Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-21T16:24:23.027Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A PATRON AMONG PEERS: DEDICATIONS TO HAYDN AND THE ECONOMY OF CELEBRITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2011

Abstract

Between 1784 and 1809 more than forty composers dedicated works to Haydn, resulting in the largest group of offerings to a single composer in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Whilst Horst Walter has suggested that certain of these works reveal the ways in which composers received Haydn's style, a study of the larger collection of dedications illuminates the broader nature of Haydn's fame and the ways in which other composers and their publishers both contributed to and capitalized on that fame. Making Haydn into a kind of pseudo-patron, the title-pages, advertisements and dedicatory epistles for these works allow for an exchange of various types of capital ranging from the material to the symbolic, ultimately enabling both dedicator and dedicatee to improve their reputations in the eyes of the consuming public.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Thomas Tolley is responsible for pointing out the prevalence of Haydn's image in his later years. See Tolley, , Painting the Cannon's Roar: Music, the Visual Arts and the Rise of an Attentive Public in the Age of Haydn, c. 1750 to c. 1810 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2001)Google Scholar .

2 See, for instance, Garratt, James, ‘Haydn and Posterity: The Long Nineteenth Century’, in The Cambridge Companion to Haydn, ed. Clark, Caryl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 226238CrossRefGoogle Scholar , and Botstein, Leon, ‘The Consequences of Presumed Innocence: The Nineteenth-Century Reception of Joseph Haydn’, in Haydn Studies, ed. Sutcliffe, W. Dean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 134Google Scholar .

3 Bonds, Mark Evan, ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery?: Mozart's “Haydn” Quartets and the Question of Influence’, Studi musicali 22/2 (1993), 370Google Scholar . For stylistic comparisons of Mozart's set with Haydn's Opp. 20 and 33 see Lippmann, Friedrich, ‘Zur Struktur der langsamen Sätze der mozartschen “Haydn-Quartette” im Vergleich mit Haydns op. 33’, Studi musicali 35/1 (2006), 193211Google Scholar ; Sisman, Elaine, ‘Observations on the First Phase of Mozart's “Haydn” Quartets’, in Words About Mozart: Essays in Honour of Stanley Sadie, ed. Link, Dorothea (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), 3358Google Scholar ; Rue, Jan La, ‘The Haydn-Dedication Quartets: Allusion or Influence?’, Journal of Musicology 18/2 (2001), 361373CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Buckholdt, Rudolf, ‘Liebe zu einer unterschätzten Komposition Joseph Haydns: Die Finalsätze von Haydns “russischem” Quartett in G-Dur und Mozarts “Haydn”-Quartett in d-moll’, in Studien zur Musik der Wiener Klassiker: eine Aufsatzsammlung zum 70. Geburtstag des Autors, ed. Speck, Christian (Bonn: Beethoven Haus, 2001), 6170Google Scholar ; Wolfram Steinbeck, ‘Mozarts “Scherzi”: zur Beziehung zwischen Haydns Streichquartetten op. 33 und Mozarts “Haydn-Quartetten”’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 41/3 (1984), 208–231; and Stanley Sadie, Mozart (London: Calder and Boyars, 1965), 108–110.

4 Clementi, for instance, received twelve dedications from peers, Clara Wieck/Schumann eleven, Pleyel and Moscheles ten, Robert Schumann eight, Beethoven only seven. See Green, Emily H., ‘Dedications and the Reception of the Musical Score, 1785–1850’ (PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 2009), 181198Google Scholar .

5 DeNora, Tia, Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792–1803 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)Google Scholar .

6 Dedicatory epistles are usually attached to published material rather than manuscripts, as is explicitly discussed in Schmidt-Beste, Thomas, ‘Dedicating Music Manuscripts: On Function and Form of Paratexts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Sources’, in ‘Cui dono lepidum novum libellum?’: Dedicating Latin Works and Motets in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bossuyt, Ignace (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2008), 81108Google Scholar .

7 Walter, Horst, ‘Haydn gewidmete Streichquartette’, in Joseph Haydn: Tradition und Rezeption (Regensburg: Bosse, 1985), 1753Google Scholar .

8 Elssler's catalogue is published in Landon, H. C. Robbins, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, volume 5: Haydn: The Late Years, 1801–1809 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 299329Google Scholar .

9 Wegeler, Franz Gerhard and Ries, Ferdinand, Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven (Coblenz: Bädeker, 1838), 86Google Scholar ; discussed in Webster, James, ‘The Falling-Out between Haydn and Beethoven: The Evidence of the Sources’, in Beethoven Essays: Studies in Honor of Elliot Forbes, ed. Lockwood, Lewis and Benjamin, Phyllis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 25Google Scholar .

10 DeNora has also discussed the promotional function of such title-page statements in Beethoven and the Construction of Genius, 94.

11 One meeting in particular between Latrobe and Haydn is documented in a letter, transcribed in Landon, , Haydn: Chronicle and Works, volume 3: Haydn in England, 1791–1795 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), 5758Google Scholar .

12 Landon, , Haydn: Chronicle and Works, volume 4: Haydn: The Years of ‘The Creation’, 1796–1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 474Google Scholar .

13 Landon, Haydn: The Years of ‘The Creation’, 569.

14 Quoted in Landon, Haydn: The Late Years, 254.

15 Landon, Haydn in England, 268.

16 The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn, ed. Landon, H. C. Robbins (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1959), 6263Google Scholar . For whatever reason, Haydn's recommendation did not have the desired effect: Eybler's Op. 1 was a self-published set of string quartets (dedicated to Haydn, as discussed here), and his first piano sonatas (with violin accompaniment) were not published until 1808 as Op. 9.

17 Landon, Haydn: The Late Years, 344.

18 For an expanded discussion of the many functions of dedications see Green, Emily H., ‘Between Text and Context: Schumann, Liszt, and the Reception of Dedications’, Journal of Musicological Research 28/4 (2009), 312339CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; and Green, ‘Dedications’.

19 See Green, ‘Dedications’, 1–14.

20 Annibaldi, Claudio, ‘Towards a Theory of Musical Patronage in the Renaissance and the Baroque: The Perspective from Anthropology and Semiotics’, Recercare 10 (1998), 174Google Scholar .

21 Fenlon, Iain, Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Mantua (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar ; Atlas, Allan W., ‘Dufay's Mon chier amy: Another Piece for the Malatesta’, in Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood, ed. Owens, Jessie Ann and Cummings, Anthony M. (Warren: Harmonie Park, 1997), 320Google Scholar ; Harness, Kelley, Echoes of Women's Voices: Music, Art, and Patronage in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)Google Scholar . See also Reynolds, Christopher, Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter's, 1380–1513 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)Google Scholar , and Frandsen, Mary E., Crossing Confessional Boundaries: The Patronage of Italian Sacred Music in Seventeenth-Century Dresden (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

22 Carter, Tim, ‘Music and Patronage in Late Sixteenth-Century Florence: The Case of Jacopo Corsi (1561–1602)’, I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 1 (1985), 57104Google Scholar .

23 Wegman, Rob, ‘Musical Offerings in the Renaissance’, Early Music 33/3 (2005), 425437CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Sharon Kettering and Natalie Zemon Davis have presented similar findings regarding sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literary authors. See Davis, Natalie Zemon, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000)Google Scholar , and Kettering, Sharon, ‘Gift-Giving and Patronage in Early Modern France’, French History 2 (1988), 131151CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

24 See Rose, Stephen, ‘The Mechanisms of the Music Trade in Central Germany, 1600–1640’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 130/1 (2005), 2425CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

25 Landon, H. C. Robbins, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, volume 2: Haydn at Eszterháza, 1766–1790 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 625, 592Google Scholar .

26 Landon, Haydn at Eszterháza, 457.

27 Landon, Haydn at Eszterháza, 453.

28 For a more extensive discussion of musical dedications as gifts see Green, Emily H., ‘Between Text and Context’. Relevant anthropological and theoretical work on gifts includes: Bronislaw Malinowski, ‘Kula: The Circulating Exchange of Valuables in the Archipelagoes of Eastern New Guinea’, Man 20 (1920), 97105Google Scholar ; Mauss, Marcel, The Gift: Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Douglas, Mary (New York: Norton, 2005)Google Scholar ; Lévi-Strauss, Claude, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. Bell, James Harle and von Sturmer, John Richard, ed. Needham, Rodney (Boston: Beacon, 1969)Google Scholar ; Hyde, Lewis, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (New York: Vintage Books, 1983)Google Scholar ; Derrida, Jacques, Given Time I: Counterfeit Money (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 714Google Scholar ; Weiner, Annette, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-while-Giving (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

29 Derrida, Given Time I, 7–14.

30 Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘Marginalia: Some Additional Notes on the Gift’, in The Logic of the Gift: Towards an Ethic of Generosity, ed. Schrift, Alan D. (New York: Routledge, 1997), 231Google Scholar .

31 See Leiner, Wolfgang, Der Widmungsbrief in der französischen Literatur (1580–1715) (Heidelberg: Winter, 1965)Google Scholar ; Kettering, Sharon, ‘Gift-Giving and Patronage’; Ulrich Maché, ‘Author and Patron: On the Function of Dedications in Seventeeth-Century German Literature’, in Literary Culture in the Holy Roman Empire: 1555–1720, ed. Parente, James A. and others (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 195205Google Scholar ; and Kiesel, Helmut and Münch, Paul, Gesellschaft und Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert: Voraussetzung und Entstehung des literarischen Markts in Deutschland (Munich: Beck, 1977)Google Scholar .

32 Translated in Perissone Cambio, Sixteenth-Century Madrigal, volume 2, ed. Feldman, Martha (New York: Garland, 1993), xiGoogle Scholar . Original Italian not provided in this edition.

33 Translated in Marc'Antonio Ingegneri, Sixteenth-Century Madrigal, volume 15, ed. Owens, Jesse Ann (New York: Garland, 1993), xiGoogle Scholar . Original Italian not provided in this edition.

34 Reprinted in Benton, Rita, Ignaz Pleyel: A Thematic Catalogue of His Compositions (New York: Pendragon, 1977), 100Google Scholar . Translated by David Rosen, Stefania Neonato and the author.

35 The complete texts and translations of all dedicatory epistles to Haydn, save that of Mozart, are provided in the Appendix.

36 Wolfgang Leiner explores this function in more detail with regard to earlier literary dedications in Der Widmungsbrief in der französischen Literatur (1580–1715).

37 Translated in Claudio Merulo, Sixteenth-Century Madrigal, volume 18, ed. Owens, Jesse Ann (New York: Garland, 1993), xiGoogle Scholar . Original Italian not provided in this edition.

38 A facsimile, which includes the title-page and dedication, is published in Early Eighteenth-Century French and German Masters: Continuo Sonatas for Violin, ed. Adas, Jane and Schröder, Jaap (New York: Garland, 1991), 255317Google Scholar .

39 A facsimile, which includes the title-page and dedication, is published in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Cello Sonatas: Continuo Sonatas for Cello, ed. Adas, Jane and Lutzke, Myron (New York: Garland, 1991), 123Google Scholar .

40 Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, ed. Bauer, Wilhelm A. and Deutsch, Otto Erich, volume 3 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1963), 404Google Scholar . Translated by James Webster with David Rosen.

41 Webster, James and Feder, Georg, The New Grove Haydn (Palgrave: MacMillan, 2002), 2Google Scholar ; Bonds, ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery’, 366–368.

42 Wiener Zeitung (2 May 1794), quoted in Walter, ‘Haydn gewidmete Streichquartette’, 38–39.

43 My italics.

44 There is uncertain evidence regarding the authorship of Mozart's letter. First, no autograph exists today, though Bauer and Deutsch report that at one time an autograph was in the possession of Artaria & Co.; see Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, volume 6 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1971), 238. Even if such a document existed, there is no guarantee it would have been in Mozart's hand. We do know that Mozart's knowledge of Italian was quite good, and that, if he had not been able to complete the letter himself in its high style, he could probably have written at least a good deal of it on his own, and also could have drafted a complete German version. He then could have received help from a number of native speakers of Italian with whom he was friendly, including Lorenzo Da Ponte or Artaria himself, as has been suggested to me by James Webster and Neal Zaslaw. Because the topic here is reception and the letter is presented to the reader as Mozart's, the precise authorship is less of an issue. I refer to Mozart as the author, then, because it is plausible that he wrote it, and because the letter was certainly received as being by him. For a discussion of Mozart's knowledge of the Italian language see Petrobelli, Pierluigi, ‘Mozart und die italienische Sprache’, in Europa im Zeitalter Mozarts, ed. Csáky, Moritz and Pass, Walter (Vienna: Böhlau, 1995), 372380Google Scholar .

45 Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, volume 3, 404. Translated by James Webster with David Rosen.

46 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (12 May 1802), 535–536.

47 Bourdieu, ‘Marginalia: Some Additional Notes on the Gift’, 234–235.

48 Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, Sociological Theory 7/1 (1989), 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar . For an extended discussion of the distinction between cultural and social capital see ‘The Forms of Capital’, in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. Granovetter, Mark and Swedberg, Richard (Boulder: Westview, 2001), 96111Google Scholar .

49 Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’, 98.

50 Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, 23.

51 Bourdieu himself uses this term in ‘The Forms of Capital’, 97.

52 Elaine Sisman, ‘Haydn's Career and the Idea of the Multiple Audience’, in The Cambridge Companion to Haydn, 3–16. See also Leppert, Richard, ‘Social Order and the Domestic Consumption of Music: The Politics of Sound in the Policing of Gender Construction in Eighteenth-Century England’, in The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text, ed. Bermingham, Ann and Brewer, John (London: Routledge, 1995), 514534Google Scholar .

53 Wiener Zeitung (17 September 1785), quoted and translated in Otto Erich Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom, Peter Branscombe and Jeremy Noble (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), 252.

54 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (12 May 1802), 535–536.

55 Bonds, ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery’, 369.

56 The metaphor of fatherhood was not new; in particular, sixteenth-century English dedicators often referred to their works as their ‘children’ and asked their patrons to assume the role of the surrogate parent in protecting those children. See Fumerton, Patricia, Cultural Aesthetics: Renaissance Literature and the Practice of Social Ornament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 5962Google Scholar (referred to in Bonds, ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery’, 367). The only example known to me of this kind of language in a musical context is in a letter written from Maria Theresia von Paradis to Gottfried August Bürger, published at the opening of her setting of his Lenore (1789). While this letter does not quite function as a dedication, it does use several typical dedicatory tropes, including this kind of parental metaphor.

57 DeNora, Beethoven and the Construction of Genius, 84.

58 Johann Ferdinand Ritter von Schönfeld, Jahrbuch der Tonkunst von Wien und Prag, 1796, quoted and translated in Robbins Landon, H. C., Beethoven: A Documentary Study (New York: MacMillan, 1970), 59Google Scholar ; also quoted in DeNora, Beethoven and the Construction of Genius, 87.

59 Stephenson, Kurt, Andreas Romberg: ein Beitrag zur hamburgischen Musikgeschichte (Hamburg: H. Christian, 1938), 70Google Scholar ; quoted in Walter, ‘Haydn gewidmete Streichquartette’, 31–32.

60 Quoted and translated in Landon, The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn, 201. My italics.

61 Both anecdotes are discussed in Webster, ‘The Falling-Out between Beethoven and Haydn’, 25.

62 Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction, trans. Nice, Richard (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 282Google Scholar .

63 DeNora, Beethoven and the Construction of Genius, 98–111.

64 See mainly Anderson, Emily, The Letters of Mozart and His Family (New York: Norton, 1989), 891892Google Scholar , and Bonds, ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery’, 366. The original Italian can be found most easily in Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, volume 3, 404.