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Music in the Viennese Popular Theatre of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Peter Branscombe
Peter Branscombe*
Affiliation:
St. Andrews University
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Extract

When in 1710 or 1711 Joseph Anton Stranitzky's company of German actors took over the recently built Theater nachst dem Karntnertor in Vienna they established a tradition of plays with music that was to last for a century and a half. They were themselves heirs to various traditions—most notably the companies of strolling players (englische Comödianten) that had been popular in German lands from Shakespeare's time, but also assimilating features from the commedia dell'arte and the Parisian théâtres de la foire, and imitating (and frequently parodying) the Italian court opera, as well as developing even further the extensive comic scenes and intermezzi both of the opera and of the Jesuit drama. Music was an important component in the Viennese Jesuit dramas and the theatres de la foire, and collections like the Engelische Comedien und Tragedien … of 1620 and Liebeskampf oder Ander Theil der Engelischen Comoedien und Tragoedien … of 1630, containing the tunes as well as the words of a number of songs, indicate the extent to which music was readily available for ambulant troupes in seventeenth-century Germany. Parallel to the use of music in German plays at this time is the extent and nature of the comic scenes in operas and Jesuit dramas in Vienna. J. B. Adolph's carnival play of 1700, Carnisprivium proscriptum, with music by J. B. Staudt, includes three large-scale musical sequences, a light-hearted German song in praise of the joys of angling, and also a vernacular parody of a Latin lament. During the reign of Amalteo as court poet, and even more during that of Minato (1669–98), comic scenes and dialect interpolations reached such a height that the reforms of Zeno and Metastasio became entirely necessary. One example of Minato's methods must serve for many: in the Minato/Draghi La lira d'Orfeo of 1683 Orpheus is by no means Euridice's only admirer. When he leaves her after a tiff, she is forced to admit: ‘Lassa! Perdendo vo tutti gli Amanti’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 98 , 1971 , pp. 101 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

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