This is a sort of low-intensity listening project I've had going on in the background for about the past year. I stumbled across the Contemporaries of Mozart series of recordings by the London Mozart Players and thought it would be interesting to listen to the whole lot, for a few reasons:

  • I love the galant style and expected to turn up a few new discoveries that I'd enjoy investigating further.
  • There's something that appeals to me about exploring one artistic period in depth, so that I don't just know the famous highlights but have an understanding of the background culture of practice that they emerged from. I expect that this would work well in any genre and period, and that for example you'd learn a lot by reading and watching a whole bunch of random Elizabethan plays and not just Shakespeare, but for most things I am never going to put the effort in. For galant music I actually care enough to do it.
  • I work full time in an open office now and to keep my sanity I need quick access to a constant stream of undemanding background music.

The composers

All the composers overlap with a significant chunk of Mozart's life, but overall they span a wide range of time rather than being exact contemporaries. Here's a diagram I got Claude to make:

Timeline showing how composers overlap with Mozart

Here's my notes at the time on everything I listened to:

William Herschel: the astronomer, who also did some composing on the side. I like this! Some striking atmospheric moments, though some of the linking passages feel pretty paint-by-numbers.

John Marsh: I had never heard of John Marsh, but he was a highly prolific English composer who was very popular in his time. And I can see why, there are some very catchy tunes in here. The Conversation Symphony is a cool idea (split the orchestra into two and have them "talk" across to each other).

Josef Mysliveček: this sure is some music. Not sure I have anything else to say about it.

Carl Stamitz: I already liked Stamitz's viola concerto a lot coming into this porject. The first time I listened to this recording it felt polished but I wasn't very excited by it. A bit later I went back to it and loved it, so not sure what went wrong the first time round. The last movement of the hunt symphony was my favourite. Good enough that I dropped this project for a few weeks and went on a general Stamitz listening binge.

Samuel Wesley: wow I like this a lot. Vaguely similar to Marsh but bigger, more ambitious and dramatic. Not quite the same talent for banger tunes but overall better constructed. Maybe I actually just like English classical music more than I realised. Apparently it kept the Handel influence longer than elsewhere, which can mean "dull and pompous" but when it works it really works for me.

Franz Anton Hoffmeister: Hoffmeister also has a viola concerto I like, so I had high hopes, but these didn't grab me at all for whatever reason. Maybe I should give them one more try some time given that Stamitz worked on a second listen.

Václav Pichl: The slow movements are really nice. Particularly the one in the "Diana" symphony. Very listenable in general.

Christian Cannabich: Feels like an endless stream of lightweight opera overture type music. Fine as background music but not excited about it.

Johann Baptist Vanhal: Nice enough to listen to but again, nothing particularly excited me.

Leopold Koželuch: This is great! Stylish and has actual tunes. I'd been wading through a lot of "this is ok background music I guess" so this was very refreshing.

Antonio Salieri: This one is a bit different, with more opera overtures and incidental music. There's one piece where I thought "wow, this is really overstaying its welcome", then I checked and found that a) it was called "Twenty-six variations on 'La follia di Spagna'" and b) I wasn't even halfway through yet. I survived the full 18 minutes but don't feel the need to repeat it. Or the rest of the recording tbh.

Georg Joseph Vogler: Lots of ballet music which seems fine if you're into that sort of thing, but I'm not particularly.

Adalbert Gyrowetz: Unobjectionable, blocked out noise perfectly well on a busy office day.

Carles Baguer: I found this extremely boring.

Ignace Pleyel: This feels much more substantial and interesting. There's something slightly different going on stylistically here that I can't quite put my finger on. I appreciate the quality but don't feel that strongly into it.

Antonio Rosetti: This is fine but as with Pleyel I'm not getting excited by it.

At this point I was starting to feel pretty burned out on mid tier 18th-century music and had a break for a bit. Back to it a month or so later...

Luigi Boccherini: I love Streets of Madrid but haven't got much out of any other Boccherini. This is pretty listenable but there's nothing that really jumps out as interesting. Might be worth a relisten.

Michael Haydn: I loved this! Listened on repeat for weeks, biggest hit after Stamitz. He's Joseph's little brother, which checks out - to me it feels like there's some shared sunny expansive quality.

François-Joseph Gossec: Enjoyable enough but kind of samey - constant stream of pleasant background music with no memorable bits. The one exception is the second symphony in E flat major, which has some recording error in the first movement that inserted an unpleasant noise that gave me a jump scare, so I didn't repeat-listen to that one.

Franz Krommer: bit later, sounds more like Beethoven than Mozart. Nothing wrong with that but not particularly what I was looking for. Listened to it once and moved on.

Muzio Clementi: feels a bit later too. Well done but in a sort of light music style that doesn't excite me that much

Paul Wranitsky: this is also good but also in a later style. There's a selection effect where a lot of these remaining recordings are ones I tried at some point, thought "hm maybe not" and put them back in the jar. Now I can't avoid eating them.

Franz Xaver Richter: ok this last one is more in the style I was looking for. I liked the trumpet symphony.

Overall ranking

Reading back the notes, they fall into the following rough categories:

Composer
Loved it Carl Stamitz
Michael Haydn
Liked it William Herschel
John Marsh
Samuel Wesley
Václav Pichl
Leopold Koželuch
Franz Xaver Richter
Worth trying again Franz Anton Hoffmeister
Luigi Boccherini
Not for me Josef Mysliveček
Christian Cannabich
Johann Baptist Vanhal
Antonio Salieri
Georg Joseph Vogler
Adalbert Gyrowetz
Carles Baguer
Ignace Pleyel
Antonio Rosetti
François-Joseph Gossec
Franz Krommer
Muzio Clementi
Paul Wranitzky

Everything in the top three categories feels worth revisiting. So roughly half of the total list. Not a bad hit rate actually!