Gottfried van Swieten

Baron Gottfried van Swieten ( born October 29, 1733 in Leiden, † March 29 1803 in Vienna) was a diplomat in the service of the Habsburg monarchy. He was a patron of several classical composers, including Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Life

Gottfried van Swieten spent much of his childhood in Holland. His father, the physician Gerard van Swieten, earned high reputation for raising the standards in medical research and teaching, and in 1745 was the personal physician of the Empress Maria Theresa. He moved with his family to Vienna and was raised there in the hereditary baron later. Gottfried was brought here at a school of the Jesuits for the civil service and worked (after a brief stint in the civil service ) in two professions: As a diplomat for Austria, he was from 1755 to 1757 in Brussels, from 1760 to 1763 in Paris, from 1763 to 1764 in Warsaw, and finally as Austrian ambassador from 1770 to 1777 in Berlin. After his return to Vienna he worked until the end of his life as Prefect of the Imperial Court Library. He was also to early December 1791, " president of the studies and books censorship Hofkommission ", thus Senior civil servant.

Van Swieten had a strong interest in music, he composed himself a number of operas and symphonies, but these are not of great quality and are now listed only rarely. Joseph Haydn was his symphonies " as stiff as himself ." Swieten belongs to the circle of enlightenment; here also includes his involvement in the closure of nearly 1,000 Austrian monasteries by Joseph II

His influence on classical composers

Mozart

Van Swieten made ​​Mozart with the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel known when he about 1782 /83 Manuscripts, which he had collected during his long stay in Berlin, at the regular Sunday concerts in the great ceremonial hall of the Vienna Court Library for public performance was providing. Mozart, Haydn and Vanhal looked at the concerts with active. The encounter with the compositions of the greatest composers of the Baroque made ​​a deep impression on Mozart and had a great influence on his later compositions. Van Swieten regarded as Mozart's patron.

In the later 1780s, van Swieten organized the Society of Associated, a gathering of interested music nobleman. Thanks to the financial support of this group van Swieten was able to pursue an interest in Baroque music, which he shared with Mozart on. The Company commissioned Mozart to the revision of four Handel compositions for performance in contemporary taste. Of these, Mozart's arrangement of Handel 's oratorio The Messiah, the new passages for flutes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets as well as further includes the timpani, the best known. Mozart processing was performed under the auspices of the Society in 1789.

When Mozart died in 1791, van Swieten organized for him at that time generally accepted Burial 3 class. Later he hosted the premiere of the completed of Süßmayr after Eybler Mozart Requiem in Vienna Jahn Hall as a benefit concert for Constanze and the two surviving children of the marriage.

Haydn

Van Swieten was Haydn's close collaborator in the two oratorios The Creation ( 1798) and The Seasons (1801 ). He met even the selection and made the translation of the source material, which was done by John Milton or of James Thomson, from English into German, and often got pretty awkward back translations into English, in order to adapt the text to the rhythm of Haydn's music; both oratorios were initially published in two languages.

He made beyond Haydn suggestions how different passages of the libretto should be set musically. An example is the moving episode in creation, in which God the newly created animals applying to be fruitful and multiply. Van Swieten's paraphrase of Gen 1:27 f EU is:

Haydn's music stems from a proposal van Swieten that the words should be sung by a bass soloist in a unadorned bass line. However, as usual, he followed the proposal only partially, and added after some thought to the bass line, a layer rich four-part harmonies for cellos and violas added - crucial for the final result.

The premieres of The Creation and The Seasons were also held under the auspices of the Society of Associated, also gave the financial guarantees required Haydn for his long -term projects.

Beethoven

Van Swieten was one of the Viennese aristocracy, whose financial support made ​​the early career of Beethoven's possible. However, it is conceivable that van Swieten's promotion of young talent had something to do with the fact that Beethoven at the beginning of his career, often the preludes and fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier aufführte in the Viennese salons, whom he knew from Bonn.

Gottfried van Swieten belonged in 1795 to the subscribers of Beethoven's Piano Trio Op 1 He bought 3 copies. Beethoven's first symphony is dedicated van Swieten.

Other compounds

In his time in Berlin, van Swieten Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach supported, in which he ordered six symphonies. A famous of CPE Bach's compositions, the third set of sonatas for connoisseurs and lovers, van Swieten dedicated. After Bach's move to Hamburg van Swieten also visited him there again.

Johann Nikolaus Forkel, the first Bach biographer, dedicated his book also van Swieten.