“Johann Traeg”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Johann Traeg (20 January 1747 – 5 September 1805)^[2] was a German music copyist and publisher who flourished in Vienna in the late 18th century. He had business dealings with Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and his catalogs and advertisements are still employed today as a source for historical musicology.

Life and career

He was born in Gochsheim in Bavaria, and had moved to Vienna by 1779.^[3] He began his work simply by offering hand copies of musical works, working out of his home. This was possible even in the late 18th century, for as Jones notes, Austria was at the time not very technologically advanced in this respect:

As Jones as elsewhere pointed out, what set Traeg apart from most professional copyists was his assiduous compilation of what became a vast library of music from which he could offer copies for sale. Jones suggests that the several changes of residence recorded for Traeg in his advertisements may have been needed to house the expanding collection, and indeed Traeg eventually moved his family out to the suburbs and placed the collection in his own shop, whose opening was advertised 16 May 1789,^[3] and which became a destination for Viennese music-lovers for the rest of his life.^[5]

As of 9 April 1794,^[3] Traeg entered the publication business per se, with issue of printed copies of quartets by Joseph Eybler; this business eventually flourished. Traeg retained his offerings of hand-copied music, however. Starting no later than 1789, he served as the Vienna agent of the important Leipzig publisher Breitkopf & Härtel.^[6]

Austria had no copyright law until the 19th century^[7] and Traeg was perfectly free to acquire copies from any source of whatever music he liked and offer hand copies of them for sale without compensation to the composer. Jones estimates, for instance, that Traeg at his peak had 500 works by Joseph Haydn on offer, none of which provided Haydn with any income.^[8] Nevertheless, Haydn occasionally dealt with Traeg on a business basis, though there is evidence he was not pleased with the situation; see below.

His catalogue

In 1799, Traeg's firm created a catalog listing all the items that were available for purchase at the time, indicating which were obtainable in print and which in custom hand-copy. The catalog runs to 233 pages and by Edge's "conservative" estimate contains at least 10,000 musical works by hundreds of composers.^[9] A supplement to the catalog was issued in 1804. The catalogs have been re-published in modern times as a resource for historical musicology, along with the set of advertisements that Traeg took out in the newspaper Wiener Zeitung.^[10]

Later years

Starting in about 1800, the music copying part of the business was deemphasized in favor of printed offerings.^[12] In his later years Traeg carried out his business in collaboration with his son, also named Johann Traeg (15 September 1781 – after 1831); as of October 1803 the firm was named "Johann Traeg und Sohn". ^[13]

Traeg died on 5 September 1805; his fatal disease was described as “Brustwassersucht” (pulmonary dropsy).^[14] The family business continued to prosper under the son for some time but eventually withered against strong competition and folded in 1820.^[3]

His dealings with celebrated composers

Haydn

Joseph Haydn mostly entrusted publication of his works to others, but in old age he did have Traeg publish his late piano trio, H. XVI:31 (1803). Concerning the issue of Traeg and intellectual property, Jones narrates the following small act of revenge on Haydn's part, from the same year:

Mozart

Traeg periodically offered works by Mozart for sale in his advertisements in the Wiener Zeitung.^[16] He was the first (27 Sept. 1783) to offer copies of the Piano Concertos K. 413, K. 414, and K. 415 after the Paris publisher Jean Georges Sieber had turned them down. Halliwell (1998) raises the possibility that the Traeg issue of the concertos may have been not a backup business arrangement with Mozart but rather simply pirated.^[17] But Edge makes the case that at least some of Traeg's Mozart offerings were in fact created from material acquired from Mozart himself, and thus presumably involved remuneration.

Edge spells out what may have been happening, and partially endorses Eisen's hypothesis: "One can easily imagine that Constanze, suddenly faced with the prospect of supporting herself and two children while attempting to sort out her deceased husband’s chaotic finances, might quickly have decided to sell some of what seemed to her the less obviously important items from her husband’s collection in order to raise ready cash. Although there is currently no direct evidence to support this conjecture, it is at least plausible."^[21]

Later on, Constanze's dealings with Traeg were less substantial; once her financial situation had become more secure she dealt more often with out-of-town publishers such as Breitkopf & Härtel and Johann André. However, Traeg did issue the first edition (1798) of the Mozart's String Quintet K. 174 (1773), as well a four-hand piano edition of the Fantasia for Mechanical Organ K. 608.^[22]

Beethoven

Traeg published a fair number of Beethoven's works; particularly early in his career. For the most part, these were works that Beethoven did not assign the dignity of an opus number. The material includes variation sets on themes by other composers, a popular genre. As with Constanze Mozart's choices, the most important works largely went to other publishers. A partial listing of Traeg's Beethoven publications follows.^[23]

According to Kalischer Beethoven was an inveterate punster,^[24] and when the appropriate occasion arose (late delivery by Traeg of some free offerings from Breitkopf & Härtel) Beethoven did not hesitate to make a pun out of the literal meaning of Traeg's name: "with Herr Traeg everything is slow" [German "traeg"].^[25]

Notes

1. ^Per Edge (2001:173), metal pens did not come to be used by music copyists until about 1825.
2. ^Life dates from New Grove.
3. ^¹²³New Grove
4. ^Jones, David Wyn (2011) Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn. Oxford University Press, article "copyists". The article is by David Wyn Jones.
5. ^Jones's discussion of the expanding library appears in his book The symphony in Beethoven's Vienna (2006); Cambridge University Press.
6. ^Edge (2001:191)
7. ^See Schnopfhagen, Richard Dieter Heine, and Vladan Katanic (2011) Intellectual Property Law in Austria, Kluwer Law International, p. 33). Edge (2001:152) remarks, "Musical copyright was not protected by law in the Habsburg monarchy at this time, and there was as yet no concept of “royalties".
8. ^Cf. Edge's (2001:152) very similar remarks concerning Traeg and Mozart: "Needless to say, Mozart received no financial benefit from any of the manuscript copies sold by ... Traeg."
9. ^Edge (2001:274-276)
10. ^See Weinmann (1973, 1981).
11. ^Edge (2001:191)
12. ^Edge (2001:757-758)
13. ^Edge (2001:758)
14. ^Edge (2001:758)
15. ^Jones (2011). For the original version of the anecdote, which derives from a letter by Georg August Griesinger and was published in a biographical volume on Haydn by Hugo Botstiber, see Edge (2001:782).
16. ^These may be viewed in English translation in Deutsch (1965); see entries for "Traeg" in Index; as well as in Edge (2001), who fills some gaps in the earlier record.
17. ^Ruth Halliwell (1998) The Mozart family: four lives in a social context. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 396, fn. 25.
18. ^Edge (2001:786)
19. ^The documents from Constanze's struggle (ultimately successful) to receive a pension from the Emperor are recorded in Deutsch (1965), entries for 1791–1792.
20. ^Eisen, Cliff (1997) Another look at the 'corrupt passage' in Mozart's G Minor Symphony, K550: Its sources, 'solution' and implications for the composition of the final trilogy. Early Music 25 (3):373-380. Quotation is from p. 376.
21. ^Edge (2001:862-863)
22. ^Source for this paragraph: Keefe (2007).
23. ^From Clive, Peter (1993) Mozart and his circle. New Haven: Yale University Press.
24. ^Kalischer writes, "Of puns and various plays upon words there is an abundance, one might say superabundance." Kalischer, Alfred Christlieb (1909) Beethoven's Letters: A Critical Edition : with Explanatory Notes, Volume 1. The quotation is from p. xiv.
25. ^For the letter see Alfred Christlieb Kalischer (2013 reprint) Beethoven's Letters. Courier Corporation, p. 127.