Joseph Schmitt - Symphony No.1, Op.6 (1773)

Joseph Schmitt

  (Gernsheim am Rhein, bap. 18 March 1734 - Amsterdam, 28 May 1791)
German composer and music publisher, active in the Netherlands.

 Symphony No.1, Op.6 (1773)

Performers: New Dutch Academy Chamber Orchestra; Simon Murphy

His musical education under Carl Friedrich Abel must have taken place in Dresden before 1758, the year Abel left the Hofkapelle there and settled in London. on 2 October 1753 Schmitt took vows at the Cistercian monastery at Eberbach im Rheingau, where he wrote many sacred and secular works. on 9 October 1757 he was ordained priest. From 1763 at the latest the care of the music in the monastery seems to have been entrusted to him as regens chori. Before 1767 he established a connection with the music publisher J.J. Hummel in Amsterdam, who from this time until 1773 took six luxuriously printed collections of instrumental pieces by Schmitt into his catalogue. In 1771 payments by the monastery for music abruptly ceased, and by 1774 Schmitt had printed his op.7 in Amsterdam under his own imprint. (His setting of the Dutch Evangelische gezangen, 1783, and entry into the Amsterdam lodge ‘La Charité’ cannot, in view of the toleration of the Enlightenment, serve as proof that he had renounced his priesthood.) In Schmitt’s early years in the Netherlands he earned his livelihood from his publishing firm (which at first brought out only his own compositions) and perhaps by teaching, as is indicated by his Principes de la musique dédiés à tous les commençans and by the violin duos op.8 (1773–4) which exhibit a strong didactic bias. When the Felix Meritis Society of Amsterdam opened a new building in 1788, Schmitt was appointed director of the music section. At his death he was succeeded in this post by Bartholomeus Ruloffs, and in his publishing firm by Vincent Springer (a relative of Schmitt’s by marriage), a basset-horn player who continued the business until the end of the century.

The range of Schmitt’s compositions covers church music, symphonies, concertos, chamber music in various combinations and a few sacred songs. As early as 1773 Burney praised ‘the boldness, spirit and accuracy’ of Schmitt’s string trios. Contemporary writers gave prominence to the ‘Feuer, Erfindung und Gesang’ of his op.1 and expressed the opinion that his works needed no special recommendation because of the author’s well-established reputation. The blind flautist F.L. Dülon, Schmitt’s fellow pupil under Abel, asserted in 1808 that Schmitt’s compositions were certainly not the equal of Abel’s, but that in ‘ardour, boldness and sublimity’ they were ‘fashioned throughout with the same purity of texture … and facility of style’ (Wieland). The masses, Requiem and Te Deum presumably originated during the Eberbach period, and in view of the ample layout and the instrumentation, which ranged far beyond the resources of the monastery, must have served only for festal occasions. Schmitt’s preference for instrumental music is already apparent in the frequently rather meagre treatment of the voice parts, which often had to negotiate unvocal passages in the fugal movements.