Wanhal, Johann Baptist (1739-1813)

The present symphony, one of Wanhal’s finest, is cast in the usual key of f minor, a tonality loaded with expressive significance to eighteenth-century composers. The origins of the work are unknown although its compositional finish and technical sophistication suggest that it was composed ca. 1773–1774 and is thus one of the composer’s later works. Its appearance in Supplement XI 1776–1777 of the Breitkopf Catalogue and the Quartbuch (ca. 1775) suggests that the work may have been reasonably well disseminated but it was not published in the composer’s lifetime and only two sets of manuscript parts have been identified. Its scoring with four horns is also unusual and Wanhal ensures that he can derive the maximum value from his extended forces by employing multiple crooks: in addition to a pair of horns in F, Wanhal also crooks one horn in AÏ and one in C thus enabling him to use the horns in the tonic, dominant and relative major. The first movement of the symphony is also unusual in that the violoncello and contrabass have independent parts, instead of being scored in octaves as was customary at this time.