The Music

The characters in Escapement would have been astonished to know that we are still playing and recording their music 250 years later. Happily, musicians today are exploring even some of the neglected repertoire by the likes of Rosetti and Sterkel (who are both wonderful composers). In addition, some of the original instruments Nannette and her father built have been preserved, restored, and/or copied, so that we can hear them, and start to appreciate the difference between an 18th-century fortepiano and a modern Steinway grand. (I've set up a direct comparison among the clips below.)

Imagine my delight when I learned that Andreas Staier and Christine Schornsheim had recorded a Mozart album on the very Vis-a-Vis Clavier that 8-year-old Nannette Stein and her father, Johann Andreas Stein, brought to Vienna in 1777. The difference between the harpsichord and the fortepiano sides of the instrument would have seemed more marked to 18th-century ears. Mozart's K. 381 piano duet, linked here, appears several times in the book; Mozart wrote it for himself and his sister when he was 16, and they were still playing it eight years later, so it's not a stretch to think that Mozart's father might have given a copy to the Steins.

This recording showcases several composers Nannette and her father knew personally, played on an actual Stein instrument; the fortepianist is Christoph Hammer, who is also a professor in Augsburg  and president of the German Mozart Society there.  The piece I've linked is one movement of a sonata by Captain Ignaz von Beecke; the album also includes music by Rosetti (sonata in B-flat Major) and Stein's old friend Eckard in Paris (sonata in E Major). 

This recording spotlights all of Nannette's compositions -- including two marches that she wrote for fans of hers who purchased her instruments -- and several of Andreas's, including the variations on "Bloom, little violet" that the two of them play together in the book (listed as "6 Variations"). Linked here is the excerpt Nannette published of her "Lament on the Early Death of the Virgin Ursula Sabine Stage" (text by Peter Neuß), which I believe was just the start of a much longer declamation; the poem, like most of Peter Neuß's work, is generous in length. Tobias Koch and Sarah Wegener are the performers.  

Anna von Schaden published this Rondo in 1787 in Bossler's music magazine, which was a quarterly that published collections of short pieces for clavier players. (Bossler was a friend of Rosetti and later became the impresario of Marianne Kirchgessner, the blind glass harmonica virtuoso.) I'm not sure the piece had ever been recorded until Erica Sipes made this lovely video of it (on a modern piano).   

Musicologists generally agree that Antonio Rosetti wrote the orchestra parts and Anna von Schaden wrote the clavier parts for her two concertos. How closely they may actually have worked together on them remains unknown. I find it notable that she dedicated them to female aristocrats rather than the Prince. (I once had a reader argue vociferously that I had accidentally linked to a concerto by Mozart.) Nataša Veljković is the pianist; Johannes Moesus conducts the Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim.

Rosetti returned triumphantly from his trip to Paris with a set of six published symphonies dedicated to his boss, Prince Kraft Ernst, though he probably wrote some of them before he went. This one features the kind of slow opening that Prince favored, as well as prominent parts for the two horn players, Zwierzina and Nagel, in the first and third movements. Vojtech Spurny conducts the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Wallerstein orchestra's perpetual search for a bassoon player became kind of a gag in the book. When Christoph Hoppius was finally hired, he and Rosetti forged a strong friendship that's reflected in the irresistible and utterly delightful bassoon concertos Rosetti wrote for him. This is the first movement of the B-flat concerto; Eckart Hübner is the soloist and conducts the German Chamber Academy Neuss. 

 Johann Gottfried Seyfert was a leading musician in Augsburg and a good friend of Johann Andreas Stein, but he does not appear in the book since he died when Nannette was only three. However, this concert of his Symphony in D Major by the Barocksolisten München gives you a window into music of the period, fortepiano and all, and into the Lieberts' ballroom, where Marie Antoinette danced on her way to Paris -- a location that is frequently mentioned in the book. (Nannette taught one of the Liebert daughters, whose sister married the Schaezler by whose name the palace is known today.)

Much of the music written by Maria Theresia Paradis, the blind piano virtuoso and composer whom Nannette met in Augsburg during her extensive European tour, has been lost. This Fantasie dates from 1807, more than 20 years after that tour, but still gives a sense of Paradis's work; and the pianist Ragna Schirmer plays it on the only surviving instrument from this period that still has an organ register as well as a so-called "Janisssary stop" with percussion. It was made by Joseph Böhm, not by Stein, but it gives a sense of the variety people sought in instruments of that period.  

Marianne Auenbrugger lived only 23 years, but she had made a mark on musical Vienna: her teachers included Haydn, who dedicated a set of six sonatas to her and her sister, and Salieri, who paid out of his own pocked to have this sonata published after she died. Patricia Garcia Gil is the fortepianist.

The six sonatas to the Auenbrugger sisters were the first works that Haydn designated as "Sonatas" per se; he thought this one was the most difficult to play. In this video, Sir Andras Schiff introduces his performance by explaining, among other things, that this was one of the first pieces written specifically for a fortepiano as opposed to a harpsichord (or cembalo, as they call it in the book).

In Nannette's day, when composers wrote a sonata for keyboard and violin, it was the violin, rather than the clavier, that was viewed as the accompaniment. Sterkel dedicated sonatas for piano and violin to both Nannette Streicher and Anna von Schaden -- among the last pieces he ever wrote. Neither of those pieces appears to have been recorded, but this delightful earlier sonata, written not long before Nannette and her father visited him in Mainz, gives a sense of what they sound like. Els Biesemans is the fortepianist; the violinist is Meret Lüthi.  

This was Beethoven's first major published work, and he set out to grab attention -- not least, the attention of the famous composer whose song he used as a point of departure, as well as the attention of Righini's brother-in-law Sterkel, for whom Beethoven played them in 1791. Ronald Brautigam performs them on the fortepiano. 

To help you hear the difference between the instruments Nannette was building and the piano sound we know today, I'm offering two clips of one of Mozart's best-known piano sonatas, No. 16 in C Major (K 545). In Alexei Lubimov's recording you can hear the fleetness and sparkle of the fortepiano, with the bright sharp ping of hammers striking strings: this is the so-called "Viennese piano action" that Nannette's father invented and that Nannette continued to develop throughout her life. 

"The Viennese piano was designed for the performer," I was told during my research on this book; "the English piano, for the audience." The pianos developed by Steinway and other English manufacturers in the 19th century emphasized volume and power, with metal frames to help withstand the tremendous pressure of the strings -- and eventually, all the Viennese manufacturers had to follow suit in order to remain competitive. The 19th century saw a sea change in the conception of music as well as sound: music became less a diversion that one might perform for oneself, and more a collection of masterpieces, reverentially played for an audience. This beautiful performance by Claudio Arrau demonstrates a fundamental difference, both in sound and in conception, from the Lubimov reading.