Christian Cannabich

(1731 - 1798)

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Cannabich was born in 1731 in Mannheim, where his father was a flautist in the court orchestra. The boy’s musical talent was recognised early on by the Elector, who sent him to study with Jommelli in Rome, where he remained from 1750 to 1753. By the time he was promoted to director of instrumental music at Mannheim in 1774, Cannabich, like many of his colleagues, had made several visits to Paris, where he had built up a reputation as performer and composer. When Carl Theodor became the Elector of Bavaria in 1778, most of his musicians, including Cannabich, moved with the court to Munich. There the orchestra continued to attract admiration. The composer and poet C.F.D. Schubart wrote that, under Cannabich, ‘its forte is a thunderclap, its crescendo a cataract, its diminuendo a crystal stream bubbling away into the distance, its piano a breath of spring’.

Cannabich is mentioned several times in the letters of Mozart and his father. Wolfgang, accompanied by his mother, arrived in Mannheim in October 1777. He hoped to find a job there, ignoring Leopold’s warning that the place was expensive and the ruler an ungenerous employer. Wolfgang was unsuccessful and in March 1778 he and his mother moved on to Paris. He had got on very well with Cannabich and his wife, but found them insufficiently grateful for the time he had devoted to giving piano lessons to their daughter Rosa. Leopold was not surprised that Cannabich had failed to secure an appointment for his son and described him as ‘a wretched scribbler of symphonies’. However, Wolfgang thought that he had greatly improved as a composer and, in the letter to Leopold that broke the news of his mother’s death, he wrote that Cannabich was the best conductor he had ever seen. In November 1778 Mozart was back in Mannheim, lodging with Cannabich’s wife and still hoping for employment there, despite the court’s having moved to Munich. Two years later he was in Munich itself, having been commissioned to write an opera, Idomeneo, for the Carnival season. In his first letter to his father, Mozart wrote of an overture by Cannabich, ‘if you had heard it, you would have been as much pleased and excited as I was; and if you had not previously known it, you would never have believed that it was by Cannabich’. He worked closely with Cannabich, who was to conduct Idomeneo, and a few weeks later he begged his father to write to him, adding ‘What does it matter… if he does not reply? He does not mean to be what he appears to be. He is the same with everyone – you must just get to know him.

Cannabich may not have been a composer of the first rank, but these five symphonies afford a charming glimpse of the galant style that was to lead to the masterpieces of Haydn and Mozart.

taken from notes by Richard Lawrence