Little is known of Josef Leutgeb1 (1732 - 1811), Mozart’s horn player friend. The horn concertos numbered 1 to 4 and the quintet for horn and strings were written for him between 1781 and 1786 in Vienna. The Fétis and Choron & Fayolle dictionaries have nothing on him ; The Grove has a short biography and some amusing details about Mozart's and Leutgeb's friendship, not worth writing down once more here ; but there is of course no clue of the instrument he may have played. I have searched the entire correspondence of Mozart, hoping for a letter about Leutgeb, the horn or the concertos. The name of Leutgeb appears throughout the whole correspondence, but the one and only mention made of horn matters is a letter dated december 1st 1777 from Leopold to Wolfgang, where the father writes to the son that Leutgeb is asking for a horn concerto2.
Later I found two pieces of information worth of interest :
- In his facsimile of the manuscripts of Mozart’s horn works, Pizka writes that Leutgeb was playing on a mouthpiece with "very fine rims3". I was not able to investigate his sources and this is not exactly about the horn itself, but this tiny bit of information, if true, can still give us an idea of the sound he may have produced, regardless of the instrument.
- In his book The Early Horn : A practical Guide, John Humphries suggests that Leutgeb may have played a Bohemian horn4. This statement caught my attention, for according to Horace Fitzpatrick in an article published in the Galpin Society Journal, Viennese and Bohemian schools of horn making were quite different in the XVIIIth century5. What was Leutgeb’s connection with bohemian horns, knowing he was born in Vienna and played there ? Only one way to know more about it, I asked Mr. Humphries, who kindly answered my questions :
“I wrote that book 20 years ago, now, and every time I look at it these days, I find
something else I don't agree with any more ! […] I suspect I wrote "Bohemian" just to
make it clear that he would not have been playing on a French instrument6. »
By « Bohemian », Mr. Humphries certainly meant central Europe as opposed to France, instead of the particuliar region that was named Bohemia at the time. In conclusion, Leutgeb probably did not play a Bohemian horn as there are no connections between them ; he more likely played Viennese as shown later.
I focused my interest on Leutgeb’s travels and concerts, in order to think of them later in relation with other information. Here are all Leutgeb’s whereabouts we know of :
1732 : Born in Vienna.
1754 : Played a concert in Vienna (prince Hildburghausen's orchestra). Earliest clue of Leutgeb performing.
1763 : - Playing in Salzburg, with the Band of Prince Archbishop of Salzburg ;
- Playing with Esterházy Orchestra.
1770 : - Solo concerts in Frankfurt ;
- Solo concerts at the Concert Spirituel in Paris.
1773 : Concerts in Milano, Italy7.
1777 : Definitely established in Vienna. (Blindengasse 20, Vienna8).
1779-82 : Hornist of the Burgtheater in Vienna.
These markers will be useful later.