Page 157 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

FiguRe 9.1
The New Market in Vienna in the late 1700s. The building
on the center right (today the Ambassador Hotel) housed
the casino, and it was here that Mozart’s G minor symphony
was apparently first performed in 1788. Even today, famous musicians, such as Yo-Yo Ma and Taylor Swift, perform in casinos, because that’s where the money is! <
genre of the “symphony” become that it gave its name to the concert “hall” and the performing “orchestra,” thus creating our terms symphony hall and symphony orchestra.
The Classical Symphony Orchestra
As the symphony orchestra moved from pri- vate court to public auditorium, the ensemble increased in size to satisfy the demands of its new performance space—and expanding au- dience. During the 1760s and 1770s, the en- semble at the court of Haydn’s patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, was never larger than twenty-five, and the audience at this court was often only the prince and his staff (Figure 9.2). But when Haydn went to London in 1791, his concert promoters provided him with an or- chestra of nearly sixty players in the Hanover Square Rooms. Although this hall normally accommodated 800 to 900 persons, for one concert in the spring of 1792 nearly 1,500 ea- ger listeners crowded in to hear Haydn’s latest works.
Mozart’s experience in Vienna was similar. For the public concerts that he mounted in the casino there in the mid-1780s, he engaged an orchestra of about 35 players. But in a letter of 1781, he mentions an orchestra of 80 instrumental- ists, including 40 violins, 10 violas, 8 cellos, and 10 double basses. Although this was an exceptional ensemble brought together for a special benefit concert, it shows that at times a very large group could be assembled. It also reveals that a large number of string players could be assigned to play just one string part—as many as 20 might “double” each other on the first violin line, for example.
FiguRe 9.2
A watercolor of 1775 shows Haydn leading the small orches- tra at the court of the Esterházy prince during a performance
of a comic opera. The com- poser is seated at the keyboard, surrounded by the cellos. The higher strings and woodwinds are seated in two rows at the desk.
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Deutsches Theatermuseum, Munich/© The Bridgeman Art Library
Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY
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