Mannheim school

The Mannheim school generally refers to a circle of musicians that formed especially during the reign of the Elector Karl Theodor in Mannheim in the period 1743-1778. As the founder is still regarded Johann ( Wenzel Anton ) Stamitz. Through the training of first-class violinist, such as Christian Cannabich, the brothers John and Carl Joseph Toeschi, who were among the best virtuoso of the orchestra, he created the basis for the exemplary " Mannheim School " by contemporaries, therefore, initially as a violin or orchestra school, but was also increasingly understood as a school of composition.

Active support Stamitz received in the summer of 1753 by the newly dedicated conductor Ignaz Holzbauer. Wooden building extended Stamitz -planned construction work now on all vocal groups of the orchestra from the new sites were blocked with foreign virtuosos, with specialists in their field, busy - a strategy that is right at the beginning laid the foundation for the future virtuoso orchestra in the 1770s. Because these foreign top executives not only remained, but they gave in their good twenty-five years of service time usually pass on their skills to gifted students. Particularly gifted students granted the Elector additionally grants to study in Italy.

The current earliest known evidence of the " Mannheim School " as a school of composition comes from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, is different in the dedicatory text of his six violin sonatas (K. 301-306 ) to the Electress Elisabeth Auguste of the Palatinate- Sulzbach from 1778 obvious between the court chapel and school and both the large number of composers making music as well as the numerous masterpieces of this famous school emphasizes.

The main proven instrumental and composition teachers were: Johann Stamitz Ignaz Wood Bauer, Christian Cannabich, Georg Joseph Vogler and, indirectly, Franz Xaver Richter.

This comprehensive training meant that not only commonly conductor or concertmaster composed, but that there are more important composers and virtuosos seen in any other band of the era in a person as in this ensemble: for example, the violinist Christian Cannabich, Wilhelm Cramer, Georg Zarth, Christian Danner, Frederick Eck, Ignaz Fränzl, Carl and Anton Stamitz, Carl Joseph and John Toeschi, Peter Winter, the cellist Innocent Danzi and Anton Fils, the bassoonist Georg Wenzel Ritter, the flautist Johann Baptist Wendling and Georg Metzger, the bugler Franz Anton Dimmler, the oboist Friedrich Ramm and Ludwig August Lebrun and his future wife, the coloratura soprano Franziska Lebrun (b. Danzi ), also the ( singer) bassist Giovanni Battista Zonca and the Kapell- or vice-Kapellmeister Ignaz wood Bauer and Georg Joseph Vogler.

Mannheim School as a pioneer of concert - symphony

The dual role of composer and musician formed the prerequisite for orchestra and composition workshop that is unmatched sought in Europe. After Ludwig Finscher the Kurpfälzer made ​​a major contribution to the development of the great symphony and concert of classical-romantic orchestral technique. In the complex of the symphony set the Kurpfälzer covered by the orchestra ago and not - as some later composers of the Viennese Classical - from the structure of the sentence. The court musicians relied on the juxtaposition of small melodic motifs, in contrast, variety and surprise, and especially to the orchestral sound. In this context especially the novel winds treatment is mentioned. The melodic embossed portions were increasingly designed by the winds. Was come a modern expressive orchestral language that rewrote Hugo Riemann in 1906 not by chance as so-called "Mannheim manners " with extra-musical ideas that have been received as Mannheim sigh, Mannheim rocket, Mannheim roller, vibrato, grinder or bird in the history of music. Thanks to the play technical perfection of the court orchestra crescendo, the sophisticated dynamic contrast made ​​( the clash of forte and piano in a confined space ), the booming unison or about the massive, rapid succession of chords of the orchestra at the beginning of a sentence greater effect than elsewhere. This orchestral effects were celebrated in the musical academies ( = court concerts ) outright, they had cult status. With its orchestra, the soloist front wind instruments ( since 1758 also clarinet ) and the waiver of the harpsichord from the 1760s, the Mannheimer created all the modern orchestral sound of the so-called classical symphony orchestra, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and other composers to the 19th century their symphonies designed based. With their sophisticated instrumentation and the related development of new areas of sound and sound possibilities the Kurpfälzer gave new impulses that influenced not only the orchestral music in the second half of the 18th century, lasting up to Viennese Classicism, but they also prepared the way for the orchestral compositions of the 19th century.

The Mannheim summer schools since 2001

The National Orchestra Mannheim organized under the title " Mannheim School " 2001-2004 annual international orchestral summer academies. Students and graduates of music colleges and academies had the opportunity to practical and theoretical exploration of the playing techniques and stylistic features of the orchestral literature of the time of the Mannheim school, the early classical as well as the music of the 19th and early 20th century.

The new "Mannheim court orchestra "

On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the city of Mannheim in 2007 a ​​new baroque orchestra founded under the name "Mannheim court orchestra ". Highlight of the events in the anniversary year was the reconstruction of the "Mannheim court orchestra " on original instruments in the great hall of the baroque palace. In annual summer schools and a competition for historical instruments ( Academia Palatina ), the " Music Forum Mannheim - Center for Early Music " set up.