Florian Leopold Gassmann (1729–1774)
Opera Overtures
Like many musicians who achieved fame and fortune in
eighteenth-century Vienna, Florian Leopold Gassmann
was of Bohemian origin. Little is known about his early
years although it is believed that he received his early
musical training from Johann Woborschil, regens chori at
Brüx, the small town north-west of Prague where
Gassmann was born. His father, a goldsmith, was
apparently opposed to his son pursuing a musical career
and had him apprenticed to a merchant. It seems that
Gassmann ran away and after a period spent living
precariously in Karlsbad made his way south to Italy,
where he may have studied with the celebrated theorist
Padre Martini. By 1757 Gassmann was well enough
established as a composer to secure a commission to
compose an opera, Merope, which was produced for the
carnival season at the Teatro S. Moisè in Venice. The work
was well received and he was invited to compose a new opera annually for the next five years. His third opera, Gli
uccellatori (The Birdcatchers), was the first of his many
settings of libretti by Carlo Goldoni.
Gassmann’s setting of Metastasio’s Catone in Utica
was staged at the Burgtheater in Vienna during the 1761–62 season and the following year he was invited to return
as ballet composer and successor to Gluck. Although he
was initially engaged to compose ballet music, Gassmann
also undertook to compose operas for the Viennese theatre.
The first of these, Olimpiade (another opera seria to a
Metastasio libretto), had its première at the Burgtheater in
October 1764. Gassmann also directed performances of
operas by other composers which kept him in touch with
the latest musical developments in Vienna and elsewhere.
With the closure of the Viennese theatres during the year
of mourning decreed following the death Franz I (1765–66), Gassmann obtained leave to return to Venice, where his opera Achille in Sciro was produced at the Teatro S.
Giovanni Crisostomo. On his return he found that the
disruption to the theatres caused by their enforced closure
had led to the loss of a number of personnel, among them
several opera seria singers. The buffo ensemble, however,
was unaffected, and this, perhaps as much as professional
inclination, caused him to concentrate on the composition
of comic operas over the next few years. His setting of
Goldoni’s L’amore artigiano (Love in the Workplace),
which received its première in April 1767, proved the most
successful of his operas and was staged in a number of
important centres over the next few years. The work is
also regarded as being of great historical interest,
occupying an important place in the evolution of Viennese
opera buffa.
Although Gassmann is thought of primarily as a
composer of operas and perhaps to a lesser extent of church
music, he also composed in other genres including
chamber music. His quartets, great favourites of Joseph
II, also found favour with Dr Charles Burney who wrote
of them:
It is but justice to say, that since my return to England,
I have had these pieces tried, and have found them
excellent: there is pleasing melody, free from caprice and
affectation; sound harmony, and the contrivances and
imitations are ingenious, without the least confusion. In
short, the style is sober and sedate, without dulness; and
masterly, without pedantry.
Gassmann’s appointment as Hofkapellmeister in March
1772 marked the summit of his professional career. He
owed his appointment in part to his reputation as a
composer but also perhaps to his recent initiative in
founding the Tonkünstler-Societät for one of whose first
public performances (19 March 1772) he composed the
oratorio La Betulia liberata. Gassmann approached his
new position with characteristic professional zeal. Under
the direction of his predecessor, Georg Reutter the
Younger, the Hofkapelle had declined in size and
importance although it still retained a high level of prestige.
He immediately began a comprehensive reorganization of
the Hofkapelle’s personnel and library but his untimely death in 1774, the result of a fall from a carriage, halted the
process. After a great deal of wrangling in which music
politics played a very important part, Giuseppe Bonno was
brought out of retirement to fill Gassmann’s position and
after his death, Antonio Salieri, Gassmann’s erstwhile
pupil, succeeded to the post. The high regard in which
Gassmann was held by the imperial family is evident in the
Empress Maria Theresia acting as godmother to his second
daughter, born shortly after his death.
This recording contains a selection of Gassmann’s
overtures ranging from Gli uccellatori, the first of his
Goldoni settings and composed in 1759 for the Teatro S.
Moisè in Venice, to his last opera, La casa di compagna
(The Country House), which was first given at the
Burgtheater in Vienna on 13 February 1773. Also
included are overtures to three of Gassmann’s most
popular operas, Il viaggiatore ridicolo (The Ridiculous
Traveller, 1766), L’amore artigiano (1767), and La
contessina (The Young Countess, 1770), all of which are
settings of Goldoni libretti. La contessina, perhaps
Gassmann’s best-known opera, received its première in
Mährisch-Neustadt on 3 September 1770 during
festivities to celebrate the meeting of Joseph II and
Frederick the Great. These last three overtures, along with
two others—Il filosofo innamorato (The Philosopher in
Love, 1771) and La notte critica (The Critical Night, 1768)
enjoyed an independent life as concert symphonies. All
are listed in various supplements of the Breitkopf
Catalogue and several also appear in a catalogue of
manuscripts belonging to Göttweig monastery in Austria.
The fact that these ‘symphonies’ were originally associated
with comic operas was clearly no impediment to their
performance at one of the great Austrian monastic houses.
Gassmann owed his success as a composer to his ability
to write attractive, well-crafted music in the prevailing
style of the time. His mastery of the buffa style was
impressive and his understanding of both the musical and
dramatic possibilities inherent in the ensemble writing that
is one of the defining characteristics of opera buffa is
evident in many of his operas. Like all good theatre
composers Gassmann understood the critical importance
of controlling the dramatic action through musical pacing and this quality is encountered on a smaller scale in his
overtures.
Gassmann’s opera overtures follow the three-movement
pattern fast-slow-fast typical of the mid-eighteenth-century overture, although in some instances—the overtures to Le pescatrici (The Fisherwomen, 1771)
and Il filosofo innamorato (1771) are good examples of
this—there are elisions between the second and third
movements which make the central sections of these
overtures particularly interesting from the structural aspect.
The overture to Gassmann’s last opera, La casa di
campagna (1773) is rare in being unashamedly pictorial
with its bucolic hunting horns and contradanza finale, for
in general, his overtures, like those of the majority of his
contemporaries, serve to establish the tone of the opera
rather than literally to set the scene for the first act.
Gassmann’s attractive opening movements with their bright, cheerful themes are perfect introductions to the
comic operas that follow while the central sections, which
are often distinguished by their lovely lyrical writing and
sensitive orchestration, foreshadow the interior worlds of
the more sensitive characters soon to be met on stage.
Gassmann’s impressive technical command as a composer
is evident in many aspects of these works. Their musical
structures are elegant and logical; the music is well-paced
and coherent; there are frequent and interesting variations
in texture; and Gassmann’s fondness for counterpoint is
also encountered in frequent examples of canonic writing
between the violins and also in a more extensive fashion
in the bustling contrapuntal finale to the overture to Le
pescatrici.
Allan Badley
