In 1826, a correspondent … wrote to The Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review in response to a previous issue’s article “The Great Symphonists.” He listed a number of mid-eighteenth-century symphonists whom he felt had been unjustly ignored. He credited (Johann) Stamitz with introducing the crescendo and diminuendo, and pointed to Periodical Overture No. 11 as possessing “beautiful specimens” of the crescendo in its first and last movements.[1] Then, in 1980—two centuries after the symphony’s heyday—Claude V. Palisca published Stamitz’s first movement in the inaugural edition of the Norton Anthology of Western Music.[2] He based his score on the venerable Denkmäler Deutscher Tonkunst edition from 1902.[3] That selection has therefore given generations of collegiate music students an introduction to characteristic “Mannheim” features in this vigorous opening; it also make the first movement of Bremner’s edition seem like a familiar friend.

One of the memorable gestures of Periodical Overture No. 11 is the use of three sharp “hammer-blow” strokes, or premier coups d’archet, that immediately grab listeners’ attention.[4] This “Allegro assai” is structured as a quadruple-meter sonata form without repetitions (characteristic of Stamitz’s later symphonies), and the first theme is underpinned by measured tremolos in the second violins and violas and by “drum 8ths” in the “Basso” part.[5] Distinctive horn calls resound in the second half of the theme (m. 11), and one of the transition’s most exciting elements is the use of Mannheim crescendos, which begin building in measure 18 and again in measure 27. The oboes are showcased in the more lyrical second theme (m. 47), which also plays with antiphonal effects between sections of the orchestra. After the modulatory development (m. 75), the recapitulation reverses the order of the themes, with the lyrical oboes reappearing in measure 108, the horn calls in measure 132, and the hammer-blows in measure 139 for a resounding conclusion.

The “Andantino” shifts to the dominant key of B-flat major, and it employs a binary-sonata pattern that James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy call a “Type 2 Sonata,” diagrammed as an ||: a/I b/V :||: a/V b/I :|| structure.[6] This simple-duple movement is scored for strings only, and its first theme has a lovely lilting quality above softly pulsing drum 8ths. The second theme (m. 30) features both the bass and viola parts in rising and falling scalar patterns, followed by the violins in a more disjunct and syncopated line (m. 40). Like many Mannheim works, sudden dynamic contrasts are often separated by only a single measure, and the latter half of the movement is peppered with rinforzandi accentuations.

The “Prestissimo,” an exhilarating finale in 3/8, is again loaded with strategies that the Mannheim orchestra made famous. Its first theme comprises an upward sequence that employs the quick rising-and-falling motif known as the Bebung, while the bass strings accompany with steady drum 8ths.[7] The sequence gradually crescendos to bell-like chords played fortissimo by the whole ensemble (m. 17) while the upper strings now play measured tremolos. The chords are quickly followed by lively hunting-style fanfares for the winds and upper strings. The sonata form’s second theme (m. 47) again starts quietly; the second violins and violas play oscillating, conjunct lines underneath measured tremolos, with the oboes joining in on the second half of each phrase. The extremely brief development (m. 95) plays with a modulatory Bebung before stabilizing in E-flat at measure 103 for the recapitulation of the first theme. The second theme makes its own return in measure 149. A series of seven hammer-blow E-flat chords in the last three bars bring the movement (and symphony) to a satisfying, table-thumping close.

Alyson McLamore

[1] Senex, “To the Editor,” The Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review 8, no. 31 (July 1826): 304–5.

[2] Johann Anton Wenzel Stamitz, “Sinfonia a 8 in E-flat Major (La Melodia Germanica No. 3), in Classic • Romantic • Modern, 42–50, Vol. II of Norton Anthology of Western Music, ed. Claude V. Palisca (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980); it continues to appear in the 2019 eighth edition.

[3] Hugo Riemann, ed., Sinfonien der pfalzbayerischen Schule (Mannheimer Symphoniker), Jahrgang III, vol. 1 of Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Bayern (Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst, Zweite Folge), ed. Adam Sandbergern (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1902), 1–28.

[4] David D. Boyden and Peter Walls, “Coup d’archet,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001), Vol. 6: 579.

[5] Wolf, The Symphonies of Johann Stamitz, 340.

[6] James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 353–4.

[7] Hugo Riemann, ed., Sinfonien der pfalzbayerischen Schule (Mannheimer Symphoniker), in Year 7, Vol. II, of Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Bayern, in Series 2 of Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1906), xvii.