Mannheim School

The Mannheim School refers to an orchestra and opera company which was based at the elector's court at Mannheim, Germany from 1720 to 1781, as well as the style of composition which flourished from 1750 under the direction of Johann Stamitz. Made up of some of the finest musicians in all of Europe, the Mannheim court orchestra was renowned for its precision and dynamic control; Charles Burney, a contemporary writer and critic, called it "an army of generals," referring to the fact that so many of the musicians were excellent soloists and composers in their own right. Since their period of activity comes between the end of the Baroque and the beginning of the Classical period, their innovations in playing technique and pan-European musical cosmopolitanism were symptomatic of, if not an important influence on, the general change which was occurring in musical style during the mid 18th-century that would culminate in the classical stye.

Mannheim Mannerisms

The orchestra's famed dynamic control took on two aspects which represented an advance over Baroque instrumental practices. First was the ability of the full orchestra to accompany a soloist without covering them, which requires that every member of the orchestra master playing with utmost softness without sacrificing clarity. In the Baroque period, composers avoided this difficulty by reducing the instrumentation of solo passages, but since the Mannheim orchestra members were all virtuosi, the composers who wrote for them were able to create new orchestral sounds by capitalizing on this new development. The second innovation was the famed "Mannheim crescendo," where the whole orchestra would transition from very soft to very loud within a very short time. In contrast, Baroque music's dynamics were mostly uniform, either piano or forte, but without effects such as crescendo or diminuendo.