Classical Principle Weekly
March 28, 2023
Happy Birthday Joseph Haydn! 🥳 Part 1
On March 31st, two great composers will celebrate their birthdays with our enthusiastic help. Johann Sebastian Bach will be 338 years old, and Franz Joseph Haydn will be 291. In deference to youth, we will celebrate Haydn's birthday first.
Haydn was at the center of the most intense and revolutionary musical progress the world has yet seen. That period lasted a little over a century, from J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier of 1722, till the death of Beethoven in 1827. For that reason, we will interweave Haydn's life within that century, and showcase compositions by many composers. You might be intrigued to hear the dialogue amongst them, and recognize shared ideas. To do justice to Haydn and his colleagues, we divide this into two parts.
HAYDN’S YOUTH
While many of the great composers grew up in a rich environment of great music, Franz Joseph Haydn really was a self made man. One of the chapters in Karl Geiringer's biography "Haydn, a Creative Life in Music'', is entitled "Making Something out of Nothing", and Haydn is indeed a man who made something out of nothing.
He grew up in the small villages of Rohrau and Hainburg in Austria, villages still scarred by war from the Turkish invasion of 1683, where his ancestors suffered greatly. It was an area filled with immigrants from Croatia and Hungary with their rich tradition of folk songs. There were no educated musicians in his family history, and no musicians of note around to teach him; but his family loved folk songs, and often gathered to sing them. He had a beautiful voice and sang these folk songs with his family, accompanying them on a small harp.
Let us skip ahead, just for a moment, to his old age. Haydn loved these folk songs for all of his life, and employed them often. Listen to this Croatian folk song:
and hear it in the final movement of Haydn's last symphony, No. 104. Haydn represents the folk song faithfully, but also develops it in a universal and playful way. Can one be fixated on a narrow parochial identity amidst such surprising change? Here we see the classical principle at work, as a humanizing and universalizing instinct.
His musical talent was so obvious that at the age of six he moved to Rohrau to study with a relative, and at eight, he moved to Vienna to sing in the choir at the famous St. Stephen's Cathedral. The boy was so poor that he made every effort to sing at concerts where free food was offered for the choristers. He complained that worse than starving the body was starving the mind, because he could find out nothing about musical composition. Young Haydn learned the practical way, by playing, singing, and listening. Yet, it was not enough.
He seized every opportunity to learn that he could. When he discovered the six keyboard sonatas by Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach (CPE Bach, son of J.S. Bach) he did not leave the keyboard until he had mastered them all. He had become accustomed to the light and fluffy Rococo works of the time, and here he found serious music that lifted his spirits when depressed. Later he wrote, "Who knows me well, must have found that I owe a great deal to Emmanuel Bach, that I have understood and diligently studied him" Haydn regarded CPE Bach (1714-1788) as a father figure, and studied his "Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments" intensely. Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach commented wryly, that at least one person had understood his book.
CPE began the tradition of German song-setting called Lieder by setting the poems of the man some considered to be Germany's first lyric poet, Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. Here is "Bitten."
Bitten
Gott, deine Güte reicht so weit,
So weit die Wolken gehen,
Du krönst uns mit Barmherzigkeit
Und eilst, uns beizustehen.
Herr! Meine Burg, mein Fels, mein Hort,
Vernimm mein Flehn, merk auf mein Wort;
Denn ich will vor dir beten!
So bitt ich dich, Herr Zebaoth,
Auch nicht um langes Leben.
Im Glücke Demut, Mut in Not,
Das wolltest du mir geben.
In deiner Hand steht meine Zeit;
Laß du mich nur Barmherzigkeit
Vor dir im Tode finden.
Bitten
God, your goodness extends
As far as the clouds travel.
You honour us with compassion
And are quick to our support.
Lord, my fortress, rock and refuge,
Hear my petition and heed my words,
For it is in your presence that I desire to pray.
I ask of you, Lord Zebaoth,
Not for a life that’s long;
Humility in fortune, in need to be strong;
That that should be my lot.
My days rest in your hand;
When in death before you I stand,
Show me your mercy.
Later, Beethoven set the same poem, with remarkable similarities, especially the way both composers set "Herr! Meine Burg, mein Fels, mein Hort", on a single note for the voice.
The music of Emmanuel's father, J.S. Bach had been suppressed enough that except for WF (Wilhelm Friedemann) Bach, his sons no longer wrote fugues. Simple melody and accompaniment had come into favor. Haydn knew Emmanuel Bach, and Mozart knew J.C. Bach, but it was only through the efforts of Baron van Swieten that J.S. Bach (and Handel) were brought back into focus.
Haydn caught another break when Niccolo Porpora moved to Vienna in 1752. Porpora was considered a rival to Handel in his day. He had studied at the famous conservatory Poveri di Gesù Cristo (The Poor of Jesus Christ), in his native Naples. The Naples conservatories were orphanages, and developed Partimenti (similar to figured bass but different) to educate orphans in music. This Conservatory produced several prominent composers and their activities reflect the beatitude: "Blessed are the Poor in spirit, For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven". Listen to an aria by Porpora, and you will understand why Haydn became his valet in 1753, in order to study with him.
Haydn cleaned his shoes, beat his coat, endured being called a blockhead and a beast, and received sundry cuffs from the elderly and crotchety man. It mattered not to Haydn, as long as Porpora was willing to correct his valet's compositions. In a mere three months, Haydn learned the Italian language, bel-canto singing, and "the genuine fundamentals of composition." He began writing symphonies and string quartets around 1757, at the age of 25.
An American musicologist, H C Robbins Landon (1926–2009), was the man who restored Haydn's works, in a manner similar to restoring great paintings by removing the discoloring varnish. His editions of the scores reveal unsuspected treasures, and he worked with the great Hungarian conductor Antal Dorati to record his entire symphonies and operas. One of Robbins-Landon's greatest insights was into a breakthrough made by the composer in 1772. He suggested comparing any slow movement from years previous to 1772, to any that came after. The earlier movements had a certain stiffness about them. Starting with 1772's Symphony No. 42 in D major, they flowed and sang beautifully. The difference? In between, in 1771, Haydn had composed an Italian opera, and his mastery of bel-canto flourished. Hear the difference for yourself.
Let's start with the Andante from Symphony No. 1, composed in 1759. Haydn's was a genius from the beginning, but it does betray a certain march-like stiffness and predictability.
Next, the Andante from Symphony No. 29 in G minor of 1767/68. It has the same match-like stiffness, but it features much more wit, playfulness, and surprise.
Next, the “Andantino e cantabile” from Symphony No. 42 in D major of 1772. What a difference!
Haydn was bringing his increasing mastery of the bel-canto singing voice to instrumental music. The teenaged Mozart was so inspired that he wrote out the entire symphony by hand, (as Beethoven later did with a Mozart string quartet) in order to learn from it. He then composed his own symphony in D major, number 20.
Here is the Andante from Mozart's Symphony No. 20.
Question: In this work, has Mozart already moved beyond the master, or is he still learning from him? Some of my readers might say, "Just enjoy this beautiful music." True enough! It is important though, to identify progress in musical composition, just as you would in physical science. Mozart did say at one point that everything he knew, he learned from "Papa Haydn." Both works are delightful, and even more delightful is the way the two genii fed off each other. In 1781, Mozart moved to Vienna, and he and Haydn strengthened their friendship.
Haydn is often credited with inventing both the modern symphony, and string quartet. There is truth in this. He composed his first string quartets around 1757, shortly after Mozart's birth. Twenty-four years later, in 1781, when he composed his Op. 33 String Quartets, he told Mozart that he had invented an entirely new method of writing string quartets, which he identified with the "Motivfuhrung", or leading by developing a motiv.
It is difficult to hear the breakthrough in his Op. 33 quartets of 1781, over his Op. 20, of 1772. Remember that we have already identified 1772 as a breakthrough year. We are not comparing a breakthrough to an uncreative period, but one breakthrough to another. We might fare better by comparing three works over those 24 years.
1. Here is the first movement of String Quartet Op. 1, No. 1 from 1759. It's about 2 and 1/2 minutes long, fun but not too daring.
2. Here is the first movement of Haydn's String Quartet, Op. 20, No. 5 in F minor from 1772. It is one of a set of six called the “Sun Quartets”.
3. The first movement of Quartet No. 1 in b Minor from the six quartets Op. 33, of 1881. Perhaps, you can hear how his discovery of the “Motivfuhrung” (a composition led by a motif, a short phrase of only a few notes) allows him both a new degree of compactness (musicians might call it "tighter") and surprise.
The story of Haydn is a story of the greatest progress in music that occurred over a period of a little over 100 years. We will continue this in Part 2. In the meanwhile, let us end Part 1 with something extraordinary and beautiful. Haydn's canons were his prize possessions. He did not publish them until the end of his life, and over 40 of them are framed and hanging above his piano at the Haydnhaus in Vienna. This one is called: “The Mother to her Child in the Cradle”
You may follow the words with the video: