During the early and greater part of my life of listening to classical music, I wasn’t a fan of wind instruments in particular. After all, it was string concertos that drew me in the first place, and if one really wanted to hear classical wind music, it took a good bit of looking around to find it. Suddenly though, in the 1980’s and since then, a barrage of Harmoniemusik hit the shelves, along with the unique genre of the Classical Era, the string trio or quartet with a wind soloist playing the lead. The obvious type specimen, Mozart’s sublime Clarinet Quintet, is rather deceptive, since it was always available (it was Mozart, after all), but we started seeing and hearing names like Krommer, Reicha, Crusell, Danzi and Devienne. And hanging around in there was our Giuseppe. Not with those chamber works, of course, but with the early Harmonie works that were actually pioneering for the names mentioned above.
As with all of Haydn’s efforts, they were good enough to inspire fraud among musicians and publishers, and thus we see Brahms, a hundred years later, getting tricked into Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn, with a theme that certainly wasn’t ‘of Joseph Haydn’. He made the best of it though, to be fair.
The four surviving works that are scored for pairs of oboes, horns and bassoons are unprepossessing little five movement divertimentos, arranged rather symmetrically around a central slow movement. What makes them clearly and uniquely Haydnish is the divided parts for bassoons (rather than just doubling each other) and the always special use of horns in high/low pairs, also divided. This sort of ‘partner’ horn writing was Haydn’s forte, and he apparently started doing it early times. As I mentioned a few days back, the Morzin band had some very good hornists, and these little works take advantage of that. It is a pity, really, that more of these don’t survive. While they aren’t ‘Great Music’ they are entertaining, and must certainly have been so in their time and place.
The tradition of the wind band began at the turn of the 18th century, reliably dating at least to 1704 in Prussia. Although they were sometimes employed for Tafelmusik throughout their existence, they were also expected to play outdoors, although calling them military bands, as is frequently done, is hardly accurate either. With or without the supplemental strings, they were the main exponent of the divertimento in all its guises. The New Grove, in their article entitled Harmoniemusik, tells us;
Prince Paul Anton Esterházy retained a sextet Feldmusik from 1761, and the divertimentos for pairs of oboes, horns and bassoons recently written by the new Kapellmeister Haydn probably formed part of its repertory.
Since the dating of these works is tricky and unresolved at best, I think Grove’s has shown a masterly touch in being entirely noncommittal towards whether the pieces were written for Morzin or Esterházy, but the fact that the two from 1760 are dated on the autograph would seem to indicate that Morzin should get the nod. It isn’t as though this is a matter of life or death, it simply adds to the ambiance of life with the Morzin’s if their putative Feldmusik gets the nod for these. Esterházy gets so much, after all.
These are the four verified survivors;
Year Hob Key Instruments
1758 3 G 2 Oboes, 2 Bassoons & 2 Horns
1758 7 C 2 Oboes, 2 Bassoons & 2 Horns
1760 15 F 2 Oboes, 2 Bassoons & 2 Horns
1760 23 F 2 Oboes, 2 Bassoons & 2 Horns
It is probably not surprising that these works haven’t been recorded often. Early times, the London Wind Soloists did them quite nicely, and they also included three ‘attributed to Haydn’ works that round out a nice disk. And of course, Dieter Klöcker, in his monumental survey "everything that has ever been said to be wind music by Haydn" did those 7 and many more. All of those are very well played on modern wind instruments, and if you prefer modern instruments (MI), then you really should pick up one of them. If you prefer period instruments (PI), then your options are pre-narrowed, since the clear choice, Haydn Sinfonietta Wien / Manfred Huss, limit themselves to only the certainly genuine works. It was an easy pick for me, and I’m sure that, knowing your own tastes, it will be easy for you too.
Thanks for reading!