JOSEPH WOELFL’S MUSIC FOR HARP AND PIANO
by Margit Haider-Dechant and Hermann Dechant
Johann Baptist Woelfl was born in Salzburg on 24 December 1773. His father, Johann Paul Wölfl (1737–96), a member of the gentry, worked as a lawyer in the prince-bishop’s financial administration. Already in early childhood, Woelfl benefited from piano and violin lessons given by Leopold Mozart (1719–87), and he played his first public concert as a violin soloist at the age of seven.
In 1783, he came to the Kapellhaus at Salzburg cathedral, where his teachers included Leopold Mozart, Michael Haydn (1737–1806), the castrato Francesco Ceccarelli (1752–1814) and other notable musicians. At the same time, he continued taking piano lessons with Maria Anna Mozart (1751–1829)2 and was treated as a member of the family.3 One can assume that he received tuition from private tutors until he entered an ‘Akademisches Gymnasium’, which was closely linked to the Benediktineruniversität Salzburg, where he was a student from 1786 to 1788.4 The
following two years are less clearly accounted for. It seems likely that in this period he continued his musical education by himself, since in 1790 he performed before Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Vienna and was received as a refined pianist. The extant compositions from his time in Salzburg show that he must have been an active student also in this discipline.
1 Benedikt Pillwein, Biographische Schilderungen oder Lexikon Salzburgischer Tonkünstler, Mayr, Salzburg, 1821, p. 262.
2 Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, ed., collected and annotated by Wilhelm A. Bauer and Otto Erich Deutsch, Vol. III (1780–
1786), Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg/Kassel 2005, pp. 284–91, No. 765: ‘Tagebuch Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozarts’
(4 September–31 October 1783) and pp. 433–37, here p. 436, No. 892: ‘Leopold Mozart an seine Tochter, St. Gilgen’ (Salzburg,
27 October 1785).
3 Cf. ibid., No. 765: ‘Tagebuch Maria Anna Mozarts’.
4 Cf. Margit Haider-Dechant, ‘Joseph Wölfls Salzburger Jahre’, Salzburgs Musikgeschichte im Zeichen des Provinzialismus?
Die ersten Jahrzehnte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Veröffentlichungen der Forschungsplattform Salzburger Musikgeschichte, Vol. 2,
ed. Dominik Šedivý, Hollitzer Verlag, Vienna, 2014, pp. 182–92, here pp. 188–89.
5 Cf. Benedikt Pillwein, Biographische Schilderungen, p. 263, note 1.