Dittersdorf: Sinfonia Concertante for Viola and Doublebass
“Canonicity.” If you were, for whatever reason, paying attention to the literary world in the 1990’s and 2000’s, you might remember that this word came up a lot in debates among academics. You’d be forgiven for having forgotten it, though: after all, what reason would you have had to think that it would impact your life?
Well, it turns out that the question of canonicity rears its head in many places in the cultural world, and even a casual music lover is impacted by it. Canonicity is how we determine the answer to a central question in studying any kind of art: time being limited, how do we decide what to study? Or what to read, or what music to teach our students, or what art to show them?
The works we decide to teach to our students are, after all, usually the ones our teachers decided were worth teaching us – which were usually the ones their teachers decided were worth teaching them, and so on and so on, back through the years. Those works are canonical. From the Classical era of music, for instance, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven have for over two centuries constituted a canon, their music being familiar, beloved, and performed consistently in concert halls around the world.
But we all have only so much time, of course. Musicians haven’t got the time to learn all the thousands of pieces written for their instrument during that era, and audiences don’t have time to listen to them all. This means that, if a composer isn’t quite good or lucky enough to enter the canon soon after his or her death, it can get harder and harder to break into it as generations go by – and so a lot of really good composers are practically forgotten about.
Exhibit A: Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf. Carl Ditters was a hugely successful composer in the Vienna of Haydn and Mozart, and in fact was a good friend and frequent chamber music partner of both. He acquired the second surname “von Dittersdorf” when Emperor Joseph II – among his many fans – elevated him to the nobility (an honor even Haydn and Mozart never attained). As prolific as both his contemporaries, he wrote over 120 symphonies and dozens of operas– most of which are now completely unknown, as there was just no room in the canon for them. Most have been catalogued and are awaiting revival.
One hopes they will be, and soon, for a couple reasons: 1) their titles are hugely intriguing – what could an opera called Die 25000 Gulden, oder im Dunkeln ist gut munkeln even be? And 2) what we know of Dittersdorf’s music is tremendously charming. The Concerto for Viola and Bass is less neglected than most of his music (probably because neither Mozart nor Haydn wrote for that combination), and its commitment to the charms of unbroken melody is more absolute than either Mozart or Haydn was willing to make. Its language is familiar but its voice is unique, and it offers rewards to all of us willing to broaden the range of our musical canons.
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Chris Vaneman is the Director of the Petrie School of Music and Associate Professor of Flute at Converse College. Chris frequently leads the Spartanburg Philharmonic pre-concert lecture series “Classical Conversations,” and occasionally performs as a substitute flutist in the orchestra.