A Festival for Marianna Martines in June 2025

If one turns off of Michaelerplatz onto Kohlmarkt and looks up at the building facade on the right, one will notice a memorial plaque: “In this building | lived and died | Pietro Metastasio.” As imperial court poet, Metastasio authored librettos that provided the textual basis for hundreds of operas—and Antonio Salieri, our jubilarian of 2025, was among those who made use of his texts. Metastasio was hence not just an authority where literature was concerned but also a key intellectual node in mid-18th-century Vienna. No wonder, then, that this building’s comings and goings featured everyone who was anyone in artistic and intellectual life. They paid regular visits either as invitees or with letters of introduction in hand, eager to experience interesting encounters with other contemporaries, engage in conversation, exchange news, discuss matters both literary and musical .. and listen to music.

Accounts of the busy spaces in the so-called Großes Michaelerhaus—at least those covering the period beginning in the 1760s—do, however, tend to leave out one significant aspect: it was here that, in 1744, the Viennese harpsichordist, singer, and composer Marianna Martines was born. She then grew up here—and it would be no exaggeration to say that as an inquisitive girl of great musical gifts, she couldn’t have wished for a better place during the 18th century’s second half: Metastasio, a close friend of Martines’ father, was a consistent presence in the Martines household and devoted himself to the intellectual and artistic nurture of their many children. The court poet thereby laid the foundations for multilingualism and literary sophistication, with Marianna’s elder brother Joseph going on to assume leading positions at the court library. What’s more, the Großes Michaelerhaus was also a building that positively vibrated with music: on the top floor lived the Spanglers (or Spänglers), a musical family. Both Nicola Porpora and Giuseppe Bonno also spent periods living and working here. And the young Joseph Haydn, who lodged here during the early 1750s, involved himself as a music teacher and accompanist anywhere in the building where anything musical took place. Which, one must say, occurred with great frequency: singers were trained, music was performed in Metastasio’s salon, and guests passing through the city—including Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart as well as Charles Burney—made sure to visit the court poet to discuss the newest musical developments as well as play and listen to music themselves. In the midst of all this was Marianna Martines. She grew up literally immersed in music, and her talent was not ignored. On the contrary: she was encouraged, trained, and permitted to use the spacious rooms of this apartment on Kohlmarkt as her own stage. Charles Burney, an English musician and musical scholar who visited Vienna on his wide-ranging travels through Europe, provides a vivid description of the salon at the Großes Michaelerhaus: “The great poet received me very courteously, and placed me on a sopha, just by him.” The usual letters and notes of introduction were exchanged, whereupon they proceeded to speak of their acquaintances in common. “The discourse then became general and miscellaneous, till the arrival of a young lady, who was received by the whole company with great respect. […] this was Signora Martinetz, sister to Signor Martinetz, deputy librarian at the imperial library, whose father was an old friend of Metastasio. […] After the high encomiums bestowed by the Abate Taruffi on the talents of this young lady, I was very desirous of hearing and conversing with her; and Metastasio was soon so obliging as to propose her sitting down to the harpsichord, which she immediately did, in a graceful manner, without the parade of diffidence, or the trouble of importunity. Her performance indeed surpassed all that I had been made to expect.” Burney returned several times to Metastasio’s in order to hear Martines. He showed extraordinary appreciation for her compositions and had several of them copied as he was preparing to leave Vienna. He was to remain in contact with Marianna Martines long after Metastasio’s death, their conversations doubtless eased by the fact that she spoke fluent English. But what exactly was it that Burney had heard at the Großes Michaelerhaus? Martines had already composed quite a bit: music for the neighbouring Church of St. Michael including masses as well as several litanies and misereres, vocal music in the Metastasian style including cantatas, oratorios and arias, and last but not least music for the harpsichord, her principal instrument. Martines tailored her sonatas and harpsichord concertos to her own strengths as a player, and Burney describes her technique as highly virtuosic: “She sung two airs of her own composition, to words of Metastasio, which she accompanied on the harpsichord, in a very judicious and masterly manner; and, in playing the ritornels, I could discover a very brilliant finger.”

Although Martines did come to enjoy international recognition, being admitted to the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna in 1773 and seeing harpsichord sonatas printed by the Nuremberg publishing house of Johann Ulrich Haffner during the 1760s, her compositions were conceived for precisely those spaces where they were heard throughout her lifetime: for the Church of St. Michael and for the venues of Viennese musical entertainments such as those that took place at the Großes Michaelerhaus. It is hence fortunate indeed that Martines’ music is now set to return there: on 16 and 17 June 2025, the Parish of St. Michael will be holding a Festival for Marianna Martines.

As part of this, a concert has been planned whose programme is set to include harpsichord concertos by Marianna Martines that will simultaneously be released in a new critical edition as part of the Austrian “monuments of music” series Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich (DTÖ, Hollitzer Verlag, Vienna). Furthermore, this tradition-steeped series will also be augmented by an edition of Martines’ masses. The two editions will be unveiled at a one-day symposium featuring lectures and discussions with new insights into Marianne Martines’ spheres of activity in Vienna. The festival will be framed by performances of Martines’ oratorio Isacco. Figura del Redentore at the Wiener Kammeroper, and all this will be followed in autumn 2025 by a performance of one of her masses at the Church of St. Michael. The Festival for Marianna Martines comes thanks to a cooperative effort involving multiple mdw departments—the Department of Musicology and Performance Studies, the Department of Early Music, and the Department of Organ, Organ Research and Church Music—as well as the Theater an der Wien and Monuments of Fine Austrian Music (DTÖ). We warmly welcome the attendance of all those who are interested! Exact programme details will be announced soon: https://www.mdw.ac.at/imi/aktuelle-veranstaltungen/marianna-martines/