Organized in 1947, the New York Woodwind Quintet is heard exten-
sively in concert as well as in numerous recordings. Its coast-to-coast tours
of the United States and on far-flung tours abroad evoke consistently en-
thusiastic response from audiences and critics alike. The group has been
twice honored with invitations from the United States State Department
to tour for the Cultural Presentations Program, and in this connection has
performed throughout South America, Southeast Asia, Japan and numerous
countries of the Orient.
",.. 40 notch in every department.’ —The New York Times
"Each player is a master of his trade, possessing not only the skill
of the virtuoso, but also the greater knowledge of how to subordinate
this skill to purely musical ends.”—Daily Mail, Singapore
"... bigh art of virtuoso wind playing.” —Stuttgarter Zeitung
Franz Danzi, German born, of Italian descent, was of
Mozart's generation (born seven years after Mozart, in
1763), but musically he belongs to a later period—he lived
on almost twenty-five years after Mozart. Danzi was a child
of Mannheim, where he was born and where for many years
his father was a cellist in the famous Mannheim orchestra.
The stamp of Mannheim is curiously upon Danzi’s music—
he studied under Abbé Vogler, who was extremely influ-
ential there—even though its style, as exemplified by
the present Quintets, is of a later time, paralleling carly
Beethoven and Carl Maria von Weber. For, like a number
of other second-generation children of Mannheim musicians,
such as Karl Stamitz and Peter von Winter (cf. Nonesuch
H-1014) Danzi was educated in the midst of the celebrated
musical ferment that drew musicians from the whole of
Europe to the little town of Mannheim.
The Mannheim orchestra was assembled, at the behest
of the Elector Karl Theodore, by Anton Stamitz in 1744—
at the tail-end of the late-Baroque period—and quickly be-
came not only the outstanding orchestra in Europe but the
center for a dynamic new style of composition and per-
formance. In matters of brilliance of technique and execu-
tion, and receptiveness to stylistic innovation, Mannheim
was supreme in Europe, from the 1750s straight through
until 1778, when the Elector moved his court to Munich and
the famous orchestra was broken up. (Only months before,
Mozart on his way to Paris had stopped off to re-visit Mann-
heim for a considerable stay; when he returned, en route
back to Salzburg, the orchestra was already disbanded.)
Inevitably, many musicians disliked the florid Mannheim
mannerisms and found the music superficial. Leopold
Mozart, a pedagogue and solid conservative, had harsh things
to say about such fripperies. But his more gifted son was
enormously stimulated, perceiving the latent power (for his
own genius) in the technical devices practiced at Mannheim
while agreeing with his father as to the slightness of most
of the actual music.
‘The musical sons of the Mannheimers grew up, thus, in
the midst of a quasi-carnival atmosphere, a sort of long-run
musical “show” famed for its superb display, its fantastic
precision, its unique style. Technique in all its aspects,
stylistic purity, a wealth of outward stylistic innovations—
these were the things that mattered first in Mannheim, and
these were the fascinations that brought the world of Euro-
pean music in a constant pilgrimage to hear the famed
Mannheim sound. In turn, many of the second generation,
trained in Mannheim, joined the orchestra. Karl Stamitz,
son of the founder, began playing in it at sixteen and re-
mained eight years before breaking away on his own. Franz
Danzi was considerably. younger, by almost a generation.
He, too, studied with his cellist father and entered the or-
chestra at fifteen, but his tenure was short, for that was the
very year in which the Elector moved away to Munich. It is
probable, then, that young Danzi was playing his first cello
parts in the orchestra during the weeks when Mozart, 3
youth of 21, was staying on in the small city, fascinated alike
by the stimulating musical atmosphere and a girl named
Aloysia Weber—whose younger sister he eventually married.
When the Elector moved his court to Munich, most of
his musical establishment went with him, including the
elder Danzi, The son, however, stayed with the “rump”
musical group remaining at Mannheim, to make a first
success as a composer of German opera. Five years later,
upon his father's retirement, the younger Danzi moved on
to Munich to take his place; then in 1790 he married a
singer and with her, at last, broke away to embark upon’
a long tour of Germany and Italy, to return to Munich as
second in command under Peter von Winter, also Mann-
heim-born. The rest of Franz Danzi’s life is of less interest
to us; his wife died in 1800 and he “retired” for seven years,
but came forward again, still in early middle age, as Court
Conductor at Stuttgart and then, finally, at Karlsruhe, where
he died in 1826. During these years his opera output was
significant, as a musical link to Weber and the later Ro-
mantics, and we hear some of this in his Quintets, as well.
In fact, a good deal links Weber and Danzi. Weber too
had studied with Vogler, and spent some time in Stuttgart
while Danzi was there. The two men were close friends,
and Danzi performed Weber's operas at Karlsruhe im-
mediately after their premieres elsewhere.
The stamp of Mannheim is on these Quintets in two ways.
First, of course, is the suave polish and perfection of the
writing, the matchless ease of expression, the fluent, grace-
ful thematic ideas. Though they are, again, not Mannheim
in style but of a later time, the essential quality of the Mann-
heim polish is clearly still present. That city provided a
superb professional background for any young musician's
training.
Secondly, and perhaps even more typical, is the almost
conscious “lack” of profound content in these little works,
One must tread carefully here, among mere words; for the
Danzi expression was deliberate, and desirable at the time.
The tradition of woodwind music was still strongly that of
the divertimento, the cassation—music for casual entertain-
ment, if of a refined sort—as we know not only from
Mozart but even from Beethoven, whose early works abound
in that sort of expression. Hence, with the exception per-
haps of the G minor Quintet, Opus 56, No. 2, (the first
to be republished in modern times) and portions of the
later E minor Quintet, Opus 67, No. 2, this music is gen-
erally more bland than profound. Danzi, the true Mann-
heimer at heart, was no man to strain the bounds of a given
style or medium—as Mozart was ever ready to do when
inner forces prompted him. In that sense, Danzi was no
Romantic, as was Mozart. In the nineteenth century, it be-
came fashionable to force—or to appear to force—all sorts
of aesthetic boundaries, in the name of Art! In Danzi’s late
18th- and early 19th-century world, musicians still produced
music in proper style and according to local proprieties, as
naturally as one dresses properly for a social function. There
was little aesthetic rebellion in Danzi’s musical make-up.
‘What more? Merely that in his time, Danzi is very much
preoccupied with those newly sweet twists of lushly chro-
matic harmony which then intrigued all composers, but to
our ears now often sound more sentimental than significant.
The very opening phrase of the first of our Quintets, Opus
56, No. 1, sums up the whole sound of that day, with its
honeyed diminished seventh chord, turned as blandly as a
raised eyebrow, as polished as a hostess’ smile. Danzi was
immensely skillful at this then-new harmony, as many a
succeeding passage will show, though he was not at all a
Romantic in these formal, well polished little works.
Even so, it is interesting that the composer cannot keep
his unctuous, almost oily music quite as formal as it seems
to try to be. Danzi waxes serious in spite of himself, im-
pelled by a musical language that is innately emotional, re-
flecting the newest expressive fashions of his time—those
same elements with which Weber, Beethoven and Schubert
were building the Romantic movement.
EDWARD TATNALL CANBY
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