(It. cassazione).
A term used between 1750 and 1775 in southern Germany, Austria and Bohemia as a title of a composition or of a single movement; the soloistic cassation is stylistically related to the Divertimento, the orchestral cassation to the Serenade. Its etymological derivation is uncertain. In Koch’s and Moser’s lexicons and Abert’s biography of Mozart the word is said to derive from cassare (Italian, ‘to dismiss’, ‘to release’), thus meaning ‘farewell music’ (Abschiedsmusik). Wyzewa and Saint-Foix, in their biography of Mozart (i, 201), suggest a derivation from casser (French, ‘to break’), implying that it signified a work whose movements could be played in any sequence. Riemann, in his lexicon (7/1909), derived the word from cassa (Italian, ‘drum’). More probably the word is a slight recasting of a German expression common among musicians of the mid-18th century, ‘gassatim gehen’ (‘to perform in the streets’); as early as 1619 Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, iii, 18), used the terms ‘Grassaten’ and ‘Gassaten’ in connection with the serenade.
Pre-Classical and early Classical cassations include pieces by Aumann, Dittersdorf, Michael Haydn, Leopold Hofmann, Rosetti, Joseph Schmitt and Vanhal, as well as early works by Haydn and Mozart, although few of these works are called by this title in the sources. It is therefore difficult to establish any distinctive ‘cassation style’. In Breitkopf’s thematic catalogues works are entered at some points as cassations but elsewhere as divertimentos (for example Haydn’s Divertimento hII:2 in the catalogues of 1765 and 1767). Similar discrepancies exist in the titles of these works, printed and manuscript. A Haydn divertimento (hII:6) appears variously in catalogues, printed editions and manuscripts as ‘cassatio’ or ‘gassatio’, ‘notturno’, ‘divertimento’, ‘sonata a quattro’, ‘quartetto’ (quatuor, quadro), ‘simphonia’ and ‘concertino’ (in some cases these inscriptions may merely indicate whether solo instruments were to be used for the performance of the piece). In contemporary usage these titles were largely interchangeable: Haydn himself listed his string quartets opp.1 and 2 in his Entwurfkatalog (c1765) as cassations, though for many of his early ones he later changed the title to ‘divertimento’. He let ‘cassation’ stand, however, in certain works for baryton (hXIII:19), where he used the term less as a title than as a designation for movements of a light, humorous character. The term does not appear in the authentic manuscript copies but is used in the Entwurfkatalog and the Elssler-Verzeichnis.
Mozart’s only use of the term occurs in a letter of 4 August 1770, where he listed the incipits of three movements: the first movements of the Serenades k63 and 99/63a, both of them marches, and the independent march k62 (which is now generally linked with the Serenade k100/62a). This may suggest that he associated the term with the traditional cyclical arrangement of the march and the serenade, and the same applies to Michael Haydn’s usage. Mozart and Michael Haydn used the term exclusively for orchestral works.
By Beethoven’s youth the term ‘cassation’ seems to have fallen into disuse. A rare modern example of its use is Sibelius’s op.6 (1904).
H. Hoffmann: ‘Über die Mozartschen Serenaden und Divertimenti’, Mozart-Jb 1929, 59–80
J.P. Larsen, ed.: Drei Haydn Kataloge in Faksimile mit Einleitung und ergänzenden Themenverzeichnissen (Copenhagen, 1941/R)
G. Hausswald: Mozarts Serenaden (Leipzig, 1951/R)
A. van Hoboken: Joseph Haydn: thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, i (Mainz, 1957)
R. Hess: Serenade, Cassation, Notturno und Divertimento bei Michael Haydn (diss., U. of Mainz, 1963)
S. Gerlach: Preface to Joseph Haydn: Werke, xiii (Munich, 1969); Kritischer Bericht (1970)
G. Hausswald and W. Plath: Preface to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, IV:12/i (Kassel, 1970)
Gesellschaftsgebundene instrumentale Unterhaltungsmusik des 18. Jahrhunderts: Eichstätt 1988
H. Unverricht: ‘Was versteht Mozart unter einer Cassation?’, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Leipzig 1991, 50–54
For further bibliography see Divertimento.
HUBERT UNVERRICHT/CLIFF EISEN