Hofmann, Leopold (1738-1793)

During the 1760s and early 1770s, the years of his greatest fame and productivity, Hofmann wrote around sixty concertos including a number of double concertos, one of which is scored for violin and violoncello. Hofmann was a very fine violinist and an experienced composer of concertos for both instruments. A concerto for this exact combination of solo instruments, performed, oddly enough, by "Les deux Frres Hoffmann" on 12 December 1761, appears in Philippe Gumpenhueber's Repertoire for that year. In spite of appearances there is nothing to connect this work or any other with Leopold Hofmann and grave doubt as to whether he was one of the performers involved. There were several court musicians named Hoffmann (or Hofmann) in Vienna at this time and as far as we know neither of Leopold's two brothers performed professionally. The most likely candidates for this performance are either Anton or Johann Baptist Hoffmann (violin) and Johann Nikolaus Hoffmann (violoncello). The sole surviving copy of the work - a set of contemporary manuscript parts now preserved in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien (IX 21568) - are enclosed within a wrapper which reads " Concerto / a/ Violino Violoncello Conc. / Violino Primo / Violino Secondo / Viola / con / Basso / Del Sigre / Leopoldo Hoffmann / 1782 " Although there is no external corroborative evidence to support Hofmann's authorship of this work, it bears many striking resemblances to his other string concertos and can be accepted as genuine with few qualms. The date, added by a later hand and barely visible, should be accepted with a good deal of caution although the remarkable cadenzas, surely the work of Hofmann himself, may point to a relatively late composition date.

In the absence of both the autograph score and an authentic set of parts, this edition presents as faithfully as possible the intentions of the composer as transmitted in this source. As is usual in Hofmann's concertos there are no dynamic markings in the solo sections; these are left to the discretion and good taste of the performer. The style and notation of articulation and dynamic markings have been standardized throughout, and, where missing from the source, reconstructed from parallel passages. These are indicated by the use of dotted slurs or brackets. Like most eighteenth century sources, the present manuscript is very inconsistent in its notation of appoggiature ; these too have been standardized to minimize confusion. Obvious wrong notes have been corrected without comment; editorial emendations with no authority from the source are placed within brackets. Allan Badley