they sat through the whole thing.10 A Berlin actor in late 1825 organized an “Abend-Unterhaltung,” an evening salon, described by a critic in Der Freimüthige for December 26 as “A true olla podrida, composed of all possible ingredients at hand.”11 The critic was, if anything, understating the degree of miscellany: the program included the overture to Ludwig Spohr’s opera Der Berggeist,12 a long poem by Friedrich Kind declaimed by a famous actress, and Schubert’s “Erlkönig,” sung by one Herr Bader at the piano. Marching onward, there was also an unidentified duet by Saverio Mercadante, sung by Milder and Devrient; an adagio and polonaise for cello by Antoine Bohrer;13 a vocal quartet setting of “Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe” by Friedrich Heinrich Himmel;14 an unspecified scene with chorus by Bernhard Adolf Marx, composed for Madame Milder; a work by the prolific male-quartet composer Franz Eisenhofer; the overture to Mozart’s La finta giardiniera, K. 196 (1775), followed by the first scene; a fantasy with variations by Friedrich Kalkbrenner;15 an aria with chorus from Rossini’s La Cenerentola (“Nacqui all’affanno, al pianto,” rondò with chorus from act 2, scene 3?); Mozart’s trio “Mandina amabile,” K. 480, composed for Francesco Bianchi’s 1783 comic opera La villanella rapita;16 the male quartet version of Schubert’s “Der Gondelfahrer,” D809; Carl Blum’s ballad “Der Goldschmiedgesell;”17 and a chorus of Russians from Ernst Raupach’s drama Alangbu, with guitar accompaniment.18 I would have needed strong drink to survive all that. The critic’s sarcasm in thus invoking olla podrida bespeaks an early ripple in a changing tide, a reaction already forming against the admixture of light works in popular taste with serious compositions on concert programs.
About Anna Milder
My current interest in such occasions centers on Anna Milder-Hauptmann, Beethoven’s first Leonore and one of the most extraordinary singers in the early nineteenth century. In particular, I look at the nexus of art song as an element in these miscellany concerts, Anna Milder’s influence on composers and concert programming, and the fashion for oriental subjects with Schubert’s Suleika songs as the focus (see fig. 1.1 for depictions of her).
I will happily echo Brahms in declaring that “Suleika I” is among Schubert’s loveliest works,19 and it subsequently gained a companion piece in another Suleika song created expressly for Milder. The genesis of “Suleika II” is a familiar tale, beginning with Milder’s attempt to make contact with Schubert in the autumn of 1824. He was in Hungary with the Esterházy family, and therefore, she wrote him on December 24, 1824, to say “how much I enjoy your songs, and what enthusiasm they arouse in audiences where I have performed them.”20 This was the prelude to her solicitation of both an opera and more songs from him; Schubert, whose pleasure at hearing from Leonore one can well imagine, duly sent her Alfonso und Estrella and several songs, including “Suleikas zweiter Gesang,” dedicated to her. She loved the song, she told him in a return letter from Berlin written on March 8, 1825, declaring it “magical” and telling him that it brought her to tears, as did the first Suleika song and “Geheimnis,” D491 from 1816, clearly also included in the package.21 I would guess that Schubert’s setting of “Geheimnis” was a case of the composer turning Johann Mayrhofer’s heartfelt compliment to him into a compliment to her: “You sing, and the sun shines and Spring is near,” the poet wrote, and what singer wouldn’t want to hear that?22 And yet, such rarefied beauty as was on display in “Suleika I” and “Geheimnis” were not, Milder told Schubert, meant for the public, who merely wanted their ears tickled. She turned down Alfonso und Estrella because it did not have a part suitable for her and requested a new opera from him, preferably in one act and on an oriental subject, with the soprano as the chief character.23 She also requested that he set to music “Der Nachtschmetterling,” which Walther Dürr has surmised was probably Johann Gottfried Ritter von Leitner’s poem “Der Jüngling und der Nachtschmetterling” (The youth and the moth),24 in a style “addressed to a wider public.”25 One can imagine her savoring the dramatic possibilities, the mothlike fluttering in both piano and vocal parts, afforded by this dialogue poem.
Fig. 1.1 a–b. Depictions of Anna Milder-Hauptmann. (a) Axis Images / Alamy Stock Photo (b) UtCon Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.
Well before the Christmas 1824 letter to Schubert, matters of taste and repertoire were part of her life story. At age sixteen, she was taken in hand and tutored by the composer Sigismund von Neukomm (1778–1858), who was one of Haydn’s students, and then by Antonio Salieri.26 In one thoroughly delicious anecdote, Neukomm brought her to Haydn, for whom she sang “a bravura aria from an old German opera much beloved by the Salzburgers” (I wish I knew what it was). After the aria, Haydn made his famous comment “My child, you have a voice like a house” (“Liebes Kind, Sie haben eine Stimme wie ein Haus”), upon which he turned to Neukomm and said, “You, however, should burn this score on the spot—she should not sing such trash.”27 In April 1803, at age seventeen, she was engaged by Emanuel Schikaneder for the Theater an der Wien, where she appeared for her debut as Juno in Franz Süßmayr’s Singspiel Der Spiegel von Arkadien of 1794. (This was an offspring of Die Zauberflöte with a libretto also by Schikaneder.)28 One of the most popular numbers in this work was the bravura aria “Juno wird dich stets umschweben,” its tempo allegro, its meter 4/4, its tessitura stratospheric, with an uncomfortable emphasis on the passagio and quite a few melismas, as one can see from Süßmayr’s exuberant treatment of the word Seite (see example 1.1).
But for Milder’s sake and to her specifications, the composer provided an alternate aria on the same words (most of them), its music conceived in a very different vein: here, the tempo is andante, the meter 6/8, the tessitura largely in the middle of the voice, and passage work placed only at the end, as shown in example 1.2. This version was published in Berlin in 1838, with a prefatory homage to the recently deceased singer; it is quite moving that her friends chose this earliest specimen of her fame to herald her passing, thereby tracing an arc from beginning to end and choosing a work emblematic of the singularity of her voice.29
From the start, Milder impelled change: composers wanted to write for her, and they tailored their works to her unique traits. There are numerous anecdotes in which writers try to describe how she sounded, stressing difference from everyone else as they did so. The Bohemian composer Johann Wenzel Tomaschek (Václav Jan Tomášek), in his Selbstbiographie, writes of attending the Akademie im großen Redoutensaal in Vienna at which Beethoven’s Der glorreiche Augenblick, op. 136, and Seventh Symphony, op. 92, were performed in 1814, with Milder-Hauptmann the soprano soloist in the cantata. Tomaschek invokes “the colossal voice of Madame Milder” resounding through the entire space, with the violin soloist helpless against such power.30 One of the most detailed descriptions of her sound, her technique, and her artistry comes from the Berlin composer and music critic Johann Carl Friedrich Rellstab, father of the Schubert poet Ludwig Rellstab and an important figure in Berlin’s musical life. He heard her in Vienna in 1811 and wrote a travel report from that city for the Vossische Zeitung, saying that no other performer had aroused his curiosity as much as she did and that he had studied her voice every day for the duration of his visit. Among the qualities that most impressed him was the particular beauty of her “middle voice” and the fact that from the top to the bottom, her voice was equally strong, full, and lovely. Trills and mordents were not her forte, he said, nor were bravura passages, but she had every nuance of soft and loud, strong and limpid—like the best Cremona violins, Rellstab rhapsodizes.31
Example 1.1. Franz Xaver Süßmayr, “Juno wird dich stets umschweben,”
