More Syndication, Day 3 – Symphony No. 45 by Franz Joseph Haydn

This week’s theme is…More Syndication!  Enjoy some more of my favorite episodes in rerun 🙂

More Syndication, Day 3 – Symphony No. 45 by Franz Joseph Haydn

You never quite know what you’re going to find going through Haydn’s symphonies.  He wrote many, 104 cataloged, and that’s to say nothing of those which have been lost to history, of which there are certainly at least a handful.  Any body of work that extensive will have a few items that fall through the historical cracks, especially with composers as prolific as Haydn continually churning out new music all the time.  The impulse to write for posterity is a Romantic innovation and Haydn and his contemporaries would not have been driven by this mindset, hence neither he nor his librarians felt the great need to preserve every jot and tittle from his pen.

Because he wrote them so often, it seems that Haydn was always on the lookout for clever and creative tricks and twists to enliven the four hundred-some movements of his symphonies.  Haydn was exceedingly intelligent, and not just intelligent, but also obviously concerned that his numerous symphonies transcending mere academic exercise.  If you are at all familiar with his symphonic output, particularly his middle symphonies, than you have probably come to expect the delightful games Haydn plays with his audience, and perhaps even enjoy imagining the reactions of their original listeners who would have been, for the most part, the educated and sophisticated members of the court of Esterhazy in what is today Hungary.  For a particularly clever game, seamlessly integrated into the fabric of one of his symphonies, see this post.

And sometimes the games go beyond mere academic tricks.  On at least one occasion, Haydn used a symphony to communicate, sending a subtle but unambiguous message to his patron.  

It is the last movement that sends this message.  Listen to it now, and see if anything strikes you about it.  Go to 3:00:

What did you hear?  Did you find any of its characteristics unusual?  Well, here’s a few hints.  First of all, it was almost unheard of for symphonies of this time to end with a movement as slow and tranquil as this one.  You would expect to find it as a second movement, possibly a third.  But a finale?  Finales were always quick, bold, and filled with busy agile passages to end the symphony with a flourish.  So what’s the deal with this slow movement?  Also, did you notice that the orchestration became progressively thinner as the movement progressed?  The downbeat is richly scored with strings, winds and horns, but the movement ends with two violins playing a dainty duet.  The melodic material is consistent, unifying the movement, and the form is exquisitely balanced, easily satisfying all of our cognitive expectations with regard to form and development, which is why the movement works so well.  And Haydn really uses the orchestration brilliantly – it actually adds considerable variety to the movement as it thins out over its course.  But, again, this was unheard of at the time.  If you started the movement with a full orchestra, you ended it with a full orchestra.  If your movement ended with a violin duet, it probably began that way.  During the twentieth century, it became more acceptable for composers of art music to play with the orchestration in this way, but the conventions of the eighteenth century strongly discouraged it.  So, again, what’s the deal with these unusual features?

The story goes like this…  Prince Esterhazy, Haydn’s musically cultured patron, enjoyed spending time at his summer palace in the country.  Naturally, he brought along his favorite composer and orchestra to provide musical enrichment on his holiday because, well, you don’t find a composer as good as Haydn producing as he did in an environment which did not value and encourage his contributions.  So Nikolaus would have symphonies in the countryside.  The only problem was that the musicians were separated from their wives and children, who remained at the palace proper.  The excursion ended up being extended beyond the original projections, and the members of Haydn’s orchestra became inordinately homesick, longing for reunion with their loved ones.  And so they needed a plan.  Haydn acted on their behalf, adding this ingenious fifth movement to what is today known as his 45th symphony.  The symphony was all set to follow convention, ending with a quick and stormy fourth movement which would really put a cherry on things.  But Haydn must have burned the midnight oil, designing this pointed musical statement, which the musicians started up right as the final strokes of the original finale were clearing the air.  Can you imagine the Prince Nikolaus’ reaction to hear this surprisingly lyrical encore placed where the applause should be?  And it was presented with its own staging too.  As the musicians’ parts ended, one by one, they each blew out their desk candle and left the stage.  Some modern orchestras have fun with it and present it in a similar way.  This performance really helps you to see how it works:

If you were Prince Nikolaus, how would you have reacted to that stunt?  I wonder what he did after Haydn and Tomasini, the two remaining violinists, walked off stage.  I can imagine him with his fist against his pursed lips, amused by the cheekiness of his kapellmeister and amazed at the quality of the execution, which is exactly why Haydn was there, after all.  Well, according to legend, Nikolaus read his message loud and clear, and the court returned to the main palace the next day.
If you really consider this story, it illuminates the nature of what must have been a most unusual and wonderful relationship between Haydn and Nikolaus Esterhazy.  This was a patron who truly valued his music and those who created it for him.  Haydn may have been a servant, wearing livery and eating at the low table, but Nikolaus knew his worth and would undoubtedly have regarded him as an intellectual equal.  The fact that Haydn felt comfortable expressing this, and that the Prince responded so quickly, and with no hurt feelings, indicates a high level of mutual respect between the two.  Of course, I’m sure it didn’t hurt that the delivery of the message was so artful; simply approaching the powerful patron and asking would surely have met with an entirely different reaction.  The musicians in Haydn’s orchestra seemed to know that he would be able to find a way to persuade the prince using the fiercely intelligent and ever-resourceful tricks that he dispensed in abundance from up his compositional sleeve.  In a body of work already rich with clever and enchanting tricks, this one manages to stand out, yielding what is still one of Haydn’s greatest hits, even two and a half centuries after it was written.

 

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MORE Music About Animals, Day 4 – “Straight opening her fertile womb” from The Creation by Franz Joseph Haydn

This week’s theme is…MORE Music About Animals!  There’s just too much animal fun to contain within a single week…

MORE Music About Animals, Day 4 – “Straight opening her fertile womb” from The Creation by Franz Joseph Haydn

If you were cynical, as some historians are, you could make the case that George Frideric Handel was a stifling, homogenizing influence on British music.  If you were more charitable, you could say he left a stunning legacy that nourished it.  Whichever point of view you take, it is indisputable that he left a deep impression on the face of British music, becoming its greatest composer during his lifetime, and leaving a wake that spanned from the Baroque era to, practically, the modern one.  His influence allowed another German to slip into the British musical scene, dominating it during his lifetime, Felix Mendelssohn.  Mendelssohn does not exactly feel like Handel, but his conservative propriety – he is the most refined and genteel of the early Romantics – played right into the Victorian sensibility, drawing upon the basic outline of Handel’s Anglican inventions.  Most would agree that Purcell was the best English composer before Handel and Elgar the greatest after.  You could make a case for Arthur Sullivan, but in many ways he was not able to escape the gravity of Handel and then Mendelssohn; listening to Sullivan is often very much like listening to a more natively English Mendelssohn in his songs and religious works, or Johann Strauss in his operettas.  Still, most would agree that his comic music manages to carve out a niche all its own, hence its endurance.  Sullivan was frustrated that he did not find a firmer place in the Western firmament – perhaps the legacy which pressed upon the music of his nation had something to do with that.  It was not until the distinctively lyrical music of composers like Elgar (see this post) and Delius (see this post) that English music really began to feel distinctive again, pulling away, at least in part, from the weight of Handel and Mendelssohn (ironically, Delius was quite Germanic, his parents having been born in Westphalia and emigrating to England to expand their wool business.  But his music breathes with a spring-like melodic sense that feels completely British).

Londoners, cosmopolitan by nature, had a way of seeking out musical trends beyond their borders and inviting them in.  This was true during Handel’s day, as the London aristocracy eagerly ate up his Italian operas in the 1720s and 1730s.  A century later they were wild about Mendelssohn.  And right about smack-dab between Handel and Mendelssohn they were totally crazy about another composer, not German but Germanic, the Austrian Franz Joseph Haydn.  As Haydn happily worked away the 1760s, 70s and 80s, composing symphony after symphony for the Esterhazies, his fame was steadily radiating outward from the provincial, rural estate.  When Haydn gained some freedom due to a shift in priorities in his patron family, an impresario named Johann Peter Salomon quickly jumped on the opportunity, offering to broker potentially lucrative trips to London to present the grandest symphonies he had ever produced.  During two trips to London in the 1790s audiences there enthusiastically received Haydn’s last twelve symphonies, often called his “London Symphonies” and sometimes his “Salomon Symphonies” (see this post and this one).  The trips were a resounding success and lucrative for both Haydn and Salomon.  And during his visits to London, Haydn encountered a form of art which made a lasting impression on him, one that inspired some of the greatest and most inventive music of his final years, the oratorios of Handel.

Handel had emigrated to London from his native Germany by way of Italy, settling in the English capital with the intention of living out his days supported by the profits of presenting the Italian operas of his pen, and others’.  This worked well for two decades, filling the 1710s and 1720s.  But in the early 1730s the demand began to wane and Handel was forced to look into other ways to profit from his music (see this post).  The solution he came to is what is now known as Handelian Oratorio, an unstaged biblical opera with rich choruses, set in English.  Handel began to write them in earnest beginning with 1732’s Esther.  In all, he wrote about 20 of them, and they cemented his legacy among the British.  Messiah of 1742 is the best known (see this post), but Handel wrote colorful oratorios about many biblical stories and characters including Joseph, Saul, Solomon (see this post), Samson, Joshua, and many more.  One particularly inventive and dramatically terse oratorio by Handel is Israel in Egypt of 1739 which recounts the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt.  Handel obviously had fun designing special, evocative music to illustrate each of the plagues.  Here’s a few examples…

The frogs – can you hear them hopping?

 

 

The lice and flies –

 

 

And a rather cheerful and splendorously Baroque hailstorm –

 

 

If you think too hard about it you might become depressed by the realization that Handel was setting horrifying images to what is often very cheerful and peppy music.  Best not to – it is entertainment after all.  It is thought that Haydn was particularly taken with Israel in Egypt given similar devices employed in his greatest oratorio, The Creation.   Composed a half century after Israel in Egypt, The Creation is the first of two oratorios composed by Haydn on the Handelian model.  It has all of the essential features: a biblical story, an operatic scale, vocal solos, and rich choruses.  As a work of art it is extraordinarily balanced and constantly illustrates Haydn’s irrepressible resourcefulness.  Like Handel, Haydn had some fun with certain parts of his oratorio.  The best illustration of this is a very dense and ever surprising accompanied recitative in which the archangel Raphael describes the creation of all the different animals of the world.  Follow along with the text as you listen – you’ll be glad you did 🙂

 

 

Straight opening her fertile womb, the earth obey’d the word, and teem’d creatures numberless, in perfect forms and fully grown. Cheerful roaring stands the tawny lion. In sudden leaps the flexible tiger appears. The nimble stag bears up his branching head. With flying mane and fiery look, impatient neighs the sprightly steed. The cattle in herds already seek their food on fields and meadows green. And o’er the ground, as plants, are spread the fleecy, meek and bleating flock. Unnumber’d as the sands in whirls arose the host of insects. In long dimensions creeps with sinuous trace the worm.

The Creation premiered in Vienna (present was Haydn’s student, Beethoven, who kissed his elder on the forehead in front of the audience), but was published immediately both in German and English, clearly intended for sales and performances across the Channel.  A little less than half a century later, Felix Mendelssohn would release his two oratorios, again based on the Handelian frame, in a similar manner.  They were St. Paul and Elijah.
In Handelian oratorio we see a German composer leaving Germany, sprouting in England, and offering the flowers grown in the new soil to his fellow Germans.  However you may view his influence on the development of British music, his legacy is an incredibly strong force to be reckoned with and continues to be felt all around the world to this day.  Handel’s stubborn flexibility ensured that the fruits of his inventiveness, so colorful and attractive, would be enjoyed by his fellow Germanic composers who would then toil to grow their own fruits that tasted as good, tinged with the flavors of their respective eras.

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Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 5 – Agnus dei from Mass in Time of War by Franz Joseph Haydn

This week’s theme is…Them’s fightin’ words!  Since time immemorial humans have found reasons to fight one another.  The images of combat and war fill our stories, our art, and yes, our music.  This week we listen to music colored by the din of combat.

Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 5 – Agnus dei from Mass in Time of War by Franz Joseph Haydn

It can be difficult to reconcile all the different linear presentations of history into the holistic web that is reality, harder still to realize our connection to it as members of the current world, separated from the past only by time.  (Every now and then I will have a rare moment, fleeting like deja vu, during which I realize that the flow of time envelops us all, even those who lived long ago – they did so in real time, never sure of the choices that seem so crystalline in our history books – and they come at the strangest times, but in those moments I feel like I realize the true nature of historical reality and authentically recognize my link with the heritage of our past).  The history of politics, war, architecture, music, art – they are often presented as separate strands.  Or, if you consume a biography of any kind, you are looking at a historical narrative through the vantage point of one perspective, more or less, and again a wider view is lost.  Some historical articles come close, like this kind of thing…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1796

…and it takes a great mental feat to keep it all straight in one’s head.  If you look at the sidebar of that article you will notice subtopics regarding different arts – those are fun to read.

One of the neat things about music history is that you get something of a different perspective, almost a nonlinear view of the official historical record that you would discover in a more straightforward class or textbook on the subject.  In learning about much European art music you discover commentaries on political events of the time, which helps both to place the music in history, and also to humanize the often dry political events, allowing us to understand them from a more empathetic perspective.  The Napoleonic wars, for example, were incredibly impactful on practically every element of life in Central and Western Europe during the first decade of the nineteenth century.  In many ways they were an outgrowth of what are known as the Revolutionary Wars, which saw the various coalitions of post-revolutionary France fighting surrounding monarchies who struggled to contain the specter of democracy which threatened to dissolve the old world order like a strong acid.  The entire nineteenth century was racked with conflicts surrounding this clash of political philosophies (see this post) and the old world order did finally dissolve more than a century later in the cataclysm of the First World War.

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars filled the air of Europe’s central monarchies with a sense of dread and uncertainty that their subjects and rulers must have sensed on a daily basis, or nearly.  Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, the three composers who have come to be known as the “First Viennese School” were all affected by it in some way (to find out about what is now known as the “Second Viennese School”, see this post).  Beethoven’s ambivalence regarding Napoleon is well-known (see this post).  Both he and Haydn lived to see Napoleon crown himself emperor of France in 1804, confirming what many of the French had feared about his ambitions – Europe’s trouble with Napoleon was just beginning and Beethoven’s music would later reflect the effect of his aggression (see this post).  On a side note, it staggers me to realize that Haydn in fact lived a few years past the premiere of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony – he is reported to have said that it was “Much too long, much too loud, and would never become popular” – he was many things, but apparently not a prophet, at least not in this case.  Mozart, passing in 1791, was just catching wind of the forces that would bring about the French Revolution, as alluded to right at the beginning of this scene from Amadeus (for more about Amadeus, see this post and this one):

 

But Haydn experienced the full scope of the French Revolution, from the early gathering storm, to the destructive wake of his coronation which brought with it the revelation that he was just another in a long line of megalomaniacs who had European conquest in their sights and few scruples about using the full force of imperial armed forces to set about achieving it, of whom there would still be more.

The early inklings of what would become the Napoleonic Wars touched and shaped Haydn’s music in a very explicit way in 1796.  At this point, late in his life, Haydn was able to spend most of his time at his residence in Vienna, visiting his old stamping grounds at Esterhazy annually to present a sumptuous setting of the Catholic mass for orchestra, choir, and vocal soloists in honor of his patron, Nikolaus Esterhazy II’s wife, Princess Maria Hermenegild.  Haydn composed six masses for this series, and they are often called his “Late Masses”.  They are not the only masses he wrote, but they are without question the most splendid.  Known to most musicians as the “Father of the Symphony”, a well-deserved title in light of the 100-odd he composed over the greater part of his working life, his symphonic composition had culminated in the 12 he had written for London audiences in the early 1790s.  These, to this day his most famous symphonies (for more about them, see this post), were the last symphonies from his pen, and in a sense he continued the line of stylistic development which ran through them in his 6 Late Masses.  I personally prefer the Late Masses to the London Symphonies.  The forces with which he worked add the colors and textures of choir and vocal soloist to the already colorful orchestra of the late symphonies for a nearly endless variety of textures and moods, limited only by Haydn’s unquenchable powers of invention – hardly a limit at all.

The second of these Late Masses was composed as Napoleon’s forces, having routed the Austrian Army in Italy, turned its sights to Vienna itself (Napoleon would invade Vienna in 1809 – see this post).  Haydn, like so many others loyal to the Austrian monarchy, sensed the tension with their enemy at the gates, and he worked his nation’s collective anxiety into the most agitated Agnus Dei you could imagine within the stylistic boundaries of the common practice.  

 

After a placid initial statement, the choir builds the Agnus Dei to a tense climax, at which point the timpani becomes the centerpiece, seeming to represent the foreboding advancement of a distant army.  Many historians suspect this to be an explicit evocation of the impending French forces and it is this device that is the source of both of the mass’ nicknames, “Mass in time of war” and “Timpani mass”.  After the Agnus Dei is always found the Dona nobis pacem, “grant us peace”, which here becomes an explicit prayer for the needs of the Austrian empire.  After the imploring supplication of the Agnus dei Haydn opens the floodgates of joy and the Dona nobis pacem swings the pendulum as far in the other direction as possible.  Haydn remained devoutly and happily religious his entire life; his message is clear: even amid times of unbearable strife, God is good.
Haydn’s Mass in time of war is a fascinating and explicit example of Europe’s politics intimately shaping its art.  It is easy to lose the big picture of how all disciplines and streams of human endeavor and function interrelate, but it is stories like this, more abundant than we often realize, which show us the deeper connections and help to keep our understanding of history firmly in touch with those who lived before us, not that different from ourselves, even if they can seem distant and irrelevant.

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Classic Haikus, Day 4 – Symphony No. 94, “Surprise” by Franz Joseph Haydn

This week’s theme is…Classic Haikus!

Folks, I’m on Spring Break.

Enjoy these concise poems

On great classic hits…

 

Classic Haikus, Day 4 – Symphony No. 94, “Surprise” by Franz Joseph Haydn

Polite little tune,

Cadential tutti, forte.

Britons a-titter.

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Musical Farewells, Day 1 – Symphony No. 45 by Franz Joseph Haydn

This week’s theme is…Musical Farewells! Parting is such sweet sorrow, but it’s always inevitable.  Musicians have explored the rich feelings of saying goodbye for as long as there has been music.  This week we examine examples of this from all across history.

Musical Farewells, Day 1 – Symphony No. 45 by Franz Joseph Haydn

You never quite know what you’re going to find going through Haydn’s symphonies.  He wrote many, 104 cataloged, and that’s to say nothing of those which have been lost to history, of which there are certainly at least a handful.  Any body of work that extensive will have a few items that fall through the historical cracks, especially with composers as prolific as Haydn continually churning out new music all the time.  The impulse to write for posterity is a Romantic innovation and Haydn and his contemporaries would not have been driven by this mindset, hence neither he nor his librarians felt the great need to preserve every jot and tittle from his pen.

Because he wrote them so often, it seems that Haydn was always on the lookout for clever and creative tricks and twists to enliven the four hundred-some movements of his symphonies.  Haydn was exceedingly intelligent, and not just intelligent, but also obviously concerned that his numerous symphonies transcending mere academic exercise.  If you are at all familiar with his symphonic output, particularly his middle symphonies, than you have probably come to expect the delightful games Haydn plays with his audience, and perhaps even enjoy imagining the reactions of their original listeners who would have been, for the most part, the educated and sophisticated members of the court of Esterhazy in what is today Hungary.  For a particularly clever game, seamlessly integrated into the fabric of one of his symphonies, see this post.

And sometimes the games go beyond mere academic tricks.  On at least one occasion, Haydn used a symphony to communicate, sending a subtle but unambiguous message to his patron.  

It is the last movement that sends this message.  Listen to it now, and see if anything strikes you about it.  Go to 3:00:

 

What did you hear?  Did you find any of its characteristics unusual?  Well, here’s a few hints.  First of all, it was almost unheard of for symphonies of this time to end with a movement as slow and tranquil as this one.  You would expect to find it as a second movement, possibly a third.  But a finale?  Finales were always quick, bold, and filled with busy agile passages to end the symphony with a flourish.  So what’s the deal with this slow movement?  Also, did you notice that the orchestration became progressively thinner as the movement progressed?  The downbeat is richly scored with strings, winds and horns, but the movement ends with two violins playing a dainty duet.  The melodic material is consistent, unifying the movement, and the form is exquisitely balanced, easily satisfying all of our cognitive expectations with regard to form and development, which is why the movement works so well.  And Haydn really uses the orchestration brilliantly – it actually adds considerable variety to the movement as it thins out over its course.  But, again, this was unheard of at the time.  If you started the movement with a full orchestra, you ended it with a full orchestra.  If your movement ended with a violin duet, it probably began that way.  During the twentieth century, it became more acceptable for composers of art music to play with the orchestration in this way, but the conventions of the eighteenth century strongly discouraged it.  So, again, what’s the deal with these unusual features?

The story goes like this…  Prince Esterhazy, Haydn’s musically cultured patron, enjoyed spending time at his summer palace in the country.  Naturally, he brought along his favorite composer and orchestra to provide musical enrichment on his holiday because, well, you don’t find a composer as good as Haydn producing as he did in an environment which did not value and encourage his contributions.  So Nikolaus would have symphonies in the countryside.  The only problem was that the musicians were separated from their wives and children, who remained at the palace proper.  The excursion ended up being extended beyond the original projections, and the members of Haydn’s orchestra became inordinately homesick, longing for reunion with their loved ones.  And so they needed a plan.  Haydn acted on their behalf, adding this ingenious fifth movement to what is today known as his 45th symphony.  The symphony was all set to follow convention, ending with a quick and stormy fourth movement which would really put a cherry on things.  But Haydn must have burned the midnight oil, designing this pointed musical statement, which the musicians started up right as the final strokes of the original finale were clearing the air.  Can you imagine the Prince Nikolaus’ reaction to hear this surprisingly lyrical encore placed where the applause should be?  And it was presented with its own staging too.  As the musicians’ parts ended, one by one, they each blew out their desk candle and left the stage.  Some modern orchestras have fun with it and present it in a similar way.  This performance really helps you to see how it works:

 

If you were Prince Nikolaus, how would you have reacted to that stunt?  I wonder what he did after Haydn and Tomasini, the two remaining violinists, walked off stage.  I can imagine him with his fist against his pursed lips, amused by the cheekiness of his kapellmeister and amazed at the quality of the execution, which is exactly why Haydn was there, after all.  Well, according to legend, Nikolaus read his message loud and clear, and the court returned to the main palace the next day.

 
If you really consider this story, it illuminates the nature of what must have been a most unusual and wonderful relationship between Haydn and Nikolaus Esterhazy.  This was a patron who truly valued his music and those who created it for him.  Haydn may have been a servant, wearing livery and eating at the low table, but Nikolaus knew his worth and would undoubtedly have regarded him as an intellectual equal.  The fact that Haydn felt comfortable expressing this, and that the Prince responded so quickly, and with no hurt feelings, indicates a high level of mutual respect between the two.  Of course, I’m sure it didn’t hurt that the delivery of the message was so artful; simply approaching the powerful patron and asking would surely have met with an entirely different reaction.  The musicians in Haydn’s orchestra seemed to know that he would be able to find a way to persuade the prince using the fiercely intelligent and ever-resourceful tricks that he dispensed in abundance from up his compositional sleeve.  In a body of work already rich with clever and enchanting tricks, this one manages to stand out, yielding what is still one of Haydn’s greatest hits, even two and a half centuries after it was written.

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Really Clever Music, Day 5 – Minuet from Symphony No. 47 by Franz Joseph Haydn

This week’s theme is…Really Clever Music!  All lovers of music respond to its mysterious ability to move them, often describing its effect as soul-deep.  Unlike any other art, music most directly communicates emotions and passions extremely convincingly, and that is why it is so loved.  But music works on another level as well, an intellectual one.  Due to its highly mathematical and systematic nature it can be created to satisfy and delight from an entirely different angle.  This angle is often missed in listening because it is usually much easier to see and comprehend this aspect through analysis and score study.  Every piece this week is written by a very clever composer who was able to craft a beautiful piece of music while, at the same time, manipulating the musical medium in a surprising way that may be discovered upon analysis, almost like an easter egg.

Really Clever Music, Day 5 – Minuet from Symphony No. 47 by Franz Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn wrote 104 symphonies.  But let’s explore that statement a little bit.  I’ve heard it so many times that it’s almost easy to forget what it means.

He wrote 104 symphonies, and that’s just the list that survives.  So that means there is quite possibly a whole bunch more that didn’t.  How many?  50 more?  Another 100?  It’s of course impossible to say, but it’s most certainly more than 104.  And a Haydn symphony has 4 movements.  A movement is kind of like a sub-piece within a larger piece.  It’s entirely self-contained, with its own beginning, middle, end, and double-bar, so it can technically exist by itself and make sense.  Each individual movement will also have its own character, themes, and unique orchestration scheme.  Many, many pieces have multiple movements, including the vast majority of symphonies, by Haydn or any other composer.  So, when we say Haydn wrote 104 symphonies, in a very real sense we are saying that he wrote 416 little pieces.  And that’s just what survives.  If the actual count is 150, then that is 600 little pieces.

And, while Haydn’s symphonies are probably the most famous part of his output, there are numerous other genres in which he worked and was quite prolific.  There are also 68 string quartets, more than 40 concertos, 60 piano sonatas, 45 piano trios, 14 masses, 15 operas, and 2 oratorios.  Again, these lists represent merely what survives, and all of these works contain multiple movements.  You can do the math yourself if you are interested, but you get the idea.  Haydn was prolific.  He wrote a lot of music.  And he was good at it, one of the most skilled and stylish composers of his day, and in all of history.

If you were writing that much, do you think you might try to find ways to keep things fresh from time to time?  Apparently Haydn did.  And he is also known to be clever and generally good-natured.  If you read through his catalogue and study individual movements, especially the middle symphonies I’ve found, say from around 30 to 80 or so, you will discover a variety of arrestingly clever and intriguing little games that Haydn played, sometimes with himself, sometimes with his fellow musicians, and sometimes with his listeners, just to keep his music fresh.  Here’s one of my favorites. Sit back and listen to it, and then we’ll explore what makes it special:

A nice little piece, right?  It sounds good and is most pleasing to listen to.  It’s the third movement minuet from what has been catalogued as his 47th symphony, which is speculated to have come about halfway through his symphonic production.  It works on its own as a piece of music, even without knowing what’s clever about it.  But, there’s something.  So, what’s the game?  Did anything strike you as odd or distinctive about that?  Give it another listen, and this time pay attention the the accented notes and the direction of the melodic gestures, which Haydn plants as clues.

Still not sure?  Let me give you a hint then.  Have you ever come across this phrase?

“A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL PANAMA”

That pithy little phrase probably refers to Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th American president, under whose presidency work on the Panama Canal was begun.  But have you ever seen this phrase before?  It’s a classic and justifiably famous example of a kind of linguistic device.  I think Urban Dictionary actually puts it pretty well, but be careful before clicking on this as UD is not always the safest website for work or school:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=a+man+a+plan+a+canal+panama

A palindrome is any phrase that is the same when read forwards and backwards.  Read the Panama phrase from the right and see what you get.  Pretty neat, right?  And while the Urban Dictionary definition is a little tasteless (after all, it is Urban Dictionary), I more or less concur with its sentiment.  While longer palindromes exist, they tend not to be as succinct, graceful, or just plain meaningful as “A man, a plan, a Canal Panama”.  For instance, my brother and I had a silly book of palindromes while we were growing up and its authors must have chosen the longest palindrome they could possibly come up with for the title: “Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog!”  Sure, it’s a palindrome, but it doesn’t really mean anything.  “Canal Panama” truly does, and manages to express its palindromic content in a manner both witty and couth.

Coincidence: Looks like Wisconsin Public Service anticipated the fact that we would be considering palindromes in this post.  Co-Coincidence: The check number is also a palindrome.  Cue Rod Serling…

Why were we discussing palindromes again?  Oh, right.  The minuet from Haydn’s 47th Symphony.  Give it one more listen and think about palindromes as you do:

Now do you hear it?  The second strain of the minuet is the same as the first strain backwards (exactly), and the second strain of the trio is the same as the first strain backwards (exactly).  The repetition is exact with regard to notes, orchestration, dynamics, and articulations.  You may have to listen a few times to understand the repeat structure.  It’s the typical manner of performance to play the first strain twice, then the second strain twice and then…oh enough of that.  Here’s a picture:

Do you see the repeats?  Simply put, in Haydn’s minuet, “B” is “A” backwards, and “D” is “C” backwards.  Don’t worry about the x, y, p and q at the bottom unless you care to listen more closely to the phrase structure – it’s not really necessary to understand the palindrome.  Listen to it one more time and follow that map above:

 

And don’t feel bad if you didn’t get just from listening.  I remember the first time I was introduced to this ingenious little piece.  The professor who was teaching music theory my sophomore year brought in this recording and told us “This piece has a secret.  Can you figure out what it is?”  We must have spent most of the hour-long class period listening over and over.  And a few people figured it out.  It was fun to see their faces as they got it.  And I must confess, I was not one of the brilliant few who deciphered the code.  I was thoroughly befuddled and did not hear it until it was pointed out.  So, again, don’t feel bad if you didn’t either.
But it sure is clever, isn’t it?  And not just clever, artful.  What really impresses me about Haydn’s minuet is that it works so well as a piece of music, even you don’t know how it’s put together.  Sure, it may feel quirky and prove a bit awkward to dance to, but it still flows and makes perfect sense as a musical composition, exhibiting all of the finest qualities of classical-era music.  Haydn would never sacrifice his superlative sense of elegance, grace, tunefulness or invention simply to employ a mathematical device; like the great artist he was he managed to create a harmonious and stylish piece of music that manages to be both brilliant science and transcendent art.  To me that’s the best kind of concept music.  Anyone can write a musical palindrome, literally anyone who has been acquainted with a bit of music notation.  But to do it so artfully that the music speaks in complete congruence, and even stands out a bit, with the entire body of German symphonic literature?  That is genius.  And it is so seamless you could easily miss it!

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Music about Morning and Sunrise, Day 5 – Symphony No. 6 “Morning” by Franz Joseph Haydn

This week’s theme is…Music about morning and sunrise!  Every day is like a gift, a chance to start anew and clear away whatever happened on the previous one.  The gift is always announced by yet another appearance of an old friend, the sun, who rises to greet us in the morning.  Because of our subjective view of astronomical features the sun seems to rise in the morning, first filling the sky with dawn’s glorious painting, keeping us in suspense, and then finally showing itself in full splendor.  This has been an inspiring image for many musicians who have sought to illustrate that cycle through sound.  This week we look at a variety of such examples.

Music about Morning and Sunrise, Day 5 – Symphony No. 6 “Morning” by Franz Joseph Haydn

 

Have you ever had a big break in your career?  Joseph Haydn did, in 1761.  By this point the 29-year old composer had tasted the highs and lows of freelancing and would have been ready for something more stable, which is what he got in his position of kapellmeister for the Hungarian Esterhazy family.  The stories of Haydn’s earliest musical experiences and development are fascinating, especially as you imagine the young, energetic, and essentially anonymous, man sucking as much marrow as he could out of his adventures.

Born most provincially in the tiny Austrian village of Rohrau, he shortly gravitated toward the opportunities of Austria’s cultural center, Vienna, where he sang and underwent training as a choirboy beginning at age 8.  This lasted into his late teens and there are varying accounts regarding his expulsion from the choir.  They may all be correct.  One factor was his changing voice; once puberty hit the boys choirs had no use for men.  I have also heard that Haydn was expelled for a practical joke which involved snipping the ponytail off of a fellow chorister.  Whatever the reason, Haydn soon found himself adrift and scrambling to support himself, suddenly kicking himself for not having studied harder at school (and haven’t we all?!).  Haydn’s parents would have been much happier had he pursued the priesthood, and would most likely have supported him financially in that endeavor.  But Haydn’s mission was a musical one and he had to find his own way, at one point settling for a “wretched attic without a stove”.  Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Haydn worked vigorously, teaching pupils, playing for churches, and networking with as many preeminent musicians in Vienna as he could, all the while making a concerted independent study of the craft of composition.

As his renown grew he was eventually able to land a kapellmeister gig for the aristocratic Count Morzin.  Haydn directed his orchestra and wrote his first symphonies there, including this one, his first:

 

That’s number 1 out of a total of 104, folks.  The symphonies, for which he is best known, were Haydn’s essays in an emerging and, by that time, popular genre of music which Haydn quickly mastered.  In that first symphony you can already hear his mature symphonic format, essentially complete.

Count Morzin was a bit of a spendthrift, and for this reason Haydn’s post was not to last.  After only a few years the count had squandered a large part of his fortune and had to let the orchestra go.  But Haydn was quickly offered a new job, again as kapellmeister, with another music-loving aristocratic family, the Esterhazys.  It is in this position that he spent the remainder of his life, busy, thriving and quite satisfied.

The Esterhazys, like Morzin, had a resident orchestra and must have managed their money better, because it was never disbanded, at least not during Haydn’s tenure.  Haydn had this fine group at his disposal for his entire career and he created as fine a body of work for them as is probably possible by a single artist.  He got right to work with a thank you gift for the Esterhazys in light of his recent hiring, a set of three symphonies, his sixth, seventh, and eighth.

If you know anything about Haydn’s many symphonies, you probably know that a great deal of them, in the neighborhood of half I think, have nicknames that suggest an image someone has heard in the music.  Most of the nicknames are not from Haydn, which means his music just has a naturally vivid and fresh quality, but it is often fun to think that he was guided by the ideas to capture the essence of different things in his music.

Symphonies 6, 7 and 8 are Haydn’s first symphonies to be nicknamed, and I’ve read they were not imposed by him, but it’s hard for me to buy that number 6, at least, was not intentionally written to capture its subject.  I often associate this trilogy of symphonies with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, the 4 violin concertos written for each season of the year, albeit in their Mediterranean manifestations.  For more about Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, see this post.  The nicknames of Haydn’s Symphonies 6, 7 and 8 are “Le matin”, “Le midi”, and “Le soir” – “morning”, “noon”, and “evening”.  Noon and evening may have been added later to round out the set, but Symphony 6 is definitely a morning kind of piece, and very cleverly done.  Listen to the fresh, vibrant symphony here:

 

There are two particularly clever programmatic features that identify Symphony No. 6 as being about the morning.  The first is the opening, which depicts the rising sun.  Play it again and see if you can hear the warm, swelling glow as the sun materializes over the horizon, filling the sky.  The brisk allegro that follows illustrates the hustle and bustle of everyone starting their day in response to the sun’s greeting.

And then the slower second movement.  This one I love, having been a solfege teacher.  Listen to the beginning of the movement here and see if you see any images in response:

 

Do you hear the soft, shapeless, rather stodgy choir of students singing the scale in the beginning, ascending flat, right before the solo violin, representing the singing teacher, energetically and insistently sings up the scale to correct them, with the rest of the class emphatically repeating the corrected pitch?  That’s right, the introduction of the slow movement is about a singing class.  I can relate, having been on both sides of the podium.  Haydn really captures it.

This charming, youthful symphony, was not the last time Haydn depicted the sun musically.  Almost 40 years later, just as the nineteenth century was dawning, he wrote his great oratorio The Creation, which is full of unexpected and clever musical illustrations of the biblical creation story.  In this number, the archangel Uriel sings of the creation of the sun.  Do you hear the resemblance to Haydn’s Sixth Symphony, composed half a lifetime ago?

 

It’s not that much different, is it?  Haydn’s compositional voice was remarkably mature when started working for the Esterhazys in 1761.  

Haydn inherited an emerging symphonic tradition and also perfected it in its early form, discerning the path and bringing together various techniques and forms that had worked so well during the Baroque era.  The conductor Esa Pekka Salonen provides his fascinating commentary on this process and how he observes it to have played out in Haydn’s remarkable and wonderful Symphony No. 6, Morning:

 

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Music about Poultry, Day 4 – Symphony No. 83 “The Hen” by Franz Joseph Haydn

The theme of this week’s Smart and Soulful blog is…Music about poultry!  Every piece this week contains some illustration or reference to great birds that have been used for human food consumption.  While the works in this playlist span centuries I think you will be struck by how similar the representations tend to be across styles.  We’ve always been fascinated by birds and their unique mannerisms have provided musicians with inspiration and material to work into their compositions throughout human history.  Some have done it almost obsessively, but for many musicians it was just the right thing to try at a certain time.

Music about Poultry, Day 4 – Symphony No. 83 “The Hen” by Franz Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn’s reputation as the “Father of the Symphony” rests more or less on the last 12 specimens of his gigantic symphonic output.  104 symphonies have survived in the history of our age, but the last 12, all written for visits to London toward the end of his life, most successfully anticipate the symphonic form the composers of his successive generations, starting with his student Ludwig van Beethoven, would use for their own statements in the genre.  So, it is these 12 works of refinement, perfection, and orchestral and formal adeptness, which had delighted the sophisticated audiences of London during the final decade of the eighteenth century that are most frequently performed, recorded, and heard in our own age.  For further reading about one of Haydn’s London Symphonies, see this post.

But the London Symphonies are only 12 of his surviving 104, barely 10%!  Aren’t you at least a little curious about the other 90%?  Well, fortunately for you you’re not alone, and in recent years many music historians, performers and record producers have shared your interest, happily generating a significant body of scholarship, performances and recordings of his earlier symphonies as well.  And aren’t we the lucky ones?  Yes, we most certainly are.  As much as I enjoy Haydn’s 12 London Symphonies for their mature voice and flawless balance, the earlier ones, written all across his life, are a positive treasure trove of fresh, inventive and appealing music, especially when performed with the sonorous clarity of a great period instruments ensemble.  The man just never ran out of ideas, and a lot of them are insanely creative.  And in exploring his earlier symphonic output, even a little bit of it (I mean, 104 symphonies – who, besides H. C. Robbins Landon of course, has time to get into all of that?!), you will discover amazingly inventive, almost cheeky, ideas that he would never have put in front of the stuffy London audiences.

Haydn had struggled through his 20s as a freelance musician, cycling through various roles of teacher, performer, composer, and assistant to other composers.  While he studied, observed and learned much during this time, he was only too happy to abandon the uncertainty of the freelance lifestyle for a regular appointment, funded by his wealthy patrons, the aristocratic Esterhazy family, as he approached his 30th year.  It was in this position, running the extremely busy musical activities of the cultivated Esterhazys, that Haydn happily lived out his remaining years.  Unceasing as it was, Haydn took the opportunity in service of his patrons to develop into one of the finest and most consistent composers in Western music history.  While he worked in many genres during his time with the Esterhazys, including solo piano, string quartet, opera, other chamber music like piano trios, and sacred music like settings of the mass, his most significant contributions to the history of music are a result of his captive orchestra for which he continually produced new symphonies.  60 of his symphonies, more than half of his total, starting with number 20, were written for his orchestra at Esterhazy.

Over the course of this continuous production Haydn developed his very clever and inventive manner of creating 4-movement symphonies that perfectly balanced wit, elegance and depth of feeling.  These middle symphonies are delightful, filled with infectious melodies, zesty rhythms, wistful slow movements, crystalline orchestration, and governed by a general tightness and efficiency of motivic development that worked with the musical material in a most pleasing and captivating manner.  Symphony after symphony he created in this mold and by the time he hit his stride he probably could not write a note or phrase that felt at all out of place.  These middle symphonies are also filled with numerous features that are extremely clever or unexpected, and they fit perfectly within his idiom.

Another aspect of Haydn’s middle symphonies composed for the orchestra at Esterhazy is their tendency to exhibit some characteristics of a style that came to be known as Sturm und Drang, German for “Storm and Stress”.  Originally a movement of literature which, in reaction to Enlightenment philosophy, emphasized a highly emotional and subjective approach, many musicians working in the late Classical era, in anticipation of the more romantic manner of music-making just around the corner, created works that feel agitated, panicked, and even depressed or gloomy.  I don’t know if Haydn’s character ever quite allowed him to get all the way there, but a large handful of his symphonic movements from the 1760s and 1770s seem to illustrate the stylistic tendencies of musical Sturm und Drang with minor keys, fast tempos, agitated and syncopated rhythms, jagged and disjunct melodic lines, and a general stormy and excitable feeling.  But many of his major key works exhibit these tendencies also, and those just feel peppy and enthusiastic.  Whatever the reason for these tendencies, I think there are other composers who more fully realize the vision of Sturm und Drang, like CPE Bach, for example, but it is notable to point out this influence in Haydn’s works of this time.

While Haydn stayed in the employment of the Esterhazys for his entire life, a change in his contract of 1779 allowed him to accept commissions from parties outside of that family, which opened up many great opportunities to him that were previously impossible.  Haydn’s fame, owing to the prolific and finely-crafted nature of his output, was rapidly spreading throughout Europe and many other patrons were happy to have the chance to commission him themselves.  The London visits of the 1790s that resulted in the 12 great London Symphonies are the most important example of this, but another notable instance is the 6 symphonies, numbered 82 through 86, known as the “Paris Symphonies”, commissioned by the management of one of the French capital’s largest and finest orchestras, Le Concert de la loge Olympique in the mid 1780s.  The commissioning party was not disappointed, and the fine set of 6 symphonies Haydn produced in fulfillment of his charge seem to crown his middle symphonic style, with the clever and efficient writing, clear orchestration, clever touches, and often zippy Sturm und Drang feeling.

The second of the six, Symphony Number 83, is nicknamed “The Hen”.  Listen to the first movement (which is quite Sturm und Drang) and see if you can figure out why:

 

Do you hear it in the second theme, the peppier, major key passage that contrasts with the stormy opening, starting at 1:10?  Listeners of this movement have noted a distinct hen-like image that is evoked by that theme.  Like so many of Haydn’s nicknamed symphonies, it is very hard to know whether this image was intentionally evoked, or if the witty guy just felt like it was the right thing to write.  Whatever he was thinking, it’s almost comical the way that second theme contrasts with the stormy first movement, but delightfully so.  And on the whole it sure is a fresh, crisp symphonic movement, packed to the gills with engaging twists and turns.  You can listen to the complete 4 movement symphony, from a different orchestra, here:

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Music about Time and Clocks, Day 2 – Symphony No. 101 “The Clock” by Franz Joseph Haydn

The theme of this week’s Smart and Soulful blog is…Time and Clocks!  Every piece of music this week deals with time or timepieces in an interesting way.  None of us can escape the existential dilemma to which time subjects us and dealing with that can motivate humor or deep contemplation.  This week we will experience a mix of both and plenty that is in between.  If you think about it, music is constantly governed by time.  It necessarily exists in time and is always regulated by a meter which musicians often describe as simply the music’s “time”.  But beyond these obvious artifacts of its nature, many musicians have used the medium to explore and illustrate time in other ways.

Day 2 – Symphony No. 101 “The Clock” by Franz Joseph Haydn

Can a clock be a metaphor for life?

There’s nothing worse than getting stuck in a rut, is there?  We humans tend to crave novelty in our body of experience and so if you do anything often enough chances are you will try to find ways to keep it fresh and vary the routine.  It is evident to me from examining his symphonic output that this was certainly true of Franz Joseph Haydn.  The “father” of both the symphony and the string quartet, he all but invented both genres and also brought them to their initial stages of maturity and perfection.  And he wrote lots of both.  In total there are almost 70 string quartets and more than 100 symphonies (104 is the official number).  There are also most certainly some of each that, for whatever reason, have been lost to the fog of history and are therefore not part of the final count, so those numbers almost certainly underrepresent his actual output.  In short, Haydn was fantastically prolific, generating one pleasing and balanced score after another, and creating the early body of works for both the symphony and quartet, in addition to all of the other genres in which he worked.

Anyone who creates so laboriously and routinely runs the risk of boredom and stagnation.  Can you imagine how many minuets Haydn composed over the course of his career?  It has to be more than a thousand.  The third movement of practically every four-movement work is a minuet, even if not in name.  I’ve read that Haydn hated writing minuets.  But he had to, and that hatred motivated him to get really creative.  If you look at the minuets in his middle symphonies (say those numbered between 30 and 70) you will discover a host of clever and creative ways that he spiced them up, all the while keeping within the accepted minuet and trio framework so popular in his day.  And it is for a similar reason I’m sure that so many of Haydn’s symphonies bear imaginative nicknames.  Just glance through this list of his symphonies and you’ll get a sense of it.  From quickly looking over the list I would estimate that a good 30 to 40 percent of that massive symphonic output bear subtitles.  The sources of these names are not always known; perhaps Haydn named some himself (some he surely did), and other monikers were probably applied by fellow musicians who were reminded of various subjects from performing or listening to them.  But either way, there are obviously many non-musical resonances that must have inspired Haydn’s writing at various times.  All across Haydn’s symphonic production are works that bear these nicknames, often in reference to features of the symphony that seem to bear resemblance to the reference that is named.

One rather explicit example comes from Symphony 101.  It is nicknamed “The Clock” for its second movement.  Listen to it here:

Can you hear it?  The incessant eight note ticking that pervades the texture from beginning to end, halting only at major cadences.  Haydn’s quirky sense of humor permeates this Andante movement, and wasn’t he crafty?  It is hard to determine, I think, whether this was intended to illustrate a literal mechanical clock or if it is rather a sly commentary on the well-worn but highly oiled choreography of aristocratic life.  Haydn had known both famine and feast, successfully passing from penniless street-waifery to the status of musical darling of a wealthy patron.  It is certain that Haydn enjoyed the view and the fineries of his station, but did he ever find the whole social stratosphere to be at all absurd?  I often wonder about this as I listen to his music, so fully capturing the gentility of courtly life, but also seeming at the same time to poke fun at it.  This clock movement strikes me as a particularly playful skewering of the aristocratic endeavor: everything is just a little too mannered, too stiff, too self-important.  Can you hear it?  Can you picture the finely adorned ladies and gentlemen going about their stale routines, with their self-satisfied noses pointing skyward in a biting parody of just another day in the life of the eighteenth century European upper crust?  Is the more turbulent and passionate minore middle section a release of bottled ignoble noble passions, a yearning for freedom like that of a caged exotic bird?  Maybe I’m reading into it a little too much, and I hardly think Haydn would have owned up to doing that intentionally, but great music often reveals what is beneath the surface.  I think it fits just a little too well…

You could easily mistake this movement for a gavotte, that most clock-like of aristocratic dances.  Gavottes can parody themselves without realizing it.  And the rhythms that govern them often feel like clocks with their square pendula endlessly swinging back and forth.  So maybe this gavotte became a clock by simply exaggerating its most basic feature.  Whatever the cause, Haydn certainly has fun with it, moving the “pendulum” around the orchestra to keep our interest.  First the bassoons tap it out giving the pulse a deep, woody resonance that feels like the grandfather clock in the hallway.   Then the strings pick it up and pass it about before eventually handing it back to the bassoons.  Even in the turbulent middle minore section the pulse is almost always there even if the thickness of the scoring obscures it.  But then, at the recap of the opening maggiore the ticking pulse is picked up by the flutes in addition to the bassoons, giving the clock a much more diminutive feeling.  Perhaps it has receded to the mantel.  It its most transparently scored moments the pulse is dispensed with entirely before coming back with a vengeance in the thickly scored triplet-laden finale which brings the movement to a close and reveals the movement to be a set of variations.  Haydn was crafty.  Quite possibly the craftiest creative mind to grace classical music.

As you can tell from the number, Symphony 101 comes very close to the end of Haydn’s symphonic output.  It is from his final 12 symphonies, often taken as a set (actually technically 2 sets of 6) called the London Symphonies because they were all written to be performed during 2 visits to London toward the end of Haydn’s life.  He found himself adored during these visits and responded to this admiration by creating his grandest, most opulent ever symphonic works.  In these final 12 symphonies, filled with beauty and balance from beginning to end, he expanded the accepted classical forms to a new scale and set into motion the great German symphonic tradition that would find its next great (and some would say ultimate) expression in the works of Beethoven less than a generation later.  Symphony 101 is considered by many to be especially strong, even amid the other luminous 11, with its tight and tuneful outer movements, clever clock andante and unusually long but well-proportioned minuet (refer to previous comments regarding Haydn’s attitude toward writing minuets!).  I recommend that you listen to the symphony in its entirety to get a sense of Haydn’s creative powers at the apogee of his career:

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