Fireworks and Wind Bands in 1780s Vienna: A Context for Mozart's 'Nacht Musique'?

This article examines the association between Harmoniemusik and firework displays during the reign of Joseph II. On three occasions during the 1780s, Vienna's leading pyrotechnic impresario, Johann Stuwer, chose an opera as his theme: Gluck's Orfeo (1781); Gretry's Zemire und Azor (1787); and Martín y Soler's L'arbore di Diana (1789). Each presentation was accompanied by popular airs from the featured work, played by a wind band. Musicians were also employed on non-musical nights to entertain the huge crowds of 10,000 or more that assembled in the Prater, a function seen more widely at animal-baiting shows, daylight aerostatic extravaganzas, and balloon flights. The high point of Stuwer's annual cycle of displays was always on 26 July: Vienna's St Anne's Day celebration of women. Consideration is given to the possibility that Mozart's unidentified 'Nacht Musique' was written for the 1782 presentation: The Fall of Phaethon.