Some years ago, my colleague Georg wrote an article on the composer Franz Ignaz Danzi (1763-1826) . It is full of fascinating biographical details, including Danzi’s interactions with Wolfgang Amadeus and Leopold Mozart and his advocacy of Carl Maria von Weber.

Danzi adored the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and severely disliked the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. You can already see that his living and working during a time that was dominated by the musical giants of Mozart and Beethoven was going to impact his legacy.

When Danzi died in 1826, the music critic Friedrich Rochlitz wrote, “in the great revolution that has occurred in instrumental music during the last decade and that Danzi of course witnessed, recognising its great results and holding them high, he could not quite appropriate them and even less proliferate them — his works have fallen asleep or are going to their rest with so many other works likewise worthy of respect and very popular in their time.”

Wow, that’s a pretty biting commentary if you ask me! At the end of his blog, Georg wrote, “Danzi’s music is charming, entertaining and a worthy and valuable product of its culture and its time; maybe we should bring it back to life? Well, we decided to take up Georg’s challenge and feature the 8 most beautiful compositions by Franz Danzi. I promise you will not be disappointed.

Quintet for Piano, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn and Bassoon

Franz Danzi: Quintet in D minor, Op. 41

Let’s get started with an all-time favorite, the three quintets for the combination of piano with winds. His Op. 41 in D minor was published in 1810 and is scored for oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano. Scored in three movements, the opening movement is preceded by a slow introduction.

Danzi’s music was habitually described as “light classical,” with a reviewer writing, “the music has charm and polish, enhanced by the persuasive craftsmanship of its scoring.” According to a Gramophone review, his “pieces could turn Mozart-lovers into lovers of Mozart-loving Danzi.”

In Danzi’s Opp. 53 and 54, the piano takes a much more prominent, almost concerto role. However, Op. 41 offers a real dialogue between the piano and the wind instruments, and the work seems to have taken a page from both Mozart’s KV 452 and Beethoven’s Op. 16. The music, according to a reviewer, is “luminous, alternately flowing and spirited, dreamy and boisterous.”

Wind Quintet

Franz Danzi: Wind Quintet in G minor, Op. 56, No. 2 (Ensemble Wien-Berlin)

Danzi was most famous for his wind quintets. He composed nine such works between 1820 and 1824, and published them in groups of three. The quintets display an astonishing unity of form. All of them follow the then popular four-movement pattern. Sonata-form first movements are followed by song-form seconds, and a minuet, that occasionally approaches a scherzo character. These works all concluded with rondo finales.

The Danzi wind quintets are genial and gentle works. Modest in reach, they are beautifully crafted in every detail, and their rich textures seem to have exerted an influence on Romantic orchestral wind writing. The collection of woodwind quintets, published as Op. 56 in 1821, were specifically designed to raise the level of musicianship at the court of Karlsruhe. In his G-minor quintet, Danzi skilfully embeds a combination of distinctive instrumental sonorities within a light and entertaining musical texture.

A woefully weeping flute tenderly provides the lyrical conclusion for the energetic and rhythmically forceful opening chords of the “Allegretto.” A sombre melody, relying on large melodic skips, gradually emerges. It quickly expands to include running musical passages equally distributed among all instruments. The lyrical “Andante” immediately showcases the horn, as an extended opening pedal gives rise to a musical gesture of grace and passion. This gesture resurfaces throughout the movement, with the flute providing an introspective musical conclusion. Vigorous rhythmic accents in the uneven accompaniment characterise the “Menuet,” while a smoothly flowing melody in the flute provides the trio contrast. The concluding and restless “Allegro”, meanwhile, features homogeneous ensemble textures and miniature solo passages.

String Quartet

Franz Danzi: String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 7, No. 1 (Hohenloher String Quartet)

The historian and theorist Adolf Bernhard Marx writes, “Beethoven towers above all the others; it is impossible to complete the study of the quartet without closely examining his works in every way from the first to the last in the deepest and most earnest way; one could more easily dispense with all other quartet writers than with him.”

Franz Danzi did work in the string quartet genre, and his first six quartets were written in 1800 and 1801. These brief two-movement compositions are based on themes he took from operas of contemporaries such as Franz Xaver Süßmayer, Nicolas Dalayrac and Mozart. However, in his three string quartets Op. 7, Danzi expanded his scope and modelled them after Joseph Haydn. They are now scored in four movements and include a minuet and trio.

As Danzi wrote to the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig on 23rd May 1804. “I beg to know if you are familiar with my three larger violin quartets published by Falter; they are, to my feeling, not of my lesser works and deserve to be better known than they really are.” Danzi would compose four more quartets, the Op. 16 and three string quartets Op. 29.

Quartet for Bassoon and Strings

Franz Danzi: Quartet in C Major, Op. 40, No. 1 (Robert Thompson, bassoon; Coull Quartet)

Franz Danzi grew up in the city of Mannheim, an area that played a pivotal role in the establishment of the modern Symphony Orchestra. The city had an orchestra of large size and exceptional quality, and it would pioneer orchestral techniques, including unified bowing in the string section and the varied and independent treatment of wind instruments. Franz Ignaz Danzi joined the cello section of the orchestra at the age of 15, and his interactions with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart spawned a number of compositions.

Danzi was fond of writing chamber music for a variety of instrumental combinations, and the Quartet for Bassoon and Strings, Op. 40, No. 1, although it dates from 1810, reflects the style of his early musical experiences in Mannheim. The opening “Allegretto” presents an assortment of charming melodies, which effectively showcase the lush and idiomatic registers of the bassoon. Danzi skilfully integrates the bassoon within an independent string texture, occasionally offering harmonic surprises.

The highly lyrical “Andante” offers a homogeneous ensemble texture, while the “Minuetto-Allegretto” displays a highly enjoyable musical discourse. The concluding “Polonaise” creates a vibrant and expressive blend of ensemble colours, occasionally interrupted by virtuoso flourishes. The Quartet Op. 40, No. 1 is a well-crafted and charming composition, easily enjoyed by professionals and amateurs alike.

Sinfonia Concertante

Franz Danzi: Sinfonia Concertante for clarinet and bassoon, Op. 47 (Eduard Brunner, clarinet; Klaus Thunemann, bassoon; Munich Chamber Orchestra; Hans Stadlmair, cond.)

Franz Danzi suffered occasional bouts of severe depression that curtailed his professional and compositional activities. However, he was actually a productive composer. As a scholar writes, “His main musical interests lay undoubtedly in German-language opera, but he also composed in all the genres that were common at the time.” We find opera, incidental music and church music, and countless instrumental works.

Danzi had a special gift for writing melodies, which especially endeared him to the amateur musician but not to critics. As Danzi writes, “It is true that it has already been suggested to me that I have fallen behind the Zeitgeist. One often reads in the AMZ of my melodious compositions, which would be very flattering for me – since I, in spite of the Zeitgeist, take melody to be the essence of music – although what it usually means by referring to melody is that I am incapable of producing anything else.”

And in a letter of 1822, Danzi bemoaned the lack of critical discernment in Northern Germany. “There nothing from the south was noticed unless it had appeared in print in Leipzig or it was by someone who had already made a name for himself and thus could silence criticism.” And Danzi added in brackets, “Rightly or wrongly – for even the most famous man can be wrong, as we have often seen recently in the case of the genius Beethoven.”

Piano Concerto

Franz Danzi: Piano Concerto in E-flat Major, Op. 4 (Nareh Argamanyan, piano; Munich Chamber Orchestra; Howard Griffiths, cond.)

Danzi’s instrumental works enjoyed great popularity and a long performance tradition. While his symphonies never really caught on, his concertantes and his concertos are still played on occasion. In his compositions for solo instruments and orchestra, Danzi focused on a few instruments, composing 4 concertos for the flute, 5 for the cello, 2 for the horn, and a single concerto for the piano.

His Piano Concerto in E-flat major op. 4 was probably composed in 1799 for the wedding of Danzi’s niece, the pianist Sophie Dulcken (née Lebrun, 1781–1863), to whom the work is also dedicated. Sophie premiered the work in Munich in 1800, and it was published the following year.

Without a doubt, the Danzi piano concerto follows closely in the footsteps of Mozart, both in design and realisation. We can immediately hear that influence by how Danzi constructs his themes and formal structures. The extensive opening movement features a double exposition and the development foregoes thematic advancement in favour of providing harmonic colour. The Recap brings back the material of the exposition in full and unchanged. The slow movement, as expected, is a tripartite song, and the finale is a pleasing hybrid between sonata and rondo form.

Flute Concerto

Franz Danzi: Flute Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 42 ( András Adorján, flute; Munich Chamber Orchestra; Hans Stadlmair, cond.)

Danzi composed four flute concertos, with the first two dating from 1805 and the latter ones from 1812. To some scholars, the Danzi flute concerto “operates similar to the overture of an opera and shows traits of the Italian and the German styles.” While the piano concerto leaned heavily on Mozart, the D-minor Flute concerto Op. 42 also includes romantic sentiments reminiscent of Carl Maria von Weber.

Sounding this dialogue between Italian classicism and German romanticism provides a pleasant blending of styles. The solo instrument is always at the centre of attention, and Danzi provides some opportunity for pure virtuosity. Scholars have described two characteristic traits in these flute concertos; “frequent occurrence of punctuated rhythm in the orchestra, and a very particular manner of introducing the repetition of a theme by means of a long pause.”

The opening “Allegro” sounds like the primary theme over a dancing rhythm before it takes on a progressively dramatic character in the orchestra. This opening could come straight from an opera by Carl Maria von Weber. The secondary theme, however, is written in the Italian style and played by the flute. There is plenty of melody in the slow “Andante,” and the solo instrument is in continuous dialogue with the wind instruments. A cheerful set of themes and five variations reaches a conclusion in the manner of an Italian opera buffa.

Cello Concerto

The E-minor Cello Concert was written in 1809 for the cellist Philipp Moralt, and it freely engages with classical models. The orchestra prepares for the entrance of the soloist by presenting both the primary and secondary themes, including unexpected harmonic shifts and unusual thematic constellations. Here, Danzi presents a highly individual approach to sonata form. In fact, without ever abandoning its Classical roots, some commentators have heard “the essence of a symphonic poem.” Danzi also includes a rather unusual cadenza in that the orchestra quickly joins the soloist in its announcement of the main theme.

The ”Larghetto” is a reflective instrumental aria with cantabile melodies accompanied by strings along. It has been suggested that “Danzi’s inventiveness in quieter moments compares with that of his more famous contemporaries.” Cast in the minor mode, the “Finale” once more provides a hybrid between sonata and rondo form, combining thematic contrasts with complex harmonies and unusual instrumental ideals.

Franz Danzi has been described as a “charming man and a scrupulous craftsman, and his music reflects both qualities.” He was caught between a rock and a hard place, and he could never escape the label of being a “light classical composer.” Stern critics suggest that “there is little that will make serious intellectual demands on the listener,” but clearly, that was not Danzi’s aim. More to the point, he composed music for relaxation and repose, or as Dominy Clements wrote, “it is the musical equivalent of stroking a gorgeously soft and friendly cat.”

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Franz Danzi: Cello Concerto in E minor (Thomas Blees, cello; Berlin Symphony Orchestra; Carl-August Bünte, cond.)