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Baron Gottfried van Swieten (1733- March 29, 1803) was a minor aristocrat of the Habsburg Monarchy during the eighteenth century. He is remembered today for his friendship and collaboration with several great composers of the Classical era, including Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Contents 1 Career 2 His influence on Classical composers 2.1 Mozart 2.2 Haydn 2.3 Beethoven 2.4 Other associations 3 Notes 4 References 5 See also 6 External links

Van Swieten was Dutch and spent much of his childhood in the Netherlands. His father, Gerard van Swieten, was a physician who achieved a high reputation for raising standards of scientific research and instruction in the field of medicine. In 1745, the elder van Swieten agreed to become personal physician to the Austrian Empress Maria Theresia, and moved with his family to Vienna. The young van Swieten was educated there for national service in an elite Jesuit school, and worked (following a brief stint in the civil service) in two careers. As a diplomat for Austria, van Swieten was posted to Brussels (1755–1757), Paris (1760–1763), Warsaw (1763–1764), and ultimately (as ambassador) to Berlin (1770–77). He then returned to Vienna and served, for the remainder of his life, as the Prefect of the Imperial Library. He was also President of the Court Commission on Education and Censorship.^[1]

Van Swieten had a very strong amateur interest in music. Evidence for this is preserved in a 1756 report of his supervisor in Brussels, Count Cobenzl, that "music takes up the best part of his time."^[2] While in Paris he staged a comic opera of his own composition.^[3]. He also composed other operas as well as symphonies. These works are not considered of high quality and are seldom if ever performed today.

Van Swieten familiarized Mozart with the works of J. S. Bach and Handel, by sharing (around 1782-1783) the manuscripts he had collected during his long stay in Berlin. This process took place at regular Sunday musical gatherings at van Swieten's rooms in the Imperial Library. The experience of encountering the greatest composers of the Baroque era had a profound effect on Mozart and greatly influenced his later compositions.

In the late 1780's, van Swieten organized the Gesellschaft der Associierten ("Society of Noblemen")^[4], an organization of music-loving nobles. With the financial backing of this group, van Swieten was able to pursue further the interest in Baroque music that he shared with Mozart. The Gesellschaft commissioned Mozart to prepare four works by George Frideric Handel for performance according to contemporary taste. These included:

• Acis and Galatea, performed in (approximately) November 1788 in Jahn's Hall.^[5]
• The oratorio Messiah, for which Mozart wrote new parts for flutes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trombones, as well as more notes for the timpani. This was performed under the Gesellschaft's auspices in 1789.

The Gesellschaft's concerts were an important source of income for Mozart during the period 1788-1789, when he was experiencing severe financial worries.^[6]

When Mozart died (in the middle of the night of December 5, 1791), van Swieten showed up at his home and made the funeral arrangements.^[7] He also helped care for Mozart's two young children during the difficult period after Mozart's death when Constanze was trying to insure the financial stability of her family.^{[citation needed]}

Van Swieten was Haydn's close collaborator on the two oratorios The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801). He translated the source material (from John Milton and James Thomson, respectively) from English into German, and also provided (often rather awkward) retranslations into English to fit the rhythm of Haydn's music. (Both works were first published in bilingual editions.)

As Haydn's patron, Van Swieten also made many specific suggestions to Haydn about how various passages in the libretto should be musically set. Haydn followed some of these suggestions. One such example is the moving episode in The Creation in which God tells the newly-created beasts to be fruitful and multiply. Van Swieten's paraphrase of Genesis reads:

Seid fruchtbar alle,

Mehret euch!

Bewohner der Luft, vermehret euch, und singt auf jedem Aste!

Mehret euch, ihr Flutenbewohner

Und füllet jede Tiefe!

Seid fruchtbar, wachset, und mehret euch!

Erfreuet euch in eurem Gott!

Be fruitful all

And multiply.

Dwellers of the air, multiply and sing on every branch.

Multiply, ye dwellers of the tides,

And fill every deep.

Be fruitful, grow, multiply,

And rejoice in your God!

Haydn's musical setting stems from a suggestion of van Swieten's that the words should be sung by the bass soloist over an unadorned bass line. As usual, Haydn only partly followed van Swieten's suggestion, and after pondering, he added to his bass line a rich layer of four-part harmony for divided cellos and violas, crucial to the final result.^[8]

The premieres of The Creation and The Seasons took place under the auspices of the Gesellschaft der Associierten, who also provided financial guarantees needed for Haydn to undertake long-term projects.

Van Swieten was one of the Viennese aristocrats whose financial support made possible the early career progress of Beethoven. It is possible that van Swieten's sponsorship of Beethoven arose not just because of the young man's talent, but also because during his early career he often performed preludes and fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, a work that Beethoven knew very well, in the salons of Vienna.

The composer's First Symphony is dedicated to van Swieten.

Earlier in his career, while in Berlin, van Swieten had also supported the career of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, commissioning six symphonies from him. One of C. P. E. Bach's most famous works, the third set of Sonaten für Kenner und Liebhaber, is dedicated to van Swieten.

Johann Nikolaus Forkel, the first biographer of Bach, dedicated his book to van Swieten.

1. ^ Olleson (1963, 64)
2. ^ Quoted in Olleson (1963, 64)
3. ^ Olleson (1963, 64)
4. ^ Translation from Deutsch 1965, 330
5. ^ Deutsch 1965, 330
6. ^ Solomon 1995
7. ^ Solomon 1995, ch. 30
8. ^ Of the passage, Rosemary Hughes writes (1970, 135), "Only a profoundly experienced, as well as profoundly inspired, musician could have endowed the reitative 'Be fruitful all' with the shrouded depth and richness suggested by its accompaniment of divided lower strings alone."

• Deutsch, Otto Erich (1965) Mozart: A Documentary Biography. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Hughes, Rosemary (1970) Haydn. London: Dent.
• Olleson, Edward (1963) "Gottfried van Swieten: Patron of Haydn and Mozart," Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 89th Sess. (1962 - 1963), pp. 63-74. Available online from JSTOR.
• Solomon, Maynard (1995) Mozart: A Life. Harper Collins.

• Fugue

• Portrait of Gottfried van Swieten
• Program notes on Mozart's version of Handel's Messiah, from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra
• Program notes on the Proms 2006 performance of Mozart's version of Handel's Alexander’s Feast, from the The English Concert written by the conductor Andrew Manze