Antonio Caldara in Vienna (1716-36) and the "Indigenization" of an Italian Composer at a Foreign Italianate Court
Journal
中山人文學報
Journal Issue
33
Pages
71-109
Date Issued
2012
Author(s)
Abstract
The preeminence and prevalence of Italian musicians in non-Italian locales is a well-known circumstance of several centuries of European music history. This essay examines a multifaceted and complex instance of cultural interaction involving Antonio Caldara, Vice-Kapellmeister at the Habsburg imperial court in Vienna from 1716 to 1736, which will serve to underscore the dynamic, competitive, and appropriative aspects of at least some situations of musical exchange. Not simply an importer of the stylistic idioms of his native land, Caldara obtained the post to which he had long aspired only one year after the appointment as Kapellmeister of the Austrian Johann Joseph Fux, which broke a century-long succession of Italians who had held the position. Together, these two figures centrally forged a musical Reichstil over the course of the next two decades, of an Italianate orientation yet inflected by the ideological dimensions of the Austrian imperial context, and musically featuring a weighty contrapuntal manner (codified in Fux's ”Gradus ad Parnassum” of 1725) as well as a ceremonial liturgical idiom marked by the bright timbre of clarino trumpets. Caldara had written few works of such a cast prior to his arrival in Vienna, yet he rapidly ”indigenized” in order to meet the requirements of his new post, clearly aided by the already deeply Italian character of the Viennese court which he certainly helped to perpetuate and enhance further. The implications of this development have a broad historical relevance, for the Habsburg imperial capital in the early eighteenth century epitomized a cultural-ideological paradigm of universal authority which contrasts notably with Enlightenment ideals of freedom and autonomy associated with the Austria of just a few decades later. This paper argues that Caldara's stylistic adaptation contributed crucially to promoting his influence and legacy well beyond his death in 1736, and that the latter part of the century may be viewed less as an ”age of freedom” than as one of an especially intensive dialectic between competing values of socio-political order and individual autonomy.
SDGs
Type
journal article