1773 – The Music part 1 - Styles change; style doesn't!

Hob	Key	NC	HRL	Name	Instruments
51	Bb	57	53		2 Oboes, 2 Horns & Strings
64	A	58	59	Tempora mutantur	2 Oboes, 2 Horns & Strings
50	C	59	58		2 Oboes, 2 Horns, 2 Trumpets, Timpani & Strings

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.         The times change and we change with them.
Quomodo? Fit semper tempore peior homo.         How? Time passing makes mankind worse.
                                        John Owen, Shakespearean contemporary

Along with the various other tasks of musical preparation for 1773, Haydn left us three fine symphonies. I find it interesting, as I always do, to see the named symphony being the one which gains notice. Tempora mutantur has only one advantage over the dozens of other named symphonies in Haydn's oeuvre; he actually named it himself! Well, we'll see about that, too! Let's go in order, it helps my OCD…

Number 51 in Bb is believed to be the first of the year. If not unique, then it is at least unusual in many ways, from the Minuet with two trios to the horn parts which defy gravity!

 I am particularly fond of the Adagio second movement in this work, a serenade in all but name. Haydn's mastery of horn writing is most effective here; he exploits the very top and the very bottom of the range for the Bb alto horn playing solo. This is followed by a long interlude with the muted violins playing a beautiful melody, then returns to the horns to finish the movement.

Many times Haydn's humor is not something the audience ever hears, no matter how intently one listens. For example, in the original manuscript, the bass part of the minuet is only written out once, and after that it is alternately played in several clefs by the appropriate instrument. This is purely for the benefit of the players, who must have been amazingly versatile on the one hand, and dearly fond of their own composer on the other for his ability to amuse them while working! Another unusual (for a symphony) feature of the minuet is having two trios. The first one is just for strings. In the second of the two trios, the horns also get some serious exercise; it seems like a movement from a double horn concerto! The first horn twice has to play Bb``, the highest note ever written for a horn! Meanwhile, the second horn is playing the lowest possible pedal notes he can play! It is one thing to imagine Haydn's own hornists being virtuosic enough to play this sort of thing, but what must have been the reaction of players in distant places when suddenly presented with their parts? Since parts dating from the period show up in various monasteries, one can only imagine they must have been up to it. Or didn't object to playing in lower parallel octaves! Other examples include the contrast in the first movement between the serious, rumbling bass section playing forte accompanied by the violins who are sounding anything but serious! In this section the dynamics alternate as close as a measure apart between ff and p, an indication which requires careful attention by the players to achieve the desired (interesting!) effect. By any measure, this is a Sinfonia con brio!

Tempora mutantur; times change. A not uncommon phrase in the Enlightenment when Roman proverbs abounded, and ones like this, which had received especial attention during the Renaissance, were particularly well known to educated people of all classes and backgrounds. It seems odd to find Haydn writing notes in the parts of a symphony as though he were giving it a name. On the other hand, it isn't unusual at all to find him writing notes to the players to warn them about various intricacies which he had put in the music for them to trip over. And so, when we find 'Times change' on the parts of this highly interesting work in A major, why should we assume Haydn is also changing with the times and naming the work? Which is what we've done, of course. Elaine Sisman, in her highly interesting essay on 'Haydn's Theater Symphonies' has a different take altogether. As we saw in the essay presenting the year 1773, Haydn was reported to be writing the incidental music for the Wahr troupe to perform Hamlet. Wahr's contract with the Prince states that the Prince will supply the music for the various plays. Next year, for example, we will see Il distratto, which becomes Symphony #60 in due time. Sisman's brilliant idea about Hamlet though, rides on the back of some background knowledge of how the main character was conceived at the time, when Shakespeare, translated into decent German, was just beginning to be well known. Despite the fact that he is sometimes thought of as a bold and fiery youth, both then and now, this was not always the case. Wahr portrayed him in another way altogether; cautious, serious and reflective. The end of Shakespeare's first act (and Heufeld, the German translator's, second act) is a couplet which was considered at the time to sum up Hamlet's character;

The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!

An excellent Tempora mutantur!

As modern listeners, it is only the odd rarities among us who have rediscovered the lost art of rhetorical listening. I can say honestly, even though I am very well aware of the idea, and modestly well-read in its concepts, I haven't got a grip on it yet, because my personal background, like yours, is steeped in the 19^th century style of listening which throws rhetoric out the window and lets the composer do all the work. In the 18^th century things were different, the audience wasn't people like you and me (unless you are secretly a Count or Baron, in which case, drop me a line!), it was people who had a shared educational background with the composer, and who had learned to do their part in the process of realizing the music. If you were a composer, writing music to highlight this portrayal of Hamlet by Wahr, how might you express this rhetorically through your music? Sisman's idea is interesting, the second movement of this symphony, if indeed it is created from this incidental music, is very much a rhetorical portrayal of 'time out of joint'. As she demonstrates, and what you can easily hear for yourself, is that the cadences, which are the joints between the phrases, are not at the end of the phrase itself, but instead are embedded into the subsequent phrase, further and further into it, in fact, until one loses track of what is the phrase and where is the resolution! There is a missing downbeat, or upbeat as the case may be. This begins right away, with the melody and harmony being a beat apart, and in the next phrase they are two beats apart. The resulting need to wait for things to catch up finally results in exactly the phenomenon desired; time is out of joint! Timing, to be more precise. If the first movement is the overture to the play, then this wonderfully atmospheric Largo, based, as it would be, on the final line of the act, is outstanding entr'acte music, providing some solid meat for the patrons to contemplate while awaiting the next act! Of course, Landon's idea of Symphony 44, or possibly 52, both of which are minor key, serious S & D symphonies, being candidates for the Hamlet music is still a possibility. But the more I consider Sisman's proposal, the more I believe she is correct. Likely we will never know for sure, but sometimes solid speculation can be a fun indulgence!

Our final symphony of the year has a shared heritage with the previous one, if our speculation is true. The first two movements were both born for the stage. This time it would certainly be a marionette opera rather than possibly a play.

Retrospective in many ways, although not more so than other symphonies in C, which seem to form a class of their own. Possibly it was written this way to appeal to Maria Theresia, who was old-fashioned in her musical tastes. I say old-fashioned, but we aren't talking about 30 years, only a decade or so behind the times. The opera was intended to appeal to her tastes right from its genesis, after all.

It has an introduction, Adagio e maestoso, which runs through the C triad up two octaves to High C. Haydn then uses this very same material later on as the theme of the minuet, thus connecting the two movements. This is a more modern trait, and as we discussed earlier, one which is based on the cyclic principle. There are several instances here where he takes material from the introduction, like a descending bass run at the end of it, used again also in the minuet, and some other, similar gestures which show up again in the finale. In this way, this symphony is progressive as well as regressive, since these ideas and structural concepts will become standards in his symphonies in the future. It is interesting to see this contrast! Of course, there are probable reasons for this sort of structure; one of them is that the first two movements are actually the overture to our marionette opera from this year, not Philemon & Baucis, which has its own overture in d minor, but its introductory 'Council of the Gods', Der Götterath. The minuet and finale were newly composed for the symphony itself. The trumpets and timpani are part of the original manuscript this time, so there is little doubt as to their authenticity or necessity! It is interesting, knowing the back-story, how Haydn pandered to MT's well known musical conservatism in many small ways. Things like not using wind instruments in the slow movement were carefully observed (almost), which differed from Haydn's contemporaneous works. Other throwback touches, such as having the cello double the melody an octave lower in the Andante moderato, which harkens back to Symphony #16 of 1763!

The minuet, as mentioned, uses the introduction of the opening movement for a theme. Interestingly, the trio has no written repeats; it begins just as the minuet proper did, but then heads off into a lovely and lyrical oboe obbligato. When it seems as though there must now be a cadence, Haydn leaves the trio behind and returns to the minuet, da capo. When the finale arrives, Presto, we are treated to some nice playing by the high horns and trumpets. Until now they have been playing in unison throughout, but here they have separate parts. It is a typically Haydnish touch that he gives the horn players a bit of a break by letting them rest while the trumpets take the high notes. The last part of the movement goes through some wonderful cadences and dissonances until it finally arrives back on the tonic and bids farewell with fanfares, where oddly enough the timpani are reinforcing, not the trumpets and horns, but the oboes, violins, cellos and violones! This symphony is overall a unique blending of new and old, theatrical and classical, and an orchestration treat. The fact that it was published for the first time ever in 1951 by the Haydn Society is one to ponder.

So there you have our symphonies for the year. You can see we are moving rapidly away from Sturm und Drang and into a stylistic period where a different sort of drama dominates; not the self-contained, inner drama for its own sake, but the one which has a purpose, even if it is one which we don't always know or recognize. While many have mourned the passing of that style, I look at it as a new beginning where Haydn can, and does, really show how he can make music work for his purposes.

Thanks for reading!