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| Perkeo (born Clemens Pankert, or Giovanni Clementi) 1702–1735. |
Back at that time Mannheim was part of the lands in Germany near the Rhine that were ruled by the Elector of Palatine (so-called because he was one of the formal Electors of the Emperor, who ruled from Vienna).
That area of the Empire (the Palatinate) wasn't always peaceful, but during this era, life would remain remarkably stable and prosperous by historical standards, at least until the Napoleonic Wars early in the next century (when all of Germany would undergo huge transformations akin to a Revolution).
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| Red box indicates location of the various Palatinate landholdings within the Imperial borders of 1789. (source) |
In the 1710s, while Elector of Palatine had his court in the city of Heidelberg, he had begun building one of the finest orchestras in Europe, rivaling the ones in Berlin and Vienna. In 1720 he moved his court to nearby Mannheim, at which point the court orchestra enters into a Golden Age. It would remain highly influential throughout much of the Romantic era.
Mannheim welcomed skilled players from failed orchestras throughout Europe, acting like a wealthy center for musical refugees. Over time the court orchestra invariably came to include a cosmopolitan variety of players of the highest caliber and diverse musical backgrounds, including exotic places such as Eastern Europe and Silesia.
The goal at Mannheim was more than recruiting players of great talent and skill. It was also to build an orchestra of unprecedented scale, especially in the string section, with the goal of producing an overpowering musical effect in the audience inside the concert hall.
Moreover, the goal was to achieve wild innovative musical effects as well. Along those lines, the court composer at Mannheim, Johann Stamitz, instituted a particular style that became widely known and imitated throughout Europe as being characteristic of the court orchestra.
The Mannheim style was characterized by specific musical effects including sudden crescendos and diminuendos, and varieties: the Mannheim Crescendo, the Mannheim Rocket, the Mannheim Roller, the Mannheim Sigh, the Mannheim Birds, and the Grand Pause. The style of composition is found in the music of two figures who framed the beginning and end of the era in music: Mozart and Beethoven.
Composers of the Mannheim school introduced a number of novel ideas into the orchestral music of their day: sudden crescendos – the Mannheim Crescendo (a crescendo developed via the whole orchestra) – and diminuendos; crescendos with piano releases; the Mannheim Rocket (a swiftly ascending passage typically having a rising arpeggiated melodic line together with a crescendo); the Mannheim Roller (an extended crescendo passage typically having a rising melodic line over an ostinato bass line); the Mannheim Sigh (a mannered treatment of the Baroque practice of putting more weight on the first of two notes in descending pairs of slurred notes); the Mannheim Birds (imitation of birds chirping in solo passages); the Mannheim Climax (a high-energy section of music where all instruments drop out except for the strings, usually preceded by a Mannheim Crescendo); and the Grand Pause where the playing stops for a moment, resulting in total silence, only to restart vigorously. The Mannheim Rocket can be a rapidly ascending broken chord from the lowest range of the bass line to the very top of the soprano line. Its influence can be found at the beginning of the 4th movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 as well as the very start of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 2, No. 1.
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| Mannheim Rocket, Wikipedia |
Mannheim must have been a very interesting place back then. One can imagine the privilege that the audience members must have delighted in, to be among the few people in the world to experience the range of musical emotion that was produced in the concert hall.
One can get a glimpse of what life in the court of Mannheim was like by the fact the historical figure most associated with that era by Germans today is not the ruler (the Elector of Palatine), or even the court composer Stamitz, but rather the Elector's favorite dwarf jester, who went by the name Perkeo.
Perkeo allegedly derived his name from the Italian perché no? (why not?), which is what he would invariably reply, when asked if he wanted another glass of wine.
Today Perkeo remains a symbol of the city of Heidelberg, the original location of the court. Mannheim itself has mostly been forgotten as an important cultural center.
Fact: the MGM Studio Orchestra, which is possibly the finest overlooked musical ensemble of recent history, doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page. It doesn't even get its own section in the MGM article! (Alas I've long since retired from that particular publishing platform, so someone else will have to do that)
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| Johnny Green, Music Director at MGM 1949-1959 (borrowed from Sinatra.com) |
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