Klarinet Archive - Posting 000219.txt from 1994/10

From: Dan Leeson
Subj: STADLER PART 2
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 10:19:19 -0400

Four months later, Stadler was back performing in Germany. On 10 September
1794, the "Lubeckische Anzeigen" included the following announcement:
"Withgovernment permission, Herr Stadler, Court Chamber Musician in the present
service of His Royal and Imperial Majesty, will have the honor to give a
concert on his way through on next Saturday the 13th of September at 6 o'clock
in the evening at the Opernsaal (footnote 13) here. He will be heard on a
clarinet that is quite newly invented by him. This instrument differs from the
normal [clarinet] through its special construction, through its softer tone, as
well as through a compass of four octaves (footnote 14). It also has five
[emphasis added] more notes in the bottom than the ordinary clarinet [i.e.,
from written small e to c]. Admission is 2m & [Lubeck marks], Tickets are
available at the [Hotel] Stadt Hannover on Klingberge".

A second concert was given at popular request, later in the month at the Lubeck
Theater on Saturday evening on the 27th of September. For this concert, it was
announced that Stadler would be joined by Mademoiselle Amalie Lowe, who was to
sing an aria and then a duet with her brother Leopold (footnote 16).

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Footnote 10: Moritz Rudolph, Rigaer Theater- und Tonkunstler-Lexikon, Riga
1890, p. 234.

Footnote 11: Robert Mooser, Annales de la musique et des musiciens en
Russie au XVIIIe siecle, 3 vols., Geneve 1948-1950, vol. 2, p. 613.

Footnote 12: Lotz, member of the Crowned Hope Masonic Lodge along with Mozart
and Stadler, improved and extended the range of the basset horn. It is likely
that he then applied a similar technology to the clarinet, creating the basset
clarinet. A five-keyed clarinet of his survives today in the "Musee des
Instruments anciens" at Geneve, Switzerland, as does a basset horn in the
"Musikinstrumenten-Museum des Staatlichen Instituts fur Musikforschung
Preussischer Kulturbesitz" in Berlin (Nr. 2911). See also Joseph Saam, Das
Bassetthorn, Seine Erfindung und Weiterbildung, Mainz 1971, pp. 37-38.

Footnote 13: The "Opernsaal", for theater, opera and ballet productions
(Stadler must [emphasis added] have played to large audiences!), was located in
the Ebbeschen Theater, on Beckergrube, today the Buhnen der Hansestadt Lubeck,
according to Renate Schleth, Librarian at the Bibliothek der Hansestadt Lubeck,
to whom the author extends her thanks for this information.

Footnote 14: That the basset clarinet had a four-octave range is substantiated
by an unfinished "Clarinet Concerto" by Franz Xaver Sussmayr which he was
composing for Stadler. Two drafts for the Allegro movement of this "Concerto
for Clarinet in A" survive today in the British Library (Signature: Add.
#32181). Truly remarkable is the clarinet scalar passage of folio 123, which
begins on c and extends all the way to c''''.[Music example given: Leeson] The
second draft is dated "Vienna le [without day] Jan [1]792." The earlier draft
is undated by Alan Tyson has discovered it to be on Bohemian paper with a
watermark identical to that used by Mozart in completing "La clemenza di Tito"
in Prague in September of 1791. (See Alan Tyson, Mozart: Studies of the
Autograph Scores, Cambridge MA and London 1987, p. 253.) It will be remembered
that Sussmayr was with Mozart and Stadler in Prague for Leopold II's coronation
festivities. In Mozart's letter of 8 October 1791, a continuation of the 7
October letter noted above, Mozart writes to Constanze at Baden, "Do urge [name
deleted, probably Sussmayr , who was with her in Baden] to write something for
[name deleted, probably Stadler], for he has begged me very earnestly to see to
this". After his triumph in "La clemenza di Tito", the idea of a concert tour
of Europe may have come to Stadler and he might have been anxious to have
Sussmayr complete the basset clarinet concerto begun in Prague in order to have
an additional composition to "showcase" the technical possibilities of his
basset clarinet.

[Note from Leeson: footnote 15 is very long and both it and footnote 16 will
be deferred to the next entry which will contain these two footnotes alone.]

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