Negative Experts’ opinions

[Estelle]

Following this interesting discussion of the attribution of the Jena Symphony, just out of curiosity I turned to Friedrich Witt's page in Wikipedia. The final sentence of the biography reads, "His best known work, a symphony in C major known as the Jena, is largely plagiarised from the Symphony No. 97 by Joseph Haydn." (No source for this statement is provided.)

[rauschwerk]

Grove Online (http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/ accessed using your library barcode number) does give sources, including articles by Robert Simpson and H C Robbins Landon.

[salymap]

Apologies to Mario for starting a way off topic subject, the Jena symphony. I really had forgotten all about it. It sounds as though it needs Poirot to track down its origins.

[Suffolkcoastal]

I've got an MDG disc of two other symphonies by Witt coupled with the Flute Concerto in G, they are pleasantly attractive though strongly Haydnesque, I believe the disc is stil available.

[Sydney Grew]

"It was Joachim's playing at the Dusseldorf festival of 1853 which kindled the dying embers into one further little wisp of smoke, if not flame, in the Violin Concerto later the same year. But for the mistaken zeal of Joachim's great-niece, Jelly d'Aranyi, who performed and published the work in 1937, it would have remained undisturbed in the Prussian State Library, in accordance with the wishes of the composer's wife. Its construction is stilted and repetitive, and its content is savourless - save for that wonderful opening theme of the slow movement, which, haunting the composer in the first onset of madness, led him to believe that it was some new inspiration sent him by the angels."

- Joan Chissell in The Concerto (1952)

[gradus]

Only good for piano, lieder and some chamber music and a hopeless orchestrator - the view that was strongly held by many until quite recently and perhaps still has adherents.

[Ferretfancy]

Acting on information received, as they say, I've just listened to the Witt Symphony in C on the BBCMM disc with the LMP and Mathias Bamert. I kept the disc for the Mozart No.34 with which it's coupled. It's innocuous stuff, obviously much influenced by Haydn. Misha Donat's notes mention a direct lift from No. 93 in the first movement,and it's very obvious. There are less obvious quotes from No. 97 elsewhere in the piece. I felt that it might have made more impact in a less cavernous acoustic than St Jude's in Hampstead.
I'm not a musician, but I'm baffled by the original assignment as Beethoven.

[Bryn]

My understanding is that it was precisely the similarity to Haydn's 97th which lead Stein to attribute the work to Beethoven who was believed to have been studying the Haydn work and indeed sketching a symphony (this was before he wrote what we know as his 1st). However, no Beethoven sketches which bear similarities to what we now know was by Witt have ever been discovered.

[Auferstehen2]

Apologies to Mario for starting a way off topic subject, the Jena symphony. I really had forgotten all about it. It sounds as though it needs Poirot to track down its origins.

Message 33 Honestly salymap, I really don't mind at all, as I'm utterly fascinated by the wealth of information some contributors have on these boards, and I'm just rather greedy at lapping it all up!

Thanks,

Mario