Benedikt Schack was a
composerA composer is a person who creates music, usually by musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of...
and
tenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
of the
Classical eraThe dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as approximately 1750 to 1825. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or seventeenth to...
, a close friend of
MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as...
and the first performer (1791) of the role of Tamino in Mozart's opera
The Magic FluteThe Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder...
.
Schack was born February 7, 1758 in
MiroticeMirotice is a town in the Czech Republic. It is known as the birthplace of Mikoláš Aleš...
, in what is now the
Czech RepublicThe Czech Republic is a country in Central Europe that is sometimes considered to be Eastern European. The country borders Poland to the northeast, Germany to the west and northwest, Austria to the south and Slovakia to the east. The capital and largest city is Prague...
, but at the time was in the Bohemian provinces of the Austrian Empire. Like
Joseph Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer. He was one of the most important, prolific and prominent composers of the classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these genres...
and
Michael HaydnJohann Michael Haydn was an Austrian composer of the classical period, the younger brother of Joseph Haydn.-Life:...
, he worked as a chorister as a child, singing from 1773 in the
cathedralSaint Vitus's Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Prague, and the seat of the Archbishop of Prague. The full name of the cathedral is St. Vitus, St. Wenceslas and St. Adalbert Cathedral...
in
PraguePrague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Nicknames for Prague have included "the mother of cities" , "city of a hundred spires", or Stověžatá Praha in Czech and "the golden city" or Zlaté město in Czech.Situated on the River Vltava in central Bohemia, Prague has been the...
, then moved to Vienna (1775) to study medicine, philosophy and singing.
Benedikt Schack was a
composerA composer is a person who creates music, usually by musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of...
and
tenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
of the
Classical eraThe dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as approximately 1750 to 1825. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or seventeenth to...
, a close friend of
MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as...
and the first performer (1791) of the role of Tamino in Mozart's opera
The Magic FluteThe Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder...
.
Early life
Schack was born February 7, 1758 in
MiroticeMirotice is a town in the Czech Republic. It is known as the birthplace of Mikoláš Aleš...
, in what is now the
Czech RepublicThe Czech Republic is a country in Central Europe that is sometimes considered to be Eastern European. The country borders Poland to the northeast, Germany to the west and northwest, Austria to the south and Slovakia to the east. The capital and largest city is Prague...
, but at the time was in the Bohemian provinces of the Austrian Empire. Like
Joseph Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer. He was one of the most important, prolific and prominent composers of the classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these genres...
and
Michael HaydnJohann Michael Haydn was an Austrian composer of the classical period, the younger brother of Joseph Haydn.-Life:...
, he worked as a chorister as a child, singing from 1773 in the
cathedralSaint Vitus's Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Prague, and the seat of the Archbishop of Prague. The full name of the cathedral is St. Vitus, St. Wenceslas and St. Adalbert Cathedral...
in
PraguePrague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Nicknames for Prague have included "the mother of cities" , "city of a hundred spires", or Stověžatá Praha in Czech and "the golden city" or Zlaté město in Czech.Situated on the River Vltava in central Bohemia, Prague has been the...
, then moved to Vienna (1775) to study medicine, philosophy and singing. His voice teacher in Vienna was Karl Frieberth. Later, Schack worked for several years as
KapellmeisterKapellmeister is a German word designating a person in charge of music-making. The word is a compound, consisting of the roots Kapelle and Meister . Kapelle derives from the Latin word capella. Thus, originally, the word was used to refer to somebody in charge of music in a chapel...
to Prince Heinrich von Schönaich-Carolath in
SilesiaSilesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in present-day Poland, with parts in the Czech Republic and Germany....
.
In 1786, Schack joined the traveling theatrical troupe of
Emanuel SchikanederEmanuel Schikaneder , born Johann Joseph Schickeneder, was a German impresario, dramatist, actor, and singer. He was the librettist of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute and the builder of the Theater an der Wien.-Earlier career:Schikaneder first appeared with the theatrical troupe of F. J. Moser...
, working both as a tenor and as a composer of Singspiele. The troupe settled in Vienna in 1789, performing in the suburban Theater auf der Wieden.
Friendship and collaborations with Mozart
It was around this time that Schack became a friend and professional colleague of Mozart, who was gradually increasing his involvement with Schikaneder's troupe. Schack apparently asked his friend for advice and help in composing, and the level of assistance evidently increased. The following anecdote was published in the
Baierisches Musik-Lexikon by Felix Joseph Lipowsky (Munich, 1811):
- Mozart often came to Schack to fetch him for a stroll; while Schack dressed he would sit at the writing desk and compose here and there a piece in Schack's operas. Thus several passages in Schack's operas derive from Mozart's own hand and genius.
In 1790, Schack and his fellow singer-composers of the Schikaneder troupe collaborated to write an opera
Der Stein der Weisen ("The Philosopher's Stone"). Mozart also played a part in its composition, contributing a duet ("Nun liebes Weibchen,"
K.The Köchel-Verzeichnis is a complete, chronological catalogue of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart which was originally created by Ludwig von Köchel. It is abbreviated K or KV. For example, Mozart's Requiem in D minor was, according to Köchel's counting, the 626th piece Mozart composed....
625/592a) and perhaps other passages. This fairy-tale opera can be considered a kind of precursor to
The Magic Flute; it employed much the same cast in similar roles.
When
The Magic Flute (music by Mozart, libretto by Schikaneder) premiered in 1791, Schack took the role of Tamino. According to the New Grove, "it is to be presumed that he also played Tamino's flute solos." An 1815 source indicates that Schack sang the role a total of 116 times.
Only two months after the
Magic Flute premiere, Mozart died. According to a story that first appeared in an anonymous obituary of Schack (1827), the two men participated in a rehearsal of Mozart's
RequiemThe Requiem Mass in D minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composed in Vienna in 1791, during the last year of the composer's life. The requiem was Mozart's last composition and is one of his most popular and respected works, although the question of how much of the music Mozart managed to...
on the last day of Mozart's life.
- On the very eve of his death, [Mozart] had the score of the Requiem brought to his bed, and himself (it was two o'clock in the afternoon) sang the alto part; Schack, the family friend, sang the soprano line, as he had always previously done, Hofer, Mozart's brother-in-law, took the tenor, Gerl
Franz Xaver Gerl was a bass singer and composer of the classical era. He sang the role of Sarastro in the premiere of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute.-Life:...
, later a bass singer at the Mannheim Theater, the bass. They were at the first bars of the Lacrimosa when Mozart began to weep bitterly, laid the score on one side, and eleven hours later, at one o'clock in the morning (of 5 December 1791, as is well known), departed this life.
It is worth noting that the tale first appeared 36 years after Mozart's death;
this commentator calls it "more than a little unbelievable".
Later life
Later, Schack moved on to posts in
GrazGraz , with a population of 291,574 as of 2009 , is the second-largest city in Austria after Vienna and the capital of the federal state of Styria....
(1793) and
MunichMunich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg...
(1796). With the decline of his singing voice, he retired in 1813 and lived on a pension. He died in Munich on December 10, 1826.
Toward the end of his life, Schack was sent a letter by the former
Constanze MozartConstanze Mozart was the wife of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.-Life:...
, which attests to his friendship with Wolfgang. Constanze, who had remarried (1809) to Georg Nikolaus Nissen, was seeking information to include in her second husband's biography-in-progress of her first. She wrote, "I could think of absolutely no one who knew him better or to whom he was more devoted than you ... Of great and general interest will be what you can instance of Mozart's few compositions in your operas." However, Schack died before he was able to reply to Constanze's letter.
Schack was married to the former Elisabeth Weinhold, who was also a singer; she took the role of the Third Lady in the
Magic Flute premiere.
Assessment
Testimony for Schack's abilities as a singer comes from
Leopold MozartJohann Georg Leopold Mozart was a composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.-Childhood and student years:He was born in Augsburg, son of Johann...
, who heard him when the Schikaneder troupe visited
Salzburg' is the fourth-largest city in Austria and the capital of the federal state of Salzburg. Salzburg's "Old Town" with its world famous baroque architecture is one of the best-preserved city centres north of the Alps, and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. The city is noted for its...
in 1786. Leopold wrote to his daughter
Maria Anna"Marianne Mozart" redirects here. For her cousin of the same name, see Maria Anna Thekla Mozart.Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart , nicknamed "Nannerl", was an Austrian musician...
(Nannerl) that Schack "sings excellently, has a beautiful voice, an effortlessly smooth throat and a beautiful method."
Schack's collaborative opera
Der Stein der Weisen has recently been revived, prompted by the discovery of an early manuscript copy, by
Boston BaroqueBoston Baroque, the oldest continuing period instrument orchestra in North America, was founded in 1973 by the American harpsichordist and conductor, Martin Pearlman, to present concerts of the Baroque and Classical repertoire on period instruments, drawing on the insights of the historical...
under
Martin PearlmanMartin Pearlman is an American conductor, harpsichordist, composer, and early-music specialist. In the1973-74 season, he founded Boston Baroque , the first permanent period-instrument orchestra in North America...
; the work has received favorable reviews.