A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Swieten, Gottfried
SWIETEN, Gottfried, Baron VAN. A musical amateur of great importance, who resided at Vienna at the end of last century and beginning of this one. The family was Flemish, and Gottfried's father, Gerhard,[1] returned from Leyden to Vienna in 1745, and became Maria Theresa's favourite physician. Gottfried was born in 1734, and was brought up to diplomacy, but his studies were much disturbed by his love of music, and in 1769 he committed himself so far as to compose several of the songs in Favart's 'Rosière de Salency' for its public production at Paris. In 1771 he was made ambassador to the Court of Prussia, where the music was entirely under the influence of Frederick the Great, conservative and classical. This suited Van Swieten. Handel, the Bachs, and Haydn were his favourite masters; in 1774 he commissioned C. P. E. Bach to write six symphonies for orchestra. He returned to Vienna in 1778; succeeded his father as Prefect of the Public Library, and in 1781 was appointed President of the Education Commission. He became a kind of musical autocrat in Vienna, and in some respects his influence was very good. He encouraged the music which he approved; had regular Sunday-morning meetings for classical music, as well as performances of the great choral works of Bach, Handel, and Hasse, etc.; employed Mozart to add accompaniments to Handel's 'Acis,' 'Messiah,' 'St. Cecilia,' and 'Alexander's Feast,' and Starzer to do the same for 'Judas'; translated the words of the 'Creation' and the 'Seasons' into German for Haydn; and himself arranged Handel's 'Athaliah' and 'Choice of Hercules.' He supplied Haydn now and then with a few ducats, and gave him a travelling-carriage for his second journey to England.[2] In his relation to these great artists he seems never to have forgotten the superiority of his rank to theirs; but this was the manner of the time. Van Swieten patronised Beethoven also [see vol. i. p. 176a]; but such condescension would not be at all to Beethoven's taste, and it is not surprising that we hear very little of it. His first Symphony is, however, dedicated to Van Swieten. He was the founder of the 'Musikalischen Gesellschaft,' or Musical Society, consisting of 25 members of the highest aristocracy, with the avowed object of creating a taste for good music—a forerunner of the 'Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde,' founded in 1808.
Van Swieten died at Vienna March 29, 1803. His music has not survived him, but it would be interesting to hear one of the six symphonies which, in Haydn's words,[3] were 'as stiff as himself.'