In these German masters, conscious of their superiority, there gradually developed a desire, avowed or unconfessed, to conquer Italy with her own weapons. We are struck by the Germanic pride which we perceive increasing in Gluck and Mozart. And these brilliant Italianisers are the first to try their powers in the German Lied.[1]
Even in the theatre we see the German language reconquering its place.[2] Burney, who, after calling attention to the musical qualities of the language, was at first astonished that more use was not made of it in the theatre, very soon realised that musical compositions in the German language were beginning to spread through Saxony and in the north of the Empire. Since the middle of the century the poet Christian Felix Weisse and the musicians Standfuss and Johann Adam Hiller were composing, at Leipzig, in imitation of the English operetta and the comic operas of Favart, German operettas (Singspiele), the first example of which (1752) (Der Teufel ist los, oder die verwandelten Weiber). "The Devil is loose, or the Gossips Transformed,"[3] was soon followed by a quality of similar works.
- ↑ Gluck, as early as 1770, set the odes of Klopstock to music.
- ↑ At the Hamburg opera-house operas had been performed in the German tongue at the end of the seventeenth century. But from the opening years of the eighteenth century Keiser and Händel had set the example of mixing Italian words with German in the same opera; and shortly afterwards Italian had invaded everything.
- ↑ Music by Standfuss and Hiller. The same piece had been produced, unsuccessfully, in Berlin, in 1743, as adapted from an English operetta by Coffey, with the original English melodies.—Der Teufel ist los had a second part, which, played in 1759, under the title of Der lustige Schuster (The Merry Cobbler) was very popular. These Singspiele were the rage in Germany for twenty years; one might say that they were the opera of the lower middle classes of Germany. It is worth noting that Hiller's chief pupil was Christian Gottlob Neefe, Beethoven's master.
