| One of the Czech composers to progress from baroque style to that of preclassicism, Brixi is now credited with preparing Prague for the subsequent arrival of Mozart whose operas and symphonies were to be performed there with such success. Vanhal influenced and inspired Haydn & Mozart: they both played his music… Dušek’s wife Josefa reputedly locked Mozart in a summer-house until he composed a second concert aria for her, to follow Ah, lo previdi… Vranický studied in Vienna with Mozart and was a friend of both Haydn and Beethoven. The Thirty Years War (1618-48) resulted in the Hapsburgs taking over the kingdom of Bohemia, but it was impossible to suppress the Czech love for music, a fact then exploited by the Austrian nobles who filled their new Bohemian estates with musical talent. Once government had been transferred to Vienna, many Czech musicians moved away from their homeland to find work around Europe. As one Czech historian put it: ‘almost all the musical sources which welled up from the soil of Bohemia sped by the shortest course to join the main stream of the world’s music’… Some went to Vienna itself: Bárta, Koželuh, Vaňhal and the Vranickýs, but some, including the Benda family went to Berlin, others to Mannheim (eg Stamic and Richter), while Rejcha settled in Paris. -- Peter Avis |
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