Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Haydn's Visits To England by Christopher Hogwood Christopher Hogwood obituary. At its height in the 1980s, the early music revival was regarded by many as virtually synonymous with the Academy of Ancient Music and Christopher Hogwood, who has died at the age of 73. Established in 1973 with instruments of the baroque period, under Hogwood's direction the AAM examined aspects of historical performance practice with scholarly rigour, paving the way for the achievements of other contemporaries such as Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner and Trevor Pinnock. The AAM was at this time one of the most frequently recorded period ensembles, soon moving from the baroque era into the classical, to record the complete symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, the complete Mozart piano concertos (with Robert Levin) and a wide range of other music. Hogwood had been a continuo player for Neville Marriner's prolific Academy of St Martin in the Fields and a founder member, with David Munrow, of the Early Music Consort, but he finally managed to blaze his own trail with the foundation of the AAM, and by the 1980s had achieved superstar status in the classical sphere, dubbed "the Karajan of early music" on coming third in the 1983 Billboard chart, behind Plácido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa but ahead of any other conductor. Invited to conduct symphony orchestras in America, he was popular with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony, and invariably sold out at New York's Lincoln Centre. After some of the earlier recordings, notably the Mozart symphonies, were criticised for tonal and intonational asperities, Hogwood began to achieve a cleaner, more professional sound, later admitting that he might have gone too far in the direction of sleekness and smoothness. He was not afraid, however, to risk charges of apostasy with headline-catching productions such as a 400-strong Messiah in the Hollywood Bowl during the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 and a semi-staging of the oratorio in the Deutsche Oper Berlin for the Handel tercentenary the following year. He was born in Nottingham, the son of Haley and Marion (nee Higgott). His father was a physicist, working for the Ministry of Supply at the time of Christopher's birth, and his mother was a trilingual secretary for the International Labour Organisation. They had met through singing in a choir. Christopher was a great organiser of family events, and at the age of 10 persuaded the rest of the family to sing the Hallelujah Chorus from a score of Messiah that he had got hold of. Educated at Nottingham high school and the Skinners' school, Tunbridge Wells, he read classics and music at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and studied harpsichord with Rafael Puyana, Mary Potts and, later, Gustav Leonhardt. Though the hand-picked members of the Early Music Consort, in which he participated from 1965 to 1976, were all accomplished musicians, it was Munrow's exuberance and virtuosity on such instruments as the shawm, recorder and crumhorn that attracted most attention. Hogwood was inevitably eclipsed by Munrow's charisma, but the ensemble's soundtracks for the BBC series The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R nevertheless brought the group celebrity, and Hogwood made his own name known through writing and presenting a music magazine programme, The Young Idea, for BBC Radio 3 (1972–82). It was with the foundation of the AAM, however, that he made his breakthrough. Hogwood's philosophy with the orchestra, and indeed in all his projects, was to attempt to understand and recreate the composer's intentions, in terms of both notation and performance. To this end he would return to the original sources, correct publishing errors and evaluate textual alterations in subsequent editions. Much of the repertoire the orchestra performed was given in editions prepared by Hogwood himself. Though energetic and prolific in his scholarship, Hogwood sometimes displayed a pragmatic and wilful streak. Once questioned on the brisk tempi adopted in his Handel performances, he replied: "We got bored at the slow speeds." Such urgency did not necessarily translate into dynamic or engaging interpretations, and there is a sense in which the Academy (like that of St Martin's before it) was stripping away the barnacles of encrusted tradition while paving the way for the more engaging readings of later ensembles. The AAM was also pioneering in the element of democracy in its music-making. Recognising that his players brought often deep levels of understanding and experience to the ensemble, Hogwood happily accepted the role of umpire. "I'm for democracy to the point of anarchy," he once declared. The notion of an autocratic maestro dictating performance practice to such professionals was a nonsense to him, and other ensembles (including many not specialising in early repertoire) began to adopt a similar policy. According to Ernest Fleischmann, who invited Hogwood to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1981, "initially the musicians found him a little strange". He continued: "He didn't have the greatest conducting technique, but he's the most stimulating force in years." His habit of talking about the music during concerts took many by surprise, but audiences were won over. The appointment of Hogwood in 1986 as artistic director of the venerable Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, Massachusetts, seemed at the time to be symbolic. The embrace of period instruments by the society, founded in 1815 to promote the performance of the music of the two composers, marked the ascendancy of the historicist movement. Other significant appointments included that of director of music of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra of Minnesota (1987-92; principal guest conductor 1992-98) and artistic adviser to the Australian Chamber Orchestra (1989- 93). As his international performing schedule became ever more extensive, he began from 1996 to share conducting and directorial responsibilities at the AAM with Paul Goodwin and Andrew Manze. In 2006 he took the title of emeritus director when Richard Egarr succeeded him as music director. In addition to the orchestral repertoire of the baroque and classical periods in which the AAM specialised, Hogwood also appeared in many of the world's leading opera houses, including Covent Garden, the Paris Opéra, the Deutsche Oper and the Sydney Opera House. His performance of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at La Scala, Milan, in 2006 was well received. He also recorded many operas, including Dido and Aeneas, Handel's Agrippina, Alceste, Orlando and Rinaldo, Haydn's L'Anima del Filosofo, and Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail and La Clemenza di Tito. Hogwood's accomplishments as a keyboard player were demonstrated in recordings of works by Arne, CPE Bach, Louis and François Couperin, William Byrd (My Ladye Nevells Booke and as a contributor to the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), Frescobaldi, Giovanni Gabrieli, Gibbons, Handel and others. His discography also includes a wide range of chamber and vocal repertoire of the early periods, as well as neoclassical music by such composers as Martinů, Stravinsky, Britten, Copland, Tippett and Honegger. His love of the clavichord was evident in his "Secret" series: Secret Mozart, Secret Bach and Secret Handel. Industrious, too, as an editor, Hogwood prepared countless volumes of pieces by composers from Dowland to Cherubini and Koželuch to Benda. He was chairman of the advisory board overseeing the new edition of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works to coincide with the composer's tercentenary in 2014. Of his numerous books, the most substantial were an authoritative biography of Handel (1984, revised 2007) enhanced by entertaining documentary material as well as the insights of a performer; Music at Court (1977); The Trio Sonata (1979); Haydn's Visits to England (1980); and Handel: Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks (2005), all written in lucid and erudite prose. In the later decades of his career he worked increasingly in repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries, preparing editions of, among others, Mendelssohn, Martinů, Elgar (including the Enigma Variations), Brahms and Stravinsky. Of particular note is the publication of the many alternative versions of the overtures and symphonies of Mendelssohn, revealing new insight into the composer's working methods. Hogwood served on numerous editorial and advisory boards, and latterly held guest conductorships with the Kammerorchester Basel (2000-06), Orquesta Ciudad de Granada (2001–04), Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi (2003-06) and the Poznań Philharmonic Orchestra (from 2011). He was also a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music (1992–2008) and at King's College London (1992–96), honorary professor at Cambridge University (2002-08) and professor at Gresham College, London (from 2010), where he gave lectures that can be seen on YouTube. In 1989 he was appointed CBE. The 1840s Cambridge house in which he lived was filled with books, watercolours and an impressive collection of musical instruments, predominantly clavichords, both original and period reproductions. He rarely watched television or films, he once said, preferring to immerse himself in the culture of previous eras. He was nevertheless an affable and engaging friend and colleague to those fortunate to know him. He is survived by his sisters, Frances, Kate and Charlotte, and his brother, Jeremy. Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood, conductor, harpsichordist and musicologist, born 10 September 1941; died 24 September 2014. Handel: Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks. This handbook covers Handel's best known public music, the Water Music, written at the outset of his English career, and the Music for the Royal Fireworks, the last and largest of his orchestral creations. The genesis of these two orchestral suites is examined in its political as well as musical context; practical questions of performance style and interpretation are balanced by an enquiry into Handel's compositional processes, and the relationship of his other large-scale orchestral compositions, especially the Concerti a . Read More. This handbook covers Handel's best known public music, the Water Music, written at the outset of his English career, and the Music for the Royal Fireworks, the last and largest of his orchestral creations. The genesis of these two orchestral suites is examined in its political as well as musical context; practical questions of performance style and interpretation are balanced by an enquiry into Handel's compositional processes, and the relationship of his other large-scale orchestral compositions, especially the Concerti a due cori, to these suites. Original source material is set alongside the most recent theories on Handel's character and working methods. In particular the problem of 'borrowings' is addressed with reference to most recent identifications of Handel's sources, together with the later presentation of these works in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with an account of recordings, editions and a summary of performance questions. Read Less. Haydn's Visits To England by Christopher Hogwood. Christopher’s recording of Haydn’s symphonies 76 and 77 with The Academy of Ancient Music was the cover disk with the May 2005 issue of BBC Music Magazine . Writing in BBC Music Magazine , Richard Wigmore introduces these two delightful, witty symphonies, commissioned in 1782 and intended for performance in London. TRACK LISTING Symphony no. 77 in b flat 1. Vivace 8:50 2. Andante sostenuto 5:37 3. Menuetto (Allegro) 2:42 4. Finale (Allegro spiritoso) 5:50. Symphony no. 76 in e flat 1. Allegro 8:42 2. Adagio, ma non troppo 7:58 3. Menuet (Allegretto) 3:35 4. Finale (Allegro, ma non troppo) 8:01. Total CD duration 51:19. The composer. Haydn’s reputation has fluctuated more, perhaps, than that of any other great composer. Before his London visits in the 1790s he was acclaimed throughout Europe. Following his death in 1809, his music came to seem tame to a century that exalted the confessional and the apocalyptic and he lagged behind Mozart and Beethoven. One problem is the lack of Shaffer Amadeus-type romanticism in his biography. The son of a master-wheelwright, trained as a choirboy at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, Haydn was engaged by Prince Paul Anton Esterházy in 1761 and served the family for the rest of his life. In Haydn’s lifetime his music supremely represented moral and emotional depth. His great symphonies and quartets are among the marvels of civilised art, breathtaking in their expressive range and endlessly unpredictable in their structure. In our fractured age he has a power to uplift the spirit. Nowhere was Haydn’s music more popular than in London, where one newspaper even proposed that the composer should be kidnapped and ‘transplanted’ to England. The Earl of Abingdon had attempted to secure Haydn for his 1782–3 London concert season, announcing: ‘The Shakespeare of musical composition is hourly expected’. Though the visit never materialised — doubtless because Prince Nicolaus Esterházy was reluctant to grant his Kapellmeister leave — its legacy is the set of three symphonies of 1782, Nos 76–78, intended for London. In a letter to the Paris publisher Boyer, Haydn advertised them as ‘beautiful, elegant and by no means over-lengthy. they are all very easy, and without too much concertante [i.e. soloistic passages for wind] for the English gentlemen’. Perhaps, for Haydn, the unusually suave surface of the trilogy’s two major-keyed symphonies, No. 76 and No. 77, represents a conscious attempt to woo the London public. But in essence they continue the trend of Haydn’s music of the late 1770s and early 1780s (especially the Op. 33 quartets), combining an easy tunefulness with a wonderfully subtle, sophisticated craftsmanship — a fusion of ‘popular’ and ‘learned’ styles that reached its apogee in the 12 great London symphonies. Symphony No. 77. Vivace The innocent opening, with its whiff of opera buffa, is deceptive: this is a closely argued movement, full of Haydn’s nonchalant contrapuntal mastery. There is a contrasting lyrical second theme, lightly scored for three-part strings shadowed by a bassoon. The development (2:57) ‘worries’ the opening theme in a series of modulating imitations, and then tightens the screws in a passage of even closer canonic imitation. After a pause, the second theme ushers the music back to the home key for the recapitulation. Apart from the omission of the initial piano statement of the main theme, this remains regular until Haydn opens up surprising new vistas with a whimsical expansion of the second theme (from 4:48). Andante sostenuto This lovely movement, part rondo, part variations, evolves freely from the gracefully ornamented opening theme. The scoring, with muted violins and delicate woodwind colouring, has a chamber-music sensitivity; and as in the opening movement, Haydn uses the device of canonic imitation to intensify the music’s expression. Menuetto (allegro) Refined sentiment is summarily banished in the fast-paced minuet. With its stomping rhythms, offbeat accents and comic touches like the ‘fortissimo fart’ at the start, this is more like a lusty German dance than an aristocratic one. The Trio is a lolloping Ländler, with a folk-style melody over an ‘oompah’ accompaniment. Finale (allegro spiritoso) While the catchy opening tune suggests a rondo, the movement turns out to be in clear sonata form, with everything growing from the contour and rhythm of the fertile opening phrase. At the centre is a tense, brilliant contrapuntal tour de force (2:48) that caps even the first movement’s canonic development. But Haydn has further surprises up his sleeve in the coda where, in a rare moment of ‘concertante’, woodwind and horns give out a blunt, countrified version of the ubiquitous theme. Symphony No. 76. Allegro In typical galant style, the first subject alternates a vigorous call to attention and a gracious descending phrase in dotted rhythm; both elements are resourcefully developed. In the exposition the elegantly contoured second subject (1:14) grows from an apparently incidental phrase heard earlier (0:34). The development (3:35), varying and dissecting the two main themes through a wide spectrum of keys, contains one quietly audacious harmonic stroke. The recapitulation condenses much of the exposition to allow room for a new development of the first theme’s answering phrase. Adagio, ma non troppo Like No. 77’s Andante, this is an amalgam of variations and rondo. Here, though, the structure is more clear-cut: a delicate, almost dainty B flat string melody, increasingly embellished on its later appearances, alternates with two minor-keyed episodes. The first, in B flat minor (1:31), is haunting both in its instrumental colouring and its dusky, Schubertian modulations. In sharp contrast, the G minor second episode (4:46), with its pounding staccatos and volleys of demisemiquavers, prefigures the G minor storms in the Andantes of the ‘Clock’ and ‘London’ symphonies. After the final appearance of the main theme, with a telling new harmonic twist (6:40), a quasi-cadenza recalls the turbulent figuration of the second episode. Menuet (allegretto) This is a more leisurely, courtly affair than the boisterous minuet of No. 77, though Haydn injects a moment of drama when the cadence of the first section is immediately repeated fortissimo in F minor. The Trio is another rustic Ländler, deliciously scored for flute, violins and bassoon in octaves, with the horns joining in where they can. Finale (allegro, ma non troppo) Continuing the urbane spirit of the whole symphony, Haydn writes a leisurely paced finale, built on a single theme of almost finicky elegance. The development (2:57) reveals the theme’s unsuspected strength in a sequence of imitations. As in the finale of No. 77, the coda (4:55) gives the unaccompanied woodwind a moment of glory in a series of tootling, Papageno-ish exchanges. CD key moments A track-by-track guide to Haydn’s Symphonies Nos 77 and 76. Symphony No. 77 First movement (Track 1) Haydn’s transition to the recapitulation has a ‘Mozartian’ smoothness and poise. The development’s strenuous canonic imitations are cut short by a Haydn-esque pause. The second theme reappears in a remote G major (3:35). Second violins start to repeat the theme in G minor (3:44), initiating a sequence of imitations that ease the music back to B flat and recapitulation (3:57). Second movement (Track 2) The expressive climax in a movement that transforms galanterie into pure enchantment begins at 2:53. The opening phrase is intensified in a ravishing series of overlapping imitations, with flute, oboes and bassoon adding delicate washes of colour to the string lines. Even subtler is the moment shortly afterwards (3:39) where the ‘stray’ G flat at the end of the theme’s first half prompts a breathtaking dip from the tonic, F, to D flat. Symphony No. 76 First movement (Track 5) This symphony cultivates an air of genial sophistication, untroubled by darker emotions or knotty compositional ‘problems’. There are moments for the connoisseur in the harmonic sleight-of-hand in the development (from 4:10). The music settles on the brink of D flat, and then the rug is pulled from the listener as the music pivots to E flat. Fourth movement (Track 8) As in No. 77’s first movement, Haydn makes something special of the moment of recapitulation. But here the means are different. The development’s forceful climax leads to a pause; then the tripping theme begins in its original texture but in the ‘wrong’ key of C minor (3:53), stops in its tracks, and, with no harmonic preparation, resumes in the proper key of E flat. Folio Archives 77: Haydn’s Visits to England by Christopher Hogwood 1980. This topic is currently marked as "dormant"—the last message is more than 90 days old. You can revive it by posting a reply. 1wcarter. Haydn’s Visits to England by Christopher Hogwood 1980. Joseph Haydn was the court musician to Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy of Hungary until the latter’s death in 1790. Haydn then moved to Vienna, where he met with a Mr. Salomon, a musical entrepreneur, who persuaded him to visit London in 1791. This small 116 page book is a compilation of extracts from Haydn’s letters and diaries, as well as the letters and diaries of those who met him in England, and newspaper clippings about his visit. The extracts from Haydn’s own letters are particularly interesting, describing English life through the bemused eyes of a foreigner. The extracts are connected by Christopher Hogwood’s commentary. The musical life and mores of London 230 years ago, orchestral procedures and socialisation are all revealed. Haydn was a top celebrity at the time, and was fated by royalty, nobility, the gentry and fellow musicians. Haydn made a second visit in 1794. And this is described in a similar fashion to the first, but Haydn is now less surprised by the strange manners and customs of the English than he was on his first visit. Haydn stated that his time in England were the happiest days of his life. The book has a prelude (using the musical term rather than an introduction) by the author, and 21contemporary black & white illustrations of musicians and patrons, theatres and examples of theatre tickets. It is bound in dark blue cloth with a paper cover label reproduction of a theatre ticket from 1792. The page tops are tinted yellow, and it is housed in a fragile glassine dust-jacket. There is no slipcase. The book is 22.3x14.3cm. and was originally part of a boxed set with two 12in. LP records, but some copies were sold separately. The boxed set contained Haydn’s Music for England played by the Academy of Ancient Music directed by Christopher Hogwood and cost £15.95. I only own the book, not the LPs. Haydn: where to start with his music. Humorous, earnest, prolific and always deeply humane, the Austrian composer is credited with inventing the symphony and the string quartet. Even if that’s not strictly true, his creativity shaped western classical music. A gift for brilliant synthesis of emerging styles . Franz Joseph Haydn. Photograph: DEA/A Dagli Orti/De Agostini/Getty Images. A gift for brilliant synthesis of emerging styles . Franz Joseph Haydn. Photograph: DEA/A Dagli Orti/De Agostini/Getty Images. Last modified on Wed 11 Nov 2020 13.43 GMT. E urope’s most celebrated composer in the late 18th century, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) was known for his brilliant synthesis of emerging styles, which helped set the course of western classical music as we know it. Famed as the father of the symphony and of the string quartet, in reality he invented neither – but he did consolidate new principles of musical form, based on balance and proportion, expectation and fulfilment. Haydn’s gift was in flexing the rules to ensure variety, creating tensions and dramatic effects. As humorous as he was earnest, Haydn always reveals his deep humanity in his music. The music you might recognise. Deutschlandlied, the German national anthem – and Austria’s before that – was originally Haydn’s patriotic anthem written for Emperor Francis II, Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser. Haydn also used the tune in his String Quartet Op 76 No 3, thus the “Emperor” Quartet. It’s also the hymn Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken. Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto is a favourite processional, while the slow movement of his Surprise Symphony – where a gentle theme is punctuated by a startling fortissimo chord – is one of the first tunes taught in children’s music lessons. His life. He was born in Rohrau in 1732; his father was a wheelwright, his mother a cook, and his younger brother Michael would also be a composer. At barely six, Joseph’s gifts saw him uprooted to become a choirboy in Hainburg, then talent-spotted for St Stephen’s cathedral choir in Vienna. This experience of the last throes of baroque music stood him in good stead: Haydn would later say he learned most by listening. He became a freelance musician – singing, playing, teaching – extending his sketchy education by diligent study of counterpoint and theory. Working briefly as valet-accompanist to the composer Nicola Porpora (singing teacher of the famous castrato Farinelli), he was introduced to many of Vienna’s cultural movers and shakers, among them imperial court poet Metastasio and composers Hasse and Gluck. Now getting commissions in the city’s aristocratic circles, Haydn began writing symphonies in the service of Count Morzin. Improving prospects saw him wed Maria Anna Keller, sadly not a marriage made in heaven. But the job of a lifetime came in 1761, when prince Paul Esterházy – super-wealthy, music-loving – appointed him vice kapellmeister at the Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt. Haydn was given full rein as kapellmeister when the extravagant Nicholas succeeded his older brother the following year. Nicholas built a summer palace, at Esterháza, out in the sticks near Ferto over the border in Hungary, and while Haydn never lost touch with Vienna, he wrote that being so remote had forced him to be original. A 19th century painting imagining Haydn playing in a string quartet. Photograph: DEA/A Dagli Orti/De Agostini/Getty Images. Music-making at Esterháza could be intimate, as in the baryton trios (Nicholas was obsessed with this soon-to-be-obsolete stringed instrument), or celebratory, as in name-day cantatas or masses. For the court’s 25-strong orchestra Haydn wrote symphonies – the Trauersymphonie is Haydn in heart-on-sleeve dramatic mode – and concertos, the Cello Concerto in C among them. For a newly constructed opera house, Haydn also composed operas. Il Mondo della Luna, setting Goldoni’s comedy about a bogus astronomer, inaugurated a new season in 1776, while Haydn himself was proud of La Fedeltà Premiata, with its elements of both serious and comic opera. Haydn acquired a name for himself in circles well beyond Esterházy, and Nicholas valued him: on learning that Luigia Polzelli, a singer in his employ he had been about to dismiss, was the composer’s lover – almost certainly the father of her second son, Antonio – the prince kept her on. By the 1780s, Haydn’s contract permitted him outside commissions. The Seven Last Words of Christ was written for Cádiz’s Oratorio della Santa Cueva, its far-ranging keys and final movement’s depiction of the earthquake after the crucifixion remarkably daring. By 1790, it was not just the music that travelled. After Nicholas’s death, his son Anton reduced Haydn’s duties, which allowed the composer to accept an invitation to London from impresario JP Salomon and a commission for symphonies. Advance publicity hailed the arrival of Europe’s “most celebrated composer”. Sailing from Calais to England on New Year’s Day 1791 was symbolic: the visit would spell a new lease of life and artistic freedom. The London symphonies were ecstatically received and Haydn found himself feted as the “Shakespeare of music”. His compositions from this decade signal creative renewal in every genre, songs and piano trios included. And as he briefly teaches the young Ludwig van Beethoven in Vienna, the vast span of his career from the late baroque to the beginnings of the Romantic movement becomes clear. … and times. The Esterházy Summer Palace in Fertod, Hungary, completed in 1766, home for Haydn and his employer, Prince Esterházy Photograph: Csaba Krizsan/EPA. War was an almost constant background in 18th-century Europe. In 1740, Maria Theresa’s accession as empress of the Holy Roman empire had triggered the war of Austrian succession, followed by the seven years’ war. Maria Theresa’s arch-rival was Frederick the Great, the employer of JS Bach’s son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, much admired by Haydn and whose influence he gratefully recognised. This was also the age of the Enlightenment, of Diderot, Rousseau and Voltaire, and, thanks in part to friendships and connections made in Vienna, Haydn kept in touch with the wider intellectual world, eagerly amassing books. He suggested that he sometimes dealt with moral and philosophical issues in his music. His symphony No 22 is known as “The Philosopher”, though it’s not a name given by Haydn. Thanks to the burgeoning music publishing industry, Haydn’s music became popular across Europe. In Paris, Chevalier de St-Georges commissioned symphonies for the Concert de la Loge Olympique in the 1780s (the Paris symphonies, Nos 82-87). In the audience to hear them was Maria Theresa’s daughter Marie-Antoinette. The French revolution meant she would not remain queen for much longer, but her liking for Symphony No 85 led to its nickname, La Reine. Haydn’s London concerts at the Hanover Square and King’s Haymarket rooms are further testimony to this growing phenomenon of music for public edification and entertainment rather than for a religious context or for private performances for the ultra-privileged. Queen Marie Antoinette’s liking for Haydn’s 85th symphony led to its nickname, La Reine. Photograph: Alamy. This was also the age of scientific advancement. In June 1792, Haydn visited Observatory House in Slough, home of the eminent astronomer and discoverer of Uranus, William Herschel, and his sister Caroline, also an astronomer. Haydn did not meet Herschel that day but inspected his 40- foot telescope, then the largest in existence. Did this visit later have a bearing on the opening of his oratorio The Creation – based on the Book of Genesis and on Milton’s Paradise Lost – The Representation of Chaos? It is one of his most arresting pieces of music, its untethered harmonies and the building of acute tension only released with the chorus’s fortissimo declamation of the word “Light!” Victor Weisskopf, a former director of Cern in Switzerland, liked playing a recording of this passage when lecturing on cosmology in the 1960s. (By way of footnote: a crater on the moon was named for Herschel, one on Mars is now named Haydn.) As well as The Creation, and The Seasons, the ageing Haydn – a devout Catholic, who habitually wrote “ In nomine Domini” at the beginning of every piece and “ Laus Deo” at the end – returned to settings of the mass, now on a larger scale. His knowledge of the horror of the French revolutionary wars was reflected in his Missa in Tempore Belli (Mass in Time of War) and the Missa in Angustiis (Mass in Troubled Time, also known as the Nelson Mass). French respect for Haydn’s status meant that in 1809, his final year, when Napoleon invaded Vienna again, two French soldiers were ordered to guard the composer’s door to ensure his safety. Why does he still matter? Beethoven’s anniversary year is a good moment to recognise that, without Joseph Haydn, there would not have been Beethoven. The younger man grudgingly said that he hadn’t learned that much from him, but everything that music had become and that Beethoven had absorbed was coloured by Haydn’s often radical practice. Mozart, to whom Haydn was something of a mentor, dedicated quartets to him in gratitude for his example. Master of melodic invention, his fashioning of simple motivic cells from which evolve whole movements – even entire works – would become a hallmark of his style. The craft, emotional acuity and wit of his music still communicates vividly. Great performers. Haydn - a fundamental for Simon Rattle. Photograph: Andrew Fox/The Guardian. The Esterházy connection meant that conductors such as Antal Dorati with the Philharmonia Hungarica and, more recently, Adam Fischer with the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, made it their business to record the complete symphonies, all 104 of the numbered ones – a treasure trove. For many, though, the period performances of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Frans Brüggen and Christopher Hogwood have the edge. Haydn has been a fundamental for Simon Rattle, also for Mariss Jansons. There is great clarity in performances by the Quatuor Mosaïques, while both the Kodály Quartet and Takács Quartet bring Hungarian sensibilities to their authoritative playing. John Eliot Gardiner’s recordings of Haydn Masses with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists are always rewarding and John McCabe offered a composer’s insight in his admirable mid-1970s recording of the complete piano sonatas. Go to the Florestan for the piano trios, and Cecilia Bartoli is a richly expressive Haydn singer.