5th July 1828

NOTES:

1) Early in the nineteenth century, canonization was extended from "ancient" music to the "classical" music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (and, for that matter, to new music of serious aspiration by Spohr and Mendelssohn). This high-minded reverence for art contrasted with populist ephemera as well as with the glitz of Italian opera and virtuoso pianism, regarded equally as shallow upper-class infatuations. The change was most clearly articulated by the formation of the Philharmonic Society in 1813. The previous decade, despite Salomon’s advocacy of Beethoven, had been dominated by the Vocal Concerts and other series by such divas as Elizabeth Billington and Angelica Catalani; whereas the Philharmonic’s agenda explicitly elevated modern symphonies alongside ancient music, eschewing vocal solos and even concertos at first (though both these restrictions were soon abandoned). Like the Professional Concert, the Philharmonic Society was founded by musicians, but differed radically from its predecessor in its high ideals and ostentatious disdain for profit. Subscribers were admitted on the basis of artistic credentials rather than social status, resulting in many fewer titled members than at the Concert of Ancient Music and a broader audience claiming artistic discernment based on the new Viennese repertory. Admittedly the path was not always smooth, with some members reviving their allegiance to the Professional Concert in 1815 and accusations of complacency and stasis during the 1830s. With a freelance orchestra and limited rehearsal, the standard of orchestral playing cannot have been high, and although Spohr introduced the baton at a rehearsal in 1820, a dual control system between violinist and pianist persisted for many years. Nevertheless, the Philharmonic was a dominant force for many decades, responsible not only for confirming Beethoven as the keystone of the repertory, but also for commissioning music from Cherubini, Spohr and Mendelssohn. If the latter’s appearance at the Philharmonic in 1829 cemented his reputation and influence in England, his authority as a conductor began to encourage more precision of ensemble, an improvement much advanced by Michael Costa from 1846 to 1855.

2) Probably Andreas Jakob Romberg (1767 to 1821), who wrote nine symphonies, twenty violin concertos, and twenty-five string quartettes. A cultured and thoughtful artist, he won European recognition as a composer, modelling his technique on Haydn and Mozart and setting himself the task of writing works musically more substantial than the usual run of virtuoso pieces.

Less probably his cousin, Bernhard Heinrich Romberg (1767 to 1841), who wrote five symphonies, ten violoncello concertos, and eleven string quartettes. Called "the hero of all violoncellists, the king of all virtuosos" by the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, he was a charismatic performer, and always played solos from memory.

3) There are several Pacinis in Grove, but this one is almost certainly Giovanni Pacini (1796 to 1867). He composed more than eighty operas; and although his output of instrumental music was limited it includes the noteworthy programmatic Sinfonia Dante, a lovely octet, and six string quartettes. Unlike Bellini and Donizetti, and despite his self-conscious attempt to correct the defects that he perceived in his early style and to find a more up-to-date approach, Pacini never gained a significant following outside Italy in such important centres as London, Paris and New York, although he was popular in Spain, Portugal and South America. His operas met with mixed reviews in Vienna in the late 1820s, Fétis wrote a scathing criticism of his music in 1830, and Berlioz and Mendelssohn were completely unsympathetic. The scores of forty of Pacini's operas may be downloaded from the Internet Text Archive.

4) Carlo Evasio Soliva (1792 to 1853). He studied at the Milan Conservatory and in 1815 was engaged as a conductor at La Scala, where four of his five operas were produced. In 1821 he moved to Warsaw, where he became one of the foremost figures in musical life. He taught singing and harmony at the conservatory and (from 1827) was director of the School of Singing and Declamation. He also conducted many operas and symphony concerts in Warsaw, including Chopin’s farewell concert on 11 October 1830. In 1832 he moved to St. Petersburg, where from 1834 he was conductor of the tsar’s royal chapel, director of the opera and teacher of music theory and head of singing classes at the school of drama. In 1841, after a visit to Italy, he settled in Paris.

5) In Grove there are two Fioravantis but no Fioravente. It is difficult to work out which Fioravanti is intended here.

Valentino Fioravanti (1764 to 1837) wrote eighty-four operas. His harmonic language is uninventive for its time, but typical of Italian opera innocent of Haydn and Mozart. Comedy is everything, from complicated imbroglios in ensembles to the imitation of barnyard animals; each dramatic situation receives an appropriate, witty musical treatment. Stendhal in his Vie de Rossini (Paris, 1824) paid Fioravanti his greatest compliment; he reported Rossini as believing that the art of opera buffa had already reached perfection before he began to compose and that in the particular comic style known as nota e parola there was no further progress possible after Fioravanti.

His son Vincenzo Fioravanti (1799 to 1877) wrote thirty-nine operas, the most popular of which was Il ritorno di Pulcinella dagli studi di Padova (1837); it was performed abroad, was constantly adapted by various singers and composers, and was on the stage for over eighty years. Part of its success was due to the irresistibly comic scenes in which the hero is thrown into an asylum for crazy musicians. Just a few of his operas appear to have been composed prior to 1828; Robinson Crusoe is one.

6) Nicolas Mori (1797 to 1839) was a violinist and music publisher. The son of an Italian wig-maker in the New Road, London, he played a concerto by his teacher F.-H. Barthélemon at the King’s Theatre in 1805. From 1808 to 1814 he studied with Viotti, and in 1813 joined the Philharmonic Society’s orchestra. In 1816 he became one of the orchestra’s leaders, appearing regularly in chamber music items and as a soloist. He also led the King’s Theatre orchestra under Costa, played in several London concerts and at provincial festivals, and from 1823 was a professor at the RAM. In 1836 he and Robert Lindley established annual series of Classical Chamber Concerts in competition with the Quartett Concerts set up by Henry Blagrove. Mori was one of the leading English violinists of the 1820s and 30s; the Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review admired his bold, free and commanding bow-arm, his firm, full and impressive tone and the force, precision and facility of his playing, but noted that his style lacked the nice points of finish and graces and delicacies of expression. He composed a number of works for violin, including several unpublished concertos; he also made arrangements of operatic excerpts for solo violin, and of orchestral works for chamber ensemble.

7) The violinist and composer Charles-Auguste de Bériot was born at Leuven in 1802 and expired at Brussels in 1870. Bériot made a highly successful début in Paris, meeting with equal acclaim in London, where he played his own Concertino at the Philharmonic Society on 1st May 1826. After his return to Brussels, he was named solo violinist to King William I of the Netherlands at a salary of two thousand guilders, but the appointment was terminated by the revolution of 1830. In 1829 he met the famous singer Maria Malibran. For the next six years they travelled together, giving joint concerts in Belgium, England, France and Italy. This liaison led to their marriage on 29 March 1836. Less than six months later she expired unexpectedly in Manchester, shortly after appearing at a concert. The grief-stricken Bériot returned to Brussels and temporarily left the concert platform. Altogether he published ten violin concertos.

8) Mr. Weichsel is not in Grove's.

9) Thomas Greatorex (1758 to 1831) was an English conductor and organist. In 1774, at a performance of sacred music in St Martin's Church, Leicester, the nineteen-year-old Greatorex was picked up by Joah Bates, private secretary and music director to the Earl of Sandwich. The earl invited him to become an inmate of his house, and between 1774 and 1776 he assisted at the oratorios given at Christmas at the earl's country seat, Hinchinbrook House, near Huntingdon.

On the establishment in London of the Concert of Ancient Music in 1776, conducted by Bates, Greatorex sang in the chorus. From 1781 to 1784 he was organist of Carlisle Cathedral, and then he moved to Newcastle. In 1786 he went to Italy to study singing with Santorelli, and in Rome met the pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, who subsequently bequeathed him a large quantity of valuable manuscript music.

On his return to England in 1788 Greatorex established himself in London as a teacher of music, building up an extensive and lucrative practice. In 1793 he succeeded Bates as conductor of the Ancient Concerts, a post that he held until his death. In 1801 he joined W. Knyvett, Harrison and Bartleman in reviving the Vocal Concerts, and in 1819 he succeeded G.E. Williams as organist of Westminster Abbey. In 1822 he also became professor of organ and piano at the R.A.M.

Greatorex was most important in his day as a teacher and conductor. He published no original music, but was highly esteemed for his arrangements, and for his additional accompaniments to many pieces for the Ancient and Vocal Concerts. He harmonized the Parochial Psalmody (London, c. 1825) and published psalms and chants (London, 1829) as well as several monographs on mathematics, astronomy and natural history. Only one of these is available at the Internet Text Archive: his 1819 Observations on the Height of Mountains in the North of England.

10) Francesco Geminiani (1687 to 1762), composer, violinist and theorist. "Geminiani," wrote Burney, "was seldom heard in public during his long residence in England. His compositions, scholars, and the presents he received from the great, whenever he could be prevailed upon to play at their houses, were his chief support." In 1725 he was one of the founder members of the Philo-Musicae et Architecturae Societas, a masonic lodge known as the Queen's Head; in confirmation of the distinction he had achieved during his more than ten years in London, he was awarded the office of Perpetual Dictator.

On 6 December 1733 Geminiani arrived in Dublin to join Moore's retinue, and on 15 December he gave his first public concert there. He opened a concert hall in Dame Street, Spring Gardens, later known as "Geminiani's Great Room," which he used also for selling pictures.

He composed forty-seven concertos and at least six treatises; a number of these items are available from the Internet Text Archive, including "A Guide to Harmony," "The Art of Accompaniment," and - very important this in our present day, when the subject is so neglected - "A Treatise of Good Taste in the Art of Musick" (1749).

11) Madame Schutz is not in Grove's.

12) Henriette Sontag (1806 to 1854), the German soprano. In 1823 Weber heard her in Rossini’s La donna del lago: clearly she had greatly developed, for when he had heard her in Prague the year previously he had thought her, "a pretty girl, but still very much a beginner, and rather goose-like," but now he offered her the title role of Euryanthe. On 25 October 1823 she triumphed; she also sang with great success, and to the composer’s pleasure, in the premières of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Missa solemnis (7 and 13 May 1824). Well that is something is it not! Do members know of any seventeen-year-old English maidens who sing but are goose-like? At Weimar, she greatly impressed Goethe, who wrote the poem Neue Siren for his "fluttering nightingale". Her English début was in 1828, as Rosina at the King’s Theatre on 19 April. In London her repertory included Carolina in Il matrimonio segreto; and she herself contracted a secret marriage with Count Carlo Rossi.

13) Johann Peter Pixis (1788 to 1874) became famous as a pianist at a very early age through his concert tour with his brother and the favourable publicity it received. In addition to being an excellent pianist he accompanied his brother on the cello and played the violin. When the brothers returned to Mannheim after their tour Johann Peter also studied composition. In 1808 he joined his family in Vienna, where he met Beethoven, Meyerbeer and Schubert. His greatest success as pianist and composer came during his second tour with Boehm in 1823, and his reception in Paris in particular persuaded him to move there permanently in October 1824. In Paris Pixis met Alexander von Humboldt, Heine, Cherubini, Moscheles, Liszt, Halévy, Berlioz and Rossini. In 1828 he travelled to England with the above-mentioned Henriette Sontag, whom he had met in Vienna. At the height of his "career" (c. 1818 to the early 1830s) Pixis was a pianist of the first rank. He composed a symphony, a piano-forte concerto, at least six string quartettes, a piano-forte quintette, and much else, including several sets of variations on operatic themes.