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The Frenzel Gallery
(portraits) Although no one knows what Frenzel looks like, several artists have attempted to portray his likeness. The resemblance of the individual images is striking. Did each one copy from the other? Or was / is there a model after all?
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From the “Weindeputat”
(payment in wine) This collection includes the most important works from a controversial creative period of Frenzel’s. There are a few references to the fact that the composer was paid in “a half pail of the best wine” (just under 30 litres) at a famous monastery in Lower Austria. Opinions differ about this undocumented period. The controversy begins with the question of which famous monastery is meant. So far, Klosterneuburg and Heiligenkreuz in Lower Austria have been mentioned but it could very well have been a different one. In his widely acclaimed essay “ |
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The
Power of Silence – about the rests in Frenzel’s works”, F.
Schwehla wrote that it would be rather improbable “for Frenzel
to have been able to have consumed such huge amounts of wine
daily. That would have permanently elicited grave changes in the
arrangement of rests, which however is not detectable.”
Schrapfeneder is also sceptical, and mentions that when one
considers the grape harvest per hectare in the 18th century, the
payment of such an enormous amount wine would have equalled the
entire yield for one whole year. F. Katt, on the other hand,
stands by the theory of the payment in wine, the basis for the
1st Katt axiom, and uses this theory to conclusively explain the
harmonic and rhythmic conception of several of Frenzel works. The
1st Katt axiom says that on 1st December 1776, in the monastery
Stift Klosterneuburg, Franz Xaver Frenzel was awarded with
remuneration for his compositions with several litres of the best
wine on a daily basis. The amount of wine that Frenzel actually
consumed correlates with the product of the number of composed
bars and the square of the noted therein. (W=tn”).
The consumption of wine lasted uninterruptedly until 28th
September 1806. The period of payment in wine begins with the
writing of the pieces for trumpet and organ, and lasts up to the
“Stainprunner Codices”, or to be exact the “Hasty Retreat
Minuet”, which represents Frenzel’s clear and self-imposed
break with the period.
