Schwetzingen - Schlösser-Magazin

friend Lorenz Hagenauer in Salzburg in
19 July 1763 14 , when his children came to
Schwetzingen for a guest performance. We
can be fairly sure that the court concerts
lasted three to four hours, and that, as
was the custom elsewhere, symphonies
alternated freely with solo concertos and
operatic arias. Foreign virtuosi who, like the
Mozarts, brought with them the right kind
of recommendation from an aristocrat of
the highest rank, or who had been expressly
invited by the Electoral couple, were given an
opportunity to demonstrate their outstanding
skills 15 .
Carl Theodor had a particular predilection for
chamber music. He expressed it, in a way, by
building the bath house so idyllically located
in the palace park, and by creating a new
post, the director of cabinet music, first held
by Konzertmeister Carlo Giuseppe Toeschi.
The Elector enjoyed spending an afternoon
in the bath house talking philosophy to
scholars of bourgeois and aristocratic origin
alike, and the records show that much of their
talk centred on the theory and aesthetics of
music. The bath house was to some extent a
metaphor, a place of intellectual renewal. In
the middle room, Elector Carl Theodor would
play music himself, along with selected court
musicians or virtuosi who happened to be
travelling through. It is no surprise, then,
that so many flute quartets have survived,
for this is the genre of music that symbolizes
intellectual pursuit par excellence. From
1773, these contemplative afternoons in
the bath house were an integral feature of
the diverse programme of amusements in
Schwetzingen 16 .
(Bärbel Pelker)
14 Mozart. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, Gesamtausgabe, gesammelt
von W. A. Bauer und O. E. Deutsch. Kassel-Basel 1962, vol.
1, pp. 78-81, esp. p. 79.
15 It was by no means easy to enter this society, as demonstrated
by the fact that the young Luigi Boccherini, for example, was
turned away from Schwetzingen in 1761 by Minister Heinrich
von Beckers (München, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Sign.:
Gesandtschaft Wien 665).
16 For a detailed account of musical life in Schwetzingen, see:
Bärbel Pelker: Sommer in der Campagne – Impressionen aus
Schwetzingen, in: Hofoper in Schwetzingen, pp. 9-38.
II. Schwetzingen – Elector Carl Theodor’s Summer Residence
II.
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