Throughout his creative life, Richard Strauss remained indebted to the music +Y7of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart’s presence articulated itself in manifold ways through traces lost, hidden and unsettling. The first category is represented through Strauss’s cadenza for Mozart’s Piano concerto in c minor, K.491, performed at his debut in Meiningen. A hidden portrayal of Mozart is revealed in the character of the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos, which the librettist Hofmannsthal had modelled after Beethoven. The final section turns to the surprising and unsettling appearance of Mozart’s music in Strauss’s scores, focussing on quotations and allusions in Die schweigsame Frau, the orchestral song Die Liebe (from the Drei Hymnen von Friedrich Holderin fur hohe Singstimme) and the ballet Schlagobers.

Modern readers generally consider Walther von der Vogelweide’s Palastinalied as crusading propaganda. In support of this understanding, scholars have pointed to the song’s melody: they argue that Walther deliberately borrowed the melody of Jaufre Rudel’s Lanquan li jorn for his song (contrafacture) because of the shared concern for the distant Holy Land that is expressed in the two texts. Following the work of Elmar Willemsen and Michael Stolz, the present article reconsiders the presentation of the Palastinalied in two of its medieval sources: the Codex Buranus (D-Mbs Clm 4660/a) and the Hausbuch of Michael de Leone (D-Mu 2° Cod. ms. 731). The study of the Palastinalied in the context of its written transmission shows that contemporary readers (in the Codex Buranus) and those who continued to value it in Wurzburg about a century later (in the Hausbuch) did not place Walther’s song alongside other crusading songs. Instead, these manuscripts suggest that their scribes/readers/patrons read the Palastinalied as the expression of new-found personal worth (‘werdekeit’) that may result from spiritual metanoia (conversion of life). If the song can indeed be understood in such a soteriological context, Ursula Aarburg’s erstwhile suggestion that Walther may have modelled his melody on the Marian antiphon Ave regina celorum deserves fresh consideration.

This contribution focuses on the anonymous five-part madrigal Bella guerriera mia, which survives in two sixteenth-century manuscripts (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus.ms. 1503g and Wolfenbuttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 293 Musica). The poem by Pietro Bembo plays with the famous topos of love as war. Following the example of Petrarca and other poets, Bembo has the woman play the role of warrioress, but he ends the sonnet with a subversive punchline that takes the form of a poetic self-reflection. Bella guerriera mia was set to music by several composers, from Perissone Cambio to Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder. The article analyses the anonymous setting in the light of this musico- textual tradition, while at the same time highlighting striking parallels with Cambio’s madrigal.

Based on the understanding of 19th-century musical culture as predominantly bourgeois, this chapter presents relationships between its courtly and interregional aspects. Using examples from Wertheim, Bückeburg, Sigmaringen, Urach, Schillingsfürst and Langenburg, it documents interactions with Franz Liszt, Cosima Wagner, Giacomo Meyerbeer, J. G. Rheinberger and Ignaz Brüll. In addition, the letters of the Donaueschingen choirmaster Thomas Täglichsbeck illustrate his interregional network including contacts with Ferdinand Hiller, Louis Spohr and Gioacomo Meyerbeer.

This contribution takes a critical look at the famous encounter between Clementi and Mozart in 1781 from a historiographical perspective. The most significant sources, well-known reports, anecdotes and estimations from between 1781 and 1880 are discussed in detail. This essay traces their reception and consequences for positioning Mozart and Clementi within German-speaking music history.