Welcome to my final post on music history! For today’s topic, I shall be reflecting on some Viennese music from before Mozart’s time, then on Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 K. 271 in E-Flat major “Jeunehomme”, as well as some readings on this latter subject.
Before we look in depth at Mozart’s Piano Concerto in E-Flat, let’s turn briefly to the city and composers that largely shaped him.
Vienna, or Wien, was a multicultural city even back in the 1700’s. The seat of Austrian Hapsburg power, Wien sat at the heart of Europe, surrounded by diverse peoples: Germans, Italians, Croats, Hungarians and the Czechs, to name but a few, with the Ottoman Empire right on their doorstep (I mean very literally, come 1529 and 1683). Out of this bubbling, (largely) Catholic Realm, religious music took a predictable turn towards the more joyous and uplifting strain, found nowhere else in Europe at the time.
Church services were grand and opulent; the standard setting of a service was a choir and full orchestra, leading to wonderful works of music, such as Czech composer Vanhal’s Missa Pastoralis. Although composed in a recognizable way, this piece is full of unexpected chromaticism and clever mimicking of a bagpipe’s drone (hence the piece’s title Pastoralis). The massed forces available for such music definitely attracted composers, Mozart not least among them when he arrived in 1781. Due to reforms carried out by Josef II, successor to the formidable Empress Maria Theresa, however, these grand practices were halted to save coin. Mozart, not willing to give up the ability to compose for such forces, subsequently turned to orchestral writing.
Before the “Classical” era, there was a smaller era: that of the “Galant”. This era has only been recognized recently, and their composers are largely forgotten, despite their influence at the time and on composers directly after them. Composers such as Hasse, Vanhal and Wagenseil wrote dynamic and intricate works. Wagenseil’s Divertimento in C major Op. 1, No. 2, WV1 is a perfect example of this style of music: highly structured by Baroque standards, with strong interlocking regular phrases, an often bar-to-bar harmonic progression, and a certain penchant for triplet rhythm. I find the use of harpsichord fascinating: the only way to play louder on a harpsichord is to play more
notes, and I think it is done quite tastefully. The coinciding harmonies, especially in the first movement, I find utterly mesmerizing. Music such as this is a clear forbear to works by composers such as Mozart and Haydn.
To give an example of how influential some of these composers were, one need only look at Wagenseil’s life: possibly the most influential of all Galant composers, he was employed at the palace as music tutor to Maria Theresa’s children (among them the infamous Marie Antoinette), and subsequently influenced the musical taste at court. When Mozart first visited the Viennese court in 1762, he well knew who Wagenseil was, seeking him out as he was to perform one of his concertos. True, Mozart then press-ganged the notable composer into being his page-turner, but this still shows how influential and internationally acclaimed some of these composers were.
Even though Mozart is a much more well known composer, some of the information behind his works are only just coming to light, such as in the case of his Piano Concerto No. 9 K. 271 in E-Flat major.
Written in 1777, all that was known about this piano concerto for a very long time was that it had been commissioned/written for a female piano virtuoso. This in itself was extraordinary, as female performers were quite rare at the time; it was thought that a performing woman was, consequently, an ill-bred woman (an idea luckily not encouraged today). The identity of this women was hidden, however, through a combination of selective historic recording which favours male artists over female, and by the Mozarts’ absolutely shocking spelling. Nonetheless, after much speculation and conjecture, in 2004 the identity of the pianist was revealed to be Louise Victoire Jenamy, daughter of Georges Noverre, a theatre director who was friends with Mozart. Many analysts have since claimed many connections, either speculative or factual, between the performer and the concerto, which was imbued by Mozart with several innovations.
In the concerto’s exposition (beginning), the piano starts on bar two. As far as I’m aware, this is the only occurrence in a concerto where Mozart did not use a lengthy orchestral introduction. Other elements unique to this concerto include a messa di voce-style trilling entrance when the piano comes in properly; messa di voce is a singing technique which involves the singer holding a single pitch whilst increasing and reducing volume. Another innovation is the Arioso movement: a lyrical, operatic slow movement, whose structure would appear later in many a Beethoven sonata. These elements, analysts maintain, allude to Mme. Jenamy’s association with the theatre. It is believed that to the original audience, Mme. Jenamy’s history would have been largely understood, in the way that celebrities today are, and these little allusions and foibles would have been much appreciated.
Article A
This is the original 2004 article, where Michael Lorenz published for the first time the correct identity of the mystery women. This three-page article is a very easy and enjoyable read, published in the Journal of the American Mozart Society. I don’t quite know why, but this amuses me. I expect many things to come out of America, but a National Mozart Society was not one of them. Reading through other parts of the Journal, I find this society completely commendable, as a forum for Mozart enthusiasts, as well as their ability to support students in graduate study. So, simultaneously I apologise for my scepticism and take my hat off to you.
A couple more things on the article. I find the inclusion of Albert Einstein’s quote, that
K.271 was Mozart’s “Eroica”, highly entertaining. As a Beethoven fanatic, it is very amusing to read about a work of Mozart’s being compared to a later work by a man who actively admired and tried to emulate Mozart in his younger years.
Lorenz’s contention of an “incorrect name” and that now we can use the proper name for the concerto don’t sit too well with me, however. Mozart did not subtitle his work “Jeunehomme”; likewise, Beethoven’s Sonata op. 27 no. 14 “Moonlight Sonata” was named thus by a (thoroughly deluded) poet, and the hypocrisy of Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words” having words is due to his rapscallion publisher: examples accumulate throughout history. Since Mozart never intended to name his concerto, who can say what name is correct?
Article B
Kris Steyaert’s “Mozart with a French Twist: Mademoiselle Jeunehomme revisited” is an interesting read, relying heavily on Lorenz’s article and Wyzewa & Saint-Fox’s book Wolfgang Amédée Mozart [1911] to make his argument in a quasi-mediating/reviewing framework.
In Wolfgang Amédée Mozart, written in 1911, the French musicologists Wyzewa & Saint-Fox claimed that the mystery pianist was French. Correct though they were, they extracted the name Mademoiselle Jeunehomme from primary sources: The Elder and Younger Mozarts’ letters. There are several issues with their claim: spellings in the Younger and Elder Mozarts’ letters (especially where French was concerned) were famously approximate, and in the letters, there were three different spellings of “Jenamy”, none of which were actually “Jenamy”. Wyzewa & Saint-Fox were also not allowed to handle the original documents, and instead had to rely on French reproductions, which had Francocized the names. Wyzewa & Saint-Fox then altered these names further, then created a new name which they claimed would have been the common and rightful spelling: Jeunehomme. These views went relatively unchallenged until Michael Lorenz’s article in 2004. It appears that Steyaert’s article is mainly trying to temper Lorenz’s argument and accusations against these two French musicologists. As he argues, there was ample room for error in this situation. I tend to agree with him. However, as pointed out by Steyaert, in the appendix of Wolfgang Amédée Mozart the authors lay the foundations for the discovery of Victoire Jenamy by bringing up a link to Claudius Jenamy, the Grandfather of Victoire Jenamy’s husband. Although they must be credited for this clue, Wyzewa & Saint-Fox must also be credited with the purely fabricated comment: “Mde. was one of the most celebrated virtuosi of her day”. I would also like to point out the fact that Wyzewa & Saint-Fox presume to give the title “Mademoiselle” to “Jeunehomme”. This, I think, is because that they presume that, like the majority of female performers of the time, the mystery women was unmarried.