Joseph Woelfl (1773 – 1812): Piano Sonata in C Minor, op 25
A composer can be born with certain advantages. You might be tall and handsome, with an agreeable manner, prodigious talent and enormous piano-playing hands which can stretch more than an octave and a half. And God might have smiled on you in other ways. Rather propitiously, your hometown is late eighteenth century Salzburg and fortune sends you to Vienna at a young age to befriend some of the greatest musicians of the day.
Joseph Woelfl was all of those things and more. So why haven’t we heard more about him? He admittedly didn’t help himself by dying so relatively young, while still in the process of developing his compositional style. But he was also unlucky to be writing at a time when the likes of Mozart (briefly), Haydn and Beethoven were all in full flow – it would appear that every musical era only has room for a few celebrated figures. More happily for Woelfl’s legacy, a resurgence of interest in his music has been underway since the turn of the present century.
Woelfl was well-connected in his day. He had some of the best teachers during his youth, including Leopold Mozart (father of Wolfgang) and Michael Haydn (brother of Joseph). Later he was friends with Beethoven in Vienna, and for a time Woelfl was cast as his keenest rival, as both composer and virtuosic pianist. Both attracted their own groupies and many even rated Woelfl the greater of the two.
One contemporary writer of the time would sum up the rivalry thus:
Opinion is divided here touching the merits of the two [Woelfl and Beethoven]; yet it would seem as if the majority were on the side of the latter (Wölffl). I shall try to set forth the peculiarities of each without taking part in the controversy.
Beethoven’s playing is extremely brilliant but has less delicacy and occasionally he is guilty of indistinctness. He shows himself to the greatest advantage in improvisation, and here, indeed, it is most extraordinary with what lightness and yet firmness in the succession of ideas Beethoven not only varies a theme given him on the spur of the moment by figuration (with which many a virtuoso makes his fortune and—wind) but really develops it. Since the death of Mozart, who in this respect is for me still the non plus ultra, I have never enjoyed this kind of pleasure in the degree in which it is provided by Beethoven.
In this Wölffl fails to reach him. But W. has advantages in this that, sound in musical learning and dignified in his compositions, he plays passages which seem impossible with an ease, precision and clearness which cause amazement (of course he is helped here by the large structure of his hands) and that his interpretation is always, especially in Adagios, so pleasing and insinuating that one can not only admire it but also enjoy…. That Wölffl likewise enjoys an advantage because of his amiable bearing, contrasted with the somewhat haughty pose of Beethoven, is very natural.
The two would perform at aristocratic parties, sometimes separately (while trying to outshine the other) but just as often as duets on two separate pianos. According to another witness, they would “improvise alternately on themes which they gave each other, and thus created many a four-hand Capriccio which if it could have been put upon paper at the moment would surely have bidden defiance to time. It would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, to award the palm of victory to either one of the gladiators in respect of technical skill.”
Yet the same observer noted how Beethoven’s improvisations would delve deep under the surface of his art, that as they “began to revel in the infinite world of tones, he was transported also above all earthly things”. Woelfl, by contrast, “trained in the school of Mozart, was always equable; never superficial but always clear and thus more accessible to the multitude. He used art only as a means to an end, never to exhibit his acquirements.”
Eventually Woelfl appears to have decided that the Austrian capital wasn’t quite big enough for the two composer-pianists, and he moved firstly to Paris and then to London (where he is buried in Marylebone church yard). His music did well, if not outstandingly, and despite the general eclipse of his reputation after his death, his piano works were admired by several early romantic composers.
The Piano Sonata in C Minor op 25 dates from the end of his Parisian period. It remains to this day an obscure and somewhat unconventional piece of music, and yet it is unquestionably a minor masterpiece. Its structure is grander than most other piano sonatas written in the early 1800s – instead of the usual three (occasionally four) movement structure, Woelfl’s monumental work is in five, and starts off with that most Baroque of openings – a slow introduction followed by a fugue. The first few bars make clear reference to Mozart’s Fantasia in C Minor K475 (same key, dramatic octaves followed by quiet, hesitant cadences), before the music works its way through some interesting harmonies in preparation for the fugue. Rather like Anton Reicha, Woelfl briefly evokes the sound-world of JS Bach in his fugue, before developing it into something bolder and more individualistic.
It is only after this grandest of grand two-movement introductions that we finally move into more conventional sonata form territory. The third movement is a fast, rumbling, virtuosic affair, still in the stormy key of C Minor, although with lighter, sometimes humorous touches. The slow fourth movement is soulful but with some striking harmonic modulations. The final movement, Allegretto, is a rondo loosely structured around a rather formal sounding polka, which frequently breaks off into further passages of virtuosic fancy.
Suggestions for further listening
Mozart was a primary influence on Woelfl’s music and in Woelfl’s sonata you can hear definite echoes of two of Mozart’s most famous piano works in C Minor (which are often played in tandem), his Fantasia in C Minor K475 & Piano Sonata in C Minor K457.
Aside from Woelfl’s other piano sonatas (too numerous to mention in detail – he composed 68 in all), he also turned his hand to Piano Concertos and Symphonies. But whereas his sonatas tend to be bolder and more experimental in character, his symphonic works much more readily evoke the spirit of Mozart.