In my article ‘On the Venues for and Decline of the Accademies at Eszterháza in Haydn's Time’ (Eighteenth-Century Music 13/2 (2016), 253–281) I surveyed the various venues for music-making found at Eszterháza according to various genres, using an abundance of archival sources. I concluded that the default venue for ‘serious’ concerts or accademies was the court theatre or opera house; furthermore, I detected that concerts as separate events had become extremely rare by the 1780s and that their function was partly taken over by pieces of instrumental or vocal music performed before or between the acts of operas.

Since the publication of my article I have come across some data that complete the picture I had drawn up of the venues at Eszterháza. Two of the contemporary reports quoted below are widely known – still, for the sake of completeness, I should have mentioned them.

Three of these reports are connected with various occasions of local music-making. The earliest, widely known one is a diary entry by Count Zinzendorf, published by Edward Olleson in his article ‘Haydn in the Diaries of Count Karl von Zinzendorf (Haydn Yearbook 2 (1963–1964), 46). This is the earliest eyewitness report of Eszterháza, written a few weeks before the visit in July 1772 of Prince Rohan, the French ambassador to Vienna at that time. It is also interesting because it offers a tangential but unique insight into the interior of the first opera house. Writing on 28 May, Zinzendorf makes mention of a ‘Bon diner, puis Concert, deux chanteuses [in all probability Barbara Fux-Dichtler and Magdalena Spangler-Friberth] chanterent fort bien. Hayden joua du violon. Le C^te Ottocar me mena en voiture par le parc’ (A good meal, then concert, two female singers sang very well. Haydn played the violin. Count Ottocar took me around the park in his carriage). The guests arrived at the theatre, then, after a tour made of the park: ‘Dela au Spectacle[.] La Salle est belle, la Tribune du Prince extrémement vaste, on jouoit le Postzug [a spoken play]’ (Then to the show. The hall is nice, the prince's lodge is extremely large, Postzug was given). So the private music-making arranged for the visiting aristocrats apparently took place, in conformity with the conclusions of my article, somewhere in the main building. A possible venue may have been the picture gallery, as in the case of a similar event arranged for Duke Albert and his wife Archduchess Marie Christine during their last visit in 1781.

The mention of the latter event in my article was based on one of H. C. Robbins Landon's numerous statements made with no reference to any source. In the meantime, following a hint found in Wolfgang Fuhrmann's Habilitationsschrift, ‘Haydn und sein Publikum’, which he kindly sent to me, I found a quite detailed report about that visit in the Brünner Zeitung (16 June 1781, 383–384). According to the anonymous correspondent, ‘Am 29 vorigen Monats . . . kamen Sie gegen den Abend in das Theater, wo man den Avaro deluso [by Paisiello] gab; und nach dem Schauspiele war Soupe. Den 30 ward musikalische Akademie und maskirter Ball gegeben, und folgenden Tags kehrten Ihre Königlichen Hoheiten wieder zurück’ (On the 29th of last month . . . they came towards evening to the theatre, where Avaro deluso was given, and after the theatre supper was served. On the 30th a musical academy and a masked ball took place, and next day their Royal Majesties went back home). This report contradicts the information published in the Wiener Zeitung and quoted in my earlier article: according to the Viennese newspaper the duke and archduchess arrived back in Vienna on 30 May. Nevertheless, this is a clear reference to an accademie, if only an occasional, ‘private’ one – one of the very few from the last decade of Haydn's residence at Eszterháza. However, the venue remains unspecified in this report. One wonders if the picture gallery as the venue for this concert was suggested by Landon because he – or his main source of information with respect to Eszterháza, János Hárich – combined this report with Heinrich Sander's account, also quoted in the article, of his visit in May of the following year.

We may add to these reports that, as witnessed by the paylists for the opera productions, there was an opera performance, that of Salieri's La scuola de’ gelosi, on 30 May on top of the concert and the ball. (See my PhD dissertation, ‘Az 1776 és 1790 közötti eszterházi operaévadok kronológiája’ (Chronology of the Opera Seasons at Eszterháza between 1778 and 1790), Liszt Ferenc Zeneművészeti Egyetem, available at https://apps.lfze.hu/netfolder/PublicNet/Doktori%20dolgozatok/malina_janos/disszertacio.pdf, 185). As this day was a Wednesday, not a regular day for operas, it looks very probable that it was arranged as a tribute to the high guests. That fact, again, strengthens the assumption that the report of the Brünner Zeitung was right and the couple indeed left on 31 May.

I have come across an indirect reference to yet another late accademie in the archives. This is the only one among those dealt with here whose venue is clear from the relevant document (Esterházy Privatstiftung Archiv, Schloss Forchtenstein, Bau Cassa Süttör 1790, Commission N 550). Dated 17 April 1790, it is a ‘Verzeichniß Uiber nothwendige Bedürfnisse des Theaters, an Opern, und Balleten’ (List of Items Necessary for the Theatre for Operas and Ballets). Item 9 of the list states: ‘Zu die [sic] Akademien sind die Pulte zur Music neu verfertiget word:’ (new music stands have been made for the accademies). This involves several accademies (plural) or rather a habit of arranging them which makes it necessary to have new music stands made. In a sense, this datum somewhat weakens the conclusion of my article that accademies virtually disappeared in the beginning of the 80s at Eszterháza, or rather that they amalgamated with opera performances. However, this commission, being a list of the needs of the theatre, freshly corroborates my conclusion that concerts normally took place there.

The last datable accademies we know of took place on 27 and 28 February and 1 March 1790. If we compare the text of Haydn's letter of 14 March, quoted already in my 2016 article, with the known dates of the opera performances of the period (‘Az 1776 és 1790 közötti eszterházi operaévadok kronológiája’, 203), we find that the first opera performance after the death of the Princess Maria Elisabeth – due to take place on Sunday, 28 February – was suppressed, together with the comedies on the previous and the following day, and they were replaced by the three accademies.

Two more minor discoveries prove that some Eszterháza practices existed in nearby Hungarian cities as well. That a theatre was a customary concert venue is obvious from an advertisement published in the 10 January 1776 issue of the Preßburger Zeitung, informing the public of a newly established concert series in Oedenburg (Sopron): ‘Der alhiesigen Noblesse zu gefallen warden in dem hiesigen Stadttheater alle Freytage musikalische Divertissements gegeben. Wobey sich denn verschiedene Virtuosen einfinden und hören laßen. Den 29sten v[origes] M[onats] [that is, December 1775] ist damit bereits der Anfang gemacht worden.’ (Every Friday for the pleasure of the nobility of our town musical amusements are arranged in the local theatre, at which various virtuosos appear and may be heard. The first concert has already taken place, on the 29th of last month.)

The Eszterháza (and Viennese) practice of performing instrumental or vocal chamber compositions in conjunction with opera performances existed in Pressburg too. At the end of the last known libretto (Axur König von Ormus. Eine heroische Oper . . . von Herrn Anton Salieri (Pressburg: Weber, 1788), 80) printed for the ‘Erdödisches Operntheater’ – which functioned from 1785 under the direction of Hubert Kumpf in an unidentified building belonging to Count Johann Nepomuk Erdődy – all forty-five operas produced in the Erdődy opera house until the (probable) conclusion of the 1788 season are listed. To the end of the list this text is added:

(In the case of shorter operas the time was filled in by such pieces as a pantomime, a Cossack pas de deux, a gypsy pas de deux, a cantata . . . various symphonies, concertos, arias etc. ‘Il Signo’ is, of course, is a misspelling of Il sogno, Vicente Martín y Soler's popular cantata.)

One striking feature is the uncommon diversity of genres found in these insertion numbers; the other one is that the public obviously found the two-part comic intermezzos too short for a full evening performance. Since such intermezzos were very popular across the whole of Europe – the Tsarina Catherine the Great especially preferred them – and quite a lot of them were also produced at Eszterháza, we may well presume that this kind of ‘enrichment’ of opera performances was common there as well. There was certainly the capacity to offer a similar variety of genres. The ‘Türkisches pas de deux’ included in the copyist's list that was reproduced as Figure 10 in my original article offers just one concrete instance of the extent of this variety.