Joseph Haydn: Craftsman and Genius
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Haydn Edition liner notes I. JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809) Joseph Haydn: Craftsman and Genius by Richard Wigmore Symphonies Immediately after his appointment at the Haydn has long been dubbed ‘the father of the Esterházy court in 1761 he produced his symphony’. Taken literally, this is absurd. The celebrated ‘Times of symphony had evolved out of the Italian opera overture in the first decades of the eighteenth Day’ triptych, Nos 6-8. In these fetching century. From the 1730s composers such as G. B. programmatic works (No. 6, ‘Le matin’, opens Sammartini in Milan, Johann Stamitz, Ignaz with a sunrise, while No. 8, ‘Le soir’, closes with a Holzbauer and F. X. Richter in Mannheim, genial storm that to our ears sounds more like a and M. G. Monn and Christoph Wagenseil in hunt) Haydn crosses the symphony with Vienna turned out a regular supply of chattering the concerto grosso, writing extended solos for ‘sinfonias’ and ‘overtures’ (the terms were virtually everyone in his crack orchestra right interchangeable). Haydn will have played and down to the lowly double bass. There is even studied symphonies by Monn, Wagenseil and more flamboyant solo writing in the so-called others before he wrote his own earliest ‘Hornsignal’, No, 31, of 1765, with its symphonies, by which time the symphony was extravagant virtuoso writing for a quartet of bidding to horns. In the resonant hall of the Esterházys’ eclipse the concerto in popularity in Austria and Eisenstadt palace the effect will have been southern Germany. Yet Haydn can be regarded sensational. as the father of the symphony in the sense that During the late 1760s and early 1770s Haydn he was the first to realise fully the genre’s composed a whole series of sorrowful or dramatic potential. For all their slightness, his agitated symphonies in the minor mode. Most earliest symphonies already reveal a taut logic, a famous of these are No. 49, ‘La passione’, No. 44, sense that each phrase implies its successor, ‘Mourning’, and the ‘Farewell’, No. 45, the latter unequalled by his older contemporaries. From more famous for the finale’s charming the mid-1760s his disappearing act (the players literally voting symphonies grew in scale and individuality ; and with their the finest works of the years around 1770 feet for a return to their families in Eisenstadt) combine inspired eccentricity, impassioned than its revolutionary originality. This outburst rhetoric and unprecedented structural of minor keyed angst has spawned the label sophistication. By the 1790s Haydn’s late ‘Sturm und Drang’ (Storm and Stress), after the symphonies and the last four symphonies of slightly later German literary movement of that Mozart had made the genre, with the string name. Few of the major-keyed works from quartet, the supreme touchstone of instrumental around 1770 could be described as stormy or composition. stressful. One exception is the fiery and eccentric In the 1750s and 1760s the lingua franca in No. 46, in the outlandish key of B major, which in southern Germany and the Habsburg lands was an astonishing structural twist brings back part the Italianate buffo style: frivolous, short- of the minuet in the finale – a foretaste of breathed, staking much on surface bustle. The 20 Beethoven’s use of the same ploy, in a very or so works Haydn wrote between 1757 (the different context, in the Fifth Symphony. Yet probable date of his earliest symphonies, Nos 1, whether turbulent, playful or (as in the amply 18 and 37) and 1760 for his first full-time scaled No. 48, the so-called ‘Maria Theresa’) employer, Count Morzin, add to this his own ceremonial, virtually every symphony of these brand of nervous energy and a taste, more years is intensely individual, reflecting Haydn’s pronounced than that of his contemporaries, for restless exploration of the genre’s potential. the comic and the wayward. Haydn’s production of symphonies peaked in the years 1774-5, with works such as No. 56 in C – another C major work resplendent with pealing 95594 Haydn Edition 1 high horns and timpani – the dizzy six- relished sonorous splendour and bold, assertive movement ‘Il distratto’, No. 60, concocted from gestures in their symphonies. Haydn took incidental music to a French comedy, and No. 67, account of this, above all in the two works with with its unusual ‘hunting-style’ opening trumpets and drums: No. 86, with its brooding movement and its ravishing Adagio interlude in slow movement, marked ‘Capriccio’, and No. 82, the finale. By this time Haydn’s symphonies had whose piping finale theme over a drone bass become less strenuous, more ‘popular’ in tone. reminded contemporary listeners of the music But if the dominant spirit is again one of comic that accompanied dancing bears, hence the opera, as it had been in the earliest works, there nickname ‘L’Ours’. The use of a French folksong is no falling off in craftsmanship and in the Allegretto second movement of No. 85 (‘La inventiveness. From 1776 onwards Haydn’s Reine’) apparently made it a favourite of Marie prodigious activities as opera composer-cum- Antoinette. The other nicknamed symphony, No. impresario at the Esterházy court left him little 83 in G minor, takes its sobriquet ‘La Poule’ from time for instrumental composition. Symphonies the oboe’s clucking accompaniment to the were spasmodic, and opening Allegro’s ‘second subject’, though often recycled existing music. Cases in point are barnyard jollity is hardly characteristic of the No. 53 – the enigmatically titled ‘L’Impériale – movement as a whole. Haydn also pays tribute and No. 63, ‘La Roxelane’, whose theme-and- throughout these symphonies to the Parisian variation second movement reuses a melody taste for colourful wind writing, above all in the associated with the heroine Roxelane in beautiful cadenzas in the slow movements of incidental music Haydn had provided for Nos 84 and 87. Favart’s comedy Les trios sultanes . Two After the huge success of the ‘Paris’ set, Haydn outstanding symphonies of these lean years are lost no time composing further symphonies for No. 70, which alternates D major jollity and D the lucrative Parisian market. Of the five works minor severity (the centrepiece of the finale is a of 1787-89 (Nos 88-92), two have always ferocious D minor fugue), and No. eclipsed the others in public favour. No. 88 owes 75, in which Haydn infuses his popular style its perennial popularity to its combination of with a new grandeur and sinewy strength. tunefulness, intellectual power and sheer élan, Beginning with Nos 76-78, designed for an and to the exalted melody of the Largo, of which aborted visit to London, Haydn’s symphonies Brahms allegedly exclaimed, ‘I want my Ninth from 1782 onwards were written expressly for Symphony to sound like this.’ No. 92 became outside consumption rather than the Esterházy famous in England in 1791 when it was played court. Haydn was by now the most celebrated on the occasion of Haydn’s receiving his composer in Europe ; and publishers were doctorate at Oxford University. The thrilling, falling over each other to secure the rights to his tightly woven first movement works miracles latest instrumental works. These three from the slightest of themes, the nostalgic symphonies (‘beautiful, elegant, and by no Adagio rivals No. 88’s in melodic sublimity, while means over long’, as Haydn described them), and the finale is a masterpiece of wit and the three that followed in 1783-4 contrapuntal brio. (Nos 79-81) combine an easy tunefulness with a The twelve symphonies Haydn composed on his refined craftsmanship and elaborate ‘motivic two London visits of 1791-2 and 1794-5, Nos 93- work’ that reflects the proximity of the Op. 33 104, build on the fusion of easy memorability Quartets. The two minor-keyed works, Nos 78 and intellectual rigour found in the works of the and 80, have strenuous first movements, though 1780s. His melodies become more spacious and their finales, unlike those of the ‘Sturm und more popular-sounding, his forms still freer, his Drang’ symphonies, are thoroughly cheerful. The plunges into distant keys still bolder. syncopated opening of No. 80’s finale, fashioned Inspired, too, by his first-hand experience of the so that we do not initially hear it as syncopated, London orchestras, his orchestration outdoes is one of Haydn’s funniest rhythmic jokes. even the works written for Paris in imagination With the six works commissioned by Le Concert and panache – nowhere more so than in the de la Loge Olympique in Paris in 1784-5, at the almost impressionistic colourings of No. 102’s enormous fee of 25 louis d’or per work (five Adagio. These are Haydn’s most glittering, times the sum Mozart had received for his ‘Paris’ worldly symphonies, reflecting the milieu in Symphony of 1778), the symphony again which they assumed a dominant position in Haydn’s life. were written and his determination to impress a Though Haydn never visited the French capital, broad public. The sensational effects in, say, the he wrote this works with an eye to local taste Andante of the ‘Surprise’, No. 94, and the and the prowess of the large Parisian orchestra. Allegretto of the ‘Military’, No. 100, guaranteed As Mozart had reported to his father, the French instant popularity. Yet these symphonies are 95594 Haydn Edition 2 more searchingly argued than all but a handful the D major Harpsichord Concerto (Hob: XVIII: of his earlier works. Their slow introductions 11) of c 1780, with its crisp opening movement, and several of their profound, meditative slow rhapsodically ornamented Adagio and Tokay- movements (especially those of Nos 98, 99, 102 flavoured gypsy-style rondo, and the Trumpet and 104) epitomise ‘the sublime’ (eighteenth- Concerto of 1796, his last substantial orchestral centurybuzzword) in music.