Danzi, Franz

Mannheim

Franz Danzi was the son of the Mannheim cellist Innocene Danzi (of Italian origin) and Barbara Toeschi (sister of violinist and composer ). His older brother Johann Baptist was a violinist in the Mannheim Orchestra, the younger Anton was a singer, and his sister Francesca (known by her husband's name Lebrun) became a singer and composer.

Danzi studied cello and clavier with his father, and sang in a court chapel. At the age of fifteen, he joined the Mannheim Orchestra . In the same year (1778), the orchestra moved to Munich with the court of Elector Karl Theodor . Innocent Danzi, who played the first cello, went there, and Franz remained in Mannheim, in the orchestra of the newly created . He studied composition with Abbot Fogler and, as early as Mannheim, wrote the Cleopatra, the Azakia singspiel , and music for at least eight plays.

Munich

In 1784, Danzi replaced his retired father as the first cellist of the court orchestra in Munich. Despite his repeatedly expressed desire to compose operas, he received such an opportunity only in 1789 (the triumph of fidelity singspiel). In 1790, he married the singer Margaret Marchand , the daughter of Theobald Marchand (the first director of the Mannheim ), who had been giving private composition lessons a few years before. They performed in Hamburg , Leipzig , Venice , Florence , spent two years with the troupe in Prague , where Margareta was a prima donna .

In 1796, the couple returned to Munich. In 1798, the premiere of the comic opera Midnight Hour was premiered (the reputation of Danzi's best opera was strengthened behind it). After that, on May 18, 1798, he was appointed deputy bandmaster (vice bandmaster) with the responsibility to lead the performance of German operas and sacred music.

In the same year (April 17), Danzi's father died, and two years later (June 11, 1800), after a long illness, his wife ^[3] . In 1799 (February 16), Elector Karl Theodor died. His successor Maximilian Joseph had less interest in German opera and significantly limited theater costs. Danzi did not get along with the newly appointed bosses: director Joseph Babo and bandmaster Peter Winter . In 1807, his serious opera Iphigenia in Aulida was finally staged, but the premiere was not properly prepared, and the opera was performed only twice.

Stuttgart and Karlsruhe

In October 1807, King Württemberg Frederick I invited Danzi to become a bandmaster in Stuttgart (a place that Johann Rudolf Zumsteg had occupied four years earlier). There he met a young Weber who worked on Silvana. In 1811, the king established a music institute and appointed Danzi as its director so that he taught composition and supervised wind instrument training. In Stuttgart, Danzi had absolutely no time for his own compositions: in five years he put on only one (Dido) and one singspiel (Camilla and Eugene); other works also appeared a little.

In 1812 he left Stuttgart and became the bandmaster in Karlsruhe . The Baden Chapel, which had been taken over by him, was a weak orchestra, and he made great efforts to improve her performance. Danzi continued to actively correspond with Weber until his death and staged his operas shortly after their premiere. None of his own operas, written during this period, had great success, but in the last decade he found a successful publisher of his compositions for chamber ensembles in the person of Johann Anton Andre , for whom he wrote a lot of what his fame rests on today ( including nine wind quintets P. 277, 281 and 282).

Danzi died in April 1826. In May, his colleague, vice-bandmaster Friedrich Ernst Feck , died , and Weber died in London in early June. In September, a large anonymous obituary was posted in the Universal Musical Newspaper, reviewing both the biography of Danzi and his work.

• Wife - Margaret Danzi (1868-1800), singer and composer. Two children were born in the marriage, one daughter survived.
  • Karl (born July 1794)
  • Margareta Danzi (1799 - October 23, 1866), married to actor Ludwig Brandt (d. 1865), sang in the Mannheim Court Theater.
    • Carolina Brandt (1829–1895), theater actress.

Musical Compositions

General review

Danzi is one of the most important representatives of the transition from classicism to generation romanticism in German music. He composed in all the genres known at that time. About two dozen works for the stage have been preserved, mainly operas. Most of them are comic, in the tradition of the singspiel (conversational dialogues with musical numbers). There is also one (Dido) and one serious opera (Iphigenia in Aulis). All of them were written in German text (the only exception is the French opera Deucalion and Pierre). Danzi owns one of the first romantic operas - "Mountain Spirit, or Fate and Loyalty" (staged in Karlsruhe in 1813). His best opera in the 19th century was Midnight.

Equally significant is his legacy in the field of vocal music, both sacred (at least eight masses, a requiem, Te Deum ^[4] , a total of more than a hundred works ^[1] ), and secular. Especially for a long time remained in use exercises in singing, despite the fact that his many songs were soon forgotten.

Danzi owns six symphonies (the first two were not published, so the last two were published as No. 3 and No. 4), several concert symphonies (including lost ones), as well as many instrumental concerts: for wind instruments, for cello and piano. Concerts for violin and oboe lost. His love for unusual combinations of timbres is manifested primarily in chamber-instrumental ensembles: duets, trios, quartets, quintets and sextets for different compositions of performers. Danzi left only three piano sonatas. In addition, there are three more sonatas for piano four hands.

Some works

• The operas Midnight Hour, Kiss, Iphigenia in Aulis, Camilla and Eugene, Mountain Spirit, or Fate and Fidelity
• Six symphonies: D-dur (P. 218), Es-dur (P. 219), d-moll (P. 220), C-dur (P. 221), B-dur (P. 222), D- dur (P. 223)
• Concert symphonies: for flute and clarinet (P. 226), for clarinet and bassoon (P. 227)
• Concerts: piano Es-dur (P. 229), 4 for flute, 5 for bassoon (C-dur P. 234; F-dur P. 235, 236 , 237 ; g-moll P. 238), 2 for horn ( E-dur P. 239; F-dur P. 240), 4 for cello (A-dur P. 241; B-dur P. 242; e-moll P. 243; concertina D-dur P. 244)
• Sonata B-dur for piano and clarinet, P. 256
• Sonata for Piano and French Horn No. 1 Es-dur, P. 252 (1804)
• Sonata for Piano and French Horn No. 2 e-moll, P. 255 (1813)
• Sonata F-dur for piano and bassethorn (or cello), P. 258 (1818)
• 3 quartets for bassoon with strings (P. 271)
• 3 quintets for piano and winds (d-moll P. 269, F-dur P. 278; D-dur P. 279)
• 9 wind quintets (P. 277, 281 and 282)
• 2 sextets (Es-dur P. 283 and E-dur 284)

Style

Danzi's compositions are full of interesting melodies and show great skill, however, they differ in a harsh approach to form. His harmonies were quite bold for the end of the XVIII century, often the works do not start in the main key. All these are signs of a transition to romanticism , for the development of which at the very beginning of the 19th century Danzi had a certain significance.

Of the negative aspects of his style, it is worth pointing out the lack of great interest in the development of the material: the recapitulations of sonata forms in his gallery exactly repeat the exposure. Whole parts of works can be built from regular two-, four- or eight-bar phrases. Toward the end of his life, such compositional techniques felt like old-fashioned, and his works could interest only amateurs.

Literary works

Danzi anticipated the romantic ideal of a multilateral artist (like Hoffmann ): he wrote a lot, was constantly published in the Universal Musical Newspaper and in other publications. His poems were famous in Munich, and he put some of them to music. He wrote at least one opera libretto, the comic “Rehearsal of the Opera” ( Die Opernprobe ) in two acts ^[5] ; it was used by ). Perhaps Danzi also owns the German text of his own singspire, Turandot, based on a play by Gozzi .

Reasons for Oblivion

Danzi late, only at the turn of the century, began to publish his works. This caused the loss of most of the early works. But even from what was written in the last thirty years of his life, he published only a part. It also led to losses. The difficulty in his legacy (now solved by the von Pechstedt catalog) was also represented by the fact that he put out the numbers of the compositions (opuses) irregularly, gave different works the same number, and often published them without him at all.

Danzi's music in the last years of his life was old-fashioned and was losing popularity. By the end of the 19th century, he was completely forgotten. This was also due to the fact that he, not being a pianist, wrote little for the piano - the main instrument of the heyday of romanticism. By the 1830s, the past interest in virtuoso-ovens had passed, and the compositions written for them ceased to be performed. ^[6]

Music for Winds

The revival of this interest in the 20th century led to the new discovery of a rich repertoire created in the era of late classicism and early romanticism. In addition, the movement for historical performance , which is gaining strength, made it possible to again hear the compositions on the instruments for which they were written. For Danzi's music, this was of great importance, because his composer's skills relied heavily on playing the timbres.

The first to become popular wind quintets (P. 277, 281 and 282). Back in the late 1930s - early 1940s. in Munich , reprints of some of them appear under the editorship of Günther Weigelt. In the 1950s - 1960s they are published in Basel by Fritz Kneusslin. In the late 1970s - early 1980s. all nine quintets were published in Leipzig by Klaus Burmeister. A new edition of Reinhard Groll was published in Kassel in 2007-2008.

In parallel, new editions of other compositions for wind instruments appeared: concert symphonies, concerts and chamber music. In 1963, published the “second” F major concerto for bassoon (P. 237) , which became one of Danzi’s most famous concerts. In 1965, the original version of the first sextet was first published (P. 283). William Waterhouse published quartets with bassoon in the 1960s (P. 271) and Dieter H. Förster in the 1970s and early 1980s. - compositions for flute ^[7] . At the same time, sonatas for piano with wind instrument (clarinet, horn, basset horn) were re-published.

New "discoveries" of the late XX - early XXI centuries

By the end of the 20th century, most of chamber music (except for string quartets) was published and entered the repertoire of many musicians, first of all, wind instruments. Audio began to appear. For Danzi, the fame of the composer, who wrote for wind instruments, was firmly entrenched. The thematic catalog of his compositions, published in 1996, compiled by Volkmar von Pechstaedt, made it possible to take a fresh look at Danzi's legacy: the first two hundred issues (works for the stage, vocal music, symphonic compositions) remained completely unknown. In 1997, von Pechstedt published Danzi's correspondence, providing her with commentary. In the late 1990s, he founded the and the Franz Danzi Archive in Göttingen , which was to contribute to the publication of his most important works. However, under the auspices of the archive, only four concerts were released (also in the late 1990s), which had not really been released before: the third F major (P. 235) and G minor (P. 238) concerts for bassoon, major concerto for French horn (P. 240) and E minor for cello (P. 243).

Back in 1994 and 1995, Paul Wisskirchen published two masses (P. 57 and 59). In 2003, the publication of two Latin psalms appeared (P. 127 and 135). The most important event to strengthen Danzi's reputation as a multilateral author was the publication of all his symphonies, undertaken in 2006-2007 by Bert Hagels. They were immediately recorded by Howard Griffiths (the record went on sale in 2010) ^[8] . In 2012, in Stuttgart, under the direction of , the opera Mountain Spirit, or Fate and Fidelity, was recorded. The release of the record in 2013 ^[9] was dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the composer.

• The Schwetzingen Concert Hall has been named after the composer since 2005 .

• (German) Thematic catalog of works: Volkmar von Pechstaedt. Thematisches Verzeichnis der Kompositionen von Franz Danzi (1763-1826). Mit einem Anhang der literarischen Arbeiten Danzis. - Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1996 .-- ISBN 3795208408 .
• (German) Correspondence: Franz Danzi: Briefwechsel (1785-1826) / Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Volkmar von Pechstaedt. - Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1997 .-- ISBN 3795208718 .
• (German) . Franz Danzi. Marginalien zu Leben und Werk eines vergessenen Mozartverehrers, seinen “Marchandischen” Anverwandten und den Beziehungen zu Mozart // In signo Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, Mitteilungen der Mozart-Gesellschaft Zürich, 14. Jg. (2004), Nr. 23. - S. 16-61 .
• (German) Anonymous obituary of Danzi: Franz Danzi // Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung . - 1826. - T. 28 . - S. (399) , 581-587 .
• (English) Paul Corneilson, Peter M. Alexander. Franz (Ignaz) Danzi // The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians .

• Danzi, Franz: sheet music at International Music Score Library Project
• (German) The Göttingen Archive of Franz-Danzi-Archiv (Neopr.) (unavailable link) . Date of treatment July 10, 2016. Archived June 3, 2010.
• (German) Bert Hagels . A detailed analysis of all six Danzi symphonies.
• (Eng.) Charles-David Lerer . Detailed analysis of all nine Danzi wind quintets.