“I received the music by young Beethoven you sent me with your letter. The first experience Beethoven had with wind music, still very fashionable at the end of 1700, can be dated within this context from a letter of December 1793 by Elector Maximilian Franz to Haydn in response to a request to further prolong and finance Beethoven’s stay in Vienna: This fashion spread quickly throughout the Empire together with the wind octet popularity famous Harmonie were those of Prince Esterhazy and of Prince Elector Maximilian Franz in Bonn, brother of Emperor Joseph II and for whom the young Beethoven worked. Here Leporello recognizes, among the music played on stage by a wind octet, arias from operas such as Una Cosa Rara by VicenteMartìn y Soler and, I Litiganti by Giuseppe Sarti (very successful operas in Vienna at the time) and the aria Non più andrai from Le Nozze di Figaro by Mozart himself. In 1782 Vienna, Emperor Joseph II founded the Imperial Harmoniemusik (kaiserlich-königliche Harmonie) composed of a wind octet with the best Viennese musicians to enjoy, in the comfort of his palace those arias and opera Ouvertures performed in Viennese theaters.Ī typical example of the use of wind octet during the second half of the eighteenth century can be found in the final scene of “Don Giovanni” by Mozart. The classical repertoire associated nowadays with the wind octet is based on original compositions very rarely meant to be performed in concert halls and mostly used as pure entertainment music in palaces or outdoors (Divertimenti, Serenate, Notturni, Harmoniemusik).Īuthors such as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Hummel and others less known including Rosetti, Went, Krommer and Druschetzky wrote original compositions for wind octet although the wider repertoire is represented by transcriptions from operas.