"The king" says Burney, "stood always behind the Kapellmeister, with his eyes on the score, which he followed, so that one might truthfully say that he played the part of director-general. … In the opera-house, as in the camp, he was a strict observer of discipline. Attentively observing the orchestra and the stage, he noted the least sign of negligence in the music or the movements of the performers and reprimanded the culprit. And if any member of the Italian company dared to infringe this discipline, by adding to or subtracting from his part, or by altering the least passage, he was subsequently ordered by the king to apply himself strictly to the execution of the notes written by the composer, under penalty of corporal punishment."
This detail gives us the measure of the musical freedom enjoyed in Berlin. An Italian pseudo-classicism reigned in a tyrannical fashion permitting neither change nor progress. Burney is scandalised by this tyranny.
"Thus," he says, "music is stationary in this country, and will be so long as his Majesty allows the artists no more liberty in this art than he grants in matters of civil government, striving to be at the same time the sovereign of the lives, fortunes and interests of his subjects, and the supervisor of the least of their pleasures."
We may add that Berlin was above all a city of musical professors and theorists, who assuredly did not permit themselves to discuss the king's taste, for they were all more or less officials, like the chiefest among them, Marpurg, who was director of the royal lottery and councillor to the Ministry of War. They avenged themselves upon this constraint by bitter disputes, and their squabbles did nothing to add to the liberty or the amenity of musical life in Berlin.
