Joseph Haydn

The Symphonies of Joseph Haydn

These recordings of the 106 complete extant Haydn symphonies have been organised into fifteen volumes, as listed in the table on pp. 12-13. * (Until Nos. 76-78 of c. 1782, the ordering of the traditional “104” numbers is seriously inaccurate.) Insofar as possible, the volumes are ordered chronologically. Bur many works before c. 1780 cannot be precisely dated and have had to be assigned somewhat arbitrarily; also a certain degree of overlapping between volumes is unavoidable. Details are given in a note on chronology in each volume.

In general Haydn composed for what today would be called a chamber orchestra; until the 1780s it was a very small ensemble indeed. During his earliest years at the Esterházy court (through c. 1767), the normal complement was approximately thirteen to sixteen players: strings most often 3-3-1-1-1 (though there may have been as many as eight violins on occasion), plus pairs of oboes and horns, one bassoon (doubling the cello and violone [double bass] on the bass part), and often one flute; trumpets and drums were exceptional. (The still earlier Morzin ensemble was presumably no larger; to judge by the music, it included no flutes.) Beginning in the late 1760s, the band gradually increased in size, primarily owing to the Prince’s growing passion for opera, which necessitated a larger and more varied ensemble. From c. 1768 to c. 1775, it usually numbered sixteen to eighteen, with the string section now approximately 4-4-2-1-1; in 1776, with the opening of the court opera house and the expansion of the season, the ensemble grew again, reaching in the 1780s a maximum of twenty-two to twenty-four, with the strings approximately 6-5-2-2-2. Only in London, where in 1792-94 Salomon’s band totalled nearly forty players (around 8-8-4-5-4) and in 1795 the “Professional” orchestra approached sixty (around 10-10-5-6-5, with doubled winds), were Haydn’s forces appropriate for brilliant, “public” symphonies. Again, details are given where needed in the chronological note to each volume.

Haydn almost certainly used no keyboard instrument in his symphonies, except in London. This view, which differs from earlier ones but is now widely held among scholars, is based on the following criteria: (1) Haydn’s symphony autographs include no figures or indications of a keyboard instrument whatever, whereas those for other orchestral genres (concerti, vocal music) do so in abundance. (2) The authentic performing materials include absolutely no keyboard parts, figures, or references to keyboard instruments. (3) There is no evidence that the Esterházy court ever employed a separate keyboard or continuo player (other than Haydn himself), and some evidence that Haydn led the ensemble from the violin (by his own testimony, he was a good enough violinist to perform as the soloist in concertos). (4) The finale of the Farewell Symphony (No.45), in which each player has a little solo before departing, includes no keyboard music and ends with two unaccompanied solo violins (presumably Haydn and his concertmaster Luigi Tomasini). (5) Aspects of style which formerly were thought to demand filling-out by a continuo (lean orchestration, two- and three-part writing) are now viewed as characteristic and desirable. (6) Even with respect to the London symphonies - where Haydn indeed “presided” at the keyboard - the continental sources, including those prepared under his direction, include no key board part; this confirms the hypothesis that none was used for symphonies there. These recordings are the first on original instruments to realise Haydn’s sonic intentions in this essential respect. I offer a full explanation of the reasoning behind this decision in an article published in the November 1990 issue of Early Music (OUP).

* The 106 works comprise Hoboken I: 1-104, 107 and 108 (Landon designates the latter two as “A” and “B” respectively). A few additional movements survive as fragments; see Volumes 9 and 10 of these recordings. (Hoboken’s No. 105 is a sinfonia concertante [1792] for oboe, bassoon, violin, cello and orchestra: No. 106 is the overture to Le pescatrici.) No other genuine Haydn symphonies are known.

James Webster

Volume 1

Symphony No. 1 in D major
Symphony No. 2 in C major
Symphony No. 4 in D major
Symphony No. 5 in A major
Symphony No. 10 in D major
Symphony No. 11 in E flat major
Symphony No. 18 in G major
Symphony No. 27 in G major
Symphony No. 32 in C major
Symphony No. 37 in C major
Symphony No. 107 (Partita) in B flat major

Notes on repertory, chronology, and instrumentation

Volume 1 of these complete recordings is devoted to eleven of Haydn’s earliest symphonies, most of which he probably composed c. 1757-60 while Director of Music at the court of Count Ferdinand Maximilian Franz Morzin (1693-1763).1 Together with his son Carl Joseph Franz (1717-83), Count Morzin maintained a modest musical establishment, both during the winter season in Vienna and at his summer estate in Lukavec near Plzen in Bohemia.

Haydn’s biographer Griesinger states explicitly that he composed Symphony No. 1 in D while in Morzin’s service; if so, he must have composed others for the same purpose. That he composed symphonies before his move to the Esterházy court in 1761 is confirmed by surviving sources for Nos. l and 37 from the late 1750s (see below). In addition, these two symphonies and nine others (Nos. 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 27, 32, 33 and 107 [“A”]) are transmitted by uniform, early, reliable manuscript copies from a subgroup of the so-called “Fürnberg” sources; this subgroup appears to comprise pre-Esterházy works exclusively.2 (The Fürnberg collection contains many MS copies made with Haydn’s approval and participation – evidenced in the first instance by emendations in his hand – including some of the symphony MSS in question.) Another symphony, No. 18, is transmitted in a different, equally uniform set of MSS in the same collection, together with the same two documented early works, Nos. 1 and 37. Furthermore, these works share stylistic traits that are uncharacteristic of Haydn’s symphonies known to date from 1761 and after.

This combination of uniform sources and stylistic similarities suggests that these symphonies share a common origin. Hence it seems likely that most, if not all, were composed for Morzin. This volume includes all except No. 33, which for technical reasons appears in Volume 2. (The latter also contains the remaining symphonies that Haydn may have composed before his move to the Esterházy court in 1761 (Nos. 3, 15, 17, 19, 20, 25 and 108 [“B”]). Their sources and style are more varied than is the case for those collected here, although it remains possible that some of them could nevertheless have been written for Morzin.)

Nowhere are the problems of dating more daunting than with respect to the pre-Esterházy symphonies. None survives in autograph, no documentation survives regarding Morzin’s Kapelle, and very little regarding Haydn’s musical activities generally before his move to Eszterháza. Moreover, in this case the issue seems unusually acute, because it entails the question of origins. The dates and circumstances of the earliest efforts by “the father of the symphony” inevitably colour our views, not only of the artistic development of a genius but of our entire musical heritage.

We know from Haydn’s autobiographical sketch and other accounts that his employment by Morzin followed a period of patronage by Baron Carl Joseph Fürnberg and preceded his move to the Esterházy court. (He composed his first string quartets and other chamber works for Fürnberg, but as far as we know nothing for orchestra.) Now Haydn must have left Morzin sometime between December 1760 (the parish registration of his marriage on 26 November refers to him as Morzin’s director of music), and 1 May 1761 (the date of his formal contract of employment with Esterházy). But the more significant date from the point of view of “origins” is that of his entry into Morzin’s service – and this is undocumented. Griesinger gives “1759”, but this is not persuasive:

(1) He offers it only in connection with his statement that the symphony we know as No. 1 in D was Haydns first (“as Haydn vividly recalls”, he wrote elsewhere). In fact, however, a a non-authentic source for this work was acquired by a different musical establishment in 1759. Since in general a work does not begin showing up in secondary sources until at least a year following its completion, this implies a date of 1758 at the latest.

(2) A similar source for Symphony No.37 is dated “1758”. By the same reasoning, it probably originated not later than 1757 – and hence if No. 1 really was Haydn’s first symphony, it too must date from 1757 or earlier.

(3) When Haydn – in old age – looked through a list of his symphonies sent to him by the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel, he grouped them chronologically by decades and wrote as the heading for the earliest group “1757-67”. This choice of a specific year, rather than a “round” number like “1760”, implies that he indeed believed that his earliest symphonies dated from 1757.

(4) Finally, the sheer quantity of symphonies he apparently composed before Esterházy (twelve to nineteen works) implies a period longer than merely the two years from 1759 to 1761. (From 1761 to 1774, by comparison, his average output was approximately 3.25 symphonies per year.)

All this implies that Haydn entered Morzin’s service and composed his earliest symphonies most likely in 1757; that his first symphony was indeed the one we know as No.1 in D and that No. 37 was among the very earliest; and that they were soon followed by Nos. 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 18, 27, 32, 33, and 107 (“A”). Since there is at present no secure basis for further chronological discrimination among these works3, the listener is free to enjoy them collectively as the first delectable fruits of Haydn’s symphonic muse.

With one exception, the works in this volume are scored for the “standard” mid-century ensemble of strings, two oboes, and two horns. The exception is No.32 in C, for which trumpets and timpani are transmitted in good sources and have therefore been included in our recording. (Contrary to a common opinion, many of the other early “C-major symphonies”, including No. 37, appear not to have been composed with trumpets and timpani in mind.)4

Nothing is known about the size or composition of Morzin’s ensemble, except the negative inference from Haydn’s scores that it comprised only the “standard” instruments: two oboes, two horns, and presumably a bassoon doubling the bass, plus strings. Given his relatively modest circumstances, it seems unlikely that his band should have been larger than Prince Esterházy’s. Hence we have maintained the strings at 4-4-1-1-1, the same forces applied to Haydn’s earliest Esterházy symphonies.

James Webster 1993

1 Further on the topics discussed in this note: Sonja Gerlach, “Haydns ‘chronologische’ Sinfonienliste für Breitkopf & Härtel”, Haydn-Studien, 6/2 (1988), 116-29; “Fragen zur Chronologie von Haydns frühen Sinfonien” (forthcoming); preface to Joseph Haydn: Werke (Henle), series 3/4, vols. 1-2 (forthcoming). Gerlach’s studies largely supersede earlier ones, of which the most important were Georg Feder, “Die Überlieferung und Verbreitung der handschriftlichen Quellen zu Haydns Werken”, Haydn-Studien, 1 (1965-67), 3-42 (transl. in The Haydn Yearbook, 4 [1968]); H.C. Robbins Landon , Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 1 , Haydn: The Early Years 1732-1765, (London, 1980), 235-42, 280-83; Jens Peter Larsen, “Haydn’s Early Symphonies: The Problem of Dating”, in Music in the Classic Period: Essays in Honor of Barry S. Brook, ed. Allan W. Atlas (New York, 1985), pp. 117-31.

2 Nos. 3 and 15 also are transmitted in early Fürnberg sources, but they belong to a different subgroup.

3 In particular. as Gerlach demonstrates in “Fragen”, Landon’s hypothesis regarding Haydn’s chronological ordering of the Fürnberg sources is based on a misidentification of order-numbers on the sources as being in Haydn’s own hand (they apparently are not), and is otherwise self-contradictory. (Unfortunately, she then proceeds to detailed chronological groupings based on style, which are hardly less speculative.)

4 Gerlach, ”Haydns Orchestermusiker von 1761 bis 1774”, Haydn-Studien, 4 (1976-80), 43-44.

Symphonies for Count Morzin, c. 1757-60

This earliest group of Haydn’s symphonies presents a relatively uniform profile, at least compared to the almost bewildering variety of those in Volumes 2 and 3. As noted above, all eleven works are scored for two oboes, two horns, and strings (plus trumpets and timpani in No. 32), and only the opening slow movement of No. 5 features overtly concertante writing. They fall into well-defined cyclic patterns, which furthermore are correlated with differences of style and tone for the individual movements; these combinations of cyclic forms and movement-styles create a number of distinct “types” for the symphonies as a whole. (None exhibits what would later become the standard four-movement form, fast-slow-minuet-fast.) It was these clear types which largely guaranteed their intelligibility for eighteenth-century listeners.

A majority of these symphonies (Nos. 1, 2, 4, 10, 27, 107 [A]) are in three movements, fast-slow-fast, with the slow movement in a contrasting key. The only two works in four movements with a fast opening movement are in C (Nos. 32 and 37); however, their interior movements are in “reverse” order (minuet preceding the slow movement). The two remaining four-movement works (Nos. 5 and 11) place the slow movement in the initial position, producing the sequence slow-fast-minuet-fast; in addition, all four movements are in the tonic.1 They also differ from all the other works in this volume in being set in the relatively “distant” keys of A and E flat (otherwise the keys range only from D to B flat). Finally, No. 18 also begins with a slow movement, but the cycle (again in the tonic throughout) is completed with only two additional movements: an interior Allegro and a Tempo di Menuet finale.

The fast opening movements are always the longest and “weightiest” in their respective works, in sonata form or a close variant, and in 3/4 or 4/4. (The only exceptions are the two four-movement symphonies in C, in which the opening Allegro molto is in what would later become the “finale” meter 2/4). The slow movements are also relatively fast (Andante) and usually “light” in style (even when in a minor key or pseudo-contrapuntal) and likewise in sonata form; they are scored for strings alone. The finales are very fast and very short, and stand in 3/8 meter (in No. 107 [A] in 6/8); they are either miniature sonata forms or da capo structures.

By contrast, in Nos. 5, 11, and 18 the initial slow movement, as befits its “leading” position, tends to be a weighty, highly developed Adagio (Andante in No. 18, but nonetheless highly wrought and in part contrapuntal); it includes the oboes and horns as well. Hence the main fast movement in second position is shorter and more uniform in texture, or less highly developed in form, than a fast opening movement; again in consequence, the finale eschews the “brief 3/8” type in favour of duple meter, more elaborate sonata form, and different styles (or in No. 18, a long Tempo di Menuet).

These “types” are indeed easy to grasp. What may at first be less obvious – but even more important – is Haydn’s mastery within such apparently limiting contexts.2 The notion of his “immature” beginnings is a myth, a specious justification of the notion of his invention of “Classical style” around 1780. Haydn thought differently: by his own testimony, he learned “the true fundamentals of composition” from Nicola Porpora (probably beginning in 1753); as we have seen, he began to compose symphonies not long thereafter. Indeed, his earliest symphonies exhibit the imaginative, resourceful, and varied responses that characterize mature artists. These works are in full command of musical technique, appropriate in style, adequately varied, and (once one forgets about “Classical style”) surprisingly expressive. Many works exhibit considerable thematic integration and offer unique and convincing manipulations of symphonic form. Even the apparently routine da capo finales harbour a rich variety of procedures; each is unique in form.3 The better we get to know Haydn’s early symphonies (and the more we hear contemporary works by other Austrian composers), the more we are persuaded of their technical competence and of their generic and rhetorical adequacy.

Symphony No. 1 in D major

1. Presto
2. Andante
3. Finale: Presto

This most familiar of all Haydn’s early symphonies begins, unusually, with a rising crescendo (not to be confused with the much longer and less unstable “Mannheim crescendo”). The opening Presto, for all its unceasing rhythmic drive, includes many different motivic ideas – they are not really “themes” – and changes of texture: for example, early in the second group in the dominant, the sudden breaking off and contrasting piano texture just when we expect a strong cadence; or the brief, agitated minore episode in contrasting one-and-one-half bar phrases. The brief development fragments and recombines the motives; striking are the horn fanfares that announce the impending recapitulation, which is considerably shortened but otherwise proceeds regularly.

The slow movement establishes once and for all the inimitable sprightly profundity that is so characteristic of Haydn’s interior Andantes. It is in sonata form, with a “surprise” turn to the minor mode and denser counterpoint for the reprise of the opening theme. The concluding Presto similarly exemplifies Haydn’s “brief 3/8” finale style; but the phrasing is irregular and unpredictable throughout.

Symphony No. 2 in C major

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Finale: Presto

This symphony explodes once and for all the notion that the young Haydn’s instrumental works are conventional. The opening Allegro is unique; its “subject-matter” is a kind of dialogue or confrontation between traditional and modern styles. Although it begins straightforwardly with a vigorous, dotted-rhythmed unison theme and a homophonic continuation, the piano counterstatement suddenly invokes academic counterpoint (in “mixed” species). Indeed the entire movement is dominated by free alternation between rough-and-ready homophony and contrapuntal passages based on the rising dotted theme. But it is formally unique as well. It is Haydn’s only fast symphony first movement lacking internal repeats of its two structural parts (exposition; development + recapitulation).4 Although the exposition form is clear, the putative development soon – too soon? – leads to what turns out to be the first of three separate returns to the tonic. Why? Because Haydn wants to present the theme thrice more, now in the tonic, each time in a new contrapuntal elaboration. Indeed the last of these ushers in a more or less regular recapitulation of the second group in the tonic - except for the one last contrapuntal passage, which repeats, in invertible counterpoint, the beginning of the “development”.

The Andante is a perpetuum mobile for the two violin parts in unison over a “walking” bass; although it is in sonata form, it too, like the Allegro, omits the internal repeats. Even the finale, though stylistically a normal 3/8 da capo movement, is formally unique in Haydn’s symphonic finales: a five-part rondo form, A-B-A-C-A, with the first episode in the tonic minor and the second in the subdominant.

Symphony No. 4 in D major

1. Presto
2. Andante
3. Finale: Tempo di Menuetto

The opening Presto of this symphony resembles that of No. 1 (also a Presto in D) as a “type”, in its motivically driving character, and in such passages as the minor-mode interlude for violins alone. In the development, however, the impressive twofold modulating crescendo sequence and the long, suspenseful retransition are very different. But the real departure is the Andante, one of Haydn’s earliest “atmospheric” studies. It is set in the minor, the violins con sordino, and it welds three separate rhythms – freely developing melody, beginning messa di voce; sinuously syncopated, melodically active inner part; “walking” bass – into a mood that is not easily described, but once heard is not easily forgotten. The Tempo di Menuetto finale begins with one of Haydn’s earliest thematicist gestures: whereas in the Presto the violins swooped down the scale from A to D, now they sweep right back up from D to A. It is a miniature sonata form; the development, though merely a long dominant pedal, moves in its second half into the minor, on a motive that recalls the end of the Andante.

Symphony No. 5 in A major

1. Adagio, ma non troppo
2. Allegro
3. Minuet – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

This is the first of two symphonies in this volume with the movement-sequence slow-fast-minuet-fast. Accordingly, the opening slow movement is an Adagio (ma non troppo), serious in tone, densely wrought, with a subtle, six-bar opening melody marked sonically by concertante horn interjections. (In all this, it resembles the more familiar No. 21 in A [see Volume 4], except there the oboes take the concertante lead.) Its construction is a straightforward sonata form, with the horns defining the form: the beginning of the recapitulation is highlighted by new wind doublings of the main theme, and the end by the unexpected return of a long-lost fanfare.

The second movement, Allegro 3/4, is dominated first by a unison main theme with striking dotted rhythms, then by incessantly forward-driving music articulated mainly by syncopations and tremolos. Even the one brief contrasting idea is built on restless eighth notes and non-periodic, sequentially developing motives; as so often in early Haydn, it is everything other than relaxing. The beginning of the recapitulation strikingly unites the tremolos and the dotted opening theme, the latter in free canon at the interval of a crotchet. The vigorous minuet again features the winds, especially in the trio. The short but spirited finale, Presto alla breve, is based on rapidly alternating, mainly contrapuntal phrases.

Symphony No. 10 in D major

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Finale: Presto

The first movement of this symphony somewhat resembles those of Nos. 1 and 4, but there are differences as well: the tempo is Allegro rather than Presto, the harmonic rhythm is slower and the texture changes less often, and the brief piano episode for violins alone avoids the minor mode. The sonata-form Andante seems more leisurely than many other movements of its type, with a less continuous, more varied texture. In the 3/8 Presto finale, unlike many others, the middle section is as long, proportionately, as an average Haydn development section; it contains both a dominant pedal and a minore interlude.

Symphony No. 11 in E flat major

1. Adagio cantabile
2. Allegro
3. Minuet – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

In distinction to the cyclically similar Symphony No. 5, No. 11 opens with an ornate, triplet-rhythmed Adagio cantabile essentially for the strings alone; it evens begins formally with a trio-sonata-like alternation between second and first violins (No.18 is similar). The horns have only punctuating notes and harmonic pedals, and the oboes, remarkably, are tacent altogether. They join in for the second movement, Allegro, which begins with a five-note theme that will remind some listeners of the famous four-note “cantus-firmus” of the finale of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. Sure enough, it receives overtly contrapuntal treatment in the piano passage of the second group and (especially) at the beginning of the recapitulation. (The same theme appears in three other Haydn symphony finales, always with contrapuntal implications.)

The minuet, in galant, dotted-rhythmed style, features a series of discrete motives in pervasively irregular phrasing; the trio is for strings alone and, unusually, is in the dominant; its three-layered rhythm resembles that in the minor-mode Andante of Symphony No. 4. The finale, like that in No. 5, eschews the usual 3/8 wind-up in favour of a Presto 2/4. It cedes nothing to the 3/8 type in boisterousness, but unlike them has a full, if hasty sonata-form design.

Symphony No. 18 in C major

1. Andante moderato
2. Allegro molto
3. Tempo di Menuet

This work is in three movements, with the sequence slow-fast-Tempo di Menuet; that is, the first two resemble those in Nos. 5 and 11, but the finale reverts to a more nearly “galant” mood. Accordingly, the initial slow movement is serious in tone, with a formal, trio-sonata-like opening similar to that in No. 11 (though some listeners may choose to hear the dotted motives as perky, almost divertimento-like). It is in two repeated halves like a sonata movement, but without a formal reprise of the beginning; the material simply continues to develop. The same is true in the second movement, perhaps owing to its interior position; certainly it is relentless, with no let-up in the ceaseless driving quaver rhythms. The concluding Tempo di Menuet is long and leisurely, with an equally long trio in the tonic minor. The return of the minuet is written out and played without internal repeats; at the end comes a distinctly “cyclic” feature: an additional phrase featuring dotted motives distantly, but unmistakably, recalls the opening Adagio.

Symphony No. 27 in C major

1. Allegro molto
2. Andante siciliano
3. Finale: Presto

The opening Allegro molto of this symphony begins with a striking “long-note” theme rising through the tonic triad; later in the dominant, it is varied in imitative piano texture. Although a passage in downward tremolo arpeggios resembles the interior fast movement of Symphony No. 18 (in the same key), as a whole the movement has the motivic and textural variety characteristic of opening fast movements. The Andante siciliano is outwardly conventional, but its phrasing is irregular (exposition: 7 + 5 + 6 bars) and the development is mainly in the minor mode. The Presto finale is a typical 3/8 wind-up, distinguished in the second group by a series of fast rising scales that vaguely resemble the La tempesta finale of Symphony No. 8, Le soir.

Symphony No. 32 in C major

1. Allegro molto
2. Menuet – Trio
3. Adagio ma non troppo
4. Finale: Presto

Unlike No.2, this symphony with trumpets and drums splendidly incorporates the festive C major type common in Haydn’s early œuvre. As noted above, it exhibits the otherwise unusual 2/4 opening movement typical of this group. The development leads to what may or may not be a “false recapitulation”: after a barely sufficient length of time and degree of activity, the tonic is well and clearly prepared; but what follows is a new, imitative, modulating version of the second theme; the opening theme follows a little later. The galant Menuet follows in second position; the trio in the minor shows how much Haydn could do with conventional formulas. The slow movement, by exception an Adagio ma non troppo, is in the subdominant; in brief sonata form, it too adverts briefly to the minor just when we think the true reprise is at hand. The brief Presto 3/8 finale is in miniature sonata form, with a middle section that, however brief, genuinely modulates.

Symphony No. 37 in C major

1. Presto
2. Menuet – Trio
3. Andante
4. Presto

Like No. 32, this work exemplifies Haydn’s C major style; insofar as it appears not to have originally included trumpets and drums, however, it is less festive and more nearly typical of his early symphonies in general. The opening Presto, for all its clarity of form, is a fantastic farrago of distinct but related motives, whose shapes and formal functions constantly change. The stately minuet with dotted rhythms again comes second, and again the trio is in the tonic minor, this time with more pointedly original material. The Andante is also in the tonic minor (an unusual “doubling” of the related key); it is more regular in phrasing than that in No. 32, but has greater variety of material and texture and attains greater expressiveness and harmonic range in the development. The finale, again Presto 3/8, is even more abrupt and includes more internal contrast than most of its colleagues.

Symphony No. 107 (“A”) in B flat (Partita)

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Allegro molto

Although this work was long thought to be an early string quartet (“Op. 1 No. 5”), its status as one of Haydn’s earliest symphonies has been clear since Landon’s publication of it in the 1950s. But it does seem slightly unusual in the present context, in part because of its key (it is the only “fast-movement” work on the flat side). The opening Allegro, with a “rocketing” upward theme, exhibits the usual bustle; it includes a relatively long and complex development section. The Andante is a beautiful, finely wrought miniature, which develops surprising variety out of its basically simple idea (note particularly the fate of the initial downward octave-leap). The triple-meter wind-up, unusually, is in 6/8 rather than 3/8, perhaps owing to its rushing semiquavers in Allegro molto (rather than quavers in Presto). In the transition and second group it becomes surprisingly complex in texture; the beginning of the recapitulation (if it is not merely under-articulated) is one of the earliest of Haydn’s “surprises” of this kind.

James Webster 1993

1 One often encounters the term “church-sonata form” applied to such works; this is an anachronism , for in eighteenth-century Austria many “normal” symphonies were performed in church, and conversely a slow or moderate opening movement had no necessary connection with such an institution. See Neal Zaslaw, “Mozart, Haydn and the Sinfonia da chiesa”, Journal of Musicology, 1 (1982), 95-124; James Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in his Instrumental Music (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991). pp. 177, 193.

2 Webster. Haydn’s “Farwell” Symphony, pp. 357-66; compare Webster, “Freedom of Form in Haydn’s Early String Quartets”, in Larsen et al., eds., Haydn Studies: Proceedings of the International Haydn Conference, Washington, D.C., 1975 (New York: Norton, 1981), pp. 522-30.

3 Webster, “The D-Major Interlude in Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony”, in Eugene K. Wolf and Edward H. Roesner, eds., Studies in Musical Sources and Style: Essays in Honor of Jan LaRue (Madison, Wis.: A-R, 1990), pp. 348-52.

4 The fast part of the opening movement of Symphony No. 15 (in Volume 2) also has no internal repeats. Indeed it is equally – though of course differently – unique: it is the middle section of an A-B-A movement whose outer parts are an elaborate Adagio.

Volume 2

Symphony No. 3 in G major
Symphony No. 14 in A major
Symphony No. 15 in D major
Symphony No. 17 in F major
Symphony No. 19 in D major
Symphony No. 20 in C major
Symphony No. 25 in C major
Symphony No. 33 in C major
Symphony No. 36 in E flat major
Symphony No. 108 (Partita) in B flat major

Notes on repertory, chronology and instrumentation

The symphonies recorded here overlap chronologically with those in Volume 1 (composed mainly or entirely for Count Morzin, c. 1757-60) and Volume 3 (Haydn’s earliest works for the Esterházy court, 1761-63).1 But there is a crucial difference: whereas both of those groups enjoy a uniform provenance, and all the Morzin symphonies resemble each other stylistically, the symphonies in this volume are varied and heterogeneous. This is so in part because they comprise those works about which we know almost nothing – not the purposes for which Haydn composed them, nor the venues in which they were premiered, nor their dates of composition (except for the consensus that none is later than 1763). Although scholars have been well aware of these difficulties, they have tended to overlook or suppress them in their (understandable) desire to achieve “results”.

Nos. 3, 15 and 33 survive in sources which suggest a pre-Esterházy origin: so-called “Fürnberg” MSS (a collection owned by the son of the Baron Fürnberg who commissioned Haydn’s first string quartets). However, only the MS for No. 33 has the same (excellent) provenance as those in Volume 1 and can therefore be safely dated c. 1760 (or earlier); those for Nos. 3 and 15 seem to be later and less reliable. For No. 3, however, we have an additional indication of early date in its acquisition by the monastery at Göttweig in 1762; the only other Haydn symphonies to come to Göttweig so early were the undoubted pre-Esterházy works Nos. 4, 5, and 107 (A); conversely, no Esterházy symphonies did so until 1764. For No. 15, however, there is no similar confirmation of an early date.

Another potential clue to dating lies in the differences in scoring and instrumental usage between the very early symphonies and those of the Esterházy years. Whereas the former are restricted to the “standard” ensemble of the two oboes, two horns and strings (plus trumpets and timpani in Nos. 32-33) and have only a few prominent soloistic passages (and these only for horns), the documented early Esterházy works positively revel in new instrumental combinations, and feature numerous concertante soloists in more extended passages. The presence of similar features in Nos. 14 and 36 suggests that they may also be Esterházy works. In the Andante of No. 14, an obbligato cello doubles the violin melody at the lower octave (exactly as in No. 16), and the trio is led by a solo oboe. The slow movement of No. 36 is a concertante duet for solo violin and cello, somewhat reminiscent of the double-concerto Adagio in Le midi (1761).

Two other cases are less clear. No. 15 features the horns in the slow sections of the first movement (but this occurs in the early No. 5 as well, and in any case the first movement of No. 15 is so unusual that it cannot be used in this sort of comparative study); it also includes a solo cello in the trio. No. 108 includes a modest solo bassoon part in the trio; but this very modesty, and the fact that it is a bassoon (which always doubled the bass-line) distinguishes it from the concertante solos in documented Esterházy symphonies. In any case, numerous Esterházy symphonies before 1765 (Nos. 12, 21, 23, 28, 29, 40) content themselves with the standard ensemble, without extras or concertante soloists: thus the absence of these features is no indicator of “early” status.

For Nos. 17, 19, 20 and 25 we have no clues even this tenuous; these works, plus Nos. 15 and 108 (B) can only be listed as “uncertain” in date. Nos. 17 and especially 19 are reminiscent of the three-movement symphonies in Volume 1, with their fast-slow-fast form, including minor-mode Andantes and short, very fast 3/8 finales. However, their sources are unhelpful, and the first movement of No. 17 is on a larger scale than any work in Volume 1. (It exhibits a “false retransition”, a peculiar feature of form otherwise found only in No. 36, which as we have seen is probably an Esterházy work, but it would be dangerous to base a speculative dating on a single stylistic feature of this kind, especially when the other movements in No. 17 give no similar indication of relatively late origins.) No. 20 resembles other early C major symphonies (Nos. 32, 33, 37) in being in four movements rather than three, with the very fast opening movement in the otherwise unusual metre of 2/4. (Unlike No. 33, Haydn probably did not include trumpets and timpani in No. 20; the sources transmitting them are all late and peripheral.)

None of the three symphonies Nos. 15, 25 and 108 belongs to a “type” in this sense. The first movements of Nos. 15 and 25 are outright unica, to which the usual comparative methods simply do not apply; admittedly, in both works the later movements conform to the usual “early” types. No. 108 (B) has arguably the shortest and structurally simplest opening Allegro of any Haydn symphony – but it also has that bassoon solo. In any case, the old notion that his outwardly “simplest” or shortest works necessarily preceded his more “complex” or longer ones, or are necessarily of less value, is now discredited.2 (By the same token, the formidably contrapuntal Finale of No. 3 is not ipso facto an indicator of relatively late origin.) Nos. 15 and 108 exhibit the “reversed” cyclic plan fast-minuet-slow-fast, otherwise found in this period only in the Morzin works Nos. 32 and 33, but this is hardly a secure basis for concluding that all such works must be equally early.

Given all this, it seems prudent – provisionally – to think of the works in this volume as comprising the following groups:

Probably pre-Esterházy (sources) 3, 33
Uncertain  
      Stylistically “early” (17), 19, (20)
      Stylistically not “typed” 15, 25, 108
Probably early Esterházy (style) 14,36

Since the chronological uncertainty attaching to these works will doubtless never be entirely overcome, listeners should feel free to enjoy these varied and interesting works without undue concern for their dates or types” – in a word, on their merits. After all, those merits are more than considerable.

* * * * *

Nothing is known about the size or composition of the ensembles for which Haydn might have composed these works. But it seems unlikely indeed that they should have been larger than that at the opulent Esterházy court. Hence we have maintained the strings at 4-4-1-1-1, as we have done for Haydn’s earlier Esterházy period.

James Webster 1993

1 Sonja Gerlach, “Haydns ‘chronologische’ Sinfonienliste für Breitkopf & Härtel”, Haydn-Studien, 6/2 (1988), 116-29; “Fragen zur Chronologie von Haydns frühen Sinfonien” (forthcoming); preface to Joseph Haydn: Werke (Henle), series 1, vols. 1-2 (forthcoming).

Gerlach’s studies largely supersede earlier ones, of which the most important were Georg Feder, “Die Überlieferung und Verbreitung der handschriftlichen Quellen zu Haydns Werken”, Haydn-Studien, 1 (1965-67), 3-42 (transl. in The Haydn Yearbook, 4 [1968]); H.C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 1, Haydn: The Early Years 1732-1765 (London, 1980), 235-42, 280-83; Jens Peter Larsen, “Haydn’s Early Symphonies: The Problem of Dating”, in Music in the Classic Period: Essays in Honor of Barry S. Brook, ed. Allan W. Atlas (New York, 1985). pp. 117-31.

2 Feder, foreword to JHW XVIII/1; James Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in his Instrumental Music (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 357-66.

From Vienna to Eszterháza, c. 1760-63

As outlined in the preceding note, the origins of the symphonies in this volume are obscure; some may have been composed for Count Morzin not later than 1760, some for (unknown) Viennese patrons and circumstances, and some for the Esterházy court between 1761 and 1763. But we can still usefully group them by “types” of cyclic patterns. Thus, as noted, Nos. 17 and 19 are three-movement works in the fast-slow-fast pattern found in the majority of the Morzin symphonies. All but one of the remainder are four-movement symphonies with an opening fast movement; they divide into three sub-groups. Nos. 20 and 33, like Nos. 32 and 37 in Volume 1, are “festive” works in C major. Nos. 108 (B) and 15 exhibit “reversed” ordering of the interior movements: fast-minuet-slow-fast. Nos. 3, 14, and 36 have the more familiar patterns fast-slow-minuet-fast; among these, No. 3 is distinguished by its putatively early date and its contrapuntal Finale, while Nos. 14 and 36, as described, are likely to be Esterházy works. No. 25, an unusual “hybrid” work, will be described below.

Symphony No. 3 in G major

1. Allegro
2. Andante moderato
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale: Alla breve

If this imposing work is indeed earlier than 1761, as the sources imply, it offers persuasive evidence of Haydn’s early mastery. The opening Allegro, 3/4, begins with a theme that is potentially in double counterpoint, the long melody notes contrasting with “running” quavers in the bass (though the melody is heard in homophonic versions as well). Among the other contrapuntal passages in the movement, the most impressive occurs just after the beginning of the recapitulation: the long notes finally turn up in the bass, the first violins bring a new version of the running motive, and the seconds add a new syncopated countermelody.

The sonata-form Andante moderato turns to the tonic minor; its apparently simple tune develops into an intricate web of hocketing and imitative figures. The minuet may sound galant, but it is a strict canon at the octave: one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of the many symphonic minuets where Haydn injected “learned” elements into this unassuming dance-form. The trio is pure concertante for the winds.

But the Finale, a masterpiece, trumps all this with a remarkable synthesis of fugue and sonata style, again arguably Haydn’s first example of this important type of finale. Indeed it resembles the finale of the Jupiter Symphony, in that it is a sonata-form movement in elaborately contrapuntal texture, based on a “cantus firmus”-like subject consisting of four semibreves. The first group in the tonic is a formal fugal exposition; the transition, although more “businesslike”, uses two new motives in invertible counterpoint. The second group in the dominant combines one of the latter with the original “cantus firmus” motive, and the development increases the complexity considerably. Finally, the recapitulation features a four-part stretto on the “cantus” – until, as always, Haydn reverts to sonata style at the very end, for a spirited wind-up.

Symphony No. 14 in A major

1. Allegro molto
2. Andante
3. Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro

This symphony, whose concertante usage and style suggest the Esterházy period, is on a small scale, but every note tells. The opening Allegro molto, 3/4, is tiny; indeed the “development”, uniquely in Haydn’s opening symphonic allegros, consists merely of a brief (and more tuneful) variant of the “second theme” and a retransition, all in/on the dominant. The Andante is a simple rounded-binary movement, with the gorgeous tone-colour of a solo cello doubling the violin melody at the lower octave. (The first and second phrases of the main theme are more or less identical to the first and last phrases of the variation-finale theme in the Divertimento Hob.II:11). The minuet suggests a faster tempo than most of the early-symphony galant works; the trio, in the minor and featuring a solo oboe, shows yet again how much Haydn could say with a very few notes.

The Finale, another tiny movement, is inherently incongruous. It is densely contrapuntal, yet its “theme” is merely a scale descending through an entire octave, with the added indignity of an inappropriately high-minded trill on the penultimate note. Admittedly, the syncopated countermelody and, a little later, the rushing semiquaver accompaniment add rhythmic interest. The “development” indeed brings new developments, and there is a delicious joke at the beginning of the reprise: the return of the tune is delayed by a single quiet measure of the tonic, which is “right” in terms of the modulating retransitional sequence, but utterly “wrong” in stealing the thunder from its reprise. And so the latter, which originally was piano, now breaks in fortissimo. The only proper response – not only here but throughout the movement – is laughter.

Symphony No. 15 in D major1

1. Adagio – Presto – Adagio
2. Menuet – Trio
3. Andante
4. Finale: Presto

This work begins with what is arguably Haydn’s most unusual opening symphony movement. It is an ABA, Adagio-Presto-Adagio (the A sections featuring concertante horns); but the first Adagio section is not a slow introduction, nor is the movement as a whole an example of “French overture form” (as has sometimes been said). The initial Adagio section has a closed, self-sufficient ending with a perfect cadence (plus a transitional preparation for the Presto). Because it is thus rounded off, it is not an “introduction”; more important, again unlike an introduction, it can bear repetition at the end. The Presto begins with a rising, pseudo-imitative passage that is no theme, but pure musical process. It is also unique in form: it prescribes no repetition of its two structural parts, and indeed the point at which the exposition ends and the development begins cannot be determined. These odd features must be consequences of its unique function: an opening symphonic allegro which is “framed” by an Adagio on either side. Might this unique form have been associated with extra-musical content?

However, the cyclic form of Symphony No. 15 is somewhat familiar: four movements with “reversed” interior movements: slow/fast/slow-minuet-slow-finale. Indeed all three remaining movements are of conventional types and observe the generic principle of contrast. The minuet, of the galant type, frames a sweeter, legato trio, in which the two violin parts alternate with the viola and cello. The Andante, as usual, is sprightly rather than solemn (thus offering the greatest possible contrast with the first-movement Adagio). And the Finale is a da capo structure with an elaborate minore section in the middle.

Symphony No. 17 in F major

1. Allegro
2. Andante ma non troppo
3. Finale: Allegro molto

This three-movement work opens with one of the longest movements in this repertory. (It is admittedly “neutral” in style.) Its length results from the development section, which is actually longer than the exposition (the only such case in any early Haydn symphony first movement). What is more, this development exhibits a striking “double cursus”. After a section of more or less normal length and character, it gives clear signs of working its way back to the tonic, with an elaborate descending sequence characteristic of early Haydn retransitions.2 At the very moment of the tonic arrival, however, the music astonishingly moves away into a second developmental section, almost as long as the first, until another and even more “formal” transition, touching on the minor over a dominant pedal, prepares the recapitulation. The earlier passage is therefore not a false recapitulation, but a “false retransition”! (Something similar but less “pointed” happens in Symphony No. 36.)

The Andante ma non troppo is in the tonic minor, with the slightly odd combination of perkiness and pathos characteristic of such movements in early Haydn. The Finale, again, is a 3/8 Allegro molto (not Presto, presumably because of the many moving semiquavers); it is a miniature binary movement, with only a tiny prolongation of the dominant between exposition and reprise.

Symphony No. 19 in D major

1. Allegro molto
2. Andante
3. Presto

This symphony, more than any others in this volume, resembles the three-movement Morzin works collected in Volume 1. The opening Allegro molto contrasts a triadic theme striding upward through tonal space with the usual diverse collection of active motives; a tremolo figure first heard during the transition becomes prominent in the development. The Andante, again in the tonic minor, is unusually short even for this type of movement; its most memorable incident is an “endless” descending scale in parallel tenths underneath a syncopated pedal in octaves. The finale is another conventional-sounding 3/8 Presto, except that the middle section is a “true”, if short, development, and it leads to a double reprise: first to a variant of the main theme in the minor; then to the second theme in the major.

Symphony No. 20 in C major

1. Allegro molto
2. Andante cantabile
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Presto

This is one of the two festive C major symphonies in this volume. As in many of these works, the opening Allegro molto is in the otherwise unusual “finale” metre of 2/4; it is more regular and “predictable” in form than most Haydn symphonic allegros. The slow movement is in an unusual serenade style, Andante cantabile alla breve, with a uniform texture (regular melodic phrases, crotchet accompaniment, and pizzicato bass), and only a slight broadening and quickening towards the end of each half. To paraphrase Tovey, there is no fault in the movement, but one is grateful that Haydn did not often adopt this style. The minuet, with an upbeat, implies a relatively fast tempo for this period; the trio is in the subdominant. The finale, another 3/8 Presto, is an unusually long da capo structure of 244 bars (admittedly with written-out repeats); again, unusually, both the “A” and the minore “B” sections execute miniature sonata-forms, including complete tiny “developments”.

Symphony No. 25 in C major3

1. Adagio – Allegro molto
2. Menuet – Trio
3. Presto

This work is almost as unusual as No. 15. It begins with a slow-fast compound movement, followed by a minuet and a fast finale. As in No. 15, the first movement opens with a long Adagio which eventually leads to a fast sonata-form movement. The Adagio is serious, almost “ecclesiastical” in tone; the opening theme, based on a melody-type common in Austrian mid-century church sonatas, invokes trio-sonata style, unfolding contrapuntally over a “walking” bass. But as the music proceeds, the topics and textures change constantly, and the Adagio soon proves to be formally and functionally ambiguous as well: like a slow introduction, it heads for the dominant; but unlike any proper introduction, it reaches and prolongs the dominant no fewer than four times, and is altogether much too long for the purpose. It fits no generic pattern.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the cyclic form of the whole symphony is ambiguous. If the Adagio is after all a (long and strange) introduction, the cyclic pattern would be intro/fast-minuet-finale; that is, a “galant” three-movement form with a minuet in the middle but no slow movement, all three movements in the tonic. If, however, the Adagio were an independent opening slow movement, we would have slow/fast-minuet-finale, as in Nos. 5, 11, 21, 22 and others (see Volumes 1 and 4). But the Adagio is precisely not an independent movement. Symphony No. 25 remains a generic anomaly.

The Allegro molto proper is, like many other C major opening fast movements, in 2/4, with the usual bustling “festive” air. The minuet in galant style is paired with a concertante trio, in which both oboes and horns have their chance to shine. The finale, like that to No. 3, is based on a variant of the four-note Jupiter Symphony motto; here, however, contrapuntal display is at a minimum, with only a single brief imitation (barely audible as such) at the beginning of the development, and a somewhat more elaborate one at the beginning of the recapitulation.

Symphony No. 33 in C major

1. Vivace
2. Andante
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro

This is the only symphony in this volume whose sources clearly imply a date of 1760 or earlier, or in which trumpets and timpani are transmitted in reliable sources. Its opening movement bears the unusual marking Vivace and is in the unusual metre (for C major) of 3/4; indeed its particular “festiveness” is more deliberate than hasty, the piano episode in the second group longer and more nearly lyrical than usual in early Haydn. The Andante, as is common, is in the tonic minor, with continually developing motives; note the strange rising chromatic progression in the transition to the relative major (oddly, this never returns). The minuet is faster than many in this group, and is paired with a trio in the subdominant based on a complex combination of “straight” and syncopated writing. The exuberant Finale juxtaposes a downbeat forte unison motive “ending with a bump” (Tovey) and a quiet upbeat answer in the strings; as the movement continues, the downbeat motive produces numerous unexpected and amusing variants, including close imitations between melody and bass.

Symphony No. 36 in E flat major

1. Vivace
2. Adagio
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Allegro

Like No. 14, this symphony gives many indications of having been composed during Haydn’s first Esterházy years. Its opening movement resembles that of No. 17: not only in its “neutral” symphonic style, tempo, and meter but in having a similarly long, two-part development with a “false retransition” (though the development is not as long, nor the joke as obvious, as in No. 17). The Adagio is one of Haydn’s most remarkable slow movements; as noted above, it features a duet for solo violin and cello. However, this concertante music is introduced by a forceful, dotted, quasi-recitative gesture in the orchestral strings. As the movement progresses, moreover, this gesture proves to be a vital thematic element, frequently punctuating the soloists in a manner that is not merely rhetorical, but integral to the sonata-form structure.

The minuet features a jaunty dotted upbeat figure, developed in a pointed manner not frequently encountered before the Esterházy period. The trio, in the dominant, is remarkable; it not only suddenly changes from the somewhat conventional style of the first four bars to a sinuous, almost eerie, chromatic idea in bare two-part writing, but anchors this psychological move in the tonal structure by cadencing in the mediant minor, D minor – a unique harmonic reflection of an aesthetic state. The second half is no less remarkable. The finale in 2/4 exhibits the obligatory breathless high spirits, with a striking tremolo piano gesture at the beginning of the second group.

Symphony No. 108 (B)(Partita) in B flat major

1. Allegro molto
2. Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio
3. Andante
4. Finale: Presto

This work has baffled Haydn scholars. All four movements are very short; indeed the opening Allegro molto, at only forty-eight measures, is the shortest and formally most straightforward in any Haydn symphony. Its material, too, seems unremarkable, and enjoys relatively little development. The minuet at least brings another “pointed” dotted upbeat figure, and the trio, in the subdominant, features the much-discussed bassoon solo. The Andante, in the relative minor, is attractively pensive and includes considerable contrapuntal treatment; the “leaping” parallel tenths in the second group, surrounding the sinuously winding second violins (who pretend to avoid parallel fifths with the melody), create a remarkable sound-image. The 2/4 Presto finale is more nearly normal in length, for its type, than the Allegro molto, but otherwise it too does not stand out among Haydn’s early symphonies.

James Webster 1993

1 This note is based on the extensive discussion in Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony, pp. 251-57.

2 Bathia Churgin, “The Italian Symphonic Background to Haydn’s Early Symphonies and Opera Overtures” in Jens Peter Larsen et al., eds., Haydn Studies: Proceedings of the International Haydn Conference, Washington D.C., 1975 (New York: Norton 1981), pp. 329-36.

3 This note is based on the extensive discussion in Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony, pp. 257-59.

Volume 3

Symphony No. 6 in D major Le matin
Symphony No. 7 in C major Le midi
Symphony No. 8 in G major Le soir
Symphony No. 9 in C major
Symphony No. 12 in E major
Symphony No. 13 in D major
Symphony No. 16 in B flat major
Symphony No. 40 in F major
Symphony No. 72 in D major

Notes on chronology and instrumentation

The symphonies in this volume, Nos. 6-9, 12, 13, 16, 40 and 72, have a special interest: they document Haydn’s earliest years, 1761-63, at the Esterházy court.1 (The apparently deviant numbers 40 and 72 are owing to the fact that when Eusebius Mandyczewski worked out the familiar canon of “104” symphonies early in this century, fewer sources were known than is the case today, and he guessed “too late”.)

Haydn dated No. 7 (Le midi) on the autograph and, although the autographs of Nos. 6 and 8 (Le matin and Le soir) do not survive, the latter works self-evidently go together with Le midi to make up a trilogy. The autograph of No. 9, now lost, was described by reliable nineteenth-century scholars as bearing the date 1762. Haydn dated the autographs of Nos. 12, 13 and 40 with the year 1763; No. 13 must have originated between August and December (see the following paragraph). Since the autograph of No. 40 contains three different paper-types, of which only that used for the finale is the same as that used for Nos. 12 and 13 (as well as later works), Sonja Gerlach suggests that it may be the earliest of the three 1763 symphonies. But it also gives signs of being a pastiche, musically as well as in terms of its origins.

Although No. 16 is not documented until 1766 nor No. 7 until the middle 1770s, both are believed to date from c. 1763. (H.C. Robbins Landon’s association of No. 16 with the earlier Morzin period is without documentary foundation, and is belied by the terms of his own stylistic description.2) No. 72 strongly resembles No. 31 (1765), and the fact that the oboes and horns are silent during the Andante implies a date earlier than 1768 (see Volume 5). But the scoring for four horns implies that it must date from either August-December 1763 or 1765-66, the only periods when four horns were available to Haydn. Since it is shorter and slighter than No. 31, scholars have taken it to be earlier; if so, it must have originated between August and December of 1763. The same applies to No. 13, which also employs four horns.

For No. 16, finally, the solo cello in the Andante implies the early 1760s. Haydn seems not to have used concertante soloists, or instruments other than the “standard” early scoring of two oboes, two horns and strings, until his arrival at the Esterházy court: of the sixteen symphonies up to 1765 exhibiting one or both of these features, eleven (Nos. 6-9, 13, 22, 24, 30, 31, 39, 72) are clearly Esterházy works, while none is clearly pre-Esterházy. In addition, No. 16 is in three movements, fast-slow-fast, with a finale in sonata style rather than in “da capo” form; the only other work exhibiting this overall construction is No. 12, from 1763.

The remaining five symphonies with concertante or “extra” instruments (Nos. 14-16, 36, 108) are of uncertain date; except for No. 16, which for technical reasons is included in this volume, they are united with other “uncertain” works in Volume 2, which covers very nearly the same chronological ground as the present one. The chronological uncertainty regarding Haydn’s symphonic production up to 1763 will doubtless never be entirely overcome.

* * * * *

As stated in my general note on p. 10, the Esterházy ensemble for which Haydn composed these symphonies was by modern standards a very small chamber orchestra, whose most common size seems to have been fourteen players: six violins (Haydn included), one viola, one cello, one violone (double bass), one bassoon, two oboes (alternating on flutes), and two horns.3 This group would have been capable of producing even the elaborately concertante Matin – Midi – Soir trilogy. Haydn would still have had two players on each of the two ripieno violin parts (except in the finales of Nos. 7 and 8, where the ripieno “second” might have been a single player); in any case, the ripieno parts largely double each other, producing an “orchestral” violin part distinct from the soloist(s). There is no evidence to support the common notion that more performers must have participated in these works.

By the same token, Haydn’s normal bass forces of one cello, one violone (double bass) and one bassoon suffice for this music. (He specified this instrumentation both in the autograph of Le midi and in the well-known “Applausus” letter of 1768, and it is confirmed by many other autograph indications as well as the personnel records of the Esterházy court.4) Even when, in fast movements, the cello is independent, the bassoon ordinarily doubles the double bass on the functional bass (the reverse is true in the slow introduction to No. 7); this preserves both the combination of eight- and sixteen-foot registers, and the mixed string/wind timbre, characteristic of Haydn’s orchestral bass parts. Admittedly, when the bassoon is obbligato as well as the cello, it cannot double the double bass (see the trio of No. 6, certain passages in the opening movement of No. 7, and the Andante of No. 8). And the bassoon is silent in slow movements without oboes and horns; hence when these movements have an obbligato cello (Nos. 6, 7, 13), the bass part (“Basso”) was apparently performed by the double bass alone. With a small ensemble of early-music virtuosos, this works splendidly, owing not least to Haydn’s light and supple five-string double bass, the relatively simple nature of these parts, and frequent doubling by the viola. Conversely, when in all three trios of Nos. 6, 7 and 8 the double bass itself becomes a leading soloist in a kind of “baritone” register, the solo cello takes over the bass function underneath it.

Regarding the absence of keyboard continuo5: an additional word is necessary here, because the autograph of Le midi transmits the only bit of apparent evidence in its favour. Haydn twice used the phrase “Basso continuo”, in places where the complete bass instrumentation is also specified: at the beginning of the work, and at the beginning of the main, double-concerto part of the slow movement. But it should not be assumed – as keyboard votaries have done – that Haydn’s term “Basso continuo” meant the same thing that we mean by it today. Indeed, in those contexts where a keyboard instrument is clearly intended (in concertos, vocal music with orchestral accompaniment, etc.) he does not use this term, but specific instrumental designations such as “Cembalo” or “Organo”. In Le midi he seems to have been responding to the unprecedented complexity of the bass part-writing; as described above, all three instruments (cello, double bass and bassoon) have major soloistic responsibilities, and their functional roles (melody; independent low-range inner part; bass) change constantly. Hence Haydn’s phrase “Basso continuo” seems to have meant, literally, the “continuous bass”: the “real”, foundational bass, distinct from the concertante goings-on above; and this functional bass was now projected by constantly changing groupings among his three instruments. Hence the odd term. Unbiased listeners will hear no greater lack from the absence of a keyboard instrument in these three symphonies than in any others in this volume.

A further question regarding instrumentation involves the possibility of employing timpani in No. 13. In its original 1763 form the work had none. Before 1778, however, a timpani part was disseminated in certain MS copies and the Parisian first edition (none of these sources is authentic), and from some such source it was even copied into the autograph – not by Haydn, however; the handwriting is very different and apparently much later, and the notation is “transposing” (C/G rather than his usual sounding pitch (D/A). These facts, as well as a certain ordinariness and occasional awkwardness, suggest that Haydn did not compose the part (though he owned the autograph at the end of his life and therefore might have authorized it in some sense). We have therefore recorded the work in its original form without timpani. A timpani part transmitted in one source for No. 72 has no authority.

James Webster 1992

1 On the issues of chronology discussed here, see Joseph Haydn: Werke (Henle), vol. I/3, ed. Sonja Gerlach and Jürgen Braun (hereafter: JHW I/3); Gerlach, ”Haydns Orchestermusiker von 1761 bis 1774”, Haydn-Studien, 4 (1976-80), 35-48; Gerlach, ”Haydns Orchesterpartituren: Fragen der Realisierung des Textes”, Haydn-Studien, 5 (1982-85). 169-83; Gerlach; “Fragen zur Chronologie von Haydns frühen Sinfonien” (forthcoming). Gerlach’s studies largely supersede earlier ones.

2 Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 1, Haydn: The Early Years (London, 1980), pp. 281, 288.

3 The nominal flautist Franz Sigl may have ordinarily played violin (producing the totals of six violinists and fourteen players in all, as given in the text), even when one or two obbligato flutes are present; see Gerlach, “Orchesterpartituren”, p. 169 n. 4.

4 James Webster, “Towards a History of Viennese Chamber Music in the Early Classical Period”, JAMS, 27 (1974), 237-38; Webster, “Violoncello and Double Bass in the Chamber Music of Haydn and his Viennese Contemporaries, 1750-1780”, JAMS, 29 (1976), 417-19, 428-31; Gerlach, “Orchestermusiker”; Gerlach, “Orchesterpartituren”, pp. 171-73; Sara Ann Edgerton, “The Bass Part in Haydn’s Early Symphonies: A Documentary and Analytical Study”, D.M.A. thesis, Cornell Univ., 1989, chs. 2-3.

5 Compare the general preface, and the fuller explanation referred to there: Webster, “On the Absence of Keyboard Continuo in Haydn’s Symphonies”, Early Music, 13 (1990), 599-608; with respect to the remainder of this paragraph, esp. pp. 600, 605.

Early Esterhazy Symphonies, 1761-1763
Haydn the experimenter

Far more than before, Haydn’s symphonies of the 1760s exhibit great variety of style, “subject matter”, and orchestral treatment. Among those in the present volume, the Matin – Midi – Soir trilogy (Nos. 6-8), with their rich concertante scoring, vast scale and extensive extramusical associations, are utterly different from the shorter, three-movement Nos. 9, 12 and 16 (which in their turn differ from one another far more than do Nos. 6-8). Of the four-movement symphonies from 1763, No. 40 concludes with a formal fugue, while Nos. 13 and 72 feature four horns rather than the customary two. Yet they too differ: No. 13 is massively scored and ends with a self-consciously “intellectual” finale, while No. 72 is concertante throughout.

This variety has traditionally been interpreted as reflecting Haydn’s delight in compositional “experimentation” in his new position at the Esterházy court:

My prince was satisfied with all my works; I received approval. As head of an orchestra I could try things out, observe what creates a good effect and what weakens it, and thus revise, make additions or cuts, take risks. I was cut off from the world; nobody in my vicinity could upset my self-confidence or annoy me; and so I had no choice but to become original.

These familiar remarks focus on “effective” writing, including questions of rhythmic and proportional relations and instrumental balance and texture, and the issue of originality, in the general sense of not following models or belonging to a “school”.

However, musicologists have tended to take this stylistic diversity as a sign that (consciously or unconsciously) he was “striving” towards some “goal”, with the implication that he had not yet “achieved” it. In terms of his personal development, this goal is described as his attainment of “maturity” , during his so-called “Sturm und Drang” period (c. 1768-72); in terms of the history of music, it is understood as nothing less than the creation of “Classical style” itself. These evolutionist views have fostered ambivalent, even deprecatory attitudes towards Haydn’s music of the early and middle 1760s.1

These attitudes will not do. If Haydn was an “experimental” composer, he remained one throughout his life, right through to the London Symphonies, the Chaos-Light music of The Creation, and the hunting and drinking choruses of The Seasons. There is no evidence that Haydn, his audiences or the Princes Esterházy found his early symphonies in any way unsatisfactory. Indeed, the better we come to know his early works, the more we are persuaded of their technical competence and their generic and rhetorical adequacy. This is not to deny that, other things being equal, a later work of Haydn is richer and more complex, more concentrated, than an earlier one. But his music was never in any intrinsic sense “immature” – least of all his great programmatic trilogy of 1761 or the other symphonies recorded here.

“Le matin”, “Le midi”, “Le soir” and Haydn’s extramusical symphonies
Symphony No. 6 in D major (“Le matin”)

1. Adagio – Allegro
2. Adagio – Andante
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro

Symphony No. 7 in C major (“Le midi”)

1. Adagio – Allegro
2. Recitativo: Adagio
3. Menuetto – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro

Symphony No.8 in G major (“Le soir”)

1. Allegro molto
2. Andante
3. Menuetto – Trio
4. La tempesta: Presto

Extramusical associations were common in Austrian-Bohemian symphonies of the middle and later eighteenth century. According to his early biographers Griesinger and Dies, Haydn stated that he “had often portrayed moral characters in his symphonies”. Except for the Farewell Symphony and its confrère No. 46 in B major, and a few that, like No. 60 Il distratto, may have originated as stage music2, these works do not seem to have been programmatic in the sense of being based on an explicit literary text or idea. Rather, they invoke traditional or “characteristic” topoi, such as the times of day and the seasons (Nos. 6-8); religious observance (26 in D minor, 30 in C); “ethnically” significant melodic materials and musical styles (63 in C, 103 Drum-Roll, and many others); the hunt and horn-calls (31 Hornsignal and 73 La chasse); and literary sayings (64 Tempora mutantur). These topics are impressive not merely for their variety, but for their concern with vital human and cultural issues; they document Haydn’s moral earnestness – a leading aspect of his musical aesthetics which, owing to our preference for “absolute” music and our tendency to focus on his wit and humour, has usually been undervalued.

Haydn’s trilogy of 1761, according to a somewhat garbled account by his early biographer Albert Christoph Dies, was instigated by Prince Anton Esterházy himself: “This lord gave Haydn the four times of day as the theme for a composition; he set them to music in the form of quartets.” Even though we are dealing with three symphonies rather than four quartets, the sense of the anecdote is confirmed by their date (Prince Anton died in April 1762) and Haydn’s care to “introduce”, musically, every member of his new ensemble; most of their appointments, like Haydn’s own, began on 1 May 1761. The obvious, if speculative, inference is that these were indeed the first symphonies Haydn composed for the Esterházy court; no others are securely dated 1761.

Haydn’s trilogy participates in one of the oldest and most meaningful artistic traditions in Western culture: the pastoral. The topic of the “(four) times of day” resembles that of the “four seasons”; both invoke natural cycles of fundamental importance to human culture, indeed metaphors for life itself, and have the same internal structure:

dawn/morning midday afternoon/evening night
spring summer autumn winter
germination growth ripeness decay/dormancy
birth/youth adulthood maturity old age/death

The “seasonal” version of this tradition was exemplified earlier in the eighteenth century by Vivaldi’s famous and influential concertos from Op. 8; at the turn of the nineteenth, by Haydn’s own The Seasons. The invocation of a storm in the finale of Le soir, La tempesta, is explicitly pastoral (compare Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony); it also recalls Vivaldi’s title La tempesta del mare in two other concertos. (Scores of all these Vivaldi works were owned by the Esterházy court.) The times-of-day sequence was also widespread. A series of four ballets, Le matin, Le midi, Le soir, and La nuit, was presented in Vienna in 1755, when Haydn was living and working there3, these too were owned by the Esterházy court. (The notion of temporal succession within a single day governs Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony as well.) A more tangible influence was that of Gluck: the opening theme of Haydn’s Le soir quotes a popular tune from the older master’s Le diable à quatre, an opéra comique revived in Vienna in April 1761 – the very month preceding Haydn’s appointment to the Esterházy court. Apparently, he was then again living in Vienna, and could well have seen this production; still more likely is that Prince Anton did so.

* * * * *

Many details of Haydn’s trilogy relate both to traditional pastoral conventions and to programmatic gestures in his own later music.4 Nos.6 and 7 begin with slow introductions, which are very uncommon in Haydn’s music until the 1780s. That in Le matin naturally suggests a sunrise; the association is confirmed by the musically similar sunrises in The Creation and The Seasons. That in Le midi, by contrast, is an invocation of majesty, which may be related to the “Elysian” slow movement (see below).

The prominent flute writing in all three symphonies directly signifies the pastoral: see the main themes of both outer movements in Le matin, the paired flutes in the slow movement of Le midi, and La tempesta. The lightning strokes in the latter – jagged descending flute arpeggios – recur almost literally in The Seasons, at the beginning of the summer thunderstorm. In 1761, Haydn’s lightning was accompanied by dancing raindrops (the opening theme), torrential down-pours, and perhaps other, as yet unidentified, meteorological manifestations.

The remarkable slow movement of Le midi begins with an unmistakable allusion to operatic recitativo accompagnato, with abrupt changes of mood and material, gestures of despair, and an unstable tonal progression moving from C minor through G minor to B minor. If (as Landon has suggested) the ensuing double-concerto movement, with its warbling flutes, is Haydn’s vision of Elysium, the introduction represents Hades. Heard in this way, this movement relates to more general features of Haydn’s style, specifically the sublimity of his late symphony introductions, and the Creation of Light itself.

These symphonies also include extramusical associations of other kinds. The opening and closing Adagio sections to the slow movement of Le matin are based on a simplistic “sol-la-ti-do-re-mi” melody, as if the players were students beginning the study of note-against-note counterpoint. Indeed they get the “mi” wrong, whereupon the solo violin – the “teacher” – immediately corrects them with a tremolo repetition of the same scale! From then on the “students” make good progress. Even the extraordinary concertante scoring of all three works could have had its programmatic side: Haydn’s extra-musical inspirations will have been more easily projected by prominent soloistic writing than by his alternative, “compact” orchestral scoring.

Consider, finally, Charles Rosen’s brilliant interpretation of Haydn’s late symphonies as “heroic pastoral”:

Their direct reference to rustic nature ... is no mask but the true claim of a style whose command over the whole range of technique is so great that it can ingenuously afford to disdain the outward appearance of high art ... Haydn’s pastoral style ... cheerfully lays claim to the sublime, without yielding any of the innocence and simplicity won by art.5

As suggested above with respect to “Elysium” and the sublime, a link is forged between Haydn’s last, London productions and his earliest Esterházy symphonies. Some “experiments”!

Symphony No. 9 in C major

1. Allegro molto
2. Andante
3. Finale: Menuetto – Trio

It has been speculated that this symphony might have originated as an overture: it is in three movements and concludes with a minuet, rather than a fast finale; the noisy Allegro molto is unusually short and in the unusual metre of 2/4; and in some respects it resembles the overture to Haydn’s “Festa teatrale” Acide (also from 1762). On the other hand, none of Haydn’s other three-movement symphonies ending with a minuet (Nos. 18, 26 and 30) began life as an overture; certain other early symphony first movements in C are noisy, compact, and in 2/4; and, in distinction to Haydn’s actual overtures, all three movements of this work have internal repeats.

The Allegro molto eschews strongly profiled themes in favour of three-chord “hammerstrokes”, wind fanfares, constant bustle and rhythmic surprise. The Andante, also in 2/4, invokes the pastoral, both by the key of G major and the use of flutes, whose sweet tone dominates the sound-world of this movement. Although the minuet is vaguely galant in style, it manipulates the phrase rhythm in a decidedly un-galant manner. The first strain of the trio features an oboe solo over the strings; the second is for the entire wind band alone.

Symphony No. 12 in E major

1. Allegro
2. Adagio
3. Finale: Presto

Even more than No. 16, this work is an apotheosis of the mid-century Austrian chamber symphony. Along with No. 29 of 1765, it is one of only two Haydn symphonies in the strongly “sharp-side” key of E major. The opening Allegro, a very fast alla breve, begins with a suave, ingratiating theme for the strings, piano and mostly unison; the forte counterstatement leads without break into the second group, which even has time for a contrasting “second theme”. The very short development returns to the tonic “too soon”, but the passage is based on the second theme and we again move away before the definitive preparation and return. This is an early version of Haydn’s later “false recapitulation”.

The slow movement, unusually, is marked Adagio; even more unusual is its key of E minor: after c. 1740, orchestral movements in sharp-side minor keys are very rare. Although it begins with a conventional “siciliano” motive, we soon enter a strange “operatic” world of unison forte outbursts, dissonance, chromaticism, and deceptive cadences. Most unusual of all, the exposition modulates to and cadences in the dominant minor key (B minor) rather than Haydn’s usual relative major. We must suppose that this movement carried extramusical associations. By contrast, the Presto finale is all activity. Nevertheless, Haydn’s inimitable combination of unpredictability and compositional craft raise it from routine entertainment to something higher.

Symphony No. 13 in D major

1. Allegro molto
2. Adagio cantabile
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro molto

This remarkable symphony is scored for four horns (rather than two), and also includes an independent flute part and a solo cello in the slow movement. The unforgettable opening, with its seven-part wind chords sustained over the driving, upward-striving string ostinato, all in very slow harmonic rhythm, is one of the most impressively massive sounds in Haydn’s entire output. Nevertheless, this Allegro molto is surprisingly short. The transition, with its violin/flute imitations, leads seamlessly to a second group which is only one phrase long, prolonged by a single deceptive, syncopated continuation. The reprise, though scored as massively as ever, unexpectedly begins piano; but it soon leads to an astonishing climax in which all four horns intone the ostinato motive three times running, each time at a higher pitch.

The Adagio cantabile, a beautiful “aria” for solo cello and string accompaniment, demands (and rewards) concentrated listening. The vigorous minuet, based on a descending triadic motive, employs sophisticated rhythmic and motivic contrasts often thought characteristic only of late Haydn; the trio, based on a different descending triadic motive, gives the flute its chance to shine. The finale, for those not already familiar with it, begins with a shock: the violins intone the same four-note “cantus-firmus” motive that dominates the finale of Mozart’s much later Jupiter Symphony. Like Mozart’s finale, this movement blends sonata form with multiple contrapuntal elaborations of the “cantus” and its various countersubjects, although Haydn, working here on a smaller scale, uses more rapid-fire alternations between contrapuntal and homophonic textures. Such movements were common; Haydn himself composed related finales in Symphonies Nos. 3 and 25.

Symphony No. 16 in B flat major

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Finale: Presto

The terseness and concentration of this work seem to confirm the hypothesis of its origins c. 1762-63, rather than earlier. The opening Allegro begins technically (if not stylistically) like a fugue, with a formal presentation of two themes in double counterpoint. But the third entry bursts in forte, and Haydn soon abandons the fugal pretence and sets off on a sonata-style exposition. The brief, tonally unstable development reverts to the contrapuntal material and even adds a new counter-subject, but the forte homophonic music interrupts all the sooner.

The Andante features a solo cello, doubling the unison violins an octave below in the tenor range; the ravishing effect comes through only with an appropriately small early-instrument ensemble performing without keyboard continuo. Although the texture and rhythm are uniform, the irregular phrase-lengths anad unexpected cadences of the opening cast a glow of wit over the entire movement. The finale is a rollicking 6/8 romp; humorous indeed is the beginning of the development, when the main theme finally pretends to be “regular” – but only until the sixth bar. And the recapitulation begins with one of Haydn’s earliest overtly “joking” returns; nor is it by any means his worst.

Symphony No. 40 in F major

1. Allegro
2. Andante più tosto Allegretto
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale. Fuga: Allegro

Not only the differing paper-types (see the note on chronology), but also the different styles, suggest that this symphony may represent an after-the-fact combination of originally separate movements. While the opening Allegro and the minuet are typically symphonic, the remaining two movements are unique – each, however, in a very different way. The masterful sonata-form Allegro employs “neutral” thematic material, compact scoring, and continually forward-driving rhythms (except for one curious incident in the second group). The minuet is in free, irregularly phrased two-part counterpoint; the trio features concertante horns and oboes.

The Andante più tosto Allegretto – Haydn at first wrote merely Allegretto – is written for strings alone in bare two-part harmony, sempre stacccato e piano, primarily in short, repeated-note motives and sequences. (It would be a sin to disfigure this unique sound with a keyboard continuo.) Was it intended to suggest “conspiratorial” goings-on? The finale is the only formal fugue in Haydn’s entire symphonic output: of the other two finales often cited in this context, that of No. 3 conflates fugue and sonata form, while the severe triple fugue in No. 70 is framed by extensive homophonic sections at either end. Even this movement includes occasional passages in more or less homophonic texture, but the subject (or at least its descending-skip headmotive) is never lost sight of, so that the entire movement indeed derives, fugue-like, from its theme. Although it bristles with contrapuntal artifices, especially strettos, it maintains a jaunty, forward-driving air that is appropriate to its role as a finale.

Symphony No. 72 in D major

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale: Andante

This “four-horn” symphony resembles No. 31, Hornsignal from 1765. Both use the horns in virtuoso/concertante fashion, include “concerto” slow movements, and end with a finale based on an identical concertante principle.

The opening of No. 72 is astonishing: in the eighth bar Haydn sets all four horns loose with virtuoso flights rarely heard before, and never since. This virtuosity sets the tone for the entire symphony, even though these passages recur only at the recapitulation and (more briefly) in a concluding fanfare. Although the slow movement is yet another example of pastoral – G major, 6/8, solo flute – in this case the bass discreetly subverts the Arcadian mood: except for the section-ending cadences, it plays almost exclusively on beats “two” and “three” of each half-bar, leaving the main melody notes on “one” unsupported.

In the minuet the horns again open the proceedings and frequently “echo” other events, including the final cadence; in between, Haydn reverts to a vigorously galant style. The trio is for the winds alone. The finale is a set of concertante variations on a binary theme for strings alone. The variations feature, in turn, solo flute, solo cellos, solo violin, solo double bass, the two oboes, and the full orchestra. Then a brief transition leads unexpectedly to a brilliant Presto coda in 6/8. Could this turn have had an extramusical association, as it unquestionably did in the related Hornsignal symphony?

James Webster 1992

1 This point is argued in detail in James Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in his Instrumental Music (Cambridge, 1991), conclusion.

2 Elaine R. Sisman. “Haydn’s Theater Symphonies”, JAMS, 43 (1990), 292-352.

3 This and other details in this paragraph are taken from Daniel Heartz, “Haydn und Gluck im Burgtheater um 1760: Der neue krumme Teufel, le Diable à quatre und die Sinfonie ‘Le soir’”, in Christoph-Hellmut Mahling and Sigrid Wiesman, eds., Bericht über den Internationalen Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Bayreuth 1981 (Kassel, 1984), pp. 120-35.

4 Different programmatic interpretations are found in Hermann Kretschmar, “Die Jugendsinfonien Joseph Haydns”, Jahrbuch Peters, 15 (1908), pp. 82-87; Arnold Schering, “Bemerkungen zu J. Haydns Programmsinfonien”, ibid., 46 (1939), pp. 9-27; Landon, vol. 1, pp. 555-59; David Charlton, “Instrumental Recitative: A Study in Morphology and Context, 1700-1808”, Comparative Criticism: A Yearbook, vol. 4 (Cambridge 1982), pp. 155-57.

5 The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (New York, 1971), pp. 162-63.

Volume 4

Symphony No. 21 in A major
Symphony No. 22 in E flat major The Philosopher
Symphony No. 23 in G major
Symphony No. 24 in D major
Symphony No. 28 in A major
Symphony No. 29 in E major
Symphony No. 30 in C major Alleluja
Symphony No. 31 in D major Hornsignal
Symphony No. 34 in D minor

Notes on chronology

Of the nine symphonies in this volume, Haydn composed Nos. 21-24 in 1764 and Nos. 28-31 in 1765; the date of No. 34 in uncertain (see below). (No. 39, probably from 1765 or 1766, is included in Volume 5.) All but one of their autographs (Budapest, National Széchényi Library, Music Division) formerly belonged to the Esterházy archives. This reinforces the supposition, valid for most of Haydn’s symphonies from 1761 until c. 1780, that they were composed for and premiered in the presence of Prince Esterházy - in the case of these works, in the music hall of the princely castle in Eisenstadt (Burgenland, Austria). There are no clear grounds for determining the internal ordering within either group of four symphonies, except in the case of No. 28 in A, whose autograph is written in part on a different paper-type, and which Haydn cited in his newly-inaugurated thematic catalogue slightly later than the others. Possibly it was the last of the 1765 symphonies to be composed.

Symphonies Nos. 21 and 22 open with large-scale, serious slow movements; in this they are related to the earlier Nos. 5 and 11 and the later No. 49, as well as, to a lesser degree, Nos. 18 and 34. No. 30, Alleluja, quotes liturgical melodies popular in Haydn’s time; in this it is related to the slightly later No. 26. No. 31, Hornsignal, is one of a number of Haydn symphonies from the 1760s with four horns (the others are Nos. 13, 39 and 72). Its outward form strongly resembles that of No. 72, believed to be slightly ear1ier; but it is riper in style, and goes beyond the other symphony in its use of “characteristic” courier and posthorn calls, and in exhibiting a kind of cyclic form: the end of the variation-finale recalls the courier-theme which concluded the opening movement.

The date of Symphony No. 34 is uncertain; it is cited in contemporary thematic catalogues beginning in 1766. Owing to its opening slow movement in the minor mode, which was taken as a harbinger of the “Sturm und Drang” (c. 1768-72), it was long thought to date from 1766. But it reverts to the major for all three remaining movements, and its “jig”-finale is unusually simple in form and texture; moreover Haydn twice cited it in his own catalogue with the incipit of the second (Allegro) movement, rather than the opening Adagio. All these features have recently led scholars to propose a slightly earlier date, between 1763 and 1765, and to speculate that it originated as a pastiche, or that it incorporates “recycled” incidental or stage-music.

James Webster 1990

Symphonies from 1764-1765

When Haydn joined the Esterházy household as Vice-Kapellmeister in 1761, he was put in charge of all instrumental music at the court, the ageing Kapellmeister, Gregor Werner, retaining responsibility for church music. Haydn signed a contract containing fourteen clauses of which the fifth referred specifically to the provision of concerts. “The said Joseph Haydn will appear daily in the ante-chamber in the morning and in the afternoon (whether here or in Vienna or on the country estate) and be informed there of the high-princely command as to whether there is to be a concert; to wait, but then, after the order has been received, to communicate the same to the other musicians, and not only to present himself precisely at the time arranged but also to keep the others strictly to it, and to take specific note of those who either come late to the concert or absent themselves entirely.”

Until the late 1760s the Esterházy court moved between three main locales, the Esterházy palace in Vienna, the country estate in Eisenstadt and a large castle overlooking the Danube at Kittsee. All these had large reception rooms, the largest in Eisenstadt seating some 400 people and having a very resonant acoustic. Except on special occasions, such as Prince Nicolaus’ name day, the audience would have consisted of the prince and his guests only and very often Haydn’s orchestra of fifteen or so players would have outnumbered the listeners. The repertory of these concerts in the 1760s can only be a matter of educated guess work since the evidence has either disappeared or is still inaccessible, locked away in the vast Esterházy archives. As well as Haydn’s symphonies, there were the composer’s concertos for flute, horn, violin, cello and double bass, all dating from the early 1760s. There were compositions perhaps by the Kapellmeister, Werner, by the senior violinist, Luigi Tomasini, possibly some vocal music by members of the Esterházy Chor Musique (normally responsible for the church music) and by members of visiting opera troupes, and almost certainly music by fashionable Austrian composers of the time, such as Gassmann, Dittersdorf and Ordonez. For his part, the young Vice-Kapellmeister seems to have composed three or four new symphonies per year. In 1764 and 1765 eight symphonies were written, all of whose autographs have survived (Nos. 21-24, 28-31). They are dated but, unlike Mozart who often wrote the day, the month and the year on his manuscripts, Haydn hardly ever wrote anything other than the year. Nevertheless, other evidence permits a couple of these symphonies to be more exactly dated. The survival of eight autograph scores is an historical accident of no artistic significance, for the symphonies were not composed as a coherent group in the same way as were the earlier trilogy, Le matin, Le midi and Le soir (Nos. 6, 7, and 8) and the much later Paris symphonies. Indeed, what strikes the listener is the variety of form and the individuality of narrative in these symphonies. Haydn’s accomplished players and the eager listeners in the Esterházy court could never be sure what the composer was going to do next.

Symphony No. 21 in A major

1. Adagio
2. Presto
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro molto

This symphony was written in 1764 and is scored for what must be regarded as Haydn’s standard orchestra: two oboes, bassoon, two horns and strings. The four-movement cycle opens not with a fast movement but with an Adagio, a favourite alternative scheme in Haydn’s symphonies in the 1760s. It was not merely a cosmetic change, but enabled the composer to write slow movements that were quite different from the those encountered as second movements in his symphonies. Rather than a concertante movement or a movement for strings alone this opening Adagio is a gently eloquent movement for the full ensemble, with the argument being firmly based on the opening phrases. By having a thoughtful slow movement to open the symphony Haydn is then able to provide maximum contrast in the second movement: a bristling, energetic Presto that could never have served as a first movement. The Menuet presents the theme in octaves in the violins, imitated – also in octaves – by bass instruments, a doubling technique highly typical of the composer and one that contemporary North German critics found quite vulgar (“one easily gets the idea that one is hearing father and son begging by singing octaves: and that is a bad object for musical imitation.”). The Trio is more withdrawn with its short repetitive phrases and, later, thematic material played by viola and bass instruments. The symphony ends with a bright Allegro molto movement.

Symphony No. 22 in E flat major (“The Philosopher”)

1. Adagio
2. Presto
3. Menuetto – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

This symphony has the same movement pattern as No. 21 and was composed in the same year, but it has a totally different sonority. Haydn replaces oboes with cors anglais, a favourite occasional tone colour in the composer’s music right up to the middle of the following decade. The oboe players in the Esterházy orchestra in the 1760s were two brothers, Johann Georg Kapfer and Johann Michael Kapfer, who had earlier worked in Vienna, where they might well have played in the many operas by Gluck that feature cor anglais as well as oboe. In this symphony the dark sound of two cors anglais coupled with that of horns crooked in E flat produce a very distinctive colouring in all four movements. It is displayed to maximum effect in the opening Adagio, where the wind instruments, marked fortissimo, declaim a slow-moving theme over the steady tread of strings marked piano and the violins con sordini. A manuscript source in Modena dating from about 1790 is inscribed Le Philosoph, a nickname that modern editors have chosen to perpetuate. It becomes less appropriate as the symphony proceeds and earnestness gives way to high spirits.

Symphony No. 23 in G major

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale: Presto assai

The more conventional movement pattern of fast, slow, minuet and fast is used in this third symphony from 1764. The opening Allegro, in triple time, has a touch of haughty swagger to its main theme, but Haydn’s players as well as Prince Nicolaus, who was a discerning musician, would have taken great delight too in the syntax of the music: a series of three-bar phrases that makes the more regular phrasing that follows seem gauche at first; this whimsicality is intensified in the development section where the music is broken down into one-bar units. The unorthodoxies of the following movement, scored for strings alone, are more obvious, as the quiet progress of the folk-like tune is broken and the scalic flourishes in the bass instruments become more prominent. The Menuet and Trio are both very concentrated movements, the first a canon between treble and bass instruments, the second an imitative discourse on a motif derived from the minuet. Whereas most finale movements in Haydn’s symphonies consist of forte passages relieved by piano passages (as in No. 28), in this Finale the composer has the ingenious idea of doing the very opposite; piano is the predominant dynamic and the symphony ends not with a bang but with an apologetic whimper.

Symphony No. 24 in D major

1. [Allegro]
2. Adagio
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro

When Haydn first entered the service of the Esterházy family in 1761, a new flute player, Franz Sigl, was engaged; he remained in post until 13 September 1765 when he was dismissed for setting a roof on fire while shooting birds. Following Haydn’s diplomatic intervention Sigl was re-engaged the following year. Although Haydn composed a flute concerto for Sigl (now lost) he included the instrument in only a minority of his symphonies at this time. In this D major symphony from 1764 the flute is featured in the Adagio, which could easily be a concerto slow movement (complete with cadenza), and the trio of the minuet, where it shares the melodic lead with horns and first violins. Elsewhere in this bright and confident symphony the flute is replaced by oboes.

Symphony No. 28 in A major

1. Allegro di molto
2. Poco adagio
3. Menuet: Allegro molto – Trio
4. Presto assai

One of the features that distinguishes Haydn, even in this comparatively early stage in his career, from Ordonez, Gassmann, Dittersdorf and other contemporaries is his ability to create a focussed musical argument with the minimum of material. At the end of his life the composer told his biographer, Griesinger: “Once I had seized upon an idea, my whole endeavour was to develop and sustain it in keeping with the rules of art”. The first movement of this A major symphony from 1765 provides a perfect early example of Haydn’s approach; hardly a bar in the movement does not feature the four-note anacrusic figure heard at the beginning. There are some harmonic surprises too, when, in the recapitulation, a solo oboe leads the music into a digression into the minor key. The Poco Adagio is scored for muted strings alone with the melody played by first and second violins in a low register, except for some punctuating phrases played in thirds in a higher register. Different orchestral colours catch the ear in the Menuet: bariolage, that is the oscillation of the same pitch on two different strings, and in the Trio, a severe sounding A minor as the music moves around a restricted range of chords in an almost aimless way. The last movement is a hectic 6/8 scamper.

Symphony No. 29 in E major

1. Allegro di molto
2. Andante
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

Rather like A major in Mozart’s output, the key of E major always elicited a warm response in Haydn’s music. In the genre of the symphony, however, there are only two works in that key, No. 12 and No. 29. The flowing phrases of the opening of No. 29, moving easily from strings to wind instruments and back, create a mood of contentment that remains essentially undisturbed. In the Andante, scored as usual in this period for strings alone, the melody is shared between first and second violins, a word (as it were) at a time. Contrasts of dynamic in the Menuet help underline the teasing phrasing patterns, while the Trio is an example of Haydn’s ability to create a slightly unnerving effect with the minimum amount of material. Between 1761 and 1765 the composer wrote four short Italian comic operas, most of which have not survived. The Finale of this symphony seems to reflect these first essays in Italian opera, with its pulsating bass lines and ready sequences.

Symphony No. 30 in C major (“Alleluja”)

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Finale: Tempo di Menuet, più tosto Allegretto

Haydn’s autograph score does not carry the title Alleluja, but it is found in several eighteenth-century manuscript sources and is recognition of the fact that the first movement is based on a portion of Gregorian plainsong used in Holy Week. For receptive eighteenth-century listeners in Austria therefore, the joyous first movement had strong religious associations. In that country it was common practice to play symphonies in church services and this symphony may have been specifically written for a church service, rather than the more normal private concerts in the Esterházy palaces; this might explain why the work is in three movements and not in four as was Haydn’s custom by this time. The first and last movements are scored for oboes, horns and strings. A solo flute is heard in the slow movement and in one section of the finale which, since Haydn’s autograph is dated 1765, indicates that the work was written before 13 September, the date when Sigl was dismissed.

Symphony No. 31 in D major (“Hornsignal”)

1. Allegro
2. Adagio
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale: Moderato molto

This symphony, too, was written in 1765 and again, because it contains a flute part, before 13 September. It also has parts for four horns (not the normal two), as well as the routine oboes and strings. During two periods in the early to mid 1760s the Esterházy court employed four specialist horn players: from August 1763 to December 1763, when Haydn wrote two symphonies with four horn parts (Nos. 13 and 72), and from May 1765 to February 1766. Symphony No. 31, therefore, must have been written between May and September 1765. It is a splendidly ostentatious work, displaying the prowess of the horn players to maximum effect in all four movements, whether playing as a quartet or in complementary pairs. The thematic material of the first movement draws not on hunting calls (as in the famous chorus in Haydn’s oratorio The Seasons), but on military fanfares and posthorn signals, giving rise in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to several nicknames of which Hornsignal has remained in common use.

As well as the horn players, other members of the orchestra are given opportunities to shine in what might well be termed, rather anachronistically, a concerto for orchestra. The display is at its most systematic in the Finale, a set of seven variations featuring in turn the following instruments and players: oboes (the Kapfer brothers), cello (Weigl, for whom Haydn had written his C major concerto), flute (the hapless Sigl), four horns (Messrs Franz, Steinmüller, Dietzl and Stamitz) solo violin (probably Haydn himself, perhaps Tomasini), tutti and, finally, double bass (Schwenda, for whom Haydn had written a concerto, now lost). The symphony ends with a Presto coda, culminating in the return of the hornsignal from the first movement.

Symphony No. 34 in D minor

1. Adagio
2. Allegro
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Presto assai

The autograph of this symphony has not survived and there is nothing in its instrumentation – two oboes, two horns and strings – to point to a particular period. The movement pattern of slow, fast, minuet and fast suggests that it belongs with symphonies Nos. 21 and 22 to 1764-1765; on the other hand, the fact that its opening movement is in the minor key suggests a kinship with No. 49 in F minor, known to have been composed in 1768. All four movements of No. 49 are in the minor but in No. 34 the minor is used only for the first movement, a sombre beginning to an otherwise bright work. In the second movement the wide intervals of the opening paragraph, the ensuing unison catch-phrases and the many short solos for oboes and horns show the strong influence, as in No. 29, of opera. The Menuet has a deliciously syncopated trio section and the work concludes with a short three-part presto movement.

David Wyn Jones

Volume 5

Symphony No. 35 in B flat major
Symphony No. 38 in C major
Symphony No. 39 in G minor
Symphony No. 41 in C major
Symphony No. 58 in F major
Symphony No. 59 in A major Feuersymphonie
Symphony No. 65 in A major

Notes on sources and chronology

Haydn composed the seven symphonies recorded here between 1765-66 and c. 1768 (or a little later). Except for No. 35, their actual dates, and hence their internal chronological order, can only be estimated:

1765-66 No. 39 in G minor
c. 1767 Nos. 38 in C, 58 in F
1 December 1767 No. 35 in B flat
c. 1768 Nos. 41 in C, 59 in A
[see below] No. 65 in A

The chronology of Haydn’s symphonies for the period 1766-71 is less secure than for many others, owing to (1) the relative paucity of surviving autographs (from this group, we have only that to No. 35); and (2) an absence of clear differences in instrumentation (which often permit correlations with documented changes of personnel in the Esterházy orchestra). Nevertheless, there is strong circumstantial evidence supporting the datings for all the symphonies listed above except No. 65.

Every other year or so from 1765 until well into the 1770s, Haydn entered small groups of works, arranged by genre, in his so-called Entwurf-Katalog (“EK”). Symphonies 35, 38, 41, 58, and 59 appear in EK as part of a coherent larger sequence of orchestral works which, insofar as they can be precisely dated, are all from 1767 and 1768 (No. 35: 1 December 1767). In the absence of contradictory evidence it seems likely that the remaining four symphonies also date from c. 1767-68 (to be safe, one would say 1766-69). Support for these datings can be found elsewhere. The “alla zoppa” minuet of No. 58 in F is the same as that in the Baryton Trio Hob. XI:52, from 1767-68; although we do not know which came first, they can be presumed to be very close in date. Furthermore, we know (from works whose dates are secure) that the earliest secondary sources and catalogue entries tend to show up one to two years after the date of composition. Thus Nos. 38 in C and 59 in A are both dated 1769 in secondary sources; that to No. 38 was written by the Esterházy court copyist Johann Elssler, apparently not later than 1768. No. 41 in C also survives in an Elssler copy, whose watermark and handwriting suggest that it was written c. 1768-69; since authentic sources can be presumed to have been written sooner than others, this suggests a date of around 1768. Perhaps it is the latest in this group of five symphonies.

Stylisrically, Sonja Gerlach has argued that Nos.41 and 59 are later than the other three, owing to what seems to be their “transitional” function in Haydn’s changing instrumentation of slow movements during this period. All those before c. 1767 are scored for strings alone (plus, in some cases, solo concertante winds), whereas all those from c. 1769-70 on include oboes and horns as normal constituents, with the horns transposed to the new key. But although these two movements include horns, they employ them “tentatively”, and in different ways: in No. 41 the C alto horns are transposed, but “only” to C basso, not to F (the key of the movement); in No. 59 their use is peculiar in a different way (see the annotations below).

Symphony No. 39 in G minor, on the basis of its minor key, used to be taken as an early example of Haydn’s so-called “Sturm und Drang” manner, and was therefore dated c. 1768. This speculation now seems less compelling, especially since its use of four horns suggests that it must have originated during the latter part of 1765 or early in 1766. Thus it is roughly contemporaneous with Nos. 28 and 31: No. 28 appears to be the last of the group Nos. 28-31 (dated 1765), while No. 31, the Hornsignal, is the only other symphony from this period that employs four horns. (The apparent availability of four or even more hornists again in 1767-68 appears illusory: the players in question seem to have functioned primarily as violinists.) Although Haydn cited this work in EK slightly later than the group discussed above, he paired it with the much earlier No. 20 in C (recorded in Volume 2), in an exceptional manner suggesting a supplemental entry rather than an “original” one more or less contemporary with the date of composition.

Unlike the other symphonies in this volume, Symphony No. 65 in A cannot be securely dated even to an approximate two-year period. It was long believed to come from c.1772-3 (that is, following the climax of the “Sturm und Drang”), in part because of its being in the same key as, and sharing a certain eccentricity with, its apparent “neighbour” No. 64. But in EK it appears in a group of symphonies whose dates range widely, from c. 1768 to 1772. And recent studies of the sources and (again) slow-movement scoring – No. 65 uses no mutes, unlike almost all other symphonies from 1769-70 through 1774 – suggest a date of c. 1769-70, possibly even 1768. Finally, in style it resembles not only No. 64, but to an equal degree No. 59 of c. 1768 (see the annotations below); hence it finds an appropriate place in the present volume.

* * * * *

The chronological boundaries between this volume and Volumes 4 and (especially) 6 are not clear-cut. Symphony No. 39 in G minor overlaps by instrumentation with No. 31, and by date perhaps with other works in Volume 4. Nor can we distinguish clearly between Symphonies 41, 59, and 65 in this volume and Nos. 26, 48, and 49 in Volume 6: all six works seem to cluster around 1768 (but only No. 49 in F minor is securely dated to that year). For this reason, as well as practical ones, we have instead essayed a stylistic distinction. Nos. 41, 59, and 65 appear here as “entertainment” symphonies with their slightly earlier compatriots Nos. 35, 38 and 58; while the minor-mode symphonies 26 and 49 and the unusually serious and very long No. 48 in C (substantially different from No. 41 in the same key) appear in Volume 6, along with other, slightly later symphonies that exhibit Haydn’s “Sturm und Drang” manner. (The inclusion of the thoroughly “serious” No. 39 here is admittedly inconsistent with this principle; owing to its presumed earlier date, however, this volume provides the most suitable context.)

* * * * *

Although Symphonies 38 and 41, both in C, are transmitted with trumpets and timpani in secondary sources, the Elssler copies of them have none. Furthermore, the evidence strongly suggests that (except occasionally in church) neither trumpets nor timpani were regularly used at the Esterházy court until 1773 (in operas) or 1774 (in symphonies). Hence it is virtually certain that Haydn’s original versions of these two works did not employ them (indeed there is no evidence that he ever authorised them). We therefore omit them on these recordings.

1 See Sonja Gerlach, “Haydns Orchestermusiker von 1761 bis 1774”, Haydn-Studien, 4 (1976-80), 35-48; “Fragen zur Chronologie von Haydns frühen Sinfonien” (forthcoming); H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 2, Haydn at Eszterháza 1766-1790 (London, 1978), 284-7; Jens Peter Larsen, “Haydn’s Early Symphonies: The Problem of Dating”, in Music in the Classic Period: Essays in Honor of Barry S. Brook, ed. Allan W. Atlas (New York, 1985), 117-31 (repr. in Larsen, Handel, Haydn and the Viennese Classical Style [Ann Arbor, 1988], 159-70); Robert von Zahn, “Der fürstlich Esterházysche Notenkopist Joseph Elssler sen.”, Haydn-Studien, 6/2 (1988), 130-47.

Entertainment Symphonies, c. 1765-1768

The years 1765-66 witnessed momentous changes in Haydn’s status and activity as princely Esterházy Kapellmeister. His original appointment in 1761 had been merely as Vice-Kapellmeister, with responsibility only for the princely Hof- und Cammermusique (which admittedly comprised not only all the instrumental music including that for orchestra, but also all the secular vocal and theatrical music). Nevertheless, his ageing predecessor G.J. Werner retained the title of Kapellmeister, with authority over the church music; only following Werner’s death in March 1766 was Haydn promoted to full Kapellmeister, and given responsibility for the church music as well. Not surprisingly, he immediately turned to sacred vocal music with enthusiasm, composing the huge Missa Cellensis (1766), the (mainly lost) Missa sunt bona mixta malis in stile antica, and the large-scale “Great Organ Mass” in E flat (the latter two c. 1768-69), as well as the Stabat mater (1767; enthusiastically praised by Hasse) and the cantata “Applausus” (1768). (It is owing to this cantata’s origins as an “outside” commission, for the Cistercian monastery at Zwettl, that we have Haydn’s most extensive surviving comments about performance practice, which he set down in a letter accompanying the music.) In addition, however, doubtless under princely instigation, he also cultivated opera buffa, composing in the same period La canterina (premiered 1766), Lo speziale (1768), and Le pescatrici (1770). Finally, these were the years of the first major building campaign on the grand new castle “Eszterháza”; for example, the opera house was functioning as early as autumn 1768 (Haydn’s own Speziale seems to have been the inaugural production).

This unprecedented activity in both sacred vocal music and comic opera forms the background to Haydn’s symphonic production during the second half of the 1760s. The connection between the high seriousness of the former and his so-called “Sturm und Drang” style (see Volumes 6-7) has long been understood. But (contrary to the traditional view) “theatrical” style was equally important for Haydn’s symphonic music in this period. It has recently been suggested not only that many symphonies of this period may have originated in whole or in part as incidental or stage music (as we know was the case in 1774-81), but that even in its most expressive aspects, the “Sturm und Drang” may have represented but an intensification of his interest in theatre music.1 Although this remains speculative, there can be no question as to the importance of “entertainment” as a governing concept behind his symphonies in this period – as the works here recorded abundantly demonstrate.

Symphony No. 35 in B flat major

1. Allegro di molto
2. Andante
3. Menuet: Un poco allegretto
4. Finale: Presto

Although by outward criteria this symphony of late 1767 is entirely unexceptional – it employs a common major key, the customary four-movement sequence, and the standard orchestra of two oboes, two horns, and strings (the winds tacent in the slow movement and trio), and it has no nickname, programmatic or theatrical associations, or overt disruptions of generic conventions or stylistic decorum – it exemplifies throughout the high art of which Haydn was capable in his “entertainment” mode. The Allegro di molto is based entirely on two contrasting ideas presented at the beginning: a graceful cantabile motive in the strings (interrupted by a horn-instigated fanfare), and a powerful unison theme on a “galloping” motive. The cantabile idea returns in numerous different contexts; as was his wont, Haydn varies it each time (note especially the eccentric continuations in the second group and, at the beginning of the recapitulation, the striking new form of that horn interruption). The development, a model of its type, is in two parts, which fragment and discuss the two themes in turn.

The sonata-form Andante exhibits the sprightly profundity mixed with eccentricity that is typical of Haydn’s non-Adagio slow movements. It begins with a delicious example of tonal wit: though it is in the subdominant key of E flat, the five-bar opening phrase begins in such a way as to imply B flat (which is still resounding in our inner ear), with unexpected consequences at each successive appearance – not least at the very end, where the tonal balance is at last restored. (This is perhaps Haydn’s earliest large-scale example of what would soon become a familiar structural witticism: that of ending a movement with its opening phrase.) The vigorous minuet is a masterpiece of subtlety, with unexpected changes of register and phrasing (most obviously in association with the trilled motive first heard in the second measure); the most unexpected is the straightforward piano ending. The Presto finale repeats the beginning = ending ploy; the joke is all the more effective because the three opening “hammerstrokes” move up from the tonic to the mediant, such that the movement ends melodically “off” the tonic. The violation of convention is all the stronger because we have already heard “the same” chords at the end of the exposition – where, however, they remained on the keynote as a conventional afterbeat gesture.

Symphony No. 38 in C major

1. Allegro di molto
2. Andante molto
3. Menuet: Allegro
4. Finale: Allegro di molto

Whether the inspired foolery of this work owed its inspiration to the stage we cannot know; it certainly would not lose anything from the association. Like several other early Haydn symphonies in C, the opening Allegro di molto employs the otherwise unusual “finale” metre of 2/4 in its opening movement. Perhaps it is overture-like; certainly it sounds “stagey”, faintly bombastic, with little subtlety of contrast or motivic variation. And in the middle of the development it becomes down-right comic: this section has centred around A minor; at the conclusion of a long sequence, Haydn twice cadences deceptively on F (its submediant), until he tires of this game and stamps out a third cadence, in unison, to clinch A minor at last – whereupon he not only substitutes F this time too, but drops to piano and begins a new episode in F major! (The “trio”-like effect of the reduced scoring and contextual separation of the latter section is also found primarily in early finales.)

The Andante molto is a delicately farcical “echo” movement, of the sort that notoriously offended the conservative North German critics of Haydn’s day. The second violins, muted, constantly imitate the concluding motives of the unmuted firsts – no matter how tactlessly in the rhythmic context, or how excessively at the end of both main sections. The minuet features a solo oboe in the trio. So does the second group of the Allegro di molto finale (now in alla breve), which in general alternates between an opening theme that prances up and down the scale over an offbeat tonic pedal, and contrapuntal passages in the transitions and the development. The effect is decidedly one of comic juxtaposition rather than organic integration.

Symphony No. 39 in G minor

1. Allegro assai
2. Andante
3. Menuet
4. Finale: Allegro di molto

This symphony occupies a special place in two respects: if the revised date of 1765-66 (see the note on chronology and sources) is correct, it is Haydn’s earliest symphony that is truly in the minor mode (in the slightly earlier No. 34, only the opening slow movement is in the minor). It is also the only Haydn symphony using four horns that is not in the key of D. Indeed it seems to have instigated an entire series of passionate symphonies in G minor, including two by J.B. Vanhal, one by J.C. Bach (Op. 6, No. 6), and one by Mozart (the “little” G minor, K 183); one of those by Vanhal and the Mozart also use four horns. The horns are pitched by pairs, two in G and two in B flat; this permits their use virtually throughout the G minor scale, as well as in passages set in the relative major. Oddly, however, in distinction to Haydn’s D major symphonies with four horns, the two pairs almost never play together in four-part harmony, but usually alternate according to the harmony; even the soloistic B-flat horns in the trio are (by Haydn’s standards) routine. Hence the effect is not much different from that obtainable by only two horns pitched a minor third apart, such as we find in most of Haydn’s later minor-mode symphonies.

The Allegro assai begins with a quiet four-bar theme that ends provocatively on the dominant, with a pregnant pause; it is followed still more provocatively by a six-bar continuation for the violins alone that again ends on the dominant, this time a bare octave, with another pregnant pause. Neither the rushing second group nor the impressive development centring round an elaborate contrapuntal passage can compromise the unsettling effect of this beginning; it stands as a psychological motto over the whole movement (and leads to the expected “surprises” in the retransition and recapitulation). The charming Andante in 3/8 stands, unusually, in the submediant (E flat); this was Mozart’s favorite key-relation in minor-key works, while Haydn usually chose the relative major or the tonic major. It has been unjustly criticized for its “shallowness” in the context of a minor-key symphony, but this seems anachronistically Romantic: there is no law that every Haydn minor-mode symphony must create a “through-composed” effect like that found in the Farewell or No. 44 in E minor. The movement boasts subtle and witty effects aplenty, and an unexpected codetta at the end. The trio of the minuet features the oboes and horns; the main part exhibits Haydn’s astringently bare two-part writing, here spiced by pungent Balkanisms (the raised fourth scale-degree). The finale, Allegro di molto, contrasts with the opening movement in having no leisure for provocations. It is passionate throughout (note the “wide-leap” motives in the opening theme, argued by Sisman to be another “theatrical” effect), and rushes through a brief, whirlwind sonata form that slackens the pace only in the most unlikely place: the first half of the development.

Symphony No. 41 in C major

1. Allegro con spirito
2. Un poco andante
3. Menuet
4. Finale: Presto

In distinction to No. 38 (in the same key), this work eschews all staginess in favour of unmediatedly symphonic style. The opening Allegro con spirito in 3/4 moves from cantabile phrases initiated by short, isolated forte attacks to a grand continuation; the second group recalls that of No. 35 in its rushing, tremolo, rhythmically unstable character. The development is one of Haydn’s first to make an aesthetic point of the “immediate reprise” (a statement of the main theme in the tonic towards the beginning of the development, before the real action gets under way); this was a precursor of his better-known “false recapitulations”. The movement ends with a brief, climactic codetta; another example of Haydn’s increasing tendency, during these years, to expand the normal symmetry of the sonata-like forms.

The delicate and subtly expressive Andante features an elaborate flute solo, supported for much of its course by the other winds (the first oboe also has real melodic stature). It is one of Haydn’s first slow movements to include the horns, and to mute the violins (both soon became standard practice). The minuet adopts a deliberate, galant, downbeat-oriented style, with (again) paired oboes and horns in the trio. The finale is a winning perpetuum mobile on a jig-motive (2/4 metre, but with constant triplets as if in 6/8), with a rhythmically intricate second phrase and an occasional pretence at counterpoint; like the opening movement, it closes with a fortissimo codetta extension not heard in the exposition.

Symphony No. 58 in F major

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuet alla zoppa: Un poco allegretto
4. Finale: Presto

This symphony seems to progress from normalcy to eccentricity. The Allegro theme is, unusually for Haydn, sustainedly cantabile and firmly rounded off at the end; energy and élan are reserved for the second group in the dominant and the second part of the development (whose first part shown the cantabile headmotive in a new, partly joking light). The Andante, in rounded-binary rather than sonata form, begins oddly with a nine-bar theme, which the remainder of the movement spins out at length. The minuet alla zoppa (“limping”) has the same musical substance as that from the Baryton Trio Hob. XI:52 in D. It is regular in phrasing; the nickname refers to the constant long notes on the second beat of the measure (note the subtle joke of varying the “normal” first bar on its return, four bars later). In the baryton work, the minor-mode trio is marked “al contrario”, presumably to point up the contrast between its legato ductus and regular four-bar phrasing and the minuet; note as well the horn pedal, which dissonantly sounds through the changing harmonies in the strings. The Presto finale in 3/8 is based throughout on an offbeat motive that is rhythmically hard to grasp by ear; later, the eccentricity becomes pervasive, with sudden stops and starts, dynamic changes, and chromatics.

Symphony No. 59 in A major (“Feuersymphonie")

1. Presto
2. Andante o più tosto allegretto
3. Menuetto
4. Allegro assai

Three Haydn symphonies in the key of A from the late 1760s and early 1770s are among his most “theatrical”: Nos. 59 and 65 in this volume, and the slightly later No. 64 (in volume 7). (The nickname Fire, like so many, is spurious: it appears only on one late, inauthentic source; nor is this work of c. 1768, as one often reads, related to a play titled Die Feuersbrunst performed at Eszterháza in 1774, still less to the Singspiel of the same name – which is in any case a pasticcio, not a work of Haydn.)2 But it is easy to believe that Symphony No. 59 might have originated at least in part as incidental music. The Presto (a very unusual tempo for an opening movement after the 1750s), with its opening octave leap and rushing scales underneath shifting-rhythmed repeated notes, at once suggests a crowd of confused conspirators; and it is theatrical indeed when they suddenly halt on a foreign chord, piano, moving to the dominant and a pause, rather in the manner of a slow introduction – a most incongruous type of “opening” gesture, when juxtaposed with the actual beginning. No mere theatricalism, however, is Haydn’s unpredictable, yet coherent play with these motives throughout the movement; even that piano halt not only returns several times (always varied) but, intensified into pianissimo, has the final word.

But the Andante o più tosto allegretto in the tonic minor is far stranger. (The minor keys of A, E, and B, associated with the “sharp” side of the tonal spectrum, often stimulated Haydn to adopt an exotic, “Hungarian” or “Balkan” air.) A spare two-part theme soon leads to a completely different cantabile theme in the relative major (C), developed at great length – indeed at excessive length: a characteristic of Haydn’s incidental music. When the cadence is reached at last, the same theme leads back to the dominant and a brief reprise of the first theme. Then comes the real surprise: the major-mode theme immediately enters again, in A major, along with the (utterly unexpected) oboes and horns: a ravishing yet peculiar effect. The peculiarity is only heightened by yet another, apparently unmotivated recall of the opening theme, fortissimo, which disappears as quickly as it enters, leaving the entirety of the overlong major theme to be recapitulated.

The minuet begins with the same motive as the Andante (a relatively early example of Haydn’s increasingly strong tendency to create motivic links among the several movements in the cycle); the trio again resorts to the tonic minor and to strings alone. The sonata-form finale, Allegro assai, begins with an unaccompanied horn-call in long notes (an effect that Haydn will vary in one of his latest and greatest finales: of the Drum Roll Symphony, No. 103); this horn-call alternates with an oboe melody in fast notes. The continuation, with a trilled note for the horns, is amusing enough, but a better joke follows at once: the strings enter and force these motivic scraps to pretend that they are going to become a fugue. Nothing could be less likely; sure enough, after only four bars we are off to the races in good finale style – until the development, when we are treated to a proper fugato after all! Further surprises follow in the recapitulation; Haydn even indulges in an extensive coda, with a last witty variation of his scrappy theme.

Symphony No. 65 in A major

1. Vivace e con spirito
2. Andante
3. Menuetto
4. Finale: Presto

This symphony is nearly as “theatrical” as No. 59. To be sure, the opening Vivace e con spirito is closer to the “neutral” rhetoric of ordinary symphonies; nonetheless it is a marvelously high-spirited and inventive composing-out of its opening contrast: between three annunciatory “hammerstroke” chords (note the unusual melodic succession: 1-4-3), and the ensuing quiet off-tonic melody. Witty indeed is Haydn’s inclusion, early in the development, of a “false reprise” only of the quiet melody, without the hammerstrokes, and his consequent recomposition of the “true” recapitulation. The Andante, by contrast, is so eccentric as again irresistibly to conjure up the stage. It is in sonata form but its unexpected, occasionally disorienting juxtapositions of four incompatible motives – a cantabile phrase with an off-tonic headmotive in triplets, a wind fanfare, a naked repeated-note pedal, and a sinuous phrase for the strings in unison – seem to deny all formal and rhetorical decorum.

The minuet astonishes by its rhythm. A “normal” opening phrase with prominent turn-motives on the downbeats is answered in the dominant; but now the turn figure, accented, appears every fourth beat (in the entire texture, not merely as a syncopation against steady downbeats elsewhere). The eruption of 4/4 metre is shocking in this context; it could be called Brahmsian, if only that admirer of Haydn had played his rhythmic games in an equally frank manner. The trio, like that in No. 59, is in the tonic minor for strings alone; it alternates a subtly conspiratorial grace-note ostinato with a frankly conspiratorial rising sequence. The latter is in hemiola (two-note groupings within 3/4); that is, the “opposite” rhythmic deformation from that in the minuet. The Presto finale is a jig in which the characteristic 12/8 melodic figures are introduced by a horn-call in octaves. Soon the horns take the 12/8 figure, accompanied by massive string chords (recalling the hammerstrokes from the opening movement), and a rollicking finale-exposition ensues. At the beginning of the development the horn-call engenders one of Haydn’s most astonishing surprises. Thereafter all is well, except that at the beginning of the recapitulation the horn jig-motive and the hammerstrokes are nowhere to be heard – only to return, following a coda-like repetition of the opening theme, as the boisterous climax of this splendid finale.

James Webster 1992

1 Landon, Haydn at Eszterháza, 279-80 et passim; Elaine R. Sisman, “Haydn’s Theater Symphonies”, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 43 (1990), 292-352.

2 Stephen C. Fisher, “Haydn’s Overtures and their Adaptations as Concert Orchestral Works” (PhD diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1985), 305, 335n, 167; Günter Thomas, “Haydns deutsche Singspiele”, Haydn-Studien, 6/2 (1986), 53-61.

Volume 6

Symphony No. 26 in D minor Lamentatione
Symphony No. 42 in D major
Symphony No. 43 in E flat major Merkur
Symphony No. 44 in E minor Trauer
Symphony No. 48 in C major Maria Theresia
Symphony No. 49 in F minor La passione

Historical and chronological notes

The symphonies in this volume represent Haydn’s so-called “Sturm und Drang” (“storm and stress”) style , which emerged in the later 1760s and reached a climax in 1772 (see Volume 7). The term has been criticized on several grounds: that it properly pertains to a literary movement of the middle and late 1770s rather than a musical one of c. 1768-72 (Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen and The Sorrows of Young Werther appeared in 1773-74); that the first prominent interpretation of Haydn in these terms (by Théodor de Wyzewa in 1909) assumed implausibly and without evidence that these works directly expressed a “romantic crisis” in Haydn’s life; that it is too narrow to encompass all of Haydn’s music from these years; and that it falsely implies that his music from earlier and later periods was not expressive. The fact remains, however, that during these years Haydn’s music underwent a sea-change, and that the results were in many ways unprecedented.

Furthermore, similar traits are found in the contemporary music of many other Austrian composers (including the teenaged Mozart, with works like the “little” G minor Symphony and the D minor String Quartet, K 173). Admittedly, nobody knows why this new musical sensibility sprang up suddenly in the later 1760s, and died away as rapidly after 1772 or 1773. Still, when a sub-repertory has such clear chronological and geographical coherence, it can warrant a stylistic label; and given that the results are so extraordinary, even “Sturm und Drang” does not seem out of place.

Its most commonly cited musical feature is Haydn’s sudden interest in the minor mode. Whereas none of the forty-odd symphonies written before 1766 is in the minor, six out of Haydn’s ten minor-key symphonies were written between 1766 and 1772; thereafter, he composed none until 1782. Similarly, his only string quartet opus that includes two minor-mode works is Op. 20 of 1772; most opera have only one. However, this point has been over-emphasised; the great majority of his works during this period remain in the major, and most of the novel stylistic features are independent of mode.

These features include “distant” keys (up to and including F sharp minor and B major); rhythmic and harmonic complexities; expansion of the music in every aspect (outward dimensions, harmonic range, rhythmic instability, extremes of dynamics and register); greater technical difficulty; increased use of counterpoint (most famously in the fugal finales in Op. 20, but also, for example, in the canonic minuet of Symphony No. 44); musical ideas that seem dynamically “potential” rather than self-contained; contrast within themes instead of merely between them.

The slow movements and finales become more nearly comparable to the first movements in size and weight. The oboes and horns now participate in all the interior slow movements, modestly but tellingly. In the slow movements of Symphonies 42-44 and 48 the violins play con sordino, and in all except No. 42 the tempo is slowed from Andante (and variants) to Adagio. And whereas No. 26 ends with a minuet and No. 42 with a “scherzando”, the finales of Nos. 43, 44, 48, and 49, though remaining faster and less elaborate than the respective opening movements, are on a par with them structurally and expressively.

But the qualities of this music are not merely a matter of technique. Beginning in 1766, when he took over as full Kapellmeister, Haydn devoted much time and energy to sacred vocal music and opera. Both the former’s high seriousness and the latter’s comic-dramatic values affected his instrumental music as well. Indeed it has recently been suggested that many symphonies of this period may have originated in whole or in part as incidental or stage music (as we know was the case for the years 1774-81), and that the “Sturm und Drang” style itself may have represented an intensification of this theatrical style.1 Certainly this music has “dramatic” values aplenty: sudden starts and stops, extreme contrasts of material, dynamics, and texture, long passages of gathering tension – and Haydn’s ever-present tendency towards eccentricity occasionally verges on outright irrationality.

Last but not least, many of Haydn’s “Sturm und Drang” works have extra-musical features, and a few are frankly programmatic. This is obvious not only from nicknames, quotations of liturgical melodies, and programmatic stories, but also from Haydn’s many and sometimes radical disruptions of the normal generic expectations and conventions, most obviously in the Farewell Symphony and No. 46 (see Volume 7). But already in this volume, No. 26 has overt religious associations, and No. 49 may have as well. Hence even though the nicknames Mercury for No. 43, Mourning for No. 44, and Maria Theresia for No. 48 are spurious and have nothing to do with contemporary reception of these symphonies, No. 48 is so grand, No. 44 so expressive, that one can understand how later listeners would have “concretized” their experience of them in this way.

* * * * *

The symphonies in this volume were composed between 1768 and 1771. Nevertheless, the earlier date is not entirely clear; at least three other symphonies seem to centre around 1768. We have therefore essayed a stylistic distinction: Nos. 41, 59 and 65 appear in Volume 5 as “entertainment” symphonies, while the expressive-programmatic Nos. 26 and 49 and the long and weighty No. 48 are included here.

Firm dates for the beginning and end of this sub-period are provided by the dated autographs for Symphonies 49 (1768) and 42 (1771). No. 26 was formerly thought to date from c. 1765-66, in part because it has “only” three movements. Recent thinking, however, based both on its placement in Haydn’s running thematic catalogue (“EK”) and its style, estimates it at c. 1768-69. No. 48, by contrast, was long associated with Maria Theresia’s visit to Eszterháza in 1773; however, the recent discovery of authentic manuscript parts dated 1769 disproves this, and suggests a date of c. 1768-69. (Regarding the 1773 work, speculation now centres on Symphony No. 50; see Volume 8.)

On the “later” end, Symphonies 43 and 44 were both advertised in the Breitkopf Catalogue for 1772, implying that they were composed c. 1770-71; this seems plausible on stylistic grounds as well. (Of the symphonies in Volume 7 only No. 64 comes into question as perhaps earlier than 1772, and even this seems unlikely.)

Hence, even though nothing is known of the occasions or circumstances of Haydn’s composition and performance of these symphonies, they do document the remarkable expansion of his symphonic art between 1768 and 1771.

* * * * *

All the symphonies in this volume are scored for the standard ensemble of two oboes, two horns, and strings. Although some sources for No. 48 in C include trumpets and drums, these instruments are poorly attested by the source-tradition as a whole. Moreover, trumpets were not regularly employed in the Esterházy band until 1773 (the date of Maria Theresia’s visit; again, in Symphony No. 50 they are specified in the autograph.) Hence they have been omitted from the present recording.

James Webster 1994

1 H.C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 2, Haydn at Eszterháza 1766-1790 (London: Thames & Hudson; Bloomington: lndiana Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 279-80 et passim; Elaine R. Sisman, “Haydn’s Theater Symphonies”, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 43 (1990), 292-352.

The Early “Sturm und Drang” (1768-1771)
Symphony No. 26 in D minor (“Lamentatione”)

1. Allegro assai con spirito
2. Adagio
3. Menuet – Trio

This three-movement work is an “Easter” symphony. The oldest surviving source is headed Passio et Lamentatio, and the first two movements both utilize material from traditional Austrian musical dramatizations of the Passion.1 Haydn’s compositional strategies are correspondingly unusual.

The Allegro assai con spirito opens with a driving syncopated forte theme in Haydn’s best early “Sturm und Drang” style, followed by several halting piano phrases. Without warning, the music then shifts to the relative (F major), where the first liturgical theme is heard fortissimo in one oboe and the second violins. This theme has three sections: a “declaiming” forte melody, based on a rhythmic ostinato; a stepwise piano melody in longer notes; and a higher variant of the declaiming melody. These correspond, respectively, to words of the Evangelist (“Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Marcum. In illo tempore”), of Jesus (“Ego sum”), and of the Jews (“Jesum Nazarenum”). The whole is enveloped by constant quavers in the first violins, which maintain momentum and rhythmically link the theme to the larger context.

The relatively brief development is based primarily on the opening theme (though the words of Jesus are briefly recalled). The exposition is also recapitulated without change, until a dominant pedal “portends” something unusual – which proves to be a recapitulation of the entire second group in the tonic major (D major), Passion theme and all. Not only is this effect striking in its own right, but it is highly exceptional: this is the first minor-mode sonata-form movement that Haydn ended in the major, and he did not do so again until 1782. By thus ending in the “wrong” mode, he surely intended not merely to quote an old Passion tune, but to invoke its significance: at once gruesome and hopeful.

A further consequence of this ending is that the Adagio enters with a remote tonal relation (F major from D major); again, Haydn had never done this before. The Adagio is also based on a (different) liturgical melody, also played by oboes and second violins, again “haloed” by a descant in the first violins. But here this melody begins straight away. It is a true “lamentation”, taken from a collection of such melodies identified by letters of the Hebrew alphabet (“aleph”, “beth”, etc.); its text begins, “Aleph. Incipit lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae”. Haydn’s setting, with the violin curlicues surrounding the slow, melodically limited liturgical tune, all supported by a “walking” bass (pilgrims?), invokes a strange mixture of constriction and exaltation. Two noteworthy details are the wonderful “enhancement” as the horns enter at the beginning of the recapitulation, and a moment of tonal ambiguity near the end, which further develops the previous D/F polarities.

The minuet-finale has posed a problem for interpretation, partly because great symphonies are “supposed” to have four movements, partly because minuets carry associations of the galant. And yet this austerely concentrated movement is in many ways the most intense of all. Right from the start, the off-tonic beginning, unstable rhythmic motives, Neapolitan harmony, and ambiguous phrase-rhythm create an oppressive mood. No root-position tonic appears until the recapitulation - and even this event is destabilized. The bass stamps out the theme one measure “too soon”, so that when the melody enters “correctly”, it engenders a remarkable rising canon, which dominates the recapitulation and seems to stretch toward the heavens, until it abruptly breaks off on a dissonant chord; the final cadences follow quietly. (Mozart is foreshadowed here, particularly the Adagio and Fugue for two pianos, K 426, and the D minor Piano Concerto.) Although it would be witless to speculate how an eighteenth-century listener might have heard this movement in terms of the Passion, surely it is earnest enough to conclude this remarkable symphony.

Symphony No. 42 in D major

1. Moderato e maestoso
2. Andantino e cantabile
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Scherzando e presto

Symphony No. 42 dates from the same year (1771) as the String Quartets, op. 17 and the C minor Piano Sonata, Hob.XVI:20 (Landon 33). The opening movement bears the unusual tempo-marking Moderato e maestoso, which when taken seriously produces one of the longest movements Haydn ever composed. This is not merely a matter of clock-time; for example, the second group in the dominant includes, uniquely in Haydn, two “second themes”, each worked out at considerable length, with an even longer forte passage in between. The development includes not one but two “false recapitulations”, one in the tonic early on, another in the subdominant halfway through; and the recapitulation soon breaks off for a remarkable “secondary development”2 based on motives from the first theme.

The slow movement bears the equally unusual tempo-marking Andantino e cantabile. Heinrich Christoph Koch, the most important eighteenth-century theorist of musical form, used it as his “demonstration” example of what we call sonata form. In the same key and meter as the slow movement of the Farewell Symphony, its reflective mood is also similar, and it is even more eccentric in phrasing. (At one point Haydn went too far: in the autograph he cancelled a rhythmically obscure passage, commenting self-consciously: Dies war vor gar zu gelehrte Ohren (“This was for much too learned ears”). It has been speculated that it was Prince Esterházy himself who was not amused. But the cancelled passage appears in no surviving sets of parts; most likely neither the Prince nor anyone else ever heard the version ante correcturam.

The spirited minuet is again of more than average length; the trio is an exquisite bit of refined play for the strings alone. The Finale brings yet another unusual tempo-marking, Scherzando e presto. It is a set of free variations, “excellent fooling à la Beethoven” (to quote Tovey).3 But it includes ravishing contrasts of instrumentation, as well as a somewhat extended minor-mode variation in the middle, and it concludes with a joking coda – but whether its humour is “high” or “low”, only the listener can decide.

Symphony No. 43 in E flat major (“Merkur")

1. Allegro
2. Adagio
3. Menuetto – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro

The long main theme of the opening Allegro fooled even so fine a critic as Charles Rosen, who criticized it as providing “relaxed beauty... at the price of a flaccid coordination between cadential harmonies and large-scale rhythm”.4 (This misreading forms part of his elaborate defence of the untenable notion that Haydn did not attain “maturity” until the 1780s, along with the triumph of “Classical style”.)5 Admittedly, the theme appears to circle somewhat aimlessly around the first inversion of the tonic triad. But that is Haydn’s point. It goes on too long, too demonstratively refuses to do anything, so that we become increasingly uneasy, more and more needful of hearing something different – which he finally provides when the violins, with a sudden forte, plunge down in tremolo semiquavers and the harmonic rhythm accelerates, leading to a very strong cadence that closes the first group and is elided to the vigorous transition.

The remainder of the exposition maintains the vigorous tone, except for a brief quiet passage that recalls the “static” opening. But (after the exposition repeat) the development soon leads to yet another repetition of parts of the opening theme, in the tonic. This procedure is neither a “false recapitulation” (which comes midway through a development section) nor a defect of form, but what I call an “immediate reprise”; that is, a sophisticated variant of the older practice in which the development began with a two-fold statement of the main theme, first in the dominant, then in the tonic.6 Naturally, Haydn soon strikes out into other keys; before long, however, he breaks off yet again, and a threefold sequence based on the opening phrase leads to the recapitulation proper. (A similar transition is found in the String Quartet in D major, op. 20 no. 4.) The “excessive” persistence of the main theme is thus wittily inscribed into the form as a whole.

The Adagio rings yet another change on the sprightly profundity so characteristic of Haydn’s slow movements. The sectional construction (first group, transition, second group; development; recapitulation) is unusually clear by Haydn’s standards; he rarely approaches this “Mozartian” quality of every bar being as if foreordained. Perhaps this is why he inserted a chromatic “sighing” passage into the second group, and utilized it – again “too long” – for the entire second half of the development.

The vigorous minuet is clear in outline, although it includes subtle variations in the treatment of the “long-short” motive and the phrase-rhythm; its quiet concluding phrase recalls the “static” opening theme of the symphony. In the trio, Haydn proves that a single four-bar phrase (2+2) heard four times in close succession is not boring, when it prepares, first a cadence in the dominant, then one in the tonic.

In the Allegro Finale, Haydn’s underlying eccentricity becomes more overt. The quiet main theme in rapid upward skips is demonstratively irregular in phrasing. Once we are off to the races, the music stops “too often”; these pauses are sometimes followed by long expanded upbeats for the violins alone, sometimes by chromatic progressions in long notes. In the development, one of those expanded upbeats jokingly leads into the recapitulation. This section is unusually regular and cadential – too much so: after the repeat of the second “half” of the movement it is followed, very unusually, by a long coda. This not only outdoes everything else in eccentricity, it systematically avoids cadencing until the very last moment.

The silly nickname Mercury became attached to this symphony only in the nineteenth century; it is entirely lacking in relevance.

Symphony No. 44 in E minor (“Trauer")

1. Allegro con brio
2. Menuetto: Allegretto (Canone in diapason) – Trio
3. Adagio
4. Finale: Presto

This famous symphony makes clear why Haydn’s minor-mode “Sturm und Drang” works have been so highly regarded. The entire work is terse and concentrated – not a note is wasted – and sustains its mood of stern passion with remarkable consistency. The only relief from E minor is the bright parallel mode, E major, in the trio of the minuet and the slow movement. In all these respects it bears comparison with Beethoven’s second Razumovsky String Quartet.

The symphony is also unusual in that the minuet precedes the slow movement; this pattern is found in only five other Haydn symphonies, all but one of them early. On the other hand it was his invariable pattern in the String Quartets, opp. 9 and 17, as well as three each in opp. 20 and 33. In any case, the succession of movements here exhibits a combination of expressive force, momentum, and balance among the parts that is exceptional even in Haydn’s music.

The Allegro con brio is a masterpiece of construction and rhetoric. The stern opening motive, rising in bare octaves through a fifth and a fourth, 1-5-8, is unforgettable. Notwithstanding various contrasting phrases and accompanimental figures, it seems to dominate the entire movement, in a manner reminiscent of the famous “Quinten” (“Fifths”) String Quartet, op. 76 no. 2, also in the minor. In the second group the motive appears several times: at the beginning, in the bass; a few bars later, rising dramatically through three octaves; and still later, in a new harmonic orientation. Towards the very end of the movement, following a pause on a diminished-seventh chord, it returns in three-part imitation, piano, thus producing a climax of suppressed intensity. The most important other idea, a sequential pattern of alternating semiquavers and quavers, is introduced as a countersubject over that bass entry at the beginning of the second group.

The contrapuntal implications of this movement are (as it were) realized in the minuet, a canon at the octave between melody and bass (Canone in Diapason). The violins and first oboe share the melody, while the second oboe and violas double the outer parts freely in thirds, and the horns fill out the harmony (often with motivic significance). The canon is manipulated resourcefully; particularly effective is the passage that in a normal minuet would have been the reprise of the main theme: after a pause, the temporal distance between melody and bass increases from one bar to two, heightening the ominous, troubled air that the spareness and strictness have engendered from the start. Thus the contrast of the Trio is overwhelming, as the violins descend from the heights in radiant E major, and the horns answer by ascending right back.

The same minor-major contrast is played out on a larger scale when the repeat of the minuet is followed by the Adagio, again in E major. There is little “sprightliness” (save in the counter-statement of the opening theme); the mood is solemn and the music unfailingly gorgeous (note, in the second phrase, the upward leap of a tenth rather than an octave). And when the oboes and horns suddenly enter at the end of that counter-statement, we are in the presence of unalloyed beauty and sentiment. As in so many “Sturm und Drang” symphony slow movements, Haydn takes his time; perhaps in part for this reason he begins the recapitulation directly with that magical oboe/horn entry, even higher than before.

The Finale, Presto alla breve, tops even the Allegro in concentration and drive; Haydn never surpassed the relentless momentum of this movement. Like the Allegro, it begins with a unison theme; as the accompanimental figures accumulate, however, the texture becomes increasingly contrapuntal, until the second group erupts in a double canon (the most virtuosic contrapuntal display in the symphony). Even when homophonic texture is restored, the instability remains at high pitch. Still more thrilling is the development: the head-motive drives through a rising sequence of nine steps, almost “to the crack of doom” (as Tovey, again, said about Beethoven);7 from there, a new version of the sequence modulates down almost as many steps, to the home dominant and the retransition. As in the Adagio, Haydn cuts directly to the second group (with the double canon). In this finale, however, a substantial coda returns to the main theme, first in threatening fragments, finally in a climactic cadential version in the bass.

The spurious nickname Mourning arose in the nineteenth century, perhaps owing to a performance of the Adagio during a memorial service for Haydn in Berlin in September 1809. The notion that he wished it to be played at his own funeral seems to be pure legend.

Symphony No. 48 in C major (“Maria Theresia")

1. Allegro
2. Adagio
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro

As stated in the introductory note, this work has nothing to do with Maria Theresia’s visit to Eszterházá castle in 1773. It must date from 1768-69; its closest “C major” relation is therefore No. 41 (see Volume 5). On the other hand No. 48 is not only longer, but grander, and one can see why it should have encouraged festive, even “royal” associations.

The first movement is laid out very broadly; in places it almost seems “processional”. In the first group, wind fanfares alternate with long string passages; the huge second group boasts four substantial and very different paragraphs, which include numerous internal contrasts as well. The extensive development climaxes in a tremendous sequential paragraph based on the first paragraph of the second group; its final stage, just before the arrival on the home dominant, must have inspired the strikingly similar passage in Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony: the same key, the same point in the form, the same “flashing” upbeat figure, and carrying out the same modulation (Haydn, bars 114-19; Mozart, bars 171-79).

The beautiful and languorous Adagio in sonata form is one of Haydn’s longest slow movements. The winds are unusually prominent; the oboes have solo interjections in the very first strain, while in the second strain (still in the tonic) the horns take the lead – an event that will have consequences later on. The second group is very long; when the triplet motives take over, they lead to several deceptive cadences, each one different, and each leading to yet another extension. After a relatively short development, the recapitulation is introduced by an astonishing stroke. As the music reaches the dominant of D minor (A), it suddenly stops; the oboes and horns hold the A in bare octaves, pp (always a significant dynamic mark in Haydn); suddenly the horns reinterpret A as the third scale-degree of F major, and sound their tune from the second strain of the first theme. It is all astonishingly romantic. Only thereafter does Haydn revert to the home dominant and the recapitulation proper, beginning with the original first strain.

The minuet returns to the festive mood of the Allegro, while maintaining the unusually broad dimensions that characterize the entire symphony. Towards the end it erupts in a martial fanfare in octaves for the entire band; as so often, however, the final phrase is quiet. The trio is in the tonic minor; it too is rather long, and concludes with an extended chromatic progression, which only returns to the tonic at the last moment.

The rushing alla breve Finale contrasts decisively with the processional opening movement (although the Jupiter motive does make one fleeting appearance). Once the transition is underway, the music hurtles all the way to the double-bar without pausing for breath. In compensation, the development begins quietly with a long dominant pedal inflected by the minor; this eventually leads to an “immediate reprise” (compare Symphony 43/i). Thereafter the development again rushes headlong into the recapitulation, and so to the end.

Symphony No. 49 in F minor (“La passione”)

1. Adagio
2. Allegro di molto
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

The familiar nickname for this work, La passione, is not authentic; nor is there any evidence that it had anything to do with Easter or liturgical practice.8 Indeed a strikingly different nickname, “The Good-humored Quaker”, appears more often in eighteenth-century sources (though even these are inauthentic). Moralizing Quakers were a common theme in mid-century European drama; it has been speculated that this symphony, like others of Haydn’s from this period, may have been performed, or even have originated, as incidental music to a play.9 Certainly its intensity and eccentricity suggest same kind of extra-musical association.

This work is the last of the six early Haydn symphonies that employ a variant of the usual four-movement symphonic form, in which the slow movement opens the work; it is followed by a fast movement, the minuet, and a fast finale. These opening slow movements are longer and slower than those in the usual second position, while the fast movements in second position tend to be shorter and more concentrated than opening fast movements. In addition, again in contrast to the usual procedure, all four movements are in the same key. These features seem to have induced Haydn to strike an especially serious tone and to strive for great tonal and rhetorical continuity.

Indeed this symphony is arguably the most strongly integrated Haydn had composed up to this time. Not only are all four movements in the tonic minor (relieved only in the trio of the minuet) and serious in tone, but all three sonata-form movements willfully cultivate discontinuity – of rhetorical topics, harmonic progressions, dynamics, uses of the winds, and much else. Within his F minor tonic, Haydn consistently “over-emphasizes” the dominant C. All five movements (counting the trio) begin on this pitch, and elaborate it with variants of the double-neighbour motive, C-D flat-B flat-C, heard unadorned at the very beginning of the work. In all three sonata-form movements the development, unusually, centres around the dominant minor key (C minor), and the return to the tonic for the recapitulation is harmonically and gesturally unstable. The most astonishing of these returns is that in the opening Adagio: an ungrammatical, rhetorically elliptical progression across a tritone (B natural to F). The dominant C is problematized by its absence, precisely where musical structure and convention most strongly demand it. And although the final climax of the movement duly brings a strong cadential dominant, it is only a dissonant six-four chord; the ensuing resolution into the final cadence drops back to piano, and the winds fall silent. Whatever Haydn meant by all this – the entire symphony seems to stand under the shadow of this extraordinary movement – it must have had extra-musical associations.

James Webster 1994

1 See Landon, Haydn at Eszterháza, pp.291-95.

2 Charles Rosen’s term; see Sonata Forms (New York: Norton, 1980).

3 Beethoven (London: Oxford University Press, 1944), p. 113; cf. p. 49.

4 Rosen, The Classical Style (New York: Viking, 1971), p. 150.

5 See James Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in his Instrumental Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), conclusion.

6 See Webster, “Binary Variants of Sonata Form in Early Haydn Instrumental Music”, in Eva Badura-Skoda, ed., Joseph Haydn: Proceedings of the International Joseph Haydn Congress Wien... 1982 (Munich: Henle , 1986), pp. 127-34.

7 “Some Aspects of Beethoven’s Art Forms”, in Essays and Lectures on Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 294.

8 See Joseph Haydn: Werke, I/6, foreword; critical report, pp. 17-20.

9 Sisman, pp. 331-36.

Volume 7

Symphony No. 45 in F sharp minor Abschiedssinfonie. Farewell
Symphony No. 46 in B major
Symphony No. 47 in G major
Symphony No. 51 in B flat major
Symphony No. 52 in C minor
Symphony No. 64 in A major Tempora mutantur

Historical and chronological notes
Haydn in 1772

Haydn’s major instrumental works of the year 1772 – his “annus mirabilis”, as H.C. Robbins Landon calls it – are unsurpassed, whether in terms of compositional virtuosity, originality, or expressive intensity. The huge and extroverted String Quartets, op. 20 feature an unprecedented combination of strict and free writing, rivalled in the eighteenth century only by Mozart’s quartets of 1782-85 (dedicated to Haydn himself); Symphonies 45 and 46 integrate all the movements within overtly programmatic works, in a manner not seen again until Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Why did Haydn write such extraordinary music during this period? Why did he reach for such extremes in 1772? And why did he abruptly abandon this style thereafter? We no longer believe in the notion of a “romantic crisis”, as Théodore de Wyzewa propounded long ago.1 Although some have speculated that the turn away from expressiveness after 1772 resulted from an intervention on Prince Esterházy’s part2, there is no documentation for this.

Nor does the traditional musicological narrative about Haydn’s stylistic development hold water. This maintained that, before “achieving” the so-called “Classical style” with the String Quartets, op. 33 of 1781 and the Paris Symphonies of 1785-86, he underwent various periods of “immaturity” and “experimentation”. In this view, the expressive values and contrapuntal virtuosity of his music around 1770 were a kind of “dead end”, the “popular” works from the middle and late 1770s a “searching” for his “true” style of the 1780s and 1790s. The evolutionary thrust of such speculations now seems passé, and their marginalization of early and middle Haydn untenable.3 The questions “Why?” about this music remain unanswered.

Of course, we can regard the symphonies in this volume as the climax of Haydn’s so-called “Sturm und Drang” (“storm and stress”) period beginning in the later 1760s, which (among other things) reflected his extensive experience with sacred vocal music and opera buffa from 1766 on.4 The features of this style are described in the preface to Volume 6; briefly, they comprise a new interest in the minor mode and “distant” keys (F sharp minor in Symphony No. 45, B major in No. 46), rhythmic instability and harmonic complexity, expansions of size, dynamics, and register, greater technical difficulty, contrapuntal display, and dynamic, non-symmetrical themes. The slow movements, now Adagio rather than Andante, and the finales are more nearly comparable to the first movements in size and weight. Even so, the size, expressiveness, extroversion, and originality of Haydn’s music from 1772 remain unique.

* * * * *

Of the six symphonies in this volume, only Nos. 45-47 can be documented to the year 1772, on the basis of their dated autographs (the autographs for the others do not survive).5 Nos. 45 and 46 can be placed in (late) autumn: the Farewell story requires this, and the two works seem to be a “pair”. This supposition is confirmed by a payment to a horn-maker, authorized on 22 October 1772 by Haydn himself, for two “half-step slides”, which enabled the horns to play in the otherwise unavailable keys of F sharp and B.6 It would never have occurred to Haydn to order such implements until the works in which he would use them – there are no others - had taken shape in his mind; on the other hand, the Farewell may not have been performed until some time between 20 November, the last day Haydn’s presence in Eszterháza is documented, and the beginning of December (the court had returned to Eisenstadt by the Prince’s name-day, 6 December).

Hence it would seem likely, on purely statistical grounds, that No. 47 is the earliest of the three 1772 works. But Symphony No. 52 may be earlier still. To be sure, both it and No. 51 are first documented in the Breitkopf Catalogue for 1774, implying composition c. 1771-73. But Haydn entered No. 52 in his running thematic catalogue (“Entwurf-Katalog”) as part of a group of symphonies dating primarily from 1771-72; by contrast, No. 51 was entered later, by a copyist, at the head of a group otherwise dating from 1774(-75). Indeed, No. 64 occupies a neighbouring position in EK, so that, although it survives in an authentic copy whose watermark implies the dates 1769-737, it probably originated close to No. 51. These datings conform to their style, which differs markedly from the expressive intensity of the other four works in this volume.

In short, all six works originated either in 1772 or within a year or so on either side, in the hypothetical order8:

52 c. 1771 (possibly 1770)
47 1772 (not later than September?)
45, 46 1772, middle or late autumn
51, 64 c. 1773

* * * * *

All the symphonies in this volume are scored for the standard ensemble of two oboes, two horns, and strings, plus one bassoon col basso. However, some sources for No. 52 provide an obbligato part for the bassoon; although it is of later origin and cannot be shown to be authentic, it has been included in this recording. Another peculiarity in No. 52 is that it alternates between “alto” and “basso” horns in C, according to the following principle: in the first and last movements, which are in C minor but include long sections in E flat, one horn is crooked in C alto, the other in E flat; whereas in the C major Andante and the tonally unified C minor minuet (with trio in the major), both horns are in C basso.

Although Symphony No. 51 is transmitted in the majority of sources with two trios, the one surviving source from the Esterházy archives – which however is not authentic9 – includes only the second. The two trios are different not only in form but, more obviously, in that the horns are silent in the first, while in the second they offer further proof of their virtuosity. On the other hand, both trios share a number of motives, most prominently a high dotted-scalar figure in the violins. Especially given the brevity of the “gimmick” minuet, it seems appropriate to perform both, as is done in this recording.

James Webster 1996

1 “À propos du centenaire de la mort de Joseph Haydn”, Revue des deux mondes, 79th year/vol. 51 (15 June 1909),935-46.

2 For example, H.C. Robbins Landon, The Symphonies of Joseph Haydn (London, 1955), 342-44.

3 For a critique of these views, see James Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the ldea of Classical Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in his Instrumental Music (Cambridge, 1991), 358-66.

4 Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 2, Haydn at Eszterháza 1766-1790 (London & Bloomington, Ind., 1978), pp. 279-80 et passim; Elaine R. Sisman, “Haydn’s Theater Symphonies”, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 43 (1990), 292-352.

5 The autographs to Nos. 45-47 are housed in the Music Division, National Szechényi Library, Budapest. Each is a separate MS on a different paper-type from the others; thus there is no outward indication that Nos. 45 and 46, which are closely related stylistically (see the annotations), functioned as components of a multi-work “cycle”.

6 Paul Bryan, ”Haydn’s Hornists”, Haydn-Studien, 3 (1973-74). 58.

7 Sonja Gerlach, ”Die chronologische Ordnung von Haydns Sinfonien zwischen 1774 und 1782”, Haydn-Studien, 2 (1969-70), p. 36, n. 18.

8 Landon, op. cit., p. 285, places No. 52 before Nos. 42 (1771) and 43 (cf. Volume 6); No. 51 after them, but before Nos. 45-47 (“c 1771-73”); No. 64 “c. 1773”. Sonja Gerlach, “Fragen zur Chronologie von Haydns frühen Sinfonien”, typescript of a lecture given in 1987 at the Haydn-Institut, Cologne, places No. 52 with Nos. 42-44, “c. 1770-71”; Nos. 51 and 64 after Nos. 45-47, whereby No. 64 is globally “1773-74”, but No. 51, on unstated grounds, “(1774)”. I thank Mme. Gerlach for placing this unpublished material at my disposal.

9 Georg Feder, “Die Überlieferung und Verbreitung der handschriftlichen Quellen zu Haydns Werken”, Haydn-Studien, 1 (1965-68), 14 and n. 34; transl. “Manuscript Sources of Haydn’s Works and their Distribution”, The Haydn Yearbook, 4 (1968), 111-12.

Climax of the “Sturm und Drang” (c. 1772)
Symphony No. 45 in F sharp minor (“Abschiedssinfonie", “Farewell”)

1. Allegro assai
2. Adagio
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Presto – Adagio

This is the most famous among Haydn’s “Sturm und Drang” symphonies, owing both to its programme and to its unique style and construction.1 Every year, the Esterházy court spent the warm season at Prince Nikolaus’s new and splendid, but remote, summer castle “Eszterháza”. With the exception of Haydn and a few other privileged individuals, the musicians were required to leave their families behind in Eisenstadt. Haydn’s biographer Griesinger tells the story as follows:

One year, against his usual custom, the prince determined to extend his stay in Eszterháza for several weeks. The ardent married men, thrown into utter consternation, turned to Haydn and asked him to help. Haydn hit upon the idea of writing a symphony ... in which, one after the other, the instruments fall silent. At the first opportunity, this symphony was performed in the prince’s presence. Each of the musicians was instructed that, as soon as his part had come to an end, he should extinguish his light, pack up his music, and leave with his instrument under his arm. The prince and the audience at once understood the point of this pantomime; the next day came the order for the departure from Eszterháza.2

To be sure, the nickname Farewell stands neither in Haydn’s autograph (the only surviving authentic source) nor in any other eighteenth-century musical source; it probably originated in France in the 1780s. Nor does the autograph provide any indication of leaving the hall or other unusual goings-on. On the other hand, almost all later sources, both musical and anecdotal, specify this; indeed, the German version of the nickname (Abschiedssinfonie) was widely disseminated by 1800; Griesinger himself uses it. In any case, Haydn’s audiences would surely have understood such a symphony in programmatic terms.

The Farewell Symphony is arguably Haydn’s most extraordinary composition. It is the only known eighteenth-century symphony in F sharp. It is his only symphony in five real movements; the last two constitute a run-on “double finale”, a Presto and the concluding “farewell” movement; the latter is not only an Adagio, but ends in a different key from that in which it begins. The cycle is so highly organized as to justify the epithet “through-composed”; the entire symphony prepares, and is resolved by, the apotheosis of the “farewell” ending. After 1772, the earliest work that so much as approached it in these respects was Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

All this is carried out by means of an unusual “double cycle”. Each cycle entails the same sequence of three structural keys: F sharp minor, A major, and F sharp major. In the first cycle, this comprises the Allegro assai (f sharp), the Adagio (A), and the minuet (F sharp); in the second, the Presto (f sharp) and the two parts of the “farewell” movement (A moving to F sharp). In addition, each cycle incorporates an extended decrescendo from loud to very soft, and from a fast, agitated style to a slower, calmer one; the final phrase of the minuet, for the violins alone, off-tonic and pianissimo, foreshadows the end of the symphony. Yet the end is “more so” – that is, less: two solo violins, muted, unaccompanied, for fifteen Adagio measures. As a “negative climax”, it has never been surpassed.

At the same time, the double cycle articulates an overall progression from instability to stability. In the first three movements, musical coherence seems almost to break down; all three are tonally unstable and have inadequate closure. The Allegro assai, in sonata form, is the most savage movement Haydn ever composed; its rhythms are obsessively, almost mechanically, regular. The tonic of the opening theme is projected “weakly”; the second group feints towards the relative, A major, but cannot cadence there, ending instead in the dominant minor (uniquely in Haydn’s fast sonata-form movement). In the recapitulation, the tonic is brutally undermined just four bars after it enters, and its restoration, after the most violent music in the movement, is too little, too late.

An inexplicable event is the extended piano interlude in D major that makes up the entire second half of the development. It “floats” in the high register; its breathless phrasing contradicts its surface regularity; its internal form is self-contradictory: apparently a quiet moment of repose, it incorporates and extends the principle of instability that governs the entire movement. It remains unresolved and unexplained. And since the remainder of this movement entirely ignores it, that explanation can only come elsewhere – on a level that involves the entire symphony.3

The Adagio and minuet are also unstable, albeit in different ways from the Allegro assai (and each other). To be sure, the sonata-form Adagio eases the tension; it is squarely in the relative A major, and its themes are clear periods, its keys strongly established. But the themes are troubled by rhythmic disunity and cannot articulate their own cadences, and the entire second group is burdened with major/minor chromaticism. In the minuet and trio, we finally hear F sharp major as a key. This key cannot suppress echoes of the minor, rudely disruptive in the minuet (the bass entry in the third bar), wistfully unintegrated in the trio. All the melodic entries are off-tonic and lack bass; even their ostensibly clear forms are ambiguous. The last thing we hear is the minuet’s inconclusive off-tonic tag.

* * * * *

The double finale, comprising the Presto and the “farewell” Adagio, is entirely progressive, not merely in being run-on and in the “action” at the end, but in thematic development and formal and tonal structure. Closure is systematically postponed until the final section of the “farewell” movement. The farewell procedure is progressive in its own right: a gradual and systematic reduction of the ensemble to two solo muted violins.

In contrast to the first three movements, however, the musical language is now normal. The F sharp minor Presto, in many respects a typical symphonic finale of the period, is in very clear sonata form, except that the recapitulation breaks off at the last minute and leads back to a structural dominant. This does not resolve, but proceeds abruptly to A major and the calm farewell music. The farewell movement is in two main parts: (1) a binary movement in A, at the ends of whose two sections the “farewell” theme itself is heard in oboes and horns; and (2) a compressed recapitulation and coda in F sharp major. They are linked by a modulating transition for the double-bass, also on the farewell theme, which “recaptures” the home dominant from the end of the Presto. Hence the concluding section in F sharp major, unlike the minuet, resolves the music that precedes it.

This resolution is not only tonal, but formal and gestural. The music becomes increasingly diatonic; the final section, for the two muted violins and viola, includes not a single accidental. And the very last, codetta measures revert to the “farewell” theme itself. The form is as logical and coherent as in any other movement by Haydn.

What is more, this ending has been prepared, precisely by the most problematical earlier passage: the D major interlude in the Allegro assai: “insubstantial”, for strings alone, beginning without bass, soft, legato, tuneful, regular in phrasing. Now, at the end, its register, style, and mood return – in the tonic. Though not even hinting at a thematic recall, the ending thus implicitly recapitulates the interlude; the “sonata principle” is affirmed, over the course of the entire symphony.

* * * * *

This ending suggests an interpretation of the entire symphony – not merely the finale – in terms of the programme. With winter approaching, Haydn’s musicians are stuck in the barren splendour of Eszterháza castle; they desperately want to go home to their families. Their frustration is vividly projected by the unstable, passionately unfulfilled Allegro assai in F sharp minor. But this is no ordinary key. Not only was it difficult for intonation, it was literally unheard of as an overall tonic in later-eighteenth-century orchestral music. F sharp minor thus represents a remote and inhospitable part of the musical universe – just as Eszterháza lay in a remote and inhospitable district. (Haydn more than once referred to it as an Einöde, a wasteland.)

Equally obviously, the musicians’ yearning for home is symbolized by the parallel major, the only sonority which can really resolve the tension and dissonance of a minor key. But this key is F sharp major: extremely distant (six steps from C on the circle of fifths), a region almost never dreamed of, let alone attained, by orchestral musicians. If this is “home”, it will be reachable (if at all) only at the end of a long and arduous journey.

In the wild desert of the Allegro assai, no major key can function. Even the interlude is insubstantial, unanalysable; in short, a mirage. Similarly, the A major and F sharp major of the Adagio and minuet, which remain isolated from each other and internally unstable, offer no real resolution.

By contrast, the Presto and the farewell movement traverse all the steps of the journey; at the end, F sharp major resolves its own dominant and all the preceding keys, and is repeatedly confirmed by strong cadences, purged of all dissonance and chromaticism, and informed by pure and expressive themes. Haydn’s musicians have earned the right to call it “home” – except that it remains distant, ethereal. The Farewell Symphony’s vision of home may remain unattainable. And rightly so: the musicians’ condition is one of absence; their goal is merely a cherished hope.

This does not compromise the symphony’s psychological truth. Even Prince Esterházy did not remain immune, however little his personal comfort may have been at stake. We too, more than two centuries later, respond to the genius of Haydn’s musical vision: this miraculous balance of absence and fulfillment, of desire gratified only in longing.4

Symphony No. 46 in B major

1. Vivace
2. Poco adagio
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Presto e scherzando

This symphony is in many ways a pair to the Farewell.5 It too is set in an unusual, “remote” sharp-side key; more fundamentally, it too disrupts symphonic conventions. After a complex opening Vivace, a conspiratorial siciliano Poco adagio in B minor, and a galant minuet, the Presto finale breaks off towards the end for a long reprise of the minuet, and then resumes and concludes.

The minuet begins as a vigorous forte, and continues so after the double bar; but the reprise – as so often in Haydn minuets – is varied. The winds drop out, and the dynamics shift to piano; the initial quarter-rest in the bass is expanded to more than a measure, during which silence the opening phrase returns in a free retrograde: a “dying fall”. Furthermore, this reprise stands on the dominant; it thus creates a progressive, non-symmetrical form for the minuet as a whole. The trio, in B minor, invokes an “exotic” aura by means of non-functional progressions, a heaping-up of harmonic, instrumental, and dynamic surprises, and ambiguous tonality.

Outwardly, the finale is typical of the period. However, the beginning is “weak”: it is scored for violins alone and projects the tonic triad in first inversion (over D sharp) rather than in root position. It is also rhythmically unsettled, and unusually quiet for a finale-theme; presumably, these features are among those signaled by the heading scherzando. The very short development centres around the dominant of the relative minor, and the mediant, both also built on D sharp. And the recapitulation breaks off, again on the dominant, before reaching the structural cadence.

Thus it is consequential that the recall of the minuet also begins on the dominant, with the internal reprise; its opening section is never heard. A deceptive cadence leads quickly to a newly unstable dominant and a fermata; suddenly the Presto head-motive bursts in, harmonized by a forte root-position V-I cadence – the first and only such conjunction in the movement. There follows the “missing” ending of the recapitulation, dying-away on the tag-motive (repeated in augmentation). Hence the coda, with its pedal in the low horns, is not merely a good joke in scherzando style; it also provides the minimum satisfactory degree of tonal confirmation.

* * * * *

Why does Haydn recall the minuet in the finale, and fuse these two movements into a through-composed complex? The melodic material of the minuet is based largely on a two-note appoggiatura figure; that is, a “sighing” motive. In the reprise, however, the sighs come to the fore, creating the afore-mentioned “dying fall”. Now in the minuet this passage is already a varied reprise. Hence in the finale, the minuet-recall is a “second-order” reprise, music “about” a reprise; its content is not a reprise in the usual sense, but the experience of hearing a reprise. In addition, the minuet-reprise is generically shocking, unforeseeable; as it begins, we don’t know what is happening; it takes a moment to get our bearings. It is thus not merely a recall, but a reminiscence; a re-experiencing, tinged with nostalgia or regret, which incorporates its own past into its sounding present.

Furthermore, this meta-musical reminiscence does not belong to the world of ordinary symphonic discourse. The minuet recall is “framed”, by the gesture of breaking off, by the differences in style, by its self-reflexive nature. And what is thus framed? A dying fall, which we have heard before but at first cannot quite place, which seems to say, “Once upon a time there was a happier world, a world of ordered minuets, unlike this hurlyburly”, and to say this in a tone of nostalgia and regret.

Hence the underlying idea of Symphony No. 46 must lie in its manifold relationships with the Farewell Symphony. In what order did Haydn intend these two extraordinary works to be heard? (There is no documentary evidence.) Did the B major work come last? Do its slightly more familiar key and major mode invoke life back in Eisenstadt, with the joking finale suggesting that “they all lived happily ever after”? Or did it come first? Is it an image of life at Eszterháza (minor mode; Balkanisms), the bittersweet minuet-reminiscence a reminder of happy, ordered times in Eisenstadt, not yet regained, which in the Farewell will progress through unbearable tension to a vision of longing? Scholars cannot answer these questions; but there is no reason why listeners should not enjoy speculating on them.

Symphony No. 47 in G major

1. [Allegro]
2. Un poco adagio, cantabile
3. Menuet al roverso – Trio al roverso
4. Finale: Presto assai

Unlike Nos. 45 and 46, this symphony is in an “ordinary” key and exhibits the customary sequence of four discrete movements, without overt extramusical associations. But the person who supposes that it therefore is not on the same high level has no hope of understanding Haydn’s art.

The opening Allegro begins with a remarkable non-periodic martial theme (dotted motives), in which dissonant horn fanfares, later joined by the oboes, alternate with punctuating string motives; the whole builds up to an initial climax. The martial topos continues through the counterstatement and transition until, in the dominant, it yields to a quiet, ruminating theme in triplets; this leads directly to a brief codetta. The development begins with a piano modulating passage based on the martial theme, which eventually bursts out forte in combination with the triplets. A long, dissonant pedal on the martial motive leads to a repetition of the entire ruminating second theme, at whose cadence the triplets become forte and lead to the recapitulation. Here ensues one of Haydn’s most astonishing surprises: in a manner not to be heard again until Schubert, the opening theme is rewritten in the tonic minor, and the build-up is correspondingly more dissonant – until, as if nothing unusual had happened, it leads directly to the ruminating triplet theme. However, the remainder recapitulates everything in an entirely different order.

The slow movement, with the unusual heading Un poco adagio, cantabile, is a remarkable combination of counterpoint and variation form. The theme is an A B A'; the A section is a complete antecedent-consequent period, made up of five-bar phrases; it is for strings alone, in two-part invertible counterpoint. The B section, in richer texture, comprises a four-bar phrase plus six-bar extension; the winds join in, with gorgeous tone-colours. The A', again for strings alone, repeats A with the two parts inverted. Three complete variations follow according to the “double” principle, of faster notes in each successive variation. None too soon, Haydn abandons this procedure in favour of a final variation in which the winds participate from the beginning, more gorgeously than ever. This however closes with a deceptive cadence, leading to an extensive coda and a pianissimo ending.

Yet the minuet al roverso tops this with ease. Each movement, minuet and trio, comprises merely a single period of written-out music; in both cases, the second strain is produced by performing the first part backwards. As opposed to a “crab canon”, in which contrapuntal ingenuities or intricacies of texture abound, this music is entirely homophonic; nothing can distract us from Haydn’s tour de force in composing harmonies and rhythms that make sense in both “directions”. The key is to attend to the dynamics and articulation (which come through far more clearly with historical instruments than modern ones).

The finale is marked Presto assai, on the face of it the fastest tempo Haydn ever prescribed (though compensated for by the relatively slow harmonic rhythm). It begins breathlessly, piano and off-tonic; no meaningfully contrasting forte is heard until a terrific outburst in the dominant, which soon turns to the minor. The second group proper repeats the main theme, leading eventually to a brief, offbeat codetta. At the beginning of the development, Haydn proves once again that he can confound any expectations; soon, however, the main theme appears in the subdominant and leads by forte/piano sequence to the “outburst” passage in E minor, including some hair-raising horn dissonances. The recapitulation is more or less regular (note the humourous transformation of an odd augmented passage into forte), until the codetta leads into a final high climax.

Symphony No. 51 in B flat major

1. Vivace
2. Adagio
3. Menuetto – Trio I – Trio II
4. Finale: Allegro

Though less expressive than Nos. 45-47, this symphony is no less original or eccentric. In the opening Vivace, the main theme has three parts: a vigorous forte unison gesture, a quiet continuation for strings alone, and a mysterious low unison motive for strings and second horn, which ends off the tonic, on D. The entire complex is repeated, whereby the horn D becomes the dominant of G minor; this introduces the vigorous transition, which leads seamlessly into the equally vigorous second group. Only later do we hear a quiet, contrasting theme; in its extension, however, the contrasts of material and dynamics become eccentric in the extreme.

The development surprisingly takes up the concluding phrase of the exposition, leading eventually to a “false recapitulation” of the main theme in the subdominant, and then to much of the second group in – again – G minor. As the quiet theme is about to cadence, Haydn interrupts with a chromatic passage that leads yet again to D in the bass, harmonized as the tonic in first inversion – whereupon, as if nothing unusual were happening, the second phrase of the opening theme enters, and we find ourselves in the middle of the recapitulation.

The sonata-form Adagio in E flat features remarkable solos for the two horns: the first horn leads an eight-bar theme in the tonic, dizzyingly high, then the second horn modulates to the dominant, unfathomably low (with “stopped” notes). The first oboe joins in, and the relatively brief second group soon cadences, with chromatic colouring in the codetta. The development begins with new solos for the oboe, then the two horns, now together; a long, ruminating passage for strings alone leads to the recapitulation. This is much altered: the second (low) horn solo is replaced by a new, more active one; the second group returns sooner, but is then much extended, including a written-out cadenza for the strings.

Like the minuet in No. 47, this one is based on a gimmick. It is only sixteen bars long (8+8); the bass comprises eight successive statements of the same two-bar motive, at different pitch-levels, which an Esterházy set of parts reproduces as a “cipher” for the amusement of the players. It is unique in Haydn’s symphonic œuvre in having two trios (see the “Historical Note”.)

The symphony ends with one of Haydn’s earliest variation finales (in this case, a more precise designation would be “variation-rondo”: certain “variations” are in different keys and present new thematic ideas). The artlessly “kittenish” theme (as Tovey would have called it) for strings alone harbours (as always) a wealth of art; the first, third, and fifth variations add new effects of dynamics and instrumentation. The second variation, in E flat, is a solo for the first oboe, while the fourth is a surprisingly passionate outburst in G minor. Following the fifth variation comes a brief coda, eccentric to the end.

Symphony No. 52 in C minor

1. Allegro assai con brio
2. Andante
3. Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

The expressive intensity of Symphony No. 52 at times rivals that of the Farewell. The Allegro assai con brio opens with a savage unison theme, irregular both topically and structurally. The long, bewilderingly varied second group contains six paragraphs, of which the third and fifth, uniquely in Haydn, present the “second theme” twice (much extended on its second appearance); the remainder is as stormy and unstable as the opening. In the development, the contrasts at first function on a much smaller scale; eventually, a longer forte passage leads to a “false recapitulation” in the subdominant F minor. This soon deviates to a long, ruminating passage based on the second theme, until suddenly a forte retransition in the tonic leads to the recapitulation. This is more or less regular (by Haydn’s standards), except that the second appearance of the second theme is further extended, dying away in almost unbearable tension, until the vigorous close.

The sonata-form Andante may at first seem unrelated to its context: it is a lilting 3/8 in C major, whose leisurely main theme even indulges in the trick of ending with its opening phrase. But the transitional paragraph abruptly enters forte, and continues with a series of unexpected and in part destabilizing contrasts. The long second group remains outwardly demure, but the attentive listener will notice subtle chromaticism and irregular phrasings. The development falls into two parts, the first forte and modulating, the second again demure and centring around the relative, A minor. An oddly indirect transition leads to a complete recapitulation.

Now follows an excellent example of the “exotic” air that Haydn often adopts in minor-mode minuet and trio movements; despite the prevailing piano dynamic, it is uneasily compelling. The trio may seem to function primarily as a contrast, owing to the major mode; but it is based on exactly the same motive as the minuet, with which it also shares the low tessitura and a certain irregularity of phrasing.

The Presto finale reverts to the instability of the first movement, but in a different manner. It begins with a spare, contrapuntal theme, whose piano dynamic is maintained not only through the counterstatement and transition, but the long initial paragraph of the second group as well. Thus when a forte finally erupts, it ruthlessly drives the remainder of the second group towards the final cadence. The second half is a stunning example of “conflated” development and recapitulation. It too begins with a long piano paragraph (based on the second theme); the ensuing brief contrapuntal forte leads to the reprise of the piano opening theme – much too soon, so that it quickly reverts to the contrapuntal music, now functioning as a “secondary development”.6 This leads astonishingly to the final, forte paragraph from the exposition; only after an extension and pause on a dissonant chord does the long-lost second theme return in the tonic. It too cannot cadence; only an abrupt series of syncopated chords, which culminate in a shocking “silent” measure, bring about the forceful conclusion.

Symphony No. 64 in A major (“Tempora mutantur”)

1. Allegro con spirito
2. Largo
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

Unlike Symphonies 45-47 and 52, but like No. 51, this work eschews extremes in favour of wit and esprit – except in the slow movement. The opening Allegro con spirito begins quietly with a lyrical tune for the strings, unexpectedly joined by a contrasting forte motive for the full band. The continuation varies these contrasts in new ways, and we gradually realize that the entire movement is governed by wit, inventiveness, and unexpected (and often subtle) contrasts: of material, dynamics, instrumentation, and harmonic orientation. The overall effect is not easy to describe.

A contrast of an entirely different sort is provided by the Largo, arguably the most eccentric movement Haydn ever composed. It is presumably the referent of the mysterious nickname for the symphony, “Tempora mutantur etc.”, found on the (later) wrapper of a set of authentic parts now in Frankfurt.7 This Latin phrase surely refers to the moralising epigram by the Elizabethan poet John Owen, still familiar in the eighteenth century:

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis:
Quomode? Fit semper tempore peior homo.

The Times are Chang’d, and in them Chang’d are we:
How? Man, as Times grow worse, grows worse, we see.8

It would take an entire article to describe this extraordinary movement adequately. I mention here merely its inability to complete musical phrases properly, its discontinuities of material, dynamics, and register, its refusal to execute an intelligible form (I could go on); most of all, its wilfully strange, almost incoherent ending.9

The ensuing minuet necessarily sounds “normal” in this context. Indeed it is normal (insofar as any Haydn minuet can be); the quirky registral play, “Scotch snap” motives, and saucy piano return of the first phrase as an envoi fall within his normal practice. But this scarcely applies to the manner in which, in the trio, the minor-mode episode is dove-tailed with a “veiled” return of the initial idea.

The finale, an irregular rondo, again reverts to eccentricity. The main theme is in two parts (“a” and “b”), each comprising two phrases (of six bars in “a”); each phrase – eight in all, including repetitions – ends with an odd unaccompanied afterbeat. Then theme “b” is developed into a second group in the dominant E major; this suddenly breaks off for theme “a”, just as suddenly changes to a new, “rocket”-like theme in the minor (“c”), and even more unexpectedly slides back into the tonic for the complete theme-complex, a+b. Just as this is ending, it collides, still more abruptly, with a new and longer episode based on “c”, beginning in F sharp minor; it eventually returns to “a”, as slyly as before. Now “a” turns into its own minor (A minor), and even pretends to develop contrapuntally (not that anyone is fooled), before returning “one last time” to a+b, and a playful coda – in which Haydn, by his usual “sharp practice”, proves that even “one last time” can be an illusion.

James Webster 1996

1 See Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony (cf. Historical Note, n. 3), introduction and part l, from which the present annotations have been adapted.

2 Georg August Griesinger, Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn (Leipzig, 1810), 28-29; transl. Landon, op. cit., 180.

3 For a radically different interpretation of this interlude, see Judith L. Schwartz, “Periodicity and Passion in the First Movement of Haydn’s "Farewell" Symphony”, in Eugene K. Wolf and Edward H. Roesner, eds., Studies in Musical Sources and Style: Essays in Honor of Jan LaRue (Madison, Wisc., 1990), 293-338.

4 Unless our desire is gratified in Symphony No. 46! See the following annotation.

5 These remarks are based on the much longer discussion in Webster, op. cit., 267-87.

6 Charles Rosen, Sonata Forms (London, 1980), 104-10, 276-80.

7 Further on the nickname in connection with this movement, see James Atkins, letter to the editor, The Haydn Yearbook, 11 (1980), 196-98; Sisman, “Haydn’s Theater Symphonies” (cf. Historical Note, n. 4), 326-31; Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony, 147-48.

8 Jonathan Foster, “The Tempora Mutantur Symphony of Joseph Haydn”, The Haydn Yearbook, 9 (1975), 328-29; the translation is by Thomas Harvey (1677). (Foster “underlays” the Latin to the finale; all subsequent commentators (cf. n. 6) have found this unpersuasive and have written instead of the Largo.)

9 Sisman (loc. cit.) goes so far as to suggest that this movement’s relation to “Tempora mutantur” might have been as stage music, illustrating Hamlet’s speech “The time is out of joint”, etc.

Volume 8

Symphony No. 50 in C major
Symphony No. 54 in G major (1st version)
Symphony No. 55 in E flat major Der Schulmeister
Symphony No. 56 in C major
Symphony No. 57 in D major
Symphony No. 60 in C major Il distratto
Minuet & Trio (1773-74)
Finale (1773-74)

Historical and chronological notes

Of the many changes of style in Haydn’s œuvre, one of the most striking began to manifest itself in 1773-74. In contrast to the radically expressive and innovative works characteristic of his so-called “Sturm und Drang” period (late 1760s and early 1770s; see vols. 6-7), in the middle 1770s and early 1780s he adopted a distinctly lighter style. The reason for this development is unclear. Barring the (unlikely) hypothesis of a simple change of taste on Prince Esterházy’s part, the most likely cause would seem to be the chronological pattern of Haydn’s composition of music for the stage.1 Between Le pescatrici of 1768-69 and 1773 – that is, during the height of the “Sturm und Drang” – he wrote nothing of consequence in this area. Beginning in the latter year, however, he not only resumed operatic composition with L’infedeltà delusa (premiered 26 July), but tried his hand at incidental music for spoken drama (see below). With the inauguration of the new opera house at Eszterháza in 1776, he became virtually a full-time impresario.

In this volume, both Symphonies 50 and 60 (Il distratto) testify to this influence of stage-music. The former is associated with the marionette opera Philemon und Baucis; the latter originated as incidental music to a stage-play, Le Distrait (Der Zerstreute), produced at the Esterházy court in June 1774 by a famous traveling theatrical troupe led by Carl Wahr.2 Nevertheless, the overall influence of vocal music on Haydn’s instrumental style in this period developed only gradually; it applies most strongly to his symphonies from c. 1775-76 to c. 1781 (see vols. 9 and 10). Those recorded here exhibit a varied palette drawn from both styles and in this sense can be considered “transitional”.

Of course, this stylistic mixture does not at all imply that these symphonies are unsuccessful or insignificant. Nos. 54, 56, and 57 are obvious masterworks, for the most part in a serious vein. But the lighter Nos. 50 and 55 abound in striking and beautiful passages to an equal degree. And Haydn’s pervasive eccentricity – by no means to be equated merely with his vaunted humor – is prominent in all these works, reaching an extreme in Il distratto that even he never surpassed.

* * * * *

Symphony No. 54 is dated 1774 on the autograph; and there is no doubt that a version of the work was completed and, presumably, produced in that year. However, uniquely among Haydn’s symphonies, it exists in several different authentic instrumentations, which he entered into the autograph in at least two discrete, later stages.3 Both the first and last versions - which are very different indeed – are included in these complete recordings. The latter (the one usually published and performed today) will be found in vol. 9; it begins with a slow introduction and is scored for the largest orchestra of any Haydn symphony before London.4 By contrast the original 1774 version, included here, as far as we know has never been performed since c. 1774 and never been recorded. Scored for Haydn’s standard orchestra of late 1774 (two oboes, two horns, one obbligato bassoon, and strings), it omits the introduction, beginning instead directly with the Presto. Thus a rare “serious” symphony in chamber style from the mid-1770s can be added to the Haydn canon. (The references to Symphony No. 54 in what follows refer exclusively to this initial version.)

* * * * *

All the symphonies in this volume date from 1773-74. No. 50 survives in an autograph dated 1773 and Nos. 54-57 in autographs dated 1774, while No. 60, as we have seen, is from the same year. While Nos. 54, 55 and 57 restrict themselves to Haydn’s standard orchestra (two oboes, two horns, one bassoon, and strings), the others call for trumpets; they are the first, and almost the only, Esterházy symphonies for which this is so.5 In No. 60 (the only work in this volume for which the autograph is lost) the majority of sources, including an authentic one from 1779, specify either alto horns in C or trumpets (as was usual when trumpets were mentioned). But a late (1803) copy by none other than Haydn’s amanuensis Johann Elssler, doubtless made on the oft-cited occasion when Haydn requested Elssler’s brother to send “that old rubbish” (den alten Schmarrn) from Eisenstadt to Vienna, because the empress wanted to hear it again, includes both alto horns and C trumpets (as Haydn himself did in Symphony No. 56, also from 1774). Notwithstanding its late date, the latter version has been employed here.

The first two movements of No. 50 originally served as the overture to the prologue of the marionette opera Philemon und Baucis, premiered during the visit of Maria Theresa to Eszterháza at the end of August and the beginning of September 1773.6 (This prologue bears the separate title Der Götterrat [The Council of the Gods]; indeed the opera proper has its own overture, in D minor.) In this form it had no trumpets. Later, using identical paper, Haydn added the minuet and finale of what we now know as Symphony No. 50. Although in the autograph he gave no comparable directions for instrumental enrichment of the opening movement, the majority of the MS copies include trumpets there as well. We have therefore recorded the symphony in this unified instrumentation.

This recycling of the overture into Symphony No. 50 must have taken place in 1774(-75). Although trumpeters were usually not available to the Kammermusik and none of Haydn’s earlier Esterházy symphonies call for trumpets, his access to trumpeters in 1774 is documented.7 The paper-type of the autograph is not documented after 1773; certain notational indications imply a date not later than 1775.8 Several other works from these years – but not later – include trumpets, including the revised Symphony No. 54, Symphony No. 56, and the 1775 opera L’incontro improvviso, Furthermore, the work includes neither obbligato bassoon nor flute, a double lack found in no Haydn symphony after 1774.9

Otherwise, we have only indirect indications as to the internal order of these symphonies. A possible clue relates to the fact that it was precisely in 1774 that Haydn began to compose obbligato bassoon parts as a regular practice (as opposed to the earlier col basso).10 Whereas in Nos. 50, 57 and 60 there is no obbligato bassoon writing, in Nos. 55 and 56 this does occur, but each time only in one movement (one variation in the finale of No. 55; the slow movement of No. 56), and in the autograph of No. 54 a separate obbligato bassoon part is for the first time notated throughout (except for the slow movement). A possible stylistic marker, finally, is the presence in No. 55 of two variation movements (in the finale with an admixture of rondo elements); such movements are almost entirely lacking earlier, especially as finales, but become downright common in the next years.11 (In addition, the autograph to No. 55 is on a unique type of paper for this group, suggesting that it might have originated out of sequence; i.e., later.)12 All this implies the (speculative) ordering:

50 first two movements 1773; no bassoon
57, 60 no bassoon (No. 60: June)
56 bassoon in only one movement
54, 55 54: bassoon now “normal”
55: two variation movements; different paper

James Webster 1997

1 Both hypotheses are suggested, for example, by Jens Peter Larsen, “Haydn”, The New Grove, vol. 8, pp. 336-38, 353-54.

2 For the literature on this work, see the annotations on p. 23.

3 See Joseph Haydn: Werke (JHW) (Henle), series I, vol. 7, foreword; ibid, critical report, p. 13; Sonja Gerlach, “Die chronologische Ordnung von Haydns Sinfonien zwischen 1774 und 1782”, Haydn-Studien, 2 (1969-70), p. 54 and n. 95.

4 The assertion in Landon, Haydn, vol. 3, Haydn in England 1791-1795, p. 188, that this version exists only in post-1800 sources is incorrect; a Viennese c. 1780 copy (from the more-or-less authentic Keeß collection), now in Frankfurt, is noted in JHW, I/7, critical report (published 1967), p. 14, Source C. This source also refutes Landon’s speculation (ibid.; cf. Haydn at Eszterháza, p. 307) that Haydn might have made the last version for performance in London – which is not to say that it could not have been performed there.

5 Gerlach, ”Haydns Orchestermusiker von 1761 bis 1774”, Haydn-Studien, 4 (1976-80), 43-44. Trumpet parts to other Esterházy symphonies are later and usually inauthentic additions.

6 JHW, XXIV, vol. 1, pp. 18-29; ibid., critical report, pp. 8-9.

7 Gerlach, “Haydns Orchestermusiker”, p. 44.

8 JHW, XXIV/1, critical report, p. 9, n. 16, and the references given there.

9 Gerlach, “Die chronologische Ordnung”, pp. 55-58.

10 Gerlach, “Die chronologische Ordnung”, p.55.

11 Ibid., pp. 60-63; Elaine R. Sisman, Haydn and the Classical Variation (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), pp. 149-63.

12 Gerlach, “Fragen zur Chronologie von Haydns frühen Sinfonien”, unpubl. typescript (1987), notes to chronological table. I thank Frau Gerlach for making this material available.

1773-1774
Symphony No. 50 in C major

1. Adagio e maestoso – Allegro di molto
2. Andante moderato
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

This symphony reveals its origins as the overture to Der Götterrat (see the historical note) in various ways. The slow introduction – a rare feature before the 1780s – conveys the majestic air appropriate to the high gods and goddesses who, in this prologue, would soon appear on stage. The ensuing Allegro di molto is terser than the opening movements of Nos. 54-57: the modulations are abrupt, and the “driving” quaver rhythm never lets up, not even in the six-bar excuse for a “second theme” near the end of the exposition. Everything pushes forward towards the drama to come – except that in symphonic form this energy becomes the drama.

The Andante moderato is in the “bright” dominant G major instead of the more usual subdominant (although Haydn did employ the dominant for slow movements more often – perhaps one-quarter of the time – than most of his contemporaries). Its original function as an operatic movement may explain its conservative orchestration, essentially for strings alone with a solo cello doubling the melody at the lower octave (compare Symphony No. 16, in vol. 3). In addition, this movement has no real development section, merely a six-bar leadback that, again in conservative fashion, even restores the tonic before the reprise. On the other hand, at the reprise the oboes suddenly enter, deepening the expression; this sudden enrichment of the instrumental palette, a kind of affective “stereoscopy”, is common in Haydn’s “Sturm und Drang” slow movements.

The newly composed minuet, by contrast, is very long (as are most of the minuets in this volume). It is in fact a miniature sonata form: main “trumpet” theme, vigorous transition, piano closing theme in the dominant; middle section mainly in the minor, on an imitative, dissonant derivative of the closing theme; and a full recapitulation. But the real surprise is the trio: uniquely in Haydn’s symphonies, it is entirely through-composed. It begins with the headmotive of the minuet, still in C, but suddenly deviates towards the subdominant F major, where the trio melody enters in oboe and violins. This melody is peculiar both melodically and rhythmically (six bars, with an oddly redundant and unstable harmonic rhythm); the peculiarity is reinforced by its development through four statements into a full double period. Hence when a modulating sequence finally enters, it sounds like the beginning of the second part of a conventional binary form; however, this section soon lands on E major, the dominant of A minor (m. 94). This, astonishingly, turns out to be the retransition to the minuet, which enters directly by a remote progression (III# I); the underlying rationale is a common-tone modulation (the fifth degree of A minor = the third degree of C major). Overall, the trio is thus constructed as an unstable modulating transition from the minuet’s own beginning back to itself. (For a “normal” trio in the same key and instrumentation, see Symphony No. 56.)

The witty and exciting Presto finale, replete with dynamic contrasts, reverts to the terse style of the first movement. The exposition comprises merely two paragraphs; each begins with the quiet main theme in two-part counterpoint (a distant forerunner of the finale of Symphony No. 95, also in C), while the caesura between them is marked by a fourfold loud dissonant chord. The development culminates in two longer loud chordal passages, in rapid alternation between strings and winds; the second of these includes excruciating dissonances between the winds, on E, and the strings. But this E is the dominant of A minor – and, just as in the trio, the recapitulation enters piano, without transition, by means of the common-tone E. Its ending leads seamlessly into a brief but brilliant coda.

Symphony No. 54 in G major (first version)

1. Presto
2. Adagio assai
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

The main theme of the opening Presto features the horns and the newly obbligato bassoon (see the musicological note) over an ostinato motive in the strings. The exposition is brief; the second group in the dominant enters without transition and features a variety of short, active themes. This brevity is compensated for by the development which, unusually in Haydn, is longer than the exposition. It is based primarily on the ostinato motive, which is led through a variety of keys (including an unexpectedly radiant E major after a general pause); eventually a fugato leads to the retransition which, unusually, is the climax of the entire development. Towards the end, a “surprise” deceptive resolution onto a diminished-seventh chord leads to an expanded cadence.

The ensuing movement is marked Adagio assai, an unusually slow tempo for Haydn. Such deeply felt, very long, mostly quiet slow movements in sonata form first had become a “type” for Haydn during the “Sturm und Drang” (e.g., Symphonies 44 and 48), which he occasionally cultivated in the mid-1770s as well; indeed this movement is the outstanding example. The triplet figuration, sometimes imitative, sometimes spun out over static harmonies, becomes almost hypnotic: an otherworldly vision that is scarcely ruffled by the ominous repeated unisons at the beginning of the development. In the recapitulation, this figure unexpectedly turns to the minor, and leads astonishingly to a six-four chord and a full written-out cadenza for both violin parts.

Following this, the rustic minuet, with its insouciant grace-notes, seems almost raucous; the effect is not really dispelled by the quiet answering phrase, since Haydn reverts to forte for the cadence. By contrast, the trio, scored for strings alone with (again) the bassoon doubling the melody, is all elegance.

The finale, though also marked Presto, is not as fast as the opening movement. It is a broadly laid-out sonata form, with full transitions and even a quiet, contrasting second theme. Its opening theme has a fast syncopated accompaniment and ends oddly with a “bump”; these foreshadow the many offbeat accents and longer syncopations later on. The retransition is one of Haydn’s better jokes: the quiet second theme enters in E minor, as if we were still deep within the development; but it is harmonized with a chromatically descending bass that supports a root-progression by descending-fifths; five bars later the recapitulation is suddenly in full swing.

Symphony No. 55 in E flat major (“Der Schulmeister", “The Schoolmaster”)

1. Allegro di molto
2. Adagio, ma semplicemente
3. Menuetto – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

This symphony provides the main example in this volume of Haydn’s “turn” towards a lighter style, which became so important later in the 1770s. The chief sign of this is its inclusion of two theme-and-variation movements, the slow movement and the finale. Whereas previously such movements had been rare in the symphony (most of Haydn’s earlier slow movements and finales are in sonata form); now he adopts them as a normal resource.1 Furthermore, this galant orientation in individual movements entailed changes in the patterns of “weight” and import among the four movements in the cycle, which we will have occasion to note below and in future volumes.

The nickname Schoolmaster for this symphony is spurious; it appears in no eighteenth-century source and as far as is known was not associated with any symphony by Haydn until the lexicographer Ernst Ludwig Gerber did so, in the second decade of the nineteenth century.2 To be sure, Haydn did compose a work with the nickname Der Schulmeister: a lost early divertimento bears this nickname in both of his thematic catalogues. Possibly it originated in connection with a children’s pantomime by Joseph Kurz(-Bernadon), with whom Haydn collaborated on Der krumme Teufel.3 Hence Gerber may have been aware of the existence of such a work and simply attached the label to the wrong one.

* * * * *

The first movement, although not “difficult” (see its opening fanfare and cantabile answer), is structurally complex. The exposition rushes forward in typically Haydnesque fashion; typical as well is that the contrasting piano “theme” is actually an unstable construction, whose inability to cadence is only confirmed by the swift forte interruption. As in No. 54, the development is longer than the exposition – much longer, in fact; it comprises three substantial paragraphs in a complex modulatory scheme; the second of these begins with one of Haydn’s very best “false recapitulations”. In the “true” recapitulation, the winds vary and extend the cantabile phrase in a wonderful new manner.

The variation slow movement bears the remarkable and unique heading Adagio, ma semplicemente. That Haydn’s ostensible “simplicity” is actually a highly self-conscious eccentricity becomes obvious as the final note of the first phrase, which enters “too soon”, in the “wrong” harmonic context. The theme has written-out repetitions of both halves, for the purpose of contrasting an initial “semplice” statement, dotted-rhythmed and staccato, with a supple, legato “dolce” statement; the same is true in Variation 2. In Variations 1 and 5 this principle of contrast is worked out in a different way, through dynamics and orchestration, while the pianissimo Variation 3 is a remarkable essay in expressive chromaticism.

The minuet features a “Scotch snap ” rhythm and, yet again, a novel retransition; the trio is, literally, in three parts (two violins and bass). The finale is another set of variations, outwardly similar to that in Symphony No. 42 (see vol. 6), even to the inclusion of a separate variation for winds alone. Its witty theme is no less beguiling, if less eccentric, than that of the slow movement. In addition, this is a clear early example of Haydn’s “variation-rondo” (another of his many formal inventions), adumbrated again in the finale of No. 42. After Variation 2, the variation pattern breaks off in favor of a modulating interlude based on violent contrasts, which leads to a new variation in G flat, the flat mediant – the first such “remote” key relation, as far as is known, in any variation movement. But its second half again resumes the modulations, eventually returning to the tonic for a last, rousing forte variation and a brief, witty “tag” ending.

Symphony No. 56 in C major

1. Allegro di molto
2. Adagio
3. Menuet – Trio
4. Finale: Prestissimo

This “trumpet” symphony is the only one in which Haydn explicitly specified both C alto horns and trumpets (as we have seen in the musicological note, trumpets were unusual; when they were paired with horns, the latter were usually basso). The first movement immediately exploits this brilliant sound-world: first the trumpets, then the horns descend through a triad, while the more massive (and expected) unison writing comes in the third phrase, after the piano contrast. The exposition includes that rarity, a genuine second theme (although it turns out to be merely a large-scale antecedent, the harmonic consequent reverting to forte – except that the cadence, thus long-delayed, is piano after all!). The first half of the development exploits the contrasts of the beginning through numerous modulations; eventually it settles into a loud imitative section that cadences on E as the dominant of A minor (compare Symphony No. 50), from where a brief, quiet interlude brings us home.

The Adagio is another of Haydn’s long, deeply felt utterances characteristic of this period (compare No. 54). But it is far more concertante than No. 54: the oboes and obbligato bassoon are prominent throughout, and the horns are often independent as well (in this respect it is more closely related to No. 51, in vol. 7). Several passages in the minor uncannily anticipate Schumann, perhaps especially the slow movement of his Symphony No. 2.

The minuet is again very long, in miniature sonata form and with a good joking retransition back from the supertonic. The trio, for oboe and strings in the subdominant, is a brief study in elegance; it is tempting to imagine Haydn having wanted to produce here a “normal” version of his deviant trio from No. 50.

The sonata-form finale is a C major perpetuum mobile in triplets (only the rests demarcating the short individual phrases break the momentum). This too was something of a “type”; compare the finale of Mozart’s Symphony in C, K 338. The development centers around the relative, A minor; a “surprise” diminished seventh leads down a fifth to D minor, from where, as in the minuet, we revert directly to the recapitulation – but in a much more abrupt manner, with the greatest sonic climax in the symphony.

Symphony No. 57 in D major

1. Adagio – [Allegro]
2. Adagio
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Prestissimo

Symphony No. 57 begins, unusually, with a slow introduction, by far the longest Haydn had composed up to that time. The ensuing Allegro, unlike the other first movements in this volume, has a quasi-perpetuum mobile texture (in quavers) and a slow harmonic rhythm. It is also very long, especially the exposition; there are not one but two contrasting piano sections, and Haydn is in no hurry (in all these respects it resembles the first movement of No. 42, also in D; see vol. 6).

The theme-and-variation Adagio in 6/8 is based on one of Haydn’s greatest strokes of genius. The theme comprises two halves; the first half alternates among three contrasting motives: short and pizzicato; short and legato; longer and songlike. In the second half, however, the melodic vein takes over sooner, is extended, and becomes deeper in feeling – until the initial pizzicato returns as the final cadence. The remainder of the movement comprises four variations, which combine gorgeous changes in scoring, filigree figuration for the violins and, towards the end, increased chromatics and thicker textures. But as his final gesture Haydn will repeat the pizzicato cadence one last time.

The minuet, based on a jaunty turn motive, is much extended in its second half, including a distinct coda following the structural cadence. The two last bars skip up through the triad in unison, whereupon, to our surprise, they immediately recur in D minor, as the beginning of the trio – but in such a way that the first four bars sound like a transition, as if the “real” trio began in its fifth bar and were in B flat. Not until the very end does the form become clear: those first bars in D minor are the beginning of the trio.

The finale is a rollicking Prestissimo; its main theme (featuring another turn motive) seems to be derived from a seventeenth-century Austrian piece titled “Canzona and Capriccio on the Cackling of Hens and Roosters”.4 The momentum is sustained without interruption, except when Haydn pauses briefly for his trademark fusion of wit and sentiment. About the “affect” of the ending, however, there can be no doubt.

Symphony No. 60 in C major (“Il distratto”)

1. Adagio – Allegro di molto
2. Andante
3. Menuetto – Trio
4. Presto
5. Adagio (di Lamentatione)
6. Finale: Prestissimo

This work originated as incidental music to a comic play in five acts centring on the eponymously “absent-minded” hero, Léandre. Notwithstanding hypotheses to the contrary, it is the only Haydn symphony that can be documented as having originated as stage music. This unique status correlates both with its oddities of style and with the fact that it is a six-movement symphony – a generic anomaly that in 18th-century Austrian music is found only in overtly programmatic works.5 The first movement served as the overture, the second through fifth as entr’actes, and the last as a kind of “finale” after the play was over.

Haydn’s music occasioned widespread and enthusiastic comment as dramatic illustration. In the present context, only the briefest suggestion of his brilliant treatment is possible.6 For the action, I quote portions of Robert A. Green’s synopsis:7

Most of the characters... are associated with the commedia dell’arte and as stock types were immediately intelligible as such to Haydn and the audiences of his day. Clarice and Isabelle are two well-bred young ladies. The Chevalier, Clarice’s brother, is that member of the soldier-nobility who carouses, chases women, and who is well-schooled in the arts of the galant. Mme. Grognac is the authoritarian mother searching for a wealthy mate for Isabelle irrespective of her daughter’s wishes. The avarice of Mme. Grognac is thoroughly exploited... Lisette and Carlin are the servants whose strengths help them to counterbalance the weaknesses of their masters...

Léandre, le distrait, is a character-type made famous by his description in Jean de La Bruyère’s Les Caractères published in 1688...

[He] comes down the stairs, opens his door to go out, then shuts it again; he notices that he is wearing his nightcap; and when he comes to look closer, discovers that he is only half shaved... Another time he pays a call on a lady, and presently convinced that he is the host himself, he settles down in his armchair and makes no attempt to get out of it... He gets married one morning, and has forgotten about it by that evening, and stays away from home on his wedding night.8

The first movement (overture) resembles that to Symphony No. 50, in key, metre, presence of slow introduction, and much else. The one obviously illustrative passage occurs in the second group of the exposition: having landed on a local subdominant, the music tarries there for no fewer than twelve bars, dying away melodically (stuck on a single note), dynamically (“perdendosi”), and rhythmically: it has literally “lost its way”. More puzzling is the entry, shortly after the beginning of the development, of the beginning of the Farewell Symphony: is “Haydn himself” here pretending to have lost his way?

In the ensuing Andante, the contrasting themes have been read as portraying the stage-characters themselves: first the placid Isabelle, then the martinet Mme Grognac; then, in the development, a “French” dance-parody may suggest the dissolute Chevalier whom Isabelle foolishly loves; and so on – so easily that it is worth recalling that most of these associations are speculative, even those that derive from the (also speculative) reviews of the 1770s. Listeners are encouraged to make their own.

But it is too tempting to relate the gimmick in the finale to Léandre’s tying a knot in his handkerchief in order not to forget that it is his wedding night. His “recollection” is represented by the music’s suddenly breaking-off after only a few bars, while the violins tune their lowest string, which they had “absentmindedly” left on F, up to G.

Minuet and Finale in C

Minuet and Trio in C major: Allegretto (1773-74)
Finale in C major: Prestissimo (1773-74)

This pair of movements survives in a partial, undated autograph now in Berlin.9 Haydn apparently composed them in 1773-74, in order to “complete” the two-movement overture to L’infedeltà delusa into a four-movement symphony (as he certainly did to produce No. 50). Indeed, two sources that he sold to Spain actually transmit such a symphony. Later, however, he separated these components out again, selling the overture to Artaria, who published it as one of a set of six in 1782, and temporarily using the finale (not the minuet) in a preliminary version of Symphony No.63. The latter, however, was almost immediately replaced by the definitive finale (see Volume 10).10 Thus the combination of overture and minuet+finale as a symphony proved to be temporary, and in fact scholars and performers have so far continued to regard these two movements as a fragment.

In style they are both closely related to the equivalent movements of No. 50; both are splendid examples of Haydn’s “C major” mood in the early 1770s. The minuet makes great play with apparently conventional material, ending each half with a perky upbeat motive, while the trio astonishes with its many different harmonisations of a simple two-bar motive and a completely unexpected turn to the minor at the end. The prestissimo finale is a compact, driving movement with constant quaver motion. At the very beginning, a three-“hammerstroke” motive alternates with a simple, six-note upward-scale motive and a more cantabile theme; virtually the entire movement is developed out of these three scraps. Particularly inventive is the development, where Haydn discovers all manner of surprising harmonic twists for the hammerstrokes, now in regular alternation with the other ideas.

James Webster 1997

1 Generally on Haydn’s variation movements see Sisman, Haydn and the Classical Variation.

2 Neues historisch-biographisches Lexicon der Tonkunst (Leipzig, 1812-14), vol. 2, col. 573. (Gerber actually attached the nickname to a different symphony, No. 43, also in E flat and with an opening movement in 3/4, whose more familiar nickname is the equally spurious “Mercury”; cf. Hoboken, vol. 1, p. 49. But it is not true, as Hoboken and others assume, that this was an “error” with respect to Symphony No. 43, for “The Schoolmaster” has no authentic relation to it either.)

3 JHW, VIII/1, p.x.

4 Landon, Haydn, vol. 2, Haydn at Eszterháza, P.311.

5 Richard James Will, “Programmatic Symphonies of the Classical Period”, Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell Univ., 1994.

6 Owing to its overtly eccentric and illustrative aspects, this work has engendered an extensive literature; see Landon, Haydn, vol. 2, Haydn at Eszterháza, pp. 202-12; Green; Stephen Carey Fisher, “Haydn’s Overtures and their Adaptations as Concert Orchestral Works”, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1985, pp. 181-83, 306-07; Elaine R. Sisman, “Haydn’s Theater Symphonies”, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 43 (1990), 311-20; Gretchen A. Wheelock, Haydn’s Ingenious Jesting with Art: Contexts of Musical Wit and Humor (New York, 1992, pp. 154-71.

7 “‘Il Distratto’ of Haydn and Regnard: A Re-examination”, The Haydn Yearbook, 11 (1980), 183-95.

8 Jean de la Bruyère, Characters, transl. Jean Stewart (Middlesex, 1970), pp. 183-84 (quoted from Green, pp. 184-85).

9 On these movements see Sonja Gerlach, “Joseph Haydns Sinfonien bis 1774: Studien zur Chronologie”, Haydn-Studien, 7/1-2 (1996), 202-04.

10 On this basis H.C. Robbins Landon published a speculative “first version” of No. 63 that includes both movements under discussion here; no such work can be documented in the sources.

Volume 9

Symphony No. 53 in D major L’Impériale
Symphony No. 54 in G major (2nd version)
Symphony No. 61 in D major
Symphony No. 66 in B flat major
Symphony No. 69 in C major Laudon
Symphony No. 67 in F major
Symphony No. 68 in B flat major

Historical and chronological notes

A largely unexplained aspect of Haydn’s thirty-year career at the Esterházy court is his changes of style. Having explored extremes of expression and innovative construction during his so-called “Sturm und Drang” period (c. 1767-72; see vols. 6 and 7), from the middle 1770s to the early 1780s the majority of his symphonies exhibit a distinctly lighter style (vols. 8-11). Some have speculated that Prince Nikolaus Esterházy thought Haydn had gone too far in the direction of a stylistic radicalism à la Beethoven and ordered him to retreat; others, that Haydn was seeking to maximise the distribution of his symphonies by cultivating an “easy” style of broad appeal; but there is no evidence for either proposition.1

One likely origin of this change beginning c. 1773 is the chronological pattern of Haydn’s composition of music for the stage. In particular, with the inauguration of the new opera house at Eszterháza in 1776 (immediately following the bulk of the symphonies in this volume) he became virtually a full-time impresario. This new operatic orientation was reflected not only in his instrumental style as such, but in the fact that he henceforth composed fewer symphonies, on average, than before, and several of those he did compose include recycled stage music. Symphony No. 53, L’Impériale, from the late 1770s, clearly reflects this influence, and No. 67 (c. 1775) may do so as well.

But the issue is not one of stylistic and generic orientation alone, but of artistic quality, or perhaps rather artistic integrity. Haydn’s “turn” in the middle 1770s has traditionally been viewed as something of a let-down: at best a kind of transition leading from the supposed climax of the “Sturm und Drang” to that of the Paris symphonies of 1785-86, at worst an unmediated selling-out.2 I cannot share this negative evaluation: these symphonies seem to me as finely crafted, as interesting, indeed as original, as the preceding ones, albeit very different in character. Even Haydn’s critics acknowledge his continually developing technical mastery, his unceasing experimentalism in matters of form and instrumentation, and the increasing individuality of the various movement types.

More generally, these works are better understood as representing a distinct artistic stance: that of entertainment.3 They represent “easy” listening (as Haydn himself once said), still intended in the first instance for the pleasure of an aristocratic court, but superbly crafted and abounding in striking and beautiful passages, not to mention witty and eccentric ones. The slow movements and finales exhibit new formal and stylistic options; see the exquisite Andante tune of No. 53 and the comic/serious play in the Adagio of No. 68, or the slow middle section of the Finale of No. 67. Slow introductions begin to become more common, and for the first time create tangible motivic and psychological links to the Allegros (No. 53).

These symphonies and those in Volume 10 favour a mixture of styles: light, frankly “popular” themes are as prominent as earnest ones, regular phrasing as important as vast expansions. The comic and serious are not “synthesised”, as the ideology of “Classical style” would have it, but juxtaposed, in such a way as to give the impression of accepting, even courting, stylistic incongruity. They offer Haydn’s most brilliant achievement of a purely comic art, approaching the opera buffa stage – an association of art and entertainment that remained a central aspect of his style throughout the remainder of his career. Listeners not in thrall to the Romantic-Modernist prejudice that outwardly modest, conventional, or “popular” artworks are necessarily inferior to pretentious, innovative, or high-minded ones will find a rich bounty here.

* * * * *

The core works in this volume comprise Symphonies 61 and 66-69, which originated in 1775-76 and thus link seamlessly to those of Volume 8, which date mainly from 1774 (a link emphasised by No. 54; see below).4 Only No. 61 survives in autograph; it is dated 1776 and must have been composed not earlier than April of that year, for Haydn demands a flute (for the first time since No. 41 of c. 1770), and the flautist Zacharias Hirsch joined Haydn’s band in that month.5 Nos. 66-69, which use no flutes, immediately preceded No. 61 (c. 1775); their internal ordering is unknown and can scarcely even be speculated upon, unless it were according to the degree of independent bassoon writing, which increases in the order: 68; 67 and 69; 66.

Symphony No. 54 is dated 1774 on the autograph; there is no doubt that a version of the work was completed and, presumably, produced in that year. However, uniquely among Haydn’s symphonies, it exists in several different authentic instrumentations, which he entered into the autograph in at least two discrete, later stages.6 Both the first version and the last (c. 1776) are included in these complete recordings. The former, in effect a newly recognised chamber symphony, will be found in Volume 8; the latter, scored for the largest orchestra of any Haydn symphony before London7, is the one usually performed today and is included here.

Symphony No. 53, L’Impériale, was one of Haydn’s most popular symphonies from the late 1770s until his London period. It has a complex history, which led, again, to two different authentic versions. It originally consisted of the opening Vivace (at first without the slow introduction), Andante, minuet, and a Presto finale adapted from an overture to an unidentified work (Hob. Ia.:7), referred to as finale “B” in Robbins Landon’s edition of the symphonies and in the literature. Although the overture is dated 1777, the symphony proper originated c. 1778-79 (there are no authentic sources for this version). Soon thereafter, while the symphony still had this overall form, Haydn added the slow introduction. Around 1780, presumably owing to the disastrous fire at Eszterháza castle on 18 November 1779, which destroyed virtually the entire court musical archives, including this version of No. 53, Haydn produced another version, by replacing the original overture-finale with a new one, marked Capriccio. Moderato, known as finale “A”. Since the latter represented Haydn’s final word and is the only one transmitted by an authentic source, now in the Esterházy archives, we have programmed it to follow the minuet; but we have included finale “B” as well, so that the listener may also hear the work in its original guise.

The original overture (Hob. Ia:7) deviated in instrumentation (no flute; two bassoons); the flute part in finale “B”, added later, is of unknown authorship. The first movement in both versions includes an authentic timpani part, even though there are no trumpets, whereas the timpani part for the minuet and finale in the Esterházy source is amateurish and is not included in these recordings.

James Webster 1999

1 Both hypotheses are suggested, for example, by Jens Peter Larsen, “Haydn”, The New Grove, vol. 8, pp. 336-38, 353-54.

2 Larsen, pp. 335-36, 351-53; H.C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 2, Haydn at Eszterháza 1766-1700, pp. 312-14, 561.

3 See James Webster, “Haydn’s Symphonies between Sturm und Drang and ‘Classical Style’: Art and Entertainment”, in W. Dean Sutcliffe, ed., Haydn Studies (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 218-45; there will be found detailed accounts, among other movements, of the Andante of Symphony No. 53 and the Adagio of No. 68.

4 The data given here are based on Sonja Gerlach, “Die chronologische Ordnung von Haydns Sinfonien zwischen 1774 und 1782”, Haydn-Studien, vol. 2 (1969-70), pp. 34-66; Stephen C. Fisher, “Haydn’s Overtures and their Adaptations as Concert Orchestral Works”, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1985.

5 Gerlach, p. 50.

6 See Joseph Haydn: Werke (JHW) (Henle), series I, vol. 7, foreword; ibid., critical report, p. 13; Gerlach, p. 54 and n. 95.

7 Landon speculates that this version exists only in post-1800 sources, but a Viennese c. 1780 copy (from the more-or-less authentic Keeß collection), now in Frankfurt, is noted in JHW, I/7, critical report (published 1967), p. 14, Source C.

Theatrical and popular symphonies (c. 1775-78)
Symphony No. 53 in D major (“L’Impériale”)

1. Largo maestoso – Vivace
2. Andante
3. Menuetto – Trio
4. Finale (Version A): Capriccio. Moderato
5. Finale (Version B): Presto

The slow introduction, Largo maestoso, leads to a Vivace with, for Haydn, unusually consistent four-bar phrasing, further emphasised by the slow harmonic motion, owing to the triadic construction of the main motif. Perhaps this implies an association with stage music, which we know is the case for the finale. This unusual phrasing persists not only in the second group, when the main theme is transferred to the bass with an active quaver countermelody above, but, more surprisingly, throughout the first part of the development. The latter does eventually become contrapuntal, speeding up – if this is not interpretative overkill – to two-bar units; eventually, in a wonderful passage of “suspended animation”, the main motif leads chromatically under sustained winds back to the recapitulation. In the minuet, the second part characteristically “closes” onto a deceptive cadence, following which an analogous passage over a dominant pedal prepares the final flourish.

The Andante theme sounds as if Haydn could have adapted it from a popular tune, although no model has been located; most probably he composed it himself. It stands for his entire world, in which apparent artlessness conceals high art. Simple in texture, it is a straightforward double period, 8+8 bars; each strain is divided into 4+4 bars by half-cadences, and further into 2+2+2+2 bars by the constant two-bar subphrases, always on the same motif. Yet each subphrase is different from all the others; moreover, in the second strain the accompaniment is quietly transformed into something syncopated, chromatic and legato, leading to a distinct, if understated, climax. As a whole, the movement is an early example of what became Haydn’s favourite slow movement form: double variations on alternating major and minor versions of related themes.

Of the two finales (see the Historical and Chronological Notes), the later one, “A”, is marked Capriccio. Moderato. Its main theme is an elaborate two-part construction: a │ b-a, with a modulation to the dominant in “b”; its apparently placid course is belied by the five-bar phrasing in “a”. The movement as a whole is a large-scale ternary form, with the middle section in the tonic minor; it begins with the same motif but soon goes its own way, with an odd “whining” melody at the first cadence, a quasi-development section (at one point recalling the first movement of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony) and a very long retransition based on the main motif. The reprise is expanded considerably at the close. The earlier finale “B” confirms its origins as an overture by its bustling activity (except in the second theme), its lack of internal repetitions, and its long, sequential development.

Symphony No. 54 in G major (second version)

1. Adagio maestoso – Presto
2. Adagio assai
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

As stated in the Historical and Chronological Notes, this is the last, most heavily scored version of this symphony. The Adagio introduction is longer than before, and colours the obligatory “majesty” topic in a complex manner. The main theme of the opening Presto features the horns and obbligato bassoon over an ostinato motif in the strings. The exposition is brief; the second group in the dominant enters without transition and features a variety of short, active themes. Haydn compensates in the development which, unusually, is longer than the exposition. It is based primarily on the ostinato motif, which is led through a variety of keys, including an unexpectedly radiant E major after a general pause; eventually a fugato leads to the retransition which surprisingly is the climax of the entire development. Towards the end, a “surprise” deceptive resolution onto a diminished-seventh chord leads to an expanded cadence.

The Adagio assai (an unusually slow tempo for Haydn) may be his longest instrumental movement. Such long, deeply felt, mostly quiet slow movements in sonata form had first become a “type” for Haydn during his “Sturm und Drang” period. The triplet figuration, sometimes imitative, sometimes spun out over static harmonies, becomes almost hypnotic: an other-worldly vision that is scarcely ruffled by the ominous repeated unisons at the beginning of the development. In the recapitulation this figure unexpectedly turns to the minor and leads astonishingly to a six-four chord and a written-out cadenza for both violin parts. Following this, the rustic minuet, with its insouciant grace-notes, seems almost raucous; the effect is not really dispelled by the quiet answering phrase, since Haydn reverts to forte for the cadence. By contrast, the trio, scored for strings alone with the bassoon doubling the melody, is all elegance.

The finale, though also marked Presto, is not as fast as the opening movement. Its opening theme has a fast, syncopated accompaniment and ends oddly with a bump; these features foreshadow the many off-beat accents and longer syncopated passages later on. The movement is in broadly laid-out sonata form, with full transitions and a quiet, contrasting second theme. The retransition is one of Haydn’s better jokes: the quiet second theme enters in a foreign key, as if we were still deep within the development, but it is harmonised with a chromatically descending bass that drifts sequentially towards the tonic; five bars later the recapitulation is suddenly in full swing.

Symphony No. 61 in D major

1. Vivace
2. Adagio
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Prestissimo

No better example of the unassuming art that animates Haydn’s symphonies of the middle 1770s could be found than this lovely work, which even the great Haydn scholar Jens Peter Larsen dismissed as “pleasant and unpretentious”. That it is pleasant, nobody will deny. Its opening theme, like that of No. 53, combines rapid surface activity and slow-moving harmony; as the movement proceeds we realise that this block-like phrase organisation is characteristic. But this, along with the entertaining rondo finale based on a “hornpipe” theme in 6/8 time, are virtually its only features that can be called unpretentious, and even then only in the sense of “unassuming”, not modest or conventional. Indeed the block-like passages eventually become memorable; see the quavers for the winds at the beginning of the second group, and especially the closing theme, whose quavers become four octaves deep in oboes and horns and thus “surround” the strange, chromatically rising semibreve melody.

The Adagio features the earliest example of an important thematic type in late Haydn slow movements: the “beautiful”, hymn-like melody in triple time. For this gorgeous movement, with its expressive transition and positively Schubertian second theme, the epithet “unpretentious” is wildly inappropriate. The minuet begins conventionally enough, but its second part is much extended in unexpected ways; the trio features an oboe solo. As for the finale, the only appropriate response is to laugh aloud – but, as everyone knows, this is just when Haydn is at his least innocent.

Symphony No. 66 in B flat major

1. Allegro con brio
2. Adagio
3. Menuetto – Trio
4. Finale: Scherzando e Presto

This symphony opens with a variant of the beginning of the overture Hob. Ia:7 – that is, Symphony No. 53, finale “B”; however, the resemblance is only skin-deep, for the movement soon goes its own way. The tone is “forward” throughout; as so often in Haydn, contrast is embedded in the flow of the music rather than given prominence for its own sake. Thus the second group at first continues loud and four-square; the brief “second theme” does not allow the energy to slacken; and the only sustained piano is the retransition itself, on an unstable chord that yields to the orthodox dominant only at the last minute.

The Adagio is in 3/4 time, as in No. 61; unlike the latter, its motifs are short-breathed and additive rather than hymn-like, and soon develop into semiquavers then triplet semi-quavers. The minuet is based on a short dotted motif, about which the only thing that can be predicted is that it will develop in an unpredictable manner; the return to the main theme is another characteristic joke. The trio begins off the tonic, engendering quiet subtleties of harmony and phrasing.

The rondo finale, Scherzando e presto, is the first in this volume to sound like a late Haydn rondo, with a main theme Tovey would have called “kittenish”, based on five-bar phrases. But counterpoint is hinted at in its middle phrase, and counterpoint erupts for real in the first episode, which combines second-group and developmental functions. After a varied reprise, the next episode pretends to be in the relative minor (the submediant), but soon leads to the subdominant and an even more contrapuntal episode. The next reprise is extended by various devices, leading eventually to the final thematic statement. This is less than subtle, with its fortissimo stamping-about, crude hocketing and concluding horse-laugh; it would be difficult to claim here that art triumphs over entertainment.

Symphony No. 67 in F major

1. Presto
2. Adagio
3. Menuetto – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro di molto – Adagio e cantabile – Allegro di molto

This is one of Haydn’s better-known symphonies from this period, owing to its lively opening movement, various special effects (to be described below) and formally unique finale. The whiff of the stage seems palpable, although there is no concrete evidence for such a connection.

The opening movement exhibits the unusual tempo/metre combination of Presto 6/8, which one would ordinarily expect in a finale, although the sprightly triadic main theme develops an unexpected degree of sentiment before it cadences. The vigorous exposition makes room for a true “second theme” in the dominant. Later, however, the prevailing simplicity of texture is violated by a canonic episode in the development, although the latter section, unusually, both begins and ends in a relaxed manner.

The slow movement, with that of No. 68, belongs to a distinct subtype characteristic of this period: Adagios in sonata form, with muted violins, based on short, aphoristic phrases that tend to dissolve into delicate filigree work, but in mood hovering ambiguously between comedy and sentiment. They are in no sense “popular”. Here, this stylistic mixture is most prominent in the development; its central section is an extraordinary “still” filigree passage, actually an extended canon for the two violin parts, enclosed on either side by the most expressive passages of the movement. But Haydn’s final word is strictly comic: the tender opening phrase is repeated in its entirety col legno.

The short, boisterous minuet “sets up” the remarkable trio. The latter is scored for the two principal violins, solo and muted; the first warbles a possibly “ethnic” tune in the heights, while the second plays a bordun bass and also accompanies the first in double stops: the two players thus comprise a “trio” not merely formally, but in the literal sense of comprising three musical parts. But the joke goes further: since the movement is in F, the second must tune his G string down a whole tone in order to perform the bordun.

The finale continues the reversal of movement types by being alla breve with the tempo mark Allegro di molto, characteristics “proper” to an opening movement. It exhibits the poorly named “da capo-overture” form (“reprise-overture” form seems more appropriate): a full exposition ending in the dominant and full recapitulation, with however a contrasting middle section in a different tempo in place of the development. The Allegro may seem conventional, although its very proper “second theme” is unusual for Haydn. At the conclusion of the exposition he abruptly shifts to Adagio e cantabile and 3/8, for another trio of soloists – now, however, a “true” trio, comprising the two principal violins and principal cello. They execute a complete two-part theme in the tonic, with repeats; the full band joins in for the final strain, with magical effect. A complete second theme follows in the subdominant, featuring the winds; its opening motif is identical to that of the Missa Sancti Nicolai of 1772, albeit in a different key. Eventually the music winds round to the home dominant, whereupon, as if nothing unusual had happened, the Allegro di molto resumes with a complete recapitulation – until, as the final buffo stroke, a simple three-note motif dies away over a rustling ostinato in the violins.

Symphony No. 68 in B flat major

1. Vivace
2. Menuetto – Trio
3. Adagio cantabile
4. Finale: Presto

The opening Vivace begins with a smooth, flowing 3/4 theme, which predictably becomes more vigorous later on, leading eventually to a “second theme” that it would be criminal to hear without laughing aloud. The development seems uneventful, until by tonal sleight of hand Haydn slides into the recapitulation before we are aware of it. The end of the movement considerably expands the tonally off-centre closing theme.

For the last time in his symphonic career (the few other examples are all much earlier), Haydn places the minuet in second position, the slow movement third. The former adopts a rustic air, with four-square phrasing and simple texture, while the trio wears its sophistication on its sleeve, with joking upbeat phrases that suggest the trio of the Oxford Symphony.

The Adagio cantabile is arguably the most extraordinary movement in this volume, particularly in its bewildering mixtures of Affekt. The opening theme and transition are played almost entirely by muted violins alone; the melody, in the first violins, seems arbitrary, repetitive and directionless. Meanwhile, the second violins proceed in unbroken, almost mechanical semiquavers. seemingly dissociated from the ruminative melody above (many will follow Charles Rosen in being reminded of the Clock Symphony) – except for occasional forte interjections by the full band, on the same semiquaver motif, which however never come just when they “should”. The effect is at once amusing and disorientating. As the movement proceeds, the rigid distinction between melody and accompaniment becomes more complex, as the expression becomes more serious (though at first never for too long), until, in the widely modulating development, all humour is left behind. Nevertheless, all the discontinuities return in the recapitulation. As a whole, the movement is not easy to “read”. Are the comic elements “stagey”, or high wit, or a kind of Brechtian Verfremdung (alienation)? Do the disparate elements become synthesised into a satisfying whole, or do they remain unintegrated?

No such difficulties of interpretation cloud the rondo finale, as close to pure entertainment as Haydn ever carne. The main theme is a raucous, triadic affair; nor do the episodes, for all their attractive variety, essay the bold modulatory or contrapuntal passages Haydn usually offers in this context – although one reprise includes a crudely canonic variant of the main theme. In the comic coda, everything is repeated to excess (this is no criticism): a high dominant pedal, dying away; “echo solo” entries on the main motif, wittily resolving that dominant, for all the instruments in turn; a tremolo wind-up, and altogether “too many” shouting chords at the close.

Symphony No. 69 in C major (“Laudon”)

1. Vivace
2. Un poco adagio più tosto andante
3. Menuetto – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

More than any other in this volume, this symphony epitomises the “easy listening” aspect of Haydn’s art in this period. The nickname is that of a famous Austrian Field Marshal; it was not Haydn’s idea to attach it to this work, but that of his publisher Artaria, for an arrangement for solo keyboard. But Haydn did, rather cynically, approve it:

The last or fourth movement ... is not practicable for the keyboard, nor do I find it necessary to include it; the word “Laudon” will aid the sale more than any ten finales.

The work is in the major mode throughout, instantly accessible and lightly textured; it moves within familiar styles and conventions and includes few moments of expressive intensity; the large sections, thematic groups, transitions, and so on, are crystal clear. The opening of the first movement resembles that of the better-known Symphony No. 48, Maria Theresia (c. 1768), in the same key, but its course is, again, easier to follow; even the development adumbrates no remote keys and does not so much as hint at contrapuntal complexity.

The slow movement, while equally straightforward, is by contrast decidedly eccentric. Its rising triadic theme in repeated notes immediately dissolves into meandering semiquavers, which however prove unable to leave the tonic. Only when the bass takes them over does a crude modulation to the dominant follow; the second group at least includes a bow to the minor mode and an attractively pert hocketing theme in hemiola. The development is uneventful, and only Tovey’s “counsel for the defense” could make the joking retransition seem more than routine.

Admittedly, even when Haydn seems not to be concentrating on the business at hand, he cannot help writing “a really new minuet”; note, for example, the triplet figure’s surprising reversal of accent in the middle. The attractive sonata-rondo finale seems more engaged and is certainly more engaging. The contour of the tune is other than what we expect; the second group in the dominant sparkles with tremolos, surprise remote chords, vigorous syncopated rhythms, and more. The middle episode, minore, exhibits real fire, although the transition, on a characteristic rhythmic motif over mysterious, slow-changing harmonies, lasts longer than we would wish. An imitative coda-like extension precedes the wind-up, in which “entertainment” again has the last word.

James Webster 1999

Volume 10

Symphony No. 62 in D major
Symphony No. 63 in C major La Roxelane
Symphony No. 70 in D major
Symphony No. 71 in B flat major
Symphony No. 73 in D major La Chasse
Symphony No. 74 in E flat major
Symphony No. 75 in D major

Historical and chronological notes

With the inauguration of the new opera house at Eszterháza in 1776 (see vol. 9), Haydn became virtually a full-time impresario. This new “operatic” orientation is reflected in the fact that during 1776-78 he composed very few symphonies, the first such gap since he had begun cultivating this genre in the late 1750s. Even after resuming in 1779-80 with the works included here, he composed fewer symphonies, on average, than before, and at first these included “recycled” overtures; he even used the overture Hob. Ia:7 twice! (See the comments on Symphonies 63, 62 and 73 below.) Both the resumption of symphony composition and the recycling were presumably occasioned by the disastrous fire at Eszterháza Castle on 18 November 1779, which destroyed the opera house, many instruments – and the vast bulk of the court musical archives, including most of the performing materials. Haydn must have had to “scramble” to satisfy the Prince’s demand for music (which no mere conflagration could quench: opera productions were relocated to the marionette theatre, where Haydn’s L’isola disabitata was premiered on schedule in December).

An equally important aspect of these symphonies is their distinctive artistic stance of entertainment.1 The majority offer primarily what Haydn once called “easy” listening; he was still composing in the first instance for the pleasure of an aristocratic audience. This orientation towards entertainment entailed a general (albeit not monolithic) change in character: the expressive intensity of the so-called “Sturm und Drang” (vols. 6-7) now yielded to a stylistic mixture (vols. 9-11), in which light, frankly “popular” themes are as prominent as earnest ones, regular phrasing as important as vast expansions. This stylistic “turn” has traditionally been viewed as something of a let-down: at best a kind of transition leading towards the Paris Symphonies (1785-86), at worst an unmediated selling-out.2

On the contrary, despite these differences Haydn’s symphonies of the late 1770s and early 1780s are as finely crafted, as interesting, indeed as original, as the preceding ones. Even the critics acknowledge their continually developing technical mastery, their unceasing experimentalism in matters of form and instrumentation and their increasingly individualised movement types. They abound in striking and beautiful passages, not to mention witty and eccentric ones. The slow movements and finales exhibit new formal and stylistic options; see, among the former, the exquisite Andante of Symphony No. 73, the ethereal comic/serious play in the Allegretto of No. 62, and the severe, minor-mode double counterpoint in No. 70; among the latter, the off-tonic beginning in No. 62 and the astonishing fugal/buffa combination in No. 70. Slow introductions not only become more common, but create tangible motivic and psychological links to the ensuing allegros (see No. 71).The comic and serious are not “synthesised” , as the ideology of “Classical style” would have it, but juxtaposed, in such a way as to give the impression of accepting, even courting, stylistic incongruity. They are among Haydn’s most brilliant comic achievements, approaching the spirit of the opera buffa stage, which so engaged him during these years. A sign of this character was perhaps given by Mozart, who in the early 1780s notated the incipits of two of these works, Symphonies 62 and 75 (along with No. 47), on a leaf containing an Eingang for his Concerto, K 415 (387a); it is assumed that he was contemplating their production in a concert.

A little-understood aspect of the symphonies in this volume is that they were the last ones Haydn composed for the Esterházy court. Prince Nicolaus, increasingly obsessed with opera, was losing interest in instrumental music; after 1776 there were not even any new commissions for his once-beloved baryton. Indeed, on New Year’s Day 1779 Haydn signed a new contract, in which the former prohibition on his composing other than for the court without prior permission was omitted. He must have persuaded the Prince to strike a compromise, whereby he remained in residence, continued in charge of the opera and drew his full salary, but was granted compositional and financial independence in other respects. Although the first major fruits of this new status were sonatas (Hob. XVI:35-39 and 20; published 1780) and string quartets (op. 33; 1781), symphonies soon followed: Nos. 76-78 (1782) were the first he composed as an “opus” and were published the following year in Vienna, London and Paris. There followed Nos. 79-81 (1783-84) and then, owing to a prestigious commission from the Concert de la Loge olympique, the Paris Symphonies (1785-86). Haydn’s career as a composer of instrumental music for the court had come to an end; the symphonies in this volume constitute his swan-song in this capacity.

* * * * *

The works in this volume were all completed between (1778-)1779 and 1781, although certain individual movements (primarily those based on overtures) had originated earlier. However, none survives in autograph and only Nos. 70 and 75 survive in authentic dated MS copies. More nearly precise dates for these works, and to some extent even their internal ordering, must be teased out from indirect documentary indications:3

(1778-)1779 Nos. 70 and 71
(70: recopied late 1779?)
Late 1779 Nos. 63 and 75
(63: mvts I[-II?] from 1777)
(Late) 1780 Nos. 62 and 74
(62: mvt I from 1777)
1781 No. 73 (finale from 1780[-81])

No. 70 survives in an Esterházy copy dated 18 December 1779 (one month after the fire), the date of the ceremonial laying of the foundation stone for the rebuilt theatre, and was doubtless performed on this occasion. However, the common assumption that the work was newly composed for this occasion is belied by the fact that performance markings that Haydn added to this MS, as well as the still later autograph timpani and authentic trumpet parts, are not found in the majority of the sources, implying that the Esterházy MS was a replacement for lost original parts, from which the broader dissemination had already originated. If so, the symphony most likely originated earlier in 1779 or possibly in 1778. The autograph timpani part was added later still (the timpani had also burned, and replacements were not obtained until the end of 1780). No. 71 survives in a non-authentic MS dated 1780, indicating (as usual in such cases) that it was composed a year or two earlier; that is, close in time to No. 70.

Nos. 63 (La Roxelane) and 75 also probably originated in the aftermath of the fire; indeed the Esterházy copy of the latter also bears the date 1779. But this MS of No. 75 very closely resembles that to No. 63, implying that they were copied as a “pair”. It bears obvious traces of haste; Haydn was apparently still writing the finale in autograph as the first three movements were being copied. No. 63 had a complex genesis stretching back to 1777. Indeed same scholars have argued for the existence of a coherent “first” version of this symphony4, but this cannot be documented from the sources. The opening movement recycles the overture to Il mondo della luna (1777), little altered in substance but much so in instrumentation, while the second movement is based on a tune entitled La Roxelane (hence the nickname), from Haydn’s incidental music to Soliman der zweyte (a popular adaptation of a French play by Favart), also performed at Eszterháza in 1777. After the fire, Haydn composed a new minuet and, again in haste, grafted onto these three movements a finale from c. 1773-74 (see vol. 8). However, the work was never disseminated in this form; indeed, immediately thereafter he substituted the definitive finale. In this final form (heard here) the work has only one bassoon (owing to a temporary absence of a second bassoonist from the Esterházy band), and no trumpets or timpani; same inauthentic sources for No. 75 include the latter instruments as well.

In late December 1780 Haydn requisitioned music paper; the previous stock (ordered mid-November) was “already entirely exhausted, in part for the new opera, in part for the two new symphonies”. The opera was La fedeltà premiata, premiered in February 1781 to inaugurate the rebuilt opera house, while the two new symphonies copied in November-December 1780 - and presumably composed just before – were Nos. 62 and 74; their status as a “pair” is confirmed by recently discovered authentic MSS in Madrid.5 The first movement of No. 62 was recycled from an overture, Hob. Ia:7 (1777; original destination unknown), which Haydn, astonishingly, had previously plundered once before, for the finale to the first version of No. 53 (see vol. 9). Uniquely among Haydn’s symphonies, all four movements (including the slow movement) are in the tonic D major, which has led to various undocumented speculations about a “pastiche”: in addition, the last three movements have only one bassoon, whereas the 1777 opening movement has two.

No. 73 (La Chasse) is the latest of these works; it doubtless originated in the second half of 1781, possibly stretching into early 1782. As stated, the finale recycles the overture to La fedeltà premiata6 (hence the nickname; see the annotation to this work below). Haydn added the repetition of the exposition in the autograph, but presumably not until after the first run of performances (February-April, then September 1781). In addition, the slow movement is based on his own Lied Gegenliebe, composed in the spring or summer of 1781. The opening movement may have originated last, for unlike the others it has a second bassoon part (the vacant post having finally been filled); henceforth Haydn always included two obbligato bassoons. The overture had specified “2 Trombe o 2 Corni” as well as timpani; in the symphonic context horns alone are clearly intended. The work was published by Torricella in July 1782, again implying completion in late 1781 or early 1782. This presumably authentic edition was the first ever of a Haydn symphony; its importance emerges clearly from his subsequent publication of Nos. 76-78 and 79-81 (see above) with the same firm.

James Webster 2000

1 See James Webster, “Haydn’s Symphonies between Sturm und Drang and ‘Classical Style’: Art and Entertainment”, in W. Dean Sutcliffe, ed., Haydn Studies (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 218-45.

2 Jens Peter Larsen, “Haydn, Joseph”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), vol. 8, pp. 335-36, 351-53; H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 2, Haydn at Eszterháza 1766-1790, pp. 312-14, 561.

3 The data given here are based on Sonja Gerlach, Die chronologische Ordnung von Haydns Sinfonien zwischen 1774 und 1782, Haydn-Studien, vol. 2 (1969-70), 34-66; Stephen C. Fisher, Haydn’s Overtures and their Adaptations as Concert Orchestral Works, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1985.

4 Most prominently Landon, in The Symphonies of Joseph Haydn (London, 1955) and in his Philharmonia miniature score ed., vol vi (Vienna, 1967), where both “versions” are printed; in Haydn: Chronicle and Works he tacitly backs off from this hypothesis. It was refuted by Gerlach, p. 43, n. 49 and by Fisher, “A Group of Haydn Copies for the Court of Spain”, Haydn-Studien, 4 (1976-80), 81.

5 Ibid., pp. 76-77.

6 Not a prelude to the third act, as was long erroneously believed.

Serious entertainment (c. 1779-81)
Symphony No. 62 in D major

1. Allegro
2. Allegretto
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro

This symphony is one of Haydn’s most unusual. All four of its movements are in the same key (D major), without even a change of mode: a condition found in no other Haydn symphony (other than a few much earlier ones that begin with a slow movement). As in all cases where Haydn does something unexpected, one can only gain by assuming that it represented a calculated artistic decision. The opening Allegro reveals its origins as an overture in its combination of bustling surface activity and slow harmonic rhythm. The development is remarkable for being built primarily on a new, quiet idea, moving slowly in four-bar sequential steps; only the retransition reverts to the material and mood of the remainder.

The stylistic and psychological centre of this symphony is the second movement, the one “wrongly” set in the tonic. It is marked Allegretto; that is, not slow. Its character is almost unique in Haydn: ethereal, delicate, a beautiful dream or reverie. The mood of the opening – piano for high strings, violins muted, basses silent – does not seem to match the material, which Charles Rosen describes as “the least possible – two notes and a banal accompaniment”.1 However, these scraps are presented in a kind of rudimentary invertible counterpoint (the lower strings soon joining in); that is, they imply spiritual as well as material content. As the exposition continues, the winds enter by ones and twos: the flute during the transition to the dominant; oboes and bassoons at the first cadence in the dominant (the rhythm becoming more complex); finally the horns (the entire band now forte) at the beginning of the final paragraph of the exposition, whose ending however dies away again into ethereality. After a brief developmental episode in the minor, the recapitulation adds a graceful countermelody to the opening theme and an expansion and intensification of the rhythmically complex passage (in place of the full-band forte), before the final cadences and a brief, quiet coda.

The minuet is straightforward (by Haydn’s standards), while the trio in the subdominant, with its bassoon solo, adumbrates the famous syncopated trio of the Oxford Symphony, in the same key. However, the large-scale sonata-form finale begins off the tonic, with predictably unpredictable consequences later on. This off-tonic beginning makes sense precisely because of the (as it were) excessive D-centricity of the symphony up to this point. At the same time, the finale is the most densely argued movement of the four, producing an appropriate sense of climax at the end.

Symphony No. 63 in C major (“La Roxelane”)

1. Allegro
2. “La Roxelane”: Allegretto (o più tosto allegro)
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Presto

Of all the symphonies in this volume, this one most clearly exemplifies Haydn’s “entertainment” mode of the late 1770s, offering “easy”, interesting, varied pleasure. All the movements are in the major, instantly apprehensible, lightly textured; they move within familiar styles and conventions and include few moments of expressive intensity. In the beginning of the first movement, the contrasts of dynamics, instrumentation, and texture between the opening theme and its counter-statement are crystal-clear, such that the more rapid and complex contrasts that follow are intelligible as well. The second group, which enters without transition, falls into a series of block-like, again internally contrasting, phrases which occasionally resemble the opening movement of Symphony No. 82 The Bear, in the same key and metre. The development restricts itself to closely-related keys and avoids remote or “difficult” modulations; on the other hand it is unusually long in proportion to the exposition, with extensive repetition of thematic blocks; Haydn compensates for this with extensive cuts in the recapitulation.

The Allegretto is a double variation movement (A-B-A1-B1-A2-B2) on a sprightly tune which the sources label La Roxelane; it is not known whether it was drawn from incidental music Haydn composed for Favart’s play in 1777 or newly composed in 1779. Although the usual modal organisation is reversed – the “main” theme is in C minor, the contrasting one in the major – the major predictably wins out in the end. The final minor variation slightly alters the harmonies and phrase rhythm, while the full-band scoring of the repeated final major strains resembles the conclusions of more elaborate variation movements in C major and duple metre in the Surprise, Military and Drum Roll Symphonies.

The galant minuet may sound old-fashioned, but there is nothing “par” about Haydn’s play with the piano “Scotch snap” motive first heard at the end of the initial strain; the trio is a duet for oboe and bassoon accompanied by pizzicato strings. The sonata-form finale, by contrast, includes numerous disruptions and stylistic mixtures: outbursts on remote sonorities, an harmonically indirect retransition to the recapitulation, and even some four-part counterpoint in the development. These events might suggest that Haydn was violating his implied generic orientation of “pure” entertainment, except that they are merely juxtaposed with other “easy listening” passages, rather than being integrated into the movement as a later aesthetic would have demanded.

Symphony No. 70 in D major

1. Vivace con brio
2. Specie d’un canone in contrapunto doppio: Andante
3. Menuet: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro con brio

This unusual symphony has enjoyed a high reputation among Haydn aficionados ever since H.C. Robbins Landon’s appreciative account of 1955.2 It is in “D major-minor”; its complex major-minor play is correlated with the contrast between serious or “learned” and light or galant style, so important in eighteenth-century music: the first movement and minuet are bright, forward-driving movements in D major and in 3/4, while the slow movement and (most of) the finale are in D minor and duple metre, and are “demonstratively” contrapuntal. At the same time, however, as in the analogous case of the String Quartet, op. 20 no. 2 (1772), Haydn manipulates this correlation in unexpected and profound ways.

Thus the opening Vivace con brio, so fast as to be virtually one-in-a-bar, opens with a striking two-note falling motive that immediately develops into downward arpeggiations of the triad. Still in the tonic key, a piano counterstatement of the same motive brings an imitation with the bass, at two-bar intervals. The motive then returns as the principal idea of the second group in the dominant; again it is imitated in the bass, but now at the interval of only one beat, producing a quasi-canonic texture; it undergoes further contrapuntal manipulations in the development. In the recapitulation, astonishingly, a hitherto unassuming, rising stepwise motive is subjected to equally complex elaborations. However, all this is conflated with straightforward, jaunty homophonic passages: counterpoint, though present, is not the predominant aesthetic stance.

Quite the opposite is the D minor Andante, a double variation movement with alternating minor and major strains (A-B-A1-B1-A2). Haydn somewhat ostentatiously labels the main theme Specie d’un canone in contrapunto doppio; the opening strain of its internal a1a2ba3 form is in two bare parts, which, along with the dotted rhythms, create a distinctly unheimlich air. Sure enough, the a2 strain inverts the parts; the theme, in the bass, is labelled canto fermo and is accompanied by a new inner part in tenths. Following the rather brief b strain, a3 places the original bass in the inner part, labelled contrapunto, while a new bass gives the necessary harmonic stability at the end. The B sections are in sunniest D major, with a winsome tune featuring “turn” motives in fast notes and nearly constant demisemiquavers in B1; but the demisemiquavers are present throughout A1 as well. This movement so strongly projects minor-major contrast – the telos of the symphony as a whole – that Haydn can afford to conclude with a simple restatement of A, elaborated only by occasional chromatic passing notes and two final cadential bars.

The boisterous minuet is homophonic and rhythmically two- and four-square; it compensates by continually varied harmonisations of the initial bar of its four-bar main idea. The brief trio contrasts utterly: piano, legato, and (like the slow movement theme) in only two parts, which however (unlike the slow movement theme) are homophonic, and indeed coalesce into bare octaves at every cadence. For the first time in a symphony, Haydn writes a separate coda following the repetition of the minuet proper, in which the equivalent of bar seven finally receives an appropriately strong cadential harmonisation.

But the finale is the capstone of this remarkable symphony. It begins homophonically and pp, with a naked, high, repeated crotchet motive in the first violins alternating with legato lower strings, a combination that some have heard as suggesting the buffa stage. Suddenly the repeated notes thunder out forte, and we move to, and pause on, the dominant. Now begins a strict fugue, “a 3 soggetti in contrapunto doppio”; its most prominent subject features the same repeated crotchets, yet again conjoining the galant and the learned. As always in Haydn, the fugue leads to new contrapuntal and rhetorical combinations during its course; one of the most remarkable is a canonic passage on the repeated crotchet motive alone, the other two subjects dropping out. Again, as always, sonata style eventually takes over: a long dominant pedal leads eventually to a perfect authentic cadence and full stop. But this is not the end: the homophonic “stage-setting” music returns and leads, via a surprising reinterpretation of the forte outburst, to yet another dominant pedal. Now the fugue breaks out again, astonishingly in D major (the key of the galant); the crotchet theme blazes triumphantly in horns and trumpets (who could not play it in the minor, owing to the lack of the lowered third degree in their natural scale). Yet even this is not the end: the fugue breaks off almost at once, and the “stagey” music returns one last time, leading to a joking yet profound ending that it would be witless to attempt to describe. Over the course of the symphony its two worlds – major and minor, galant and learned – turn into one.

Symphony No. 71 in B flat major

1. Adagio – Allegro con brio
2. Adagio
3. Menuetto – Trio
4. Finale: Vivace

The brief slow introduction masterfully juxtaposes the contrasting topics of “majesty” (forte unison dotted figures) and “tenderness” (piano trilled suspensions) – on the identical melodic figure. Its musical content is subtly repeated during the course of the opening Allegro con brio theme. When the vigorous transition paragraph reaches the dominant of the dominant, it suddenly pauses for a ruminative passage that builds up in even crotchets, instrument by instrument and bar by bar. This air of hesitation spills over into the second group proper, Haydn’s characteristic vigour not returning until the closing theme. The development soon reaches a stopping point on vigorous bare octaves on D; there follows Haydn’s last extended symphonic “false recapitulation” in the tonic (later examples are always in a different key), veiled by a subtle change in the initial two bars. By way of compensation, the “true” recapitulation of the first group and transition is much shortened.

The Adagio is a theme and variations movement on an elaborate binary theme consisting entirely of complex five-bar phrases, (5+5)+(5+5) with each half repeated; at the beginning of the fourth and final strain the winds usher in longer notes and more complex harmonies, to magical effect. Three variations feature, in turn, the first violins in faster note values, solo flute and bassoon against a demisemiquaver countermelody, and basses in triplets. The theme then returns literally, except that at the “magical” passage the harmonies expand out into a six-four chord on the dominant and fermata, which introduces a very long written-out cadenza for the full band, followed by a very brief coda.

The minuet contrasts a striding forte theme with a piano answer featuring chromatic neighbours in parallel tenths, which “take over” in the long second part; in the trio, the oddly phrased seven-bar melody is played by two solo violins in octaves, including a prominent turn figure (which becomes almost too prominent in the second part). The Vivace finale in sonata form features an irregularly developing theme over a constant quaver but harmonically slow-moving bass; it returns (in a variant) for the second group, which closes with a fanfare-like theme for the winds and a witty decrescendo. The development begins abruptly in the remote key of D flat major, with both violin parts in unison (both marked “per licentiam” in one early source, a type of comment occasionally found in Haydn’s autographs); after some “mystifying” modulations D flat turns itself into C sharp; that is, the third of the dominant of the dominant in G minor, the relative minor. The recapitulation is prepared by one of Haydn’s less subtle jokes.

Symphony No. 73 in D major (“La Chasse”)

1. Adagio – Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio
4. “La Chasse”: Presto

This, the latest symphony in this volume, most resembles Haydn’s more familiar works from 1782 on. In the massive slow introduction the repeated wind band chords in quavers that accompany the slowly moving initial idea eventually lead to a discrete four note upbeat-downbeat motive, which “takes over” during the final dominant pedal, ff then piano. The main Allegro theme begins with the identical motive, accompanied by an upbeat variant of the original wind quavers. In a densely argued thematische Arbeit of the sort associated with the contemporaneous String Quartets, op. 33, these related motives dominate the entire movement, which thus grows out of its introduction more organically than any other in Haydn until the Oxford Symphony of 1789. However, the Allegro theme begins tentatively: on the subdominant, working round to the tonic only in its fourth bar; and in the violins alone, the full band not entering until the counterstatement. The result is a structural dynamism: the initial instability “forces” the music ahead, by the time the full band states the tonic we are already in the transition to the second group – and so forth. The consequences continue throughout, most obviously in the development, where Haydn’s inimitable silences combine with remarkable harmonic reinterpretations of the three-note upbeat motive (C. F. Cramer, in a laudatory review from 1783, referred to “difficulties and unexpected progressions that require trained and correct players, and cannot be entrusted merely to good luck”). In a Beethovenian stroke, the recapitulation enters not tentatively, but as a ff climax.

The Andante is based on Haydn’s own Lied Gegenliebe, Hob. XXVIa:16, composed in the spring or summer of 1781 but not published until 1784. Except for the arrangement of the keyboard accompaniment for strings, the initial statement is a literal transcription, including the interpolations and postlude for keyboard alone.

The “motivically” organised minuet resembles that of the String Quartet, op. 33 no. 6, in the same key. It is based on a theme in 1+1+2 rhythm, with a characteristic offbeat, lower-neighbour motive in the first two bars that seems derived from a short-short-long motive in the slow introduction(!). The retransition to the reprise lengthens the phrasing to 5+5, while in the reprise proper the chromatic lower neighbours are transferred into the bass, providing an even clearer reminiscence of the introduction. The trio is a duet for oboe and bassoon (the flute eventually joining in); the apparently regular eight-bar phrases are subdivided in unpredictable ways.

The finale is based on the overture to Haydn’s La fedeltà premiata, premiered in February 1781; it included trumpets and timpani (omitted in the primary symphony dissemination) and had no repeat of the exposition, which Haydn added later in the autograph. A key character in the opera is Diana, goddess of the hunt; Haydn accordingly based his overture on the standard hunting “topic” (fast 6/8 with predominantly triadic “horn” motives, as in Mozart’s Hunt Quartet, K 458 and Haydn’s own “Hunting” Chorus in The Seasons). Indeed, a theme for the winds (entering late in the first group, after a pause on the dominant) quotes a well-known traditional hunting call, used in various chasse compositions through the century; in hunting manuals it figures as l’ancienne Vue; that is, the first sighting of the stag.3

For the rest, the movement is one of Haydn’s most exhilarating: the relentless quaver motion and continual variety of “topics” yield only occasionally to more relaxed harmonies and piano (still with the quavers underneath). At the end, when l’ancienne Vue returns as a sort of coda (it was withheld from the recapitulation), we expect a grandiose wind-up in the same style; what a surprise when, at the first cadence thereafter, the music suddenly becomes even softer (perdendosi) and, following a subdominant colouring over a tonic pedal, expires – like the stag? – in peace.

Symphony No. 74 in E flat major

1. Vivace assai
2. Adagio cantabile
3. Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale: Allegro assai

In this work, the generally approachable aspects of style characteristic of this period are mixed with chromaticism, deliberate artifice and expressive warmth. The opening Vivace assai is built on the contrast between three loud “hammerstrokes” (plus related ideas later on), and a quiet motive with the rhythm: long-long-short-short-short (the long notes descend by step, the short ones simply repeat). The latter motive gives rise to remarkable ruminative passages in the development, and again late in the recapitulation, until Haydn laughingly brings the movement to a brilliant close.

The main theme of the slow movement exhibits the sprightly profundity characteristic of many Haydn slow movements. In form it is a simple rondo, A-B-A1-B1-A2-coda, with the first B in the dominant and the second (shortened) one in the subdominant; each return of the long A theme is richly varied in both melodic detail and instrumentation. The wonderful coda brings a briefer, varied statement for winds alone and then two for the strings, all three richly contrapuntal and expressive, before the cadential wind up.

The minuet features “Scotch snap” rhythm, while in the trio a solo bassoon doubles the violin melody, with irregular five-bar phrases at each cadence. The sonata-form finale, in 6/8, begins with a quiet, playful, melodically intricate theme (reminiscent of the finale theme in Mozart’s String Quartet, K 589, in the same key and metre): the first and second violins begin alone, in unison; in the next bar the lower strings answer in pseudo-imitation. The theme soon halts on the dominant, with an odd melodic trailing off; suddenly the melody bursts out loudly in the bass, the violins answer with a new rushing counter-melody, and we are off to the races. The promise of genuinely imitative treatment is not fulfilled; instead, witty jokes follow in profusion. The best of these comes at the reprise: the second violins state the theme alone – whereupon the firsts, annoyed at being upstaged, break in one bar “too soon”, leading directly to the rushing passage and the remainder of the recapitulation – including one brief passage of actual imitation!

Symphony No. 75 in D major

1. Grave – Presto
2. Poco adagio
3. Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio
4. Finale:Vivace

The slow introduction is marked grave (the only Haydn instrumental work for which this is so; usually he writes adagio, occasionally largo). It is in fact serious in character, indeed closer in form and mood to his late London introductions than any other in this volume. It alternates ff unison attacks with piano sighing motives, then turns to the minor, and eventually arrives on a long dominant pedal, with further chromatic inflections. The Presto in common time (another unusual combination) begins quietly but breathlessly with a chromatic rise, D-D#-E, which more than one commentator has heard as foreshadowing the Allegro in the overture to Don Giovanni (Mozart once copied out Haydn’s theme). The exposition is relatively terse, and maintains the breathless air almost throughout; the lightly syncopated second theme breaks off before scarcely having begun. The development begins in more leisurely fashion, with sequential and contrapuntal discussions of the main theme, preceding the central section in the prevailing “forward” style. However, the retransition returns to the leisurely contrapuntal mood and texture, in the compositionally most complex passage of the movement, to which Haydn adverts again during the recapitulation. Thus the theme reveals itself as a complex personality: not only bustling and forward-driving, but contrapuntal and deeply-felt.

The Poco adagio is the first of what would become a distinct “type” in Haydn’s slow movements: dominated by a beautiful, hymn-like melody in 3/4, with regular, legato, singable phrases (see also, for example, Symphonies 87, 98 and 99).4 The form is a regular theme and variations; the four variations, in regularly accelerating note values, feature in turn the first violins, the winds on a rhythmic ostinato, a solo cello, and the second violins underneath a “straight” statement of the melody (with a gorgeous wind accompaniment); a very brief coda follows, in the same texture as the final variation.

The minuet, with its vigorous “turn” motive, reverts to the forward-driving style of the Presto; the trio features the flute and first violins doubled at the unison (rather than at the octave, as was more common), on a sprightly melody with forzato upbeat accents. The finale, Vivace alla breve, is a free rondo, A-B-A1-C-A2-coda. The main theme for strings alone is a common “rounded binary” form, a ││ b-a, with both halves repeated; A1 is given in much more varied scoring, while A2 undergoes an expansion in its b strain, complete with Haydnesque “surprises”. Meanwhile B is in the tonic minor, with a variant of the theme transposed into the bass; C, following a contrapuntal transition taking off from the end of A1, begins in the relative B minor but soon reverts to the home dominant and to A2. Following the latter an extended coda further develops both the contrapuntal transition to C and the surprises of b, to which is added a ruminative “long-note” cadence – a reminder of the mood of the Poco adagio? – before the final shouts.

James Webster 2000

1 The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (New York, 1971), p. 153.

2 The Symphonies of Joseph Haydn (London, 1955); cf. his Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 2, Haydn at Eszterháza 1766-1790 (London, 1978), pp. 563-64.

3 Alexander L. Ringer, “The Chasse as a Musical Topic of the 18th Century”, JAMS, 6 (1953), 150; Hoboken, vol. 1, p. 111.

4 James Webster, “When Did Haydn Begin to Compose "Beautiful" Melodies?”, in Jens Peter Larsen et al., eds., Haydn Studies: Proceedings of the International Haydn Congress, Washington, D.C., 1975 (New York, 1981), pp. 385-88.