Gottfried van Swieten

Baron Gottfried van Swieten (Leiden, October 29, 1733 - Vienna, March 29, 1803) was a diplomat, librarian, and government official who served the Austrian Empire during the eighteenth century. He was an enthusiastic patron of music and is best remembered today for his friendship and collaboration with several great composers of the Classical era, including Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Career

Van Swieten was Dutch and spent much of his childhood in the Netherlands. His father, Gerard van Swieten, was a physician who achieved a high reputation for raising standards of scientific research and instruction in the field of medicine. In 1745, the elder van Swieten agreed to become personal physician to the Austrian Empress Maria Theresia, and moved with his family to Vienna. [Grove] The young van Swieten was educated there for national service in an elite Jesuit school, the Theresianum. [Grove] Following a brief stint in the civil service, he pursued a career in the Austrian diplomatic service. He was first posted to Brussels (1755–1757), then Paris (1760–1763), Warsaw (1763–1764), and ultimately (as ambassador) to Berlin (1770–77). [Grove]

As librarian

On his return to Vienna he was appointed as the Prefect of the Imperial Library, a post that his father had held, [Braunbehrens 1990, 317] and which he retained for the rest of his life.

As head librarian, van Swieten introduced the world's first card catalog. Libraries had had catalogs before, in the form of bound volumes. Van Swieten's innovation of using cards permitted new entries to be freely added in a conveniently searchable order. Card catalogs were soon adopted elsewhere, notably in Revolutionary France.

Van Swieten also expanded the library's collection, notably with books on science, as well as older books from the libraries of monasteries that had been dissolved under the decrees of Emperor Joseph II. [Primary source for this section: Petschar (n.d.).]

In politics

In 1780, when Joseph II came to the throne, Swieten's career reached its peak of success. He was strongly sympathetic to the program of reforms which Joseph sought to impose on his empire (see Josephinism, benevolent despotism), and was made President of the Court Commission on Education and Censorship, [Olleson (1963, 64)] considered by Braunbehrens to be the equivalent of being minister of culture. When Joseph died in 1790 and was replaced by his brother Leopold, Swieten's influence greatly declined. He lost his commission post on 5 December 1791, coincidentally the day his protegé Mozart died. [Main source for this paragraph: Braunbehrens 1990]

Other

Swieten was well off financially, though by no means as wealthy as the great princes of the Empire. He had inherited money from his father, and he was also well paid for his government posts. Braunbehrens estimates his income as about "ten times Mozart's", which would make it (very roughly) 20,000 florins per year. [Main source for this paragraph: Braunbehrens (1990, 317)]

Like many other prominent male Viennese (for example, as of 1784, Mozart), van Swieten was a Freemason. [Braunbehrens 1990, 318]

He had a very strong amateur interest in music. Evidence for this is preserved in a 1756 report of his supervisor in Brussels, Count Cobenzl, that "music takes up the best part of his time." [Quoted in Olleson (1963, 64)] While in Paris he staged a comic opera of his own composition. [Olleson (1963, 64)] . He also composed other operas (see below) as well as symphonies. These works (see below) are not considered of high quality and are seldom if ever performed today. [For instance, the Grove Dictionary says "the chief characteristics of [his] conservative, three-movement symphonies are tautology and paucity of invention ... As a composer van Swieten is insignificant."]

Relation to Mozart

Van Swieten familiarized Mozart with the works of J. S. Bach and Handel, by sharing (around 1782-1783) the manuscripts he had collected during his long stay in Berlin. [Van Swieten's Berlin sources were students of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who had worked in Berlin up to 1768 (Braunbehrens 1990, 318).] This process took place at regular Sunday musical gatherings at van Swieten's rooms in the Imperial Library. The experience of encountering the greatest composers of the Baroque era had a profound effect on Mozart and greatly influenced his later compositions.

The "Gesellschaft der Associierten"

During the gatherings in van Swieten's rooms, the gathered company sang through entire oratorios of Handel, with Mozart substituting at the keyboard for an orchestra. This naturally led to an interest in full-scale performances of these works. [Braunbehrens 1990, 318] To this end, in 1786 [Date from Braunbehrens 1990, 320] van Swieten organized the "Gesellschaft der Associierten" ("Society of Associated Cavaliers") [Translation from Timothy Bell's English rendering (1990) of Braunbehrens's Mozart biography, cited below. Deutsch (1965, 330) translates it as "Society of Noblemen".] , an organization of music-loving nobles. With the financial backing of this group, he was able to stage full-scale performances of major works. Generally, these concerts were first given in one of the palaces of the members or in the large hall of the Imperial Library, then in a public performance in the Burgtheater or Jahn's Hall. [Braunbehrens 1990, 320]

Mozart took on the task of conducting these concerts in 1788. [Braunbehrens 1990, 320] He had previously been too busy with other tasks, but with a decline in his career prospects elsewhere he was willing to take up the post. [Braunbehrens 1990, 320] In addition to having him conduct, the Gesellschaft commissioned Mozart to prepare four works by Handel for performance according to contemporary taste:

*"Acis and Galatea", performed in (approximately) November 1788 in Jahn's Hall. [Deutsch 1965, 330]
*The oratorio "Messiah", for which Mozart wrote new parts for flutes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trombones, as well as more notes for the timpani (1789).
*the "Ode for St Cecilia’s Day" (1790) [Grove]
*"Alexander’s Feast" (1790) [Grove]

Van Swieten was responsible for the translations from English into German of the libretti for these works, a task he would perform later on for Haydn (see below). [Braunbehrens 1990, 320]

The Gesellschaft's concerts were an important source of income for Mozart during this time, when he was experiencing severe financial worries. [Solomon 1995]

Mozart's death and aftermath

When Mozart died (in the middle of the night of December 5, 1791), van Swieten showed up at his home and made the funeral arrangements. [Solomon 1995, ch. 30.] He also helped care for Mozart's two young children during the difficult period after Mozart's death when Constanze was trying to insure the financial stability of her family.Fact|date=July 2007

Relation to Haydn

Van Swieten was Joseph Haydn's close collaborator on the two oratorios "The Creation" (1798) and "The Seasons" (1801). He translated the source material (from an anonymous English libretto and James Thomson, respectively) from English into German, and also provided (often rather awkward) retranslations into English to fit the rhythm of Haydn's music. (Both works were first published in bilingual editions.)

As Haydn's patron, Van Swieten also made many specific suggestions to Haydn about how various passages in the libretto should be musically set. Haydn followed some of these suggestions. One such example is the moving episode in "The Creation" in which God tells the newly-created beasts to be fruitful and multiply. Van Swieten's paraphrase of Genesis reads:

:"Seid fruchtbar alle,
:"Mehret euch!
:"Bewohner der Luft, vermehret euch, und singt auf jedem Aste!
:"Mehret euch, ihr Flutenbewohner
:"Und füllet jede Tiefe!
:"Seid fruchtbar, wachset, und mehret euch!
:"Erfreuet euch in eurem Gott!"

:Be fruitful all
:And multiply.
:Dwellers of the air, multiply and sing on every branch.
:Multiply, ye dwellers of the tides,
:And fill every deep.
:Be fruitful, grow, multiply,
:And rejoice in your God!

Haydn's musical setting stems from a suggestion of van Swieten's that the words should be sung by the bass soloist over an unadorned bass line. As usual, Haydn only partly followed van Swieten's suggestion, and after pondering, he added to his bass line a rich layer of four-part harmony for divided cellos and violas, crucial to the final result. [Of the passage, Rosemary Hughes writes (1970, 135), "Only a profoundly experienced, as well as profoundly inspired, musician could have endowed the reitative 'Be fruitful all' with the shrouded depth and richness suggested by its accompaniment of divided lower strings alone."]

The premieres of "The Creation" and "The Seasons" took place under the auspices of the "Gesellschaft der Associierten", who also provided financial guarantees needed for Haydn to undertake long-term projects.

Relation to Beethoven

Van Swieten was one of the Viennese aristocrats whose financial support made possible the early career progress of Beethoven. It is possible that van Swieten's sponsorship of Beethoven arose not just because of the young man's talent, but also because during his early career he often performed preludes and fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, a work that Beethoven knew very well, in the salons of Vienna.

The composer's First Symphony is dedicated to van Swieten.

Other associations

Earlier in his career, while in Berlin, van Swieten had also supported the career of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, commissioning six symphonies from him. One of C. P. E. Bach's most famous works, the third set of "Sonaten für Kenner und Liebhaber", is dedicated to van Swieten.

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

Works

Comic operas:

*"Les talents à la mode"
*"Colas, toujours Colas"
*"La chercheuse d’esprit" (lost)

Symphonies: 10, of which 7 survive. [Source for this section: Grove] .

Notes

References

*Braunbehrens, Volkmar (1990) "Mozart in Vienna". Translated from the German by Timothy Bell. New York: Grove and Weidenfeld.
*Deutsch, Otto Erich (1965) "Mozart: A Documentary Biography". Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
*"Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians", online edition, article "Gottfried van Swieten". Copyright 2008 by Oxford University Press. The article is written by Edward Olleson.
*Hughes, Rosemary (1970) "Haydn". London: Dent.
*Olleson, Edward (1963) "Gottfried van Swieten: Patron of Haydn and Mozart," "Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association", 89th Sess. (1962 - 1963), pp. 63-74. Available online from JSTOR.
*Petschar, Hans (n.d.) "History of the Austrian National Library: A multimedia Essay." Formerly posted on the website of the Austrian National Library (the successor institution to the Imperial Library) at www.onb.ac.at/ev/about/history/history_text.htm. Retrieved 1/31/2008 from Google cache.
*Solomon, Maynard (1995) "Mozart: A Life". Harper Collins.

ee also

*Fugue

External links

* [http://www.laco.org/programnotes0403.html Program notes on Mozart's version of Handel's "Messiah", from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra]
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/aboutmusic/handel_alexander.shtml Program notes on the Proms 2006 performance of Mozart's version of Handel's "Alexander’s Feast", from the The English Concert] written by the conductor Andrew Manze