Great successes still lay before them. Yet those they had already achieved inspired them with confidence. Their creative courage and individualism were boosted, and their enthusiasm for seeking new means of expression grew. Thus, they began to increasingly depart from the established order of music and more boldly shape new rules for it.
Carl Philipp Emanuel, the second son of the most famous of the Bachs, spread his wings when he found employment as harpsichordist to Frederick Hohenzollern, a prince who would soon become Frederick II of Prussia. Although not a favourite with the prince (who probably valued his own works more highly), it was at the royal court that the young Bach gained recognition. He later admitted that it was then that he first began to compose without restraint. That period gave rise to concertos for keyboard instruments which he wrote freely, thinking only of himself.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, on the other hand, is said to have had business in mind when composing his so-called Viennese concertos (written in Vienna). The premiere of his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail had been a success, and it was probably on the crest of that wave that the composer decided to advertise his new works in the press, encouraging people to buy them. He was satisfied with the concertos, as he reported in a letter to his father: ‘They are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear […] without being vapid. There are passages here and there from which the connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why’.
Regardless of whether the work had a commercial purpose, Mozart – like Bach – thinks primarily of himself in his work and speaks with an individual voice. The best example of this is the Concerto in A major, the most intimate of the Viennese concertos, innovatively economical and concealing a personal tribute: a quotation from the overture to La calamità de cuori by his mentor, Johann Christian Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel’s half-brother.
Piotr Mika (Ruch Muzyczny)
