“The excellence of the Mannheim Orchestra—whose performances excited as much admiration among contemporaries as those of the Paris Orchestra under Habeneck’s conductorship at a later date—gained for it the honor of taking a regular share in the Elector’s concerts. The Orchestra contained some of the first artists and _virtuosi_ of the day, such as Cannabich, Toeschi, Cramer, Stamitz and Fränzel among the violins, Wendling as a flute-player, Le Brun and Ramm as oboists, Ritter as bassoonist and Lang as horn-player. But its fame rested chiefly on the excellent discipline of the Orchestra, which, among so many first-rate artists, it was no easy task to maintain. The _Kapellmeister_ at the time of Mozart’s visit was Christian Cannabich (1731-1798), who had succeeded Stamitz in 1775. His compositions were, doubtless, overrated by his contemporaries; but he was admirable as a solo violinist and still better as an orchestral leader, besides being an excellent teacher. The majority of the violinists in the Mannheim Orchestra had issued from his school and to this was mainly owing the uniformity of their execution and delivery. Cannabich, who was more of an organizer than an originator, had experimented with every condition and device for producing instrumental effects and he laid special stress on technical perfection of execution in order to be certain of having good ensemble players.”[60] Mozart had much to do in raising the standard of the Vienna Orchestra on his return home. From this time forward the clarinet became conspicuous in Mozart’s compositions. We get a glimpse of Mozart conducting in 1789 from Jahn. He was in Leipzig: “At the rehearsal for this concert he took the _tempo_ of the first _Allegro_ of his symphony so fast that the Orchestra was very soon in hopeless confusion. Mozart stopped, told the players what was wrong and began again as fast as before, doing all he could to keep the Orchestra together and stamping the time with his foot so energetically that his steel shoe-buckle snapped in two. He laughed at this; and, as they still dragged, he began a third time. The musicians, now having become impatient, worked in desperation; and at last the movement went right. ‘It was not caprice;’ he explained afterwards to some musical friends, to whom he had been holding forth on the subject of too rapid _tempo_, ‘but I saw at once that most of the players were advanced in years and there would have been no end to the dragging if I had not worked them up into a rage so that they did their best out of pure spite.’ The rest of the symphony he took in moderate time; and after the song had been rehearsed he praised the accompaniment of the Orchestra and said it would be unnecessary to rehearse his concerto: ‘The parts are correctly written out, you play accurately and so do I.’ The result showed that his confidence was not misplaced.”