Mannheim school refers to both the orchestral techniques pioneered by the court orchestra of Mannheim in the latter half of the 18th century and the group of composers of the early classical period, who composed for the orchestra of Mannheim. The father ofthe school is considered to be the Bohemian composer Johann Stamitz. Besides him, two generations of composers wrote compositions for the orchestra, whose reputation was due to its excellent discipline and the individual skill of its players; the English traveler Charles Burney called it "an army of generals". Their performance style included new dynamic elements, crescendos and diminuendos. Composers of the Mannheim school played an important role in the development of the classical period's genres and of the classical symphony form.
History
The origins of the Mannheim school go back to the court of the ElectorCharles III Philip, who moved from Heidelberg to Mannheim in 1720, already employing an orchestra larger than those of any of the surrounding courts. The orchestra grew even further in the following decades and came to include some of the best virtuosi of the time. Under the guidance of KapellmeisterCarlo Grua, the court hired such talents as Johann Stamitz, who is generally considered to be the founder of the Mannheim school, in 1741/42, and he became its director in 1750. The most notable of the revolutionary techniques of the Mannheim orchestra were its more independent treatment of the wind instruments, and its famous whole-orchestra crescendo. Contemporary musicians mentioned the high level of the orchestra, among them, Leopold Mozart in 1763, and W. A. Mozart in his letters in 1777/78, and the English music historian Charles Burney. The role of the Mannheim school's composers in the evolution of the classical symphony is thus significant, although most scholars now agree that these changes occurred nearly simultaneously at various other centers, e.g. in Berlin and Vienna. Their influence on the evolution of the classical music period is due to the reputation of the ensemble at one hand, and on the other hand to the fact, that the compositions of the Mannheim school's composers were published in Paris and London as well, some of their works even multiple times of different publishers.
Composers of the Mannheim school introduced a number of novel ideas into the orchestral music of their day: sudden crescendos – the Mannheim Crescendo – and diminuendos; crescendos with piano releases; the Mannheim Rocket ; the Mannheim Roller ; the Mannheim Sigh ; the Mannheim Birds ; the Mannheim Climax ; 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 fourth 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. Members of the Mannheim school abandoned quickly the praxis of the basso continuo in their compositions, which was almost universal in the Baroque era, and they used the minimum of contrapuntal elaboration. One of their chief innovations is the four-movement symphony form, introducing the menuet as its third movement, which was originally one of the Baroque suite's movements. The Mannheim school played an important role in the development of the sonata form, which is generally the form of the classical symphony's first movement. In their orchestration practice, the clarinet appears both as part of the woodwind section and as a solo instrument.
Many of the Mannheim symphonists have now been recorded on Chandos and the Naxos labels in various numbers of volumes per composer. J. Stamitz 2 volumes, Richter 2 Volumes, Carl Stamitz, Cannabich 2 Volumes, etc.
Conductor Simon Murphy has made several recordings of the very first Mannheim School symphonies for PentaTone Classics, including early four part, string symphonies by J. Stamitz and F. X. Richter.
