But this topic requires something more than the above general remarks. Some twelve years previous to Beethoven’s coming to Vienna, Risbeck, speaking of the art in that capital, had written: ORCHESTRAS OF THE GREAT NOBLES Musicians are the only ones (artists) concerning whom the nobility exhibit taste. Many houses maintain private bands for their own delectation, and all the public concerts prove that this field of art stands in high respect. It is possible to enlist four or five large orchestras here, all of them incomparable. The number of real virtuosos is small, but as regards the orchestral musicians scarcely anything more beautiful is to be heard in the world. TITLED MUSIC-LOVERS IN VIENNA How many such orchestras were still kept up in 1792-’93 it is, probably, now impossible to determine. Those of Princes Lobkowitz, Schwarzenberg and Auersperg may safely be named. Count Heinrich von Haugwitz and doubtless Count Batthyany brought their musicians with them when they came to the capital for “the season.” The Esterhazy band, dismissed after the death of Haydn’s old master, seems not yet to have been renewed. Prince Grassalkowitz (or Kracsalkowitz) had reduced his to a band of eight wind-instruments--oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns--a kind of organization then much in vogue. Baron Braun had one to play at dinner as at the supper in “Don Giovanni”--an accessory to the scene which Mozart introduced out of his own frequent experience. Prince Karl Lichnowsky and others retained their own players of string quartets. The grandees of the Bohemian and Moravian capitals--Kinsky, Clamm, Nostiz, Thun, Buquoi, Hartig, Salm-Pachta, Sporck, Fünfkirchen, etc.--emulated the Austrian and Hungarian nobles. As many of them had palaces also in Vienna, and most, if not all, spent part of the year there, bringing with them a few of the more skilful members of their orchestras to execute chamber music and for the nucleus of a band when symphonies, concertos and grand vocal works were to be executed, they also added their contingent to the musical as well as to the political and fashionable life of the metropolis. The astonishingly fruitful last eight years of Mozart’s life falling within the period now under contemplation, contributed to musical literature compositions wonderfully manifold in character and setting an example that forced other composers to leave the beaten track. Haydn had just returned from his first stay in London, enriched with the pregnant experience acquired during that visit. Van Swieten had gained during his residence in Berlin appreciation of and love for the works of Handel, Bach and their schools, and since his return to Vienna, about 1778, had exerted, and was still exerting, a very powerful and marked influence upon Vienna’s musical taste.