1796 – The Music part 4 - The Glee of Vienna

Hob. No.	Genre	Key	Title	Voice	Instruments	Libretto
25b:1-4	Partsongs	See table below		3 voices – var.	Fortepiano continuo	See table below
25c:1-9	Partsongs			4 voices - S-A-T-B	Fortepiano continuo (but fully composed in #6-9)

Haydn's original autograph manuscript

Aus des Ramlers Lyrischer Blumenlese

In die Music gesetzt

von Jos. Haydn '796

~~~~~~~~~~~

From Ramler's Lyrical Anthology

Put into music

by Joseph Haydn 1796

---

They are among his wittiest, most beautiful and most touching creations, with an inimitable air of casual sophistication and a brilliant combination of comic and serious topics and styles; their fusion of easy intelligibility and wit with the highest art and their ravishing part-writing almost suggest string quartets for voices.⁴
                                                                                            James Webster

It can be surprising when you discover the large variety of genres one can encounter while studying 18^th century music. Not surprising so many existed, since there are always a variety of tastes and interests, but moreso that one composer would tackle such a number of them. Here is another, not exactly a novelty for Haydn, but certainly a variation on some previous musical thoughts. I consider the possibility he was trying to make up for lost time, in the way that some people do when they realize later in life that their real calling was perhaps not what they built their reputation upon.

Haydn sometimes said that instead of the many quartets, sonatas, and symphonies, he should have written more vocal music….
Griesinger - Biographical Notes page 63

Many of us today may disagree with him, but the fact is, we might not even know his name now if things had gone that way. There are scores of very fine 18^th century composers who are only known to specialists for just this reason. Horrible thing to contemplate, isn't it?

---

[To E. L. GERBER, in German]

[Only extracts preserved]

Vienna 23rd September 1799.

. . [Haydn speaks of his new Oratorio, The Seasons, then…] Since this subject cannot be as sublime as that of the Creation, comparison between the two will show a distinct difference. Despite this, and with the help of Providence, I shall press on, and when this new work is completed I shall retire, because of the weakened state of my nerves, in order to be able to complete my last work. This will consist of vocal quartets, with accompaniment only of the pianoforte, based on German texts of our greatest poets; I have already composed thirteen such pieces, but have not yet performed any of them. . .

1 – ERNST LUDWIG GERBER (1746-1819), the famous German musical lexicographer, whose Historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkunstler (Leipzig, 1790-1792) and Neue Historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkunstler (Leipzig, 1812-1814) are among the most important musico-biographical lexica ever written. The extract from this letter is taken from the second volume of this latter publication.

2 - These choruses, of which Haydn was very proud, were later published by Breitkopf & Härtel

Collected Correspondence & London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn – HC Robbins Landon

 

A glee club on the lid of a snuffbox
Anon. England ca 1795

When someone wants to leave a lasting legacy, it is natural to assume he/she is speaking about leaving a personal presence in the future, i.e. - their own name. But Haydn, as usual, was different. At least part of the legacy he wanted to leave was a new tradition of singing, in the manner of the English Glee Club he had seen in London. Thus his statement above, about spending his retirement writing vocal quartets. For something which was so important to Haydn, it seems odd that modern musicology has spent very little time contextualizing these works. They do have at least one champion though, in Balázs Mikusi¹, who has written several articles about them. Most of what I know comes from him and Landon, who, even if he didn't spend a lot of time with them, did provide a solid history to get along with.

Hob 25b	Title	Translation	Poet	Scoring	Key	Tempo	Meter
1	An den Vetter	To the Cousin	K.W. Ramler	S-A-T & Continuo	G	Allegro	2/3
2	Daphnens einziger Fehler	Daphne's only Mistake	J. N. Götz	T-T-B & Continuo	C	Allegro	3/4
3	Betrachtung des Todes	Contemplation of Death	C.F. Gellert	S-T-B & Continuo	a	Andante	6/8
4	An die Frauen	To the Women	G. A. Bürger	T-T-B & Keyboard	F	Allegro moderato	4/4
Hob 25c
1	Der Augenblick	The Moment	K.W. Ramler	S-A-T-B & Continuo	A	Poco adagio	3/4
2	Die Harmonie in der Ehe	The Harmony in Marriage	J. N. Götz	S-A-T-B & Continuo	Bb	Allegretto	4/4
3	Alles hat seine Zeit	Everything has it's Time	J.A. Ebert	S-A-T-B & Continuo	F	Allegretto	4/4
4	Die Beredsamkeit	The Eloquence	G.E. Lessing	S-A-T-B & Continuo	Bb	Allegretto	4/4
5	Der Greis	The Old Man	J.W.L. Gleim	S-A-T-B & Continuo	A	Molto adagio	4/4
6	Die Warnung	The Warning	Anonymous	S-A-T-B & Continuo	Bb	Andante	4/4
7	Wider den Ubermut	Preserve me from Arrogance	C.F. Gellert	S-A-T-B & Continuo	A	Adagio	3/4
8	Danklied zu Gott	Thanksgiving song to God	C.F. Gellert	S-A-T-B & Continuo	Eb	Poco adagio	2/2
9	Abendlied zu Gott	Evening song to God	C.F. Gellert	S-A-T-B & Continuo	A	Adagio	3/4

Michael Haydn's partsongs
for 4 male voices from 1795

One can only speculate what led Haydn down this road. There was no tradition of singing of this type in Austria at the time. His brother, Michael, had almost concurrently (1795) released some marvelous songs for four male voices. But his were just that, songs. They had a melody line and accompaniment from the other voices. What was Joseph doing though?

According to Griesinger, Haydn composed the partsongs "simply con amore, in happy hours, without commission"². While this has long been interpreted to mean he considered them to be just toss-offs which filled his idle hours, the letter to Gerber, quoted above, throws an entirely different light on it. If Haydn wanted to retire and make this his final masterpiece, and he was doing it, unusually enough, out of his own pocket, then he must have thought highly of the entire concept. In 1801, when Griesinger urged him to publish the extant thirteen pieces, he still insisted that the series should be completed to twenty-five, or at least twenty numbers, for "if I now have something published, [...] it must be somewhat big"³. And this was always the idea, since we see from another character, one we haven't met previously, named Fredrik Samuel Silverstolpe, who writes this news home from Vienna in June of 1797:

Moreover, he (Haydn) sang several arias to me, which he intends to issue by subscription when the number has reached 24. His usual rhythm characterizes them and they reveal many strokes of genius and well-chosen thoughts.                                                                              F. S. Silverstolpe, 1797

What sort of arias are these, then? Ramler's Lyrical Anthology was a very popular collection of German poetry. Given Haydn's predilection for poetry, it is not too outrageous to suppose he had it since it's original printing in 1780. Ramler wrote in his introduction that he published all the pieces without authorship denoted in order that "those connoisseurs who are used to judging the excellence of a work only from the author's name may find it a little more difficult". Landon supposes that Haydn originally intended to use Ramler for the entire set of songs, but in the event, the old problem of finding just the right lyric presented itself again. So he used at least two other sources, one being a "poetry in installments" series along the same idea as our own "Everyman's Library", collected by F.A. Schrämbl in Vienna beginning in 1791. The other source, poetry in a far more serious, religious and philosophic vein, was C.F. Gellert's Geistliche Oden und Lieder (Spiritual Odes and Songs), published in 1757.

The music itself is modeled in some ways on the Catches and Glees which he was heavily exposed to in England Indeed, he wrote a dozen of them for Lord Abingdon (Hob 31c:16 N^o's.1-12). These vocal quartets are very unlike brother Michael's, which, as we saw, are actually homophonic songs. Joseph's, instead, are very much strict counterpoint, purely polyphonic, and don't waver from that ideal. They do incorporate many features from the Catch, techniques such as leaving 'windows', openings for one voice between the others to highlight a special point in the text. The interesting thing, and what sets them apart from other efforts beyond quality of the writing, is that the lyrics range in character from deeply solemn and spiritual to highly comic, but the music doesn't ever waver from being strict counterpoint. As Mikusi says:

…notwithstanding the above hints at imitation, Haydn's partsongs - and even some of the comic songs among them - engage in strict contrapuntal writing to a degree quite foreign to the glee repertory. So much so that one can hardly avoid having doubts whether many friendly companies in Vienna or elsewhere could have included a sufficient number of accomplished singers to perform pieces like Die Beredsamkeit or Daphnens ein ziger Fehler.

 

Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1715-1769)
by Anton Graff - ca. 1769

As an aid to polyphonic singing, Haydn used the traditional figured bass for accompaniment in the first nine pieces. When they were published by Breitkopf & Härtel, the figures were realized and written out for the keyboard. The final four had fully written out keyboard parts for both hands. If he had completed the entire cycle as the twenty-five he envisioned, one would assume the latter form would have prevailed, although with Haydn, one never knows.

Silverstolpe's visit of 1797, chronicled in reports sent back to his associates at the Swedish Music Academy in Stockholm, probably tells us more about Haydn's life than any other single document from this period. He knew music, he had been a student of Kraus just a few years earlier. He actually wrote the first biography of Kraus in the 1830's. But from our Haydnish perspective, it is the notes home about Haydn, and the translation of The Creation into Swedish, which allowed its performance there in 1801, only two years after its première in Vienna, which will capture our interest.

In the same room where the instrument [NB - his English pianoforte] stood, there was a bookcase with glass doors. There I especially noticed a collection of the best poets of Germany, and when we spoke of them, it seemed Gellert was his hero…        Silverstolpe

We have touched upon many cultural topics in this series. If you have learned anything from it, you are on track with me, because it was all new to me when we started out. One of the most important Haydn discoveries we've made concerns his love for the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Many of his early songs, his attendance at salons, joining the Freemasons, his amazingly large library, all attest to the breadth of his interest. Indeed, the entire decade of the 1780's was a two-way assimilation; Haydn got Enlightenment culture and in return contributed music.

Haydn's personal contacts and reading made him very much aware of the tenet's of the Enlightenment. This can be seen in his association with persons such as Franz Sales von Greiner, Gottfried van Swieten, and Johann Caspar Lavater; by his attendance at literary salons which brought him into contact with Johann Baptist von Alxinger, Aloys Blumauer, Michael Denis, Lorenz Haschka, Tobias Philipp Gebler and Ignaz von Born; and by his eventual membership in the Masonic Lodge Zur wahren Eintracht. As a result of these social and literary influences, it is entirely possible that Haydn revised his symphonic approach to bring it into line with the prevailing attitude towards literature. This attitude, very simply, was that literature should serve the goals of the Enlightenment. ⁵ Schroeder

All of this is the long way 'round to explain Haydn's deep feeling of kinship with Gellert. Even though Gellert was dead (NB - 1769) by the time of the Enlightenment's full flowering, due to Vienna's late awakening, the philosophy of the 1780's was more in tune with the thinking of the mid-18^th century and Gellert than it was with the proto-Romantics such as Goethe. And while Haydn eventually adopted Gellert's Spiritual Odes and Songs to complete his final partsongs, it is really the fact of their shared belief in the Enlightenment philosophy, particularly "everything a person creates should improve his fellow man, especially spiritually and intellectually", which bound them together. If you now return to Haydn's letter to Gerber, or his statements to Griesinger, the emphasis which he puts on quality and expectations placed on him makes more sense.

So what was Haydn trying to accomplish? Did he succeed? We have seen already, with the late keyboard trios for example, how Haydn was influenced by his time in England, and especially by the culture of music more than its actual structure. I don't want to be a spoiler here, but here is a secret look into the future: Haydn is going to write two major oratorios and an Austrian National Anthem, all within the next four years. Seriously, I'm not kidding! As we will see, he was keen on at least two of those things, and willing in spirit, at least, for the second oratorio too. And the reason was his belief that Austria would benefit from adopting some English traditions. He had seen London come to a standstill to sing God Save the King, and he had seen the King himself and the Royal family join in with his massed subjects to sing Handel at the annual festivals. And he saw how it bound the country together. His Enlightened ideals were doubtless stirred by this outpouring of patriotism, and he wanted his own country to share in it. Haydn also saw how the Glee Clubs acted in a unifying way, specifically bringing enjoyment from making music. And what could be more stirring to a composer? On this basis, Balázs Mikusi suggests¹;

…the mehrstimmige Gesänge could plausibly have been intended as a nationalized version of the English glee - one, however, that would even outdo its model in both compositional care and performing effort.                  Mikusi

Did he succeed? As we saw with Haydn's early German Lieder, and also with many of his operas, there was a major stumbling block which existed in the musical minds of the day. It can be simply stated, even though it is far more complicated than it sounds: the finest music cannot overcome mediocre (which includes inappropriate) texts. And Haydn's transgression was great: he set comic lyrics into some of the finest polyphonic settings of the era. Music deserving of being played in Church, now dedicated to Daphne's Only Mistake or the cynical The Harmony in Marriage! Yet for all the bluster of the critics, the genre did indeed take off, and Haydn's works served as the benchmark to which all others were compared. As here:

Carl Maria von Weber, in an 1815 review of Gottfried Weber's Zwölf vierstimmige Gesänge für zwei Soprane, Tenor und Bass, [in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung] wrote "these pieces were not simple lieder, but rather songs properly worked out in four parts, in their basic idea, just as in their aesthetic and artistic treatment, most similar to those which Joseph Haydn published not long before his death [...] much to the delight of countless amateurs.         Mikusi

I tend to take a fine composer like C.M. von Weber more seriously than your average critic anyway. But I'm not living in those times, and it is fair to say the consensus was weighted against the concept of setting comic lyrics to sublime music. As for performances, and there were many throughout the 19^th century, the religious songs immediately became part of the canon of partsongs. The remainder, not so much. If the taste for music of this type allowed it to still be written today, I fancy that the balance would be tipped in the other direction. Styles change; style doesn't. And these songs certainly have style!

More singing next time, the long drought of Masses since 1782 is about to break!

Thanks for reading!

1 - Balázs Mikusi - Between Tradition, Innovation and Utopia: Haydn's "mehrstimmige Gesänge" - Studia Musicologica, Vol. 51, No. 1/2

2 - Botstiber and Pohl, Joseph Haydn, Vol. 3, pg. 336

3 - Griesinger's letter to Gottfried Christoph Härtel dated 23 December 1801, in Eben komme ich, ed. Biba, pg. 118

4 – James Webster – Biography section – The New Grove Haydn

5 - David Schroeder - Haydn & Gellert: Parallels in Eighteenth-Century Music and Literature Current Musicology Vol. 35 Spring 1983