THE NATURE OF THE WORK

Strictly speaking, Schleiermacher does not have a metaphysics, if by this is meant a foundational philosophical doctrine. He was not convinced that metaphysics could grasp the highest object of the human mind, or that it could exhaustively deal with the essential interests of the human spirit. He reserved the expression “metaphysics” for the systematic exposition of descriptive truths. Alongside such a system he placed ethics, or morals, as a system of action (not only right action). The “highest” lies beyond the knowledge claims of both, and as such, must be named their transcendent ground. It cannot be represented adequately through the means of either discipline. This ground is called “transcendent” because it “lies beyond every possible experience and every possible determined thought” (Zusatz to x85 of the 1831 lectures). Schleiermacher wished to “dispense entirely” with the distinction, introduced by Kant, between the “transcendental” (grounding the knowability of objects of experience) and the “transcendent” (extending beyond the limits of experience) (Dial J, 38).

‘Virtuoso’, wrote Sir George Grove, is ‘a term of Italian origin, applied, more abroad than in England, to a player who excels in the technical part of his art. Such players being naturally open to a temptation to indulge their ability unduly at the expense of the meaning of the composer, the word has acquired a somewhat depreciatory meaning, as of display for its own sake. Virtuosität – or virtuosity, if the word may be allowed – is the condition of playing like a virtuoso. Mendelssohn never did, Mme. Schumann and Joachim never do, play in the style alluded to. It would be invidious to mention those who do.’

Grove's definition more or less sums up the modern idea of the virtuoso: at least since the middle of the nineteenth century the term has been applied almost exclusively to performers and except in rare instances, the ‘true’ virtuoso, carries with it a whiff of disapproval, the privileging of flash over substance. But the term was not always understood in this way and did not apply exclusively to performers. Johann Gottfried Walther, following the lead of Brossard, wrote that ‘Virtu [ital.] means that musical skill … either in theory or in practice … that is extraordinarily advanced. He who possesses such skill is accordingly described with the epithet virtuoso or virtudioso, and virtuosa and virtudiosa.’

Discussing his G major Piano Concerto early in the last century, Maurice Ravel writes that it ‘is a concerto in the strictest sense of the term’. At approximately the same time, the critic F. Bonavia explains that Beethoven's Violin Concerto represents ‘no conscious departure from the accepted criterion of what a concerto should be’. But what is the ‘strictest sense’ of concerto and the ‘accepted criterion’ of its ontological status? At one level, the concerto is all-too-easy to define, at another level, intractably difficult to pin down. In broadest terms a concerto from the eighteenth century through to the present day is expected to feature a soloist or soloists interacting with an orchestra, providing a vehicle for the solo performer(s) to demonstrate their technical and musical proficiency; in practical terms, concertos demonstrate multifarious types of solo–orchestra interaction and virtuosity, often provide as much of a showcase for the orchestra as for the soloist(s) and sometimes dispense altogether with the hard-and-fast distinction between soloist(s) and orchestra. Given the extraordinary diversity of works labelled concertos, it is no wonder that critics, composers and musicologists – indeed, musicians of all shapes and sizes – have on the whole steered clear of systematic theorizing about the genre. The concerto's capacity for reinvention over its venerable 400-year history – even in 1835 a reviewer for the Gazette musicale praised Chopin's E minor Piano Concerto for ‘rejuvenating such an old form’ – has ensured its fundamental elusiveness, its longevity as a genre and, in all likelihood, its deeply ingrained popularity with the musical public at large.

In a famous, oft-repeated British TV comedy sketch, first broadcast on 25 December 1971, the classic duo of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise wreak havoc in a performance of the opening of Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, conducted by André Previn. Pianist Morecambe and his ‘manager’ Wise make a string of ridiculous demands: they want to perform what Morecambe calls a ‘special arrangement’ of the concerto with the orchestra playing the opening flourishes and the piano the main theme (Previn reluctantly agrees); they deem the new orchestral introduction ‘too short’ and suggest contacting Grieg to get him to lengthen it; and, after missing Previn's cue on account of a poor sight-line to the conductor, ask him either to wear high heels or to ‘jump up in the air’ in order to be visible. Finally entering at the appropriate moment at the third attempt, Morecambe delivers a grotesquely butchered version of the main theme. Reprimanded by Previn for ‘playing all the wrong notes’, Morecambe purses his lips, grabs his conductor by the lapels and, with the exquisite timing that made him one of Britain's greatest post-war comedians, delivered his coup de grace: ‘I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order’.

The concerto was a natural culmination of the opposition of solo and tutti textures that characterized much eighteenth-century music. Using it as a vehicle for virtuoso display, performers not only extended instrumental techniques but also made increasing demands on instrument-makers for better, more responsive instruments. Composers in turn exploited that potential in what proved to be a progressive cyclical relationship. The performer-composer connection was especially crucial. A composer's notated text was rarely all-embracing as regards performance practice, not least because much eighteenth-century music was disseminated in sketched rather than fully realized formats, and performers were often required to be spontaneous in their interpretations across a wide range of performance practices.

Although much can be learnt about such practices from instrumental and theoretical treatises, iconography, historical archives, letters, critiques and even anecdotal evidence, idiomatic performance is difficult to achieve across the diversity of both styles and the particular circumstances surrounding concerto composition and performance. C. P. E. Bach's concertos H471–6, for example, were written for amateurs and differ from his other concertos in that they ‘are more adapted to the nature of the harpsichord, are easier both in the solo part and the accompaniment, are adequately ornamented in the slow movements and are provided with written-out cadenzas’. Some concertos were written for private performance, notably Wagenseil's for the Imperial family in Vienna, while others were premièred in public concerts, notably in series such as the Concert Spirituel in Paris.

A modern audience attending a concert performance of a nineteenth century concerto in a standard concert venue generally expects to hear an uninterrupted performance of a complete concerto in a polished performance directed by a conductor. The performers expect to play all of the notes – and no more – of a modern published score. Nineteenth-century audiences were used to something rather different. They would have been aware of a wider range of performance possibilities than we experience today. A concerto performance might comprise just one or two movements of a three-movement work. The concerto might be played as an orchestral piece, or as a chamber, or even solo work. Improvisation might play a role in the performance, not just in the cadenzas, but perhaps in a prelude, or in some embellishments to the composer's original. These and other factors would have given nineteenth-century audiences and musicians alike some strikingly different expectations to those of today. Perhaps most significant of all, these expectations would have been realized on instruments and orchestras that were fundamentally different from their modern counterparts, at least in the early part of the century.

On 28 December 1930 American composer Henry Cowell (1897–1965) gave the first complete performance of his Piano Concerto (1928) in Havana, Cuba. The work, like the majority of concertos in the first half of the twentieth century, adheres to many earlier traditions of the genre. It consists of the standard three movements (fast–slow–fast), the first of which opens with declamatory blasts from the orchestra and contains a substantial cadenza towards the end, and the last of which opens with the piano and concludes with a rousing virtuoso display accompanied by full orchestra. Although Cowell's pianism was highly idiosyncratic, he wrote for his personal strengths as did Bartó k, Britten, Copland, Dohnányi, Gershwin, Hindemith, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Stravinsky, to name only the most prominent composers who performed their own concertos in the first half of the twentieth century. Despite a traditional approach to the broad outlines of concerto form, Cowell was best known for his radically primitive pianism. The piano part consists almost exclusively of his signature tone clusters, requiring the soloist to pound the keys with fists, palms and forearms. Cuban policemen were called in lest the performance incite riot.

As something ‘that people do’, music shapes and takes shape in relation to the social settings where it is produced, distributed and consumed. Within those settings, music may provide exemplars and resources for the constitution of extra-musical matters. Through the confluence of performance and reception, musicking makes and partakes of values, ideas and tacit or practical notions about the social whole, agency and social relations; in this respect, music is an active ingredient of social life.

The concerto – the form par excellence of contrast – provides a useful case in point for socio-musical exploration. Following its vicissitudes will reveal music's role as a medium of social values and as a medium enabled and constrained by practical, conventional, material and organizational factors. This chapter explores the concerto and its link to society from two interrelated perspectives, the focus on local and pragmatic features of musicking and music's role as a meaningful medium and a medium of social change. I use three case studies to explore the concerto's social features, in especial relation to the keyboard concerto – Bach's Brandenburg No. 5, Mozart's career as a concerto composer/performer in 1780s Vienna, and Beethoven's innovations in keyboard performance and their connections to the gendering of the repertory during the early nineteenth century.

The Italian concerto was brought north across the Alps by travelling virtuosos and touring princes; it was further disseminated by enterprising publishers and through the avid sharing of manuscript copies among musicians; and by the 1720s it was everywhere. The best northern composers, many of whom had never been to Italy, contributed prolifically to the genre and stamped it with their own creativity; indeed, the hundreds of concertos produced in northern Europe in the first half of the eighteenth century represent a vast, and largely unexplored, treasury.

The importance of the concerto to northern musical culture is perhaps best exemplified by the repertory produced and performed by members of the Saxon court orchestra in Dresden, arguably the best in Europe in the first half of the eighteenth century. From the Kapellmeister Johann David Heinichen (1683–1729), who had himself been to Venice, some two dozen wonderful concertos survive, works that were often performed for the Saxon elector and his entourage as they celebrated a successful day of hunting in the antler-bedecked dining hall of their country castle, the Moritzburg. The heroic horn calls and pressing ritornellos of Heinichen's allegros recall the excitement of the hunt, while their arcadian slow movements evoke the bucolic aspect of the surrounding countryside. The Dresden first violinist, Johann Georg Pisendel (1687–1755), had studied with Torelli in Germany and later with Vivaldi in Venice; only seven of his concertos survive, but this mere remnant demonstrates how well Pisendel had learned his lessons from the Italians, and how creatively he engaged with the genre.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), names writ large in histories of the concerto, dominate critical discourse on late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century works. Their status as the pre-eminent concerto practitioners of the period was enshrined right from the outset. Theorists August Frederick Christopher Kollmann and Heinrich Christoph Koch cite Mozart as the exemplary concerto composer in influential writings from 1799 and 1802 respectively. In addition, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of Leipzig, published from 1798 onwards and destined to become a significant barometer of nineteenth-century musical opinion, initially accords Mozart highest honours, subsequently placing Beethoven on the same pedestal. Superlatives for Mozart's concertos flow freely: the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, and one of the E flat works (No. 9, K. 271; No. 14, K. 449; or No. 22, K. 482) performed at Leipzig concerts in late 1800 are among his most excellent and thus, by definition, among the best concertos ever written; the ‘famous grand … concerto in D minor’, No. 20, K. 466, is one of the most admirable works in the genre; and his piano concertos as a whole are ‘unsurpassed’, intimidating, even, for those ‘estimable’ composers who are not as talented as Mozart.

If the nineteenth-century piano concerto – part blend, part farrago of symphonic rigour, acrobatic virtuosity, dramatic theatrical effects, and world-weary soulful lyricism – traces its descent from Beethoven and Weber, what is the lineage of concertos for other instruments? In the case of the most prevalent non-keyboard variety, the violin concerto, a good argument could be made for the primacy of Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755–1824), whose twenty-nine concertos appeared between 1782 and 1817. Heir to the grand tradition of Baroque Italian violinists, Viotti was the prime mover in establishing the modern French violin school, the creation of which spanned the waning years of the ancien régime in Paris, where he worked between 1782 and 1792, and the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. Tainted by persisting associations of his music with political ideologies, owing to his earlier successes at the Concert spirituel and service to Marie Antoinette, Viotti fled Paris; then, a few years later in London, where he appeared with Haydn at Salomon's Hanover Square Concerts, he was suspected of Jacobin views and deported under the Alien Act. When the restored Bourbon monarch Louis XVIII appointed the violinist director of the Paris Opéra in 1819, the way seemed cleared for his return to former glory. But months later, an assassin dispatched the Duke of Berry on the steps of the Opéra, and Viotti's position became untenable; he resigned within two years.

The early history of the concerto is intimately linked to the early history of the orchestra in the modern sense of that word: an ensemble in which each of the string parts is taken by several players. What instrumental compositions termed concerto written before 1700 have in common, despite their great variety of structure and style, is suitability for performance with doubled parts. This suitability was not – and should not today be misinterpreted as – an explicit compulsion to perform early concertos with massed strings, but it set the defining parameters. In brief, the nascent concerto acquired defining features that drew it apart from its parent genre, the sonata. By the first decade of the eighteenth century, it had made a sufficient impact on the musical scene to become the object of transcriptions for organ by J. S. Bach's cousin Johann Gottfried Walther. Bach continued the practice himself in the following decade, and the logical point of arrival was his Italian Concerto, published in 1735: a concerto for a solo instrument (two-manual harpsichord) that mimics a solo concerto for violin in every respect except scoring.

The piano concerto manifests a remarkable expansion during the nineteenth century in terms of the number of composers writing works in the form, and in the basic parameters of the genre itself; that is, the number of movements, size of the individual sections, instrumentation of the orchestra, and the technical demands placed on the soloist. The piano concerto is the most high-profile subspecies of the genre at this time. This chapter will investigate issues such as compositional responses to Mozart, and then Beethoven, the role of virtuosity, structural developments in the form, symphonic dimensions, and programmatic aspects of individual works.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, composers continued to exploit the possibilities inherent in the piano concerto genre as codified by Mozart, whose twenty-three original concertos had all been published by 1806. A study of almost any concerto composed during the first third of the nineteenth century (and considerably later as well) reveals the profound influence of these works. Mozart's concertos were performed by nearly every composer in the early nineteenth century (as Beethoven's would be later in the century), creating a tradition which, of course, continues to this day. The nineteenth century also saw a dramatic increase in the number of municipal concert venues and music festivals associated with the rise of the middle class in the wake of the industrial revolution, in combination with the existing venues belonging to the nobility, cities, states and countries.

Some indication of the best-loved concertos and those most frequently performed in the concert hall in the earlier part of the twentieth century is given by Tovey in the works he selected for his famous Essays in Musical Analysis which appeared in the 1930s. These were originally written as programme notes for concerts given by the Reid Orchestra in Edinburgh that he founded in 1917. Tovey included a handful of concertos by Bach including the Concerto for Two Violins in D minor and the third and fourth Brandenburg Concertos, and by Handel just the Organ Concerto, Op. 7, No. 1. He selected thirteen works by Mozart including five piano concertos. There is the Cello Concerto in D major by Haydn. There are all the Beethoven concertos except the Piano Concerto in B flat, Op. 19, and all Brahms's works in the genre. There is Chopin's Piano Concerto in F minor, Op. 21, Schumann's three concertos – the Violin Concerto hadn't yet been discovered – and Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, Op. 64. There are works by Saint-Saëns and Max Bruch and Glazunov. The twentieth-century works include Stanford's Clarinet Concerto, Elgar's Cello Concerto, Delius's Violin Concerto, and Sibelius's Violin Concerto. Tovey thinks that the number of ‘great works in the true concerto form is surprisingly small; far smaller than the number of true symphonies’. And yet you search in vain the early record catalogues, the pre-First World War listings, to find recordings of these comparatively few canonical masterpieces.