the duet 'Briiderlein fein' fromRaimund 's Das Madchen aus der Feenwelt, oder Der Bauer alsMilliondr; alternating solos are the mainstay, here interspersedwith dance ritornelli—the voices come together only brieflyin true duet. Although the music for this play is by JosephDrechsler it is clear from sketches in Raimund's hand (hewas an accomplished violinist, though untutored) that hehimself wrote the melody, leaving his Kapellmeister toorchestrate and develop it.36id

Larger ensembles are not infrequent, particularly in theambitious scores Wenzel Muller wrote in the late '80s and'90s. His autograph of Die unruhige Nachbarschqft (1803)S6

runs to three volumes; the first-act finale is so large that it isbound as a separate volume. The first-act finale to his DieSchwestern von Prag (1794) is a sizable and quite skilful piece,though in view of the date and for reasons of quality we neednot take seriously E. von Bauernfeld's anecdote87 that 'Mozartis said to have tapped [Muller] on the shoulder during oneof the ensembles in this work and exclaimed: "Wenzel, Ishould like to have written that myself!" ' On the wholelarge ensembles were probably avoided for two practicalreasons: difficulties of rehearsal and performance, and thelimited contrapuntal, harmonic and developmental skills ofthe theatre composers.

Choruses are common in the popular theatre up until theearly 1840s. They are short, almost indecently simple, but theyserved the practical purpose, particularly when linked withmarches or extended incidental music, of bridging the gapbetween scenes or of ending an act or a whole play in astirring manner.

Melodramas, both serious and comic, are quite common;the invocation and utterances of fairies and spirits are oftenaccompanied by simple instrumental music. Apart fromovertures and entr'actes, usual but not invariable, there are

35 Die Gesange aus Raimunds Marchendramen, ed. A. Orel (F. Raimund,Samtliche Werke, vi), Vienna, 1924, pp. xviii-xix.

M Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, shelf-mark St. Th. 365." Ennnerungen aus Alt- Wun, Vienna, 1923, p. 36.

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112 MUSIC IN THE VIENNESE POPULAR THEATRE

frequent dances (often of a national character), serenades,military flourishes and occasional stage concerts. The lateeighteenth century witnessed a remarkable vogue of'TiirkischeMusik'—presumably the final defeat of the Turkish invadersin the 1780s gave the impetus to what was already becoming atradition (one has only to think of Gluck's La Rencontreimprevue and Mozart's Die Entfuhrung, though examples occuralmost a century earlier).

A final category of Viennese popular theatre music is thequodlibet, here used in the sense of pot-pourri, medley ormusical switch.38 Usually a solo number or duet, Nestroysometimes incorporated a number of soloists and chorusin his largest quodlibets, which took on the character ofoperatic parodies in miniature. A typical example comprisesten or fifteen excerpts, its effectiveness dependent on themajority of the audience identifying—or at least perceivingthe point of—the incongruous juxtaposition of melodies thatwere popular at the time in any branch of music exceptchurch music.e

Despite the occasional appearance of great musicians aspopular theatre composers, it would be wrong-headed toclaim more for the average score of the period than tunefulembellishment of the play in question. Yet if distinction ordramatic enrichment are rather rarely to be found, music inthe Viennese Volkskomodie deserves better than the ignoranceit has usually met with at the hands of theatre historians, orneglect at the hands of musicians.

The following illustrations on gramophone records were heard during thecourse of the lecture:a The aria 'Jetzt bin ich was ich war' from Haydn's Das abgebrannte Haus,

sung by Elfnede Ott (FK 50113).b The duet 'Nun liebes Weibchen' from the Schack/Mozart Der Stein der

Weisen, sung by Erika Koth and Walter Berry (S-60050).c The couplet 'Es sind gewiss in unsrer Zeit' from Adolf Muller's Einen

Jux will er sich madun, sung by Josef Meinrad (AVRS 2018-X).d Part of the duet 'Bruderlein fein' from the Raimund/Drechsler Das

Madchen aus der Feenwelt, sung by Elfriede Ott and Julius Patzak (FEP 542).e Part of the quodlibet from Adolf Muller's Das Midi axis der Vorstadt,

sung by Waldemar Kmennt (SPR 3207).

38 This section of my paper, here drastically reduced, will be the subject ofa separate study.

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