Automatic genius: Mozart and the mechanical sublime

Music and Letters

Volumn 80, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 366-389

  Richards, Annette ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61449100017     PISSN: 00274224     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/ml/80.3.366     Document Type: Review

References (48)

1. For the classic survey of music for mechanical instruments, see Ernst Simon, Mechanische Musikinstrumente früherer Zeiten und ihre Musik, Wiesbaden, 1960. The distinction I am making here is between the Flötenuhr, a small organ in a clock, with a limited compass and usually not more than one or two ranks of flue pipes, and the larger mechanical organs, not necessarily associated with clocks, which began to be displayed for public entertainment at the end of the eighteenth century. The larger of these 'automatic orchestras' provided the ideal vehicle for transcriptions of such pieces as the overture to Mozart's Die Zauberflöte or original works such as Beethoven's Wellingtons Sieg, oder Die Schlacht bei Vittoria, which was commissioned in 1813 for Johann Nepomuk Maelzel's Panharmonicon.
2. The recent critical literature on Mozart's pieces for musical clock includes Neal Zaslaw, 'Mozart's Fantasy in F minor, K. 608', The Rosaleen Moldenhauer Memorial: 'Music History from Primary Sources.' A Guide to the Moldenhauer Archives, ed. Alfred Mann & Jon Newsom, Washington, DC, 1999, pp. 333-46,
3. and Laurence Dreyfus, "The Hermeneutics of Lament: a Neglected Paradigm in a Mozartian Trauermusik', Music Analysis, x (1991), 329-43, which analyses the Adagio and Allegro in F minor K.594.
4. See also Wolfgang Plath's introduction to W. A. Mozart: Neue sämtliche Werk [NMA], IX:27 (Kassel, 1982);
5. Hans Haselböck, 'Mozarts Stücke für eine Orgelwalze', Mundus Organarum: Festschrift Walter Supper zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Alfred Reichling, Berlin, 1978, pp. 131-59;
6. A. Hyatt King, 'Mozart's Compositions for Mechanical Organ', Mozart in Retrospect: Studies in Criticism and Bibliography, rev. edn., London, 1970, pp. 198-215;
7. Otto Erich Deutsch, 'Mozarts Musik in Graf Deyms Kunstgalerie', Konzertblatt der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, ii/5 (1 December 1948), 1-4;
8. and idem, 'Count Deym and his Mechanical Organs', Music & Letters, xxix (1948), 140-45.
9. For a typical dismissal of this repertory, see for example H. C. Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart's Lest Tear, London, 1988, p. 40: 'We shall pass over the many smaller commissions for 1791: songs, pieces for mechanical clock (Mozart hated the squeaky little thing). None of it is fundamentally what he wanted to do and what he should have been doing.'
10. See Zaslaw, 'Mozart's Fantasy in F minor', Plath in NMA IX:27, and Haselböck, 'Mozarts Stücke', for a detailed discussion of the instruments in question. The small 'high-pitched' instrument can be ruled out on account of the expanded compass (C-a‴) of K.594 and K.608, and their scoring on four staves (rather than the more usual three); these pieces must have been composed for an instrument more like the 'large clock' sounding 'like an organ' that Mozart wished for in his letter. Moreover, a contemporary eyewitness account reported hearing the organ clock for which the pieces were written performing Mozart's Fantasie K.608 on 'flutes and bassoon', attesting to an instrument with at least two flue-stops and one reed-stop. An automatic organ or 'Mechanical Theatre' made by the Baden clockmaker Johann Georg Strasser, which played, among other works by Mozart, the Fantasie K.608, was exhibited at St Petersburg in 1801; the instrument had seven stops including two at 16′ pitch and one reed. See Simon, Mechanische Murikinstrumente, p. 79.
11. '. einen der ersten Plätze unter den Meisterwerken des Unsterblichen'; Ignaz von Seyfried, letter of 18 January 1813 in the archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna (quoted in Haselböck, 'Mozart's Stücke', p. 145; trans. from Zaslaw, 'Mozart's Fantasy in F minor', pp. 328-9). Wolfgang Plath surmises that the unidentified 'Hofrat' to whom this letter is addressed may have been Friedrich Rochlitz, editor of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. This journal was published by Breitkopf & Härtel, for whom Seyfried had recently completed an orchestration of K.608.
12. 'Man hört alle Stunden eine durch den unvergeßlichen Tonkünsder Mozart eigends dazu komponierte passende Trauermusik, die acht Minuten lang dauert, und an Precision and Reinigkeit alles übertrift, was man bey dieser Art von Kunstwerken je schickliches anzubringen suchte'. C. M. A., Beschreibung des kaserl königl. privilegierten, durch den Herm Hofstatuarius Müller errichteten Kunstgalerie in Wien, Vienna, 1799; edn. from 1814, No. 37, pp. 76 ff. (quoted in Haselböck, 'Mozarts Stücke', p. 137.
13. trans. from Deutsch, 'Count Deym and his Mechanical Organs', p. 143).
14. Dreyfus, 'The Hermeneutics of Lament', p. 330.
15. Gardiner later printed the letter in his Music and Friends (London, 1838-53), adding that 'The subjects quoted and wrought on the stockings were the following: "My mother bids me bind my hair" [English canzonetta]; the bass solo of "The Leviathan" [from The Creation]; the andante of the Surprise Sinfonia [No. 94]; his sonata "Consummatum est" [from The Seven Words] and "God Preserve the Emperor"'. In H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Work, v: Haydn: the Late Tears 1801-1809, London, 1977, p. 291.
16. Jonathan Swift, The tale of a tub . To which is added an account between the antient and modern book in St. James's library. Also, a Discourse concerning the mechanical operation of the spirit, Dublin, 1741;
17. see Hugh Kenner, The Counterfeiters: an Historical Comedy, Baltimore & London, 1985, pp. 24-6.
18. For an account of Vaucanson and his duck, see A. Chapuis & E. Droz, Automata, Neuchâtel, 1958, pp. 233-42;
19. and Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command: a Contribution to Anonymous History, New York, 1948, pp. 34-5.
20. See also Jean-Claude Beaune, 'The Classical Age of Automata: an Impressionistic Survey from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century', Zone: Fragments for a History of the Human Body, ed. Michel Feher, iii/1 (New York, 1989), 430-80.
21. Chapuis & Droz, Automata, p. 242;
22. see also Kenner, The Counterfeiters, p. 30.
23. Jean Paul Friedrich Richter [Jean-Paul], Army-Chaplain Schmelzle's Journey to Flaetz; and, Life of Quintus Fixlein, trans. Thomas Carlyle (1827), Columbia, South Carolina, c.1991, pp. 86-7 n.
24. Alexander Gerard, Essay on Genius, London, 1774, pp. 84-5.
25. In M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, London, 1971, p. 165.
26. Auguste Tissot, in Aristide, ou le Citoyen, Lausanne, 11 October 1766;
27. in King, Mozart in Retrospect, pp. 135-6.
28. Underlying Tissot's account of the 'automatic' nature of Mozart's inspired performance is the topos of the divine possession of the great artist For contemporary descriptions of musical inspiration and demonic possession, see Neal Zaslaw, 'Ornaments for Corelli's Violin Sonatas, Op. 5', Early Music, xxiv (1996), 95-115, esp. pp. 110-11.
29. See Jacques de Vaucanson, An Account of the Mechanism of an Automaton, or Image playing on the German Flute, London, 1742, p. 13;
30. Johann Michael Schmidt, Musico-Theologica, Bayreuth, 1754;
31. in The Bach Reader, ed. Hans T. David & Arthur Mendel, rev. & enlarged by Christoph Wolff, New York & London, 1998, p. 361.
32. Johann Joachim Quantz, Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen, Berlin, 1752;
33. trans. Edward R. Reilly as On Playing the Flute, London & Boston, 1985, p. 131.
34. Quantz was clearly familiar with the published description of the flute player (Vaucanson's treatise was quickly translated into both English and German), for he took issue with Vaucanson's explanations of the production of sound in the flute, offering a forceful and detailed refutation of Vaucanson's theory. Quantz's complaint against the pursuit of technique for its own sake foreshadows Mozart's dismissal of Clementi as a 'mechanicus': 'Clementi plays well, so far as execution with the right hand goes. His greatest strength lies in his passages in thirds. Apart from this, he has not a kreuzer's worth of taste or feeling - in short he is simply a mechanicus.' Letter to his father, 12 January 1782; trans from The Letters of Mozart and his Family, trans. & ed. Emily Anderson, 3rd edn., rev. Stanley Sadie & Fiona Smart, London & Basingstoke, 1985, p. 792.
35. On musical clocks and mechanical organs, see Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume, Joseph Haydn and the Mechanical Organ, Cardiff, 1982;
36. idem, Clockwork Music;
37. Simon, Mechanische Musikinstrumente;
38. and Ernst Fritz Schmid, 'Joseph Haydn und die Flötenuhr', Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, xiv (1932), 193-221.
39. Neuestes Sittengemählde von Wien, Vienna, 1801, i. 38ff. In Deutsch, 'Count Deym and his Mechanical Organs', p. 144. Quoting Alfred Einstein, Deutsch suggests that this music may have been an arrangement of the Adagio and Rondo for armonica, flute, oboe, viola and cello K.617, the autograph of which was owned by Deym; it is more likely, though, that this was the Andante in F major K.616, commissioned by Deym for a smaller instrument in his collection.
40. 'mit Schlag jeder Stunde lässt sich einer Trauer Musique hören, und wird alle Woche eine andere seyn. Diese Woche ist die Composition von Hm. Kapellmeister Mozart' Wiener Zeitung, 26 March 1791 (in Mozart: Dokumente seines Lebens, ed. Otto Erich Deutsch & Joseph H. Eibl, Kassel, 1981, pp. 173-4).
41. See Elaine R. Sisman, Mozart the 'Jupiter' Symphony, Cambridge, 1993, p. 70.
42. 'Das Gefühl des Erhaben wird durch Musik erregt, wenn die Einbildungskraft zum Grenzenlosen, Unermeßlichen, Unüberwindlichen erhoben wird . auch (wie in vielstimmigen fugirten Compositionen) die Melodieen zu vielfach sich in einander harmonisch verwickeln, als daß die Einbildungskraft das Mannichfaltige leicht und ruhig zu einem Ganzen vereinigen und als dn Ganzes ohne Anstrengung übersehen könnte'. Christian Friedrich Michaelis, Berlinische musikalische Zeitung (1805), i/46, pp. 179-80;
43. trans. from Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Peter le Huray & James Day, 2nd edn., Cambridge, 1988, p. 203.
44. Sisman, Mozart: the 'Jupiter' Symphony, p. 79.
45. trans. from Zaslaw, 'Mozart's Fantasy in F minor', pp. 328-9).
46. On learned counterpoint as the music of death in German theory of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, see David Yearsley, Ideologies of Learned Counterpoint in the North German Baroque (unpublished dissertation), Stanford University, 1995,
47. and idem, 'Towards an Allegorical Interpretation of Buxtehude's Funerary Counterpoints', Music & Letters, lxxx (1999), 183-206.
48. See Philippe Ariès, The Hour of our Death, trans. Helen Weaver, New York, 1981, esp. Chapter 8,'The Dead Body', and Chapter 10, 'The Age of the Beautiful Death'.