Jan Krtitel Vanhal true patriot and zealous Christian: (12th May 1739-20th August 1813).

Jan Krtitel Vanhal is known on Czech concert podia for his symphonies and above all four concertos--for double bass, flute, violin and organ. In fact he wrote a huge number of concertante and symphonic pieces, a series of string quartets, dozens of piano sonatas, organ fugues and various liturgical pieces. History presents him as an influential Vienna teacher and as a ready and versatile composer of tasteful, successful, more or less fashionable and uncomplicated music for everyday needs. Vanhal, who was born before the mid-18th century, prefigured the age of Romanticism in being one of the first artists not to depend upon patronage.

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From serfdom to the best Vienna circles

In view of his origin we give the composer's full name in its Czech form of Jan Krtitel Vanhal, and in view of his long-term career in Vienna also in its German form of Johann Baptist (sometimes Jan Ignatius) Wanhal or Vanhal. Although there is indirect evidence that his surname Van Hall came from Holland, his family on both sides had lived for generations in Bohemia. Vanhal came from the family of a serf of Count Schaffgotsch settled in Nechanice between Hradec Kralove and Novy Bydzov. We know very little of the composer's childhood and youth. In his native community Vanhal learned to sing and play on strings and wind instruments, and devoted himself to the organ under his favourite teacher Anton Erban. At the age of eighteen he became organist in Opocno, and later worked as choir director in nearby Hnevceves near Jicin, where a certain Martin Novak taught him to play the violin and write concertos. Vanhal's skill on the viola deamore so enchanted the Countess Schaffgotsch that she sent him to Vienna to obtain further education here. He moved to the capital of the monarchy at the very beginning of the 1760s and thereafter visited Bohemia only once--when one of his parents died. In the city on the Danube he soon found an entree to high social circles as a music teacher (for example as the teacher of Ignaz Pleyel, one generation his junior, who later became a cappelmeister and music publisher). He also earned himself a good enough income to purchase his own freedom. In 1762 or 1763 he was helped in some way by Carl Ditters, a violinist in the imperial theatre orchestra, a contemporary of Vanhal's (he had also been born in 1739). Ditters later wrote of Vanhal in his autobiography as a pupil, whom he had helped launch on the music scene as a violinist. In 1762, when he was already one of the leading composers in Vienna, Vanhal met the young Mozart. Later he developed contacts with the Paris publisher Huberty, who published his six symphonies, op. 1 (1769).

Return from his travels to Vienna

At the end of the sixties he was given the opportunity to travel to Italy, thanks to the Baron Riesch. Venice, Bologna, Florence and Rome were among his destinations. In Rome he composed two operas on libretti by Pietro Metastasio, II Demofoonte and II trionfo di Clelia, and had them staged. Alas, both have been lost. After his return in 1771 Riesch offered him the position of cappelmeister in Dresden, but evidently as a result of psychological illness Vanhal refused. During further travels in the 1770s, which took him to the Hungarian Lands and Croatia, Vanhal made several visits to the estates of Count Erdody, a famous patron of the arts.

Around 1780 he settled down in Vienna again and developed friendly relations with leading figures in musical life. For example, he played the cello in a quartet with Joseph Haydn, Carl Ditters and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. By this time Vienna publishers had already published three hundred or so of his works, which proved very popular and quickly found a wide public. Vanhal's interest as a composer was at this point more focused on popular forms (variations, programmatic pieces), but gradually he wrote more and more church music as well. His liturgical pieces were not for the most part published, however, and have not become the object of significant research interest.

A Polite and Amicable Man

We know very little about the composer's private life. Charles Burney observed that a certain small confusion of the intellectual capacities is a promising circumstance in young composers, and Mr. Vanhal started his musical career with these happy symptoms, almost allowing his imagination too free a rein. Elsewhere we find Vanhal described by Burney as a polite man, who did not know French but knew a little Italian, like many German musicians. We have another description from Gottfried Dlabacz, who made friends with Vanhal in 1795 and thereafter remained in almost daily contact with him. On Dlabacz Vanhal made the impression of a great artist, a zealous Christian, true patriot, and genuine and warm friend and tender father to suffering humanity. We also know that he was never married and had no heirs. He died in his flat near St. Stephen's Cathedral and was buried--like Mozart--in the Viennese Cemetry of St. Marx.

A much admired composer

In his lifetime Vanhal was already considered an excellent composer, and was mentioned in many writings of the time. In addition to the London composer and organist Charles Burney, who sought him out on one of his journeys on the continent in Vienna in 1772 (The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands and United Provinces 1773), there was the librarian at the Strahov Monastery in Prague, Johann Gottfried Dlabacz, although the latter's Allgemeines historisches Kunstler-Lexikon with a list of Vanhal's works did not come out until 1815. We find other mentions of the composer in the autobiography of the composer and violinist Carl Ditters (Lebenbeschreibung 1801), and in the writings of the poet and composer Christian F. D. Schubart (1806). Michael Kelly, the Irish tenor, Mozart performer and himself a composer, who worked in Vienna in the 1780s, remembered Vanhal in his Reminiscences (published much later in 1826). We should also mention the obituary published in the Vaterlandische Blatter fur osterreichischen Kaiserstaat (1813).

Today we have the advantage of a thematic catalogue of his pieces (without the symphonies) compiled by Alexander Weinmann (1988), a thematic catalogue of his symphonies compiled by Paul Bryan (1997), and several studies of Vanhal's work. Among Czech researchers Milan Postolka devoted the most attention to him (writing the entry in the lexicon Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart in the 1966 edition and in the New Grove Dictionary of 1980). Apart from studies focused on type, genre or form or on the classicist epoch as a whole or from a particular angle, we have as yet no monograph devoted to Jan Krtitel Vanhal as an example of a composer typical of his time.

Symphonic Music

Some compositions by this young composer, especially his symphonies, so appealed to me that I rank them among the best and most perfect instrumental pieces of which musical art can be truly proud. This was Charles Burney's view on his first visit to Vienna. Vanhal's symphonic work is certainly a valuable document of the development of Viennese classicism.

Vanhal's earliest symphonic pieces follow on from Late Baroque models both in the use of polyphonic techniques and the treatment of motifs, and in having slow introductions and dance finales. Gradually the composer expanded the three-movement scheme to an ever more frequent four-movement scheme. After his return from Italy his compositional style settled down, he limited experimentation and applied the sonata form with thoroughness.

The symphonies that Vanhal wrote up to the mid-1770s are talked about as examples of the Sturm und Drang. This designation, originally applied to German literature, either represented the last phase of Empfindsamkeit or prefigured Romanticism in its earliest phase. It came to be applied--with certain qualifications--to music in which minor keys predominated, together with sombre expression, and dramatic, sometimes steep, dynamic effects. In the case of Vanhal, however, his later symphonies with these features actually go beyond this style and tend more in the direction of the musical idiom of Mozart or even Schubert.

One example of a piece that has been classified as Sturm und Drang is the Symphony in g minor (g1 in Bryan's catalogue). Evidently composed around 1770, if we compare it with symphonies by others in the same key it is reminiscent of Joseph Haydn's (no. 39), written a few years earlier, and Mozart's (K. 183), written a little later. Vanhal's symphony catches the attention in the first movement with its striking chromatic main theme and secondary theme created by jumps. The slow movement alternates tenderly cantabile solo episodes from violin and viola. The Minuetto is once again more dramatic, while the Trio is sweet and graceful. The fourth movement opens energetically to the point of aggression (con fuoco) with the dotted main theme, beside which the secondary theme never finds fuller application.

The String Quartets

Besides symphonies, it is string quartets that occupy the most space in Vanhal's concert repertoire. The composer's chamber music output, however, represents the whole range of forms--sonatas, cassations, divertimenti, notturni, dances like minuets, ecossoises, landlers--in different combinations from string duos and trios to quintets and sextets. Most were published during the composer's lifetime with opus numbers in cities like Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam and of course in Vienna.

Out of the more than fifty string quartets definitely identified as Vanhal's let us take the example of his string quartet in Eb, which has a place in the repertoire of many Czech ensembles. It is an example of a "1st violin" score in the sense that Vanhal places almost all the important musical ideas in the leader's part (and in doing so shows himself an outstanding creator of sweet melodies) and leaves only a simple accompaniment to the other instruments. Despite this simplicity, however, the piece does not give a monotonous impression, but is fresh and vibrant.

Vanhal and keyboard instruments

A large number of pieces for keyboard instruments have been preserved under Vanhal's name. Piano music, still in process of emancipation from the harpsichord and its musical form, was at that time considered a special kind of chamber music designed for one instrument. The composers of the Classicist epoch nonetheless saw in it an experimental field, in which they tried to explore all the possibilities of the new instrument. As the piano made headway, virtuosity rapidly developed, led by a desire for spectacular performance effects, but it did not so much exploit sonata and other new forms as favour improvisation and variations, as in earlier periods. Vanhalcs keyboard pieces show greater stylistic variety that his symphonies, and range from the gallant style to early Classicism. In addition to concertos, chamber pieces and ensembles with keyboard instrument and pieces for four hands they include solo sonatas, sonatinas, capriccios, small pieces, variations, dances, remarkable programmatic pieces, organ fugues, preludes, preamabula and cadenzas.

Musical Onomatopeia

Aristotle's doctrine of art as the imitation of music was fundamental to art and criticism up to the late 18th century. Music was supposed to imitate both living and inorganic nature, the motions of speech and emotion. Composers loved to describe events like battle scenes or natural phenomena in music, and such music was received with great enthusiasm. The descriptive principle could be applied with the help of the text in vocal music, while in the instrumental field it was underlined through dedication or in the form of a battaglio. In the period of Classicism political themes resurfaced. One example from the pen of the youngest of the three Viennese classics, Beethoven, is opus 91 for pianoforte Wellingtons Sieg oder Die Schlacht bei Vittoria (composed in 1813) with quotations from songs such as the anthem God Save the King.

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There are almost twenty such occasional compositions in Vanhal's output, including for example musical illustrations of Die Schlacht bei Wurzburg (1796), Die grosse Seeschlacht bei Abukir (1800), Le Combat navale de Trafalgar et la mort de Nelson (1806) or Die Feyer der Ruckkehr unseres allgeliebten Monarchen Franz I. (1810). These pieces have survived in period printed materials, found scattered, like the quartets, in various European archives.

The Prague National Library possesses a print of the remarkable Vanhal composition whose full title reads Die Bedrohung und Befreyung der k.u k. Haupt- und Residenzstadt Wien durch franzosischen Truppen unter den Befehlen des Generals Buonaparte und durch das merkwurdig osterreichische Aufgebot den 4ten April 1797. Vanhal gratefully dedicated the piece to Count Franz von Saurau, the imperial confidential counsellor whose military campaign was not in fact a success but thanks to whom Vienna was at least liberated from siege by Napoleon's large armies. With the help of spies the nobleman successfully led the defence of the metropolis and forced the French to retreat and agree a cease-fire. Vanhal's military heroic piece for harpsichord or piano musically described the march of the besieging forces against which Count Saurau led the city's defenders, joined by nobles, burghers and peasants. The people's love of the emperor and their homeland is expressed as a melodious amoroso, and the spy bringing reports is musically arranged as a passage in the highest part. Napoleon's settlement, the people's joy, the returning imperial couple, a courier and other situations--are all episodes represented by the music. While this programmatic piece is not so compositionally elaborate as some of the composer's symphonies, piano sonatas or string quartets, it definitely shows his skill and ingenuity.

Organ Music

Until the 19th century there was no precise dividing line between music for organ and for the other keyboard instruments. Compositions that today we consider piano works often appeared in collections of organ pieces. Stylistic criteria determining what was or was not suitable for organ scarcely existed, and the only differences were in technique and range of notes. It should be noted that the organ was not at the forefront of virtuoso interest and that in the Catholic liturgy the emphasis continued to be on improvisation rather than performance of the organ literature, which was in any case more conservative and closely derived from the preceding era. More compositions than previously believed have survived from the South German and Austrian lands, and in the Czech Lands there is also more than has met the eye, since most organ music by Czech composers is scattered in various different manuscipt collections, and is usually anonymous or without reliable attribution. Organ pieces are most often designated as preludium, or preambulum, i.e. prelude.

The Vienna Preambula

The Preambula, transcribed two years after the composer's death by a certain Krenn and preserved in the library of the Vienna Universitat fur Musik und darstellende Kunst, are examples of such pieces. It is a collection containing the rather unusual number of eight pieces. Seven of them are preambula, two of which can be found with a few differences in other manuscripts and printed collections, and one fugue in d minor which had already been published in Vienna in 1785 and has survived in the library of the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek and Stadtbibliothek, in the National Museum in Prague, in the Sachsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden, in the Musikbibliothek in Leipzig, and in the libraries of conservatories in Brussels, Paris and Naples. It was also published as A Fugue [...] by celebrated Vanhall in London, an edition that exists in the library of the National Museum in Prague.

Preambula have a harmonic score and--as is clear from the title--an entirely free form. They contain numerous chromatic sequences and quantities of modulations, thanks to which some pieces seem almost lacking in any tonal anchorage as they develop. The treatment of theme and motif is free, at the most a question of imitation and favourite sequences. Nonetheless, we can distinguish between two types, i.e. those that follow the organ pattern and are more improvisational in character, and those that tend more to the piano model, and are more elaborated, richer in rhythm, and with typically piano-style jumps of more than an octave.

In compositional terms the collection of Vanhal's Preambula corresponds to the published output of the time (pieces by his contemporary Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and others) or those surviving in manuscript. They are even comparatively long, and by no means entirely banal compositions--even compared with other pieces by Vanhal in different collections such as his Kurze und leichte Praeambula fur Orgel und Clavier (Vienna 1801), which is characterised by frequent repetition of phrases, figures and octaves in the left hand. These Praeambula are not intellectually serious, highly distinctive or individual pieces, but compositions with charming ideas can still be found among them. What is certain is that they were practical pieces of music, perhaps designed as aides for Vanhal's teaching activities Although titled as organ pieces, the style oscillates between organ and the increasingly popular piano. As such they are a representative sample of organ music in Central Europe at the turn of the 18th/19th century.

The Challenge of Vanhal

If we look at areas of Vanhal's output including liturgical music, songs and others, which have not been covered in this text, we find that the composer managed to apply his high standard of composition using all kinds of musical idioms for all kinds of occasions. His range was huge, for example from the extremely elaborate Symphony in g minor to the improvisational Preambula for organ, i.e. pieces that at first sight it seems hard to imagine could both be written by the sought after teacher and experienced composer.

Discussion of Vanhal's music centres more on individual pieces. Only a few have survived in autographs, and so numerous questions can be raised in connection with dating or even authorship, and this means that we are not even sure of the number of pieces that are his.

To sum up: Jan Krtitel Vanhal is an extremely remarkable composer of the era of Classicism and the earliest stages of Romanticism, and set in the context of their time his life and work deserve the attention of music historians, but above all performers and the concert-going public.