|
Hob No |
Genre |
Key |
Name |
Instruments/Voices |
Notes |
|
22_11 |
Catholic Mass |
Bb |
Theresienmesse |
S-A-T-B, Chorus, 2 Clarinets, (Bassoon), 2 Trumpets, Timpani, Strings & Continuo (Organ) |
First performance - |
Because Haydn's career was so long and productive, it isn't difficult to pick out quite a list of years and say the music from those years represents his greatest year. And if you did so, it would probably not include 1799, at least in the first draft. I would probably pick an early year, like 1757 which saw the first symphonies and string quartets, as well as keyboard sonatas, string trios and keyboard quartets. These were the years when he learned how to write music! Or 1761, the first year with the Esterházy's, which had the Time of Day symphony set, and the Scherzandi. No, wait, 1772 had Symphonies 45-47, the Opus 20 Quartets and the Nikolaimesse. But then 1794 had… well, you can see this is a game that can go on for as long as you want to play it. But 1799, the year of Haydn's latest maturity, was more subtle than overt. It didn't have the 'first' of anything, but mainly wonderful examples of musical genres of which he was the master. Like we saw in the Op. 77 quartets. Or now, number four in the series of Late Masses. And he did most of the writing on his final oratorio, The Seasons, on his free time.
Griesinger, in one of his first letters from Vienna to his friend Gottfried Christoph Härtel in Leipzig, wrote on 25 May 1799 that "it was impossible for him [Haydn] to promise three new sonatas because he was overwhelmed with business and still has back orders to fill for the Empress, Prince Esterházy, and many wealthy Viennese."
Daniel Heartz
Among the other commissions Haydn had from "wealthy Viennese" was one we didn't look at last time with the Opus 77 quartets.
Griesinger wrote to Härtel on 12 June 1799 that Haydn had also promised to write a set of [string] quintets for Count Moritz von Fries, a genre that he had not cultivated before, which makes the information appear somewhat suspect.
Daniel Heartz
The reason we didn't look at it, of course, is because it was never completed (or even begun, as far as we know). Landon includes it on his bogus list of items which Haydn was too intimidated by Mozart to have a go at. I think we can trash that silliness and go with the far more likely one, whereby his time of creativity ran out before he was able to even get properly started on them. But the publication of Opus 76, and the completion of the first two quartets of Opus 77 certainly fall into this list from Griesinger. The back order for the Empress is doubtless the Te Deum which we will see in 1800. Which leaves us, of the things we know, the commission for the Esterházy's. By May of 1799, Haydn was certainly looking ahead to September and the Name Day of his Princess, Marie Hermenegild.
Every year, in late summer, the Esterházy's (and most of the other nobility) left Vienna behind for a while and retreated to their family estates in the country. It was a time for renewing ties with the locals, visiting each other and entertaining with grand parties, and actually living the life we hear about and associate with the aristocracy, even though it is a very partial picture, after all. There was very likely to be a strong undercurrent of unease occupying much of the conversation in the late 1790's. The revolutionary fervor which had swept America, then France, was still a major issue, even in Vienna. Especially with the Emperor and his advisers being so determined to repress it by any means. And that French devil, Napoleon, had stopped for breath, but was now back on the move, and inevitable war was plainly on the near horizon.
Why this work is called the "Theresienmesse" is nothing short of a mystery. No one seems to know where the name came from, there is no dedication to Empress Marie Therese (or any other Theresa), no documented occasion in which it was played for her, nor comment which she made if it had been. Quite a different situation from the next (Creation) Mass. Ellsler did make an authentic copy which is now in her library, but not until ca. 1820, well after her 1807 death. Still, this may have been the genesis of the name. The first historian who wrote on the Masses in the early 20th century, Carl Maria Brand, referred to it as the 'so-called' Theresienmesse', and most properly 'The Mass of the Year 1799'. Of the final six so-called "Great Masses" which Haydn wrote, this is number four. As we see above, Haydn called it, quite simply and unsurprisingly, Missa (NB- the "in B(b)" is added later). For those who have been keeping track due to their dedication to the 'Name Day Mass' tradition, this is actually the first which was certainly written for Marie Hermenegild's Name Day. But even that may only be a nominal dedication.
As we saw when discussing the Mariazellermesse (1782), the Missa Cellensis (1766) and the Heiligmesse (1796), as well as the various Marian Hymns like the Ave Regina and Salve Regina's, Haydn had undoubtedly focused his faith in Mary, the Mother of Jesus and patron saint of Austria. Since Marie Hermenegild was named after Mary, it is clear her Name Day would fall on the day of devotion dedicated to Mary. If we were thinking like devout 18th century Catholics, which Haydn certainly was, it would be transparently clear that at least one of the reasons he adopted this last great task of his musical servitude to the Prince is because, while he nominally was writing a tribute to his great friend Marie, in his heart he was also writing thanks and devotion to the great patron of his lifetime.
It isn't hard to validate the basic premise of this being a 'thank you' Mass for his spiritual patron. At this point in his life, Haydn had more to be thankful for than at any other. His The Creation, recently having received its public première to the greatest acclamation, was now being prepared for sale, and the subscription list was phenomenal. His other works, the 'London' symphonies currently being published, the 7 Last Words Oratorio, the Opus 76 quartets, had become a national cult. He was fêted everywhere he went, and had recently recovered from an unknown illness, probably brought on by the stress of it all. Thankful? Indeed. And this a man who relied on his faith in Mary (thus the rosary) for even his day-to-day musical inspiration.
"If my composing is not proceeding so well," I heard him say, "I walk up and down the room with my rosary in my hand, say several Aves, and then ideas come to me again."
Griesinger (page 54)
Carl Brand suggested the Mass should be renamed the Hermenegildmesse after Marie. I think this is a delightful proposal, but of course, changes proposed today to correct the mistakes of the past usually take a hundred years or so to take root. Still, this is one we should have begun way back ca. 1930 when Brand first brought it up.
Haydn arrived in Eisenstadt in the second week of July for the annual country retreat. July was a cold and nasty month that year, Rosenbaum's diary calls it "as cold as November". We don't know what state of completion the Mass was in, but he was still working on it. How much he knew about the state of the band must be considered. In short, there were scarcely more wind instruments than we had seen for the Nelson Mass last year. Haydn found a pair of clarinets, perhaps they were part of the Grenadiers band, or they had been brought in for the dramatic troupe to use in their stage presentations. There are also authentic bassoon parts, so the need to rely so heavily on the trumpets and timpani, while still present, was not nearly as urgent as it was last year. But as with the d minor Mass, a small wind section merely provided a new challenge for Haydn's creativity. He was equal to it.
The day of the première of the Mass finally arrived. The Feast of St. Mary, 8 September, happened to fall on a Sunday in 1799, so it was celebrated on the proper day. Despite the longstanding belief that these Masses were initially performed in the private chapel at Eisenstadt Palace, in fact they were first given in the Bergkirche. As we saw when we talked about the Heiligmesse, the Bergkirche was far more suitable for a larger production, things ranging from space for the singers to the position of the organ to the acoustic were all superior for a Missa longa. As always, it was a party. We mustn't forget, a Name Day was a big deal, bigger than a birthday. We don't have a description of the Mass itself, but an interesting item crops up in the after-party mention in Rosenbaum's diary:
Sunday, 8th, [the] name-day of the Princess: . . . At about 3 o'clock we looked in on the banquet in the grand hall, 54 persons strong. There were many 'healths' drunk, each announced by trumpets and drums in the gallery and by the thunder of cannon in front of the castle. The Prince also drank Haydn's health, to general concurrence. . . . They were at table until 5 o'clock, but real merriment was lacking despite 80 items to eat and all sorts of wines . . .
[Rosenbaum, 68]
Knowing the significance of such an apparently simple thing as the Prince drinking Haydn's health, we can actually make a few solid inferences from this snippet of a diary entry.
-
The Mass was indeed played that morning (we have no actual direct record of it).
-
It went over very well.
-
A big one: Haydn has finally risen high enough in the Prince's estimation that he was toasted in front of a large company of the elite class. One can only guess at the inner feelings which were running through the wheelwright's son in the moment!
-
"No real merriment" at an affair which should have been rife with it. One senses an underlying story behind this. We will certainly talk about this more next time.
The extra space available at the Bergkirche would have been needed, since even with the trimmed down forces available, Haydn had approximately twenty musicians to work with at the première. Among the names which are familiar from the old regime, we find both Luigi Tomasini still playing first violin, and Haydn's younger brother, Johann, singing the tenor part in the small chorus of two sopranos, two altos, a tenor and a bass. Since no specific soloists are mentioned, one must assume each chorister also sang the assigned solo parts when they arrived.
As with each of Haydn's other Masses, this one has a unique character all its own. The sections of lyrical gentleness are de rigeur for Austrian Masses dedicated to Mary, which adds more weight to that undocumented ideal. But there are also superb fugues, which make this a classic old style Mass. If you wish to read a modern, compelling analysis of the structure, you can't do better than Demaree & Moses: The Masses of Joseph Haydn4. They will amply illustrate for you how earlier descriptions, which are based on the idea that "this section is like predecessor X, while this part is like predecessor Y" are clearly off target. The Amazing Haydn has created yet another unique structure which simply isn't "like" any others, before or after.
This Mass was well-received in Austria. It was the most-performed of Haydn's Masses for many years, although that could well be because Breitkopf & Härtel published it before any of the others and it spread rapidly from there. But there were still problems. Like others of Haydn's Late Masses, like the Mass in Time of War, it elides lines from the Credo. While this was no problem in its own time, an edict of 1903 (Pope Pius X, Tra le Sollecitudini: Encyclical on Sacred Music, 22 November 1903) banning any changes to sacred texts used in music, suddenly focused attention on Haydn's 'mistakes'.
My aim here isn't an in-depth analysis of why Haydn did the things he did. If it is yours, I highly recommend to you the Beghin1 essay cited below. But a short quotation from each of two contemporary documents might be sufficient to demonstrate that Haydn hadn't simply got too senile to remember the words of the Credo, which he had certainly repeated many thousands of times in his life.
Haydn sometimes said that instead of the many quartets, sonatas, and symphonies, he should have written more vocal music. Not only might he have become one of the foremost opera composers, but also it is far easier to compose along the lines of a text than without one.
Griesinger - Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn pg. 63
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One has often declared it preposterous that in a mass the Credo (the Nicene confession of faith) is set to music and sung accompanied by the sounds of trumpets and timpani. One has made fun of it and wondered how, for instance, the line "credo – unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam, confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum" et cetera – can be expressed through music at all . . . How easy is it, though, to make fun of something that one doesn't understand! The theologian who takes the symbolum in front of him and examines its dogmas – if he wanted to sing them, or if one wanted to put them to music for him: well yes, then things would be absurd. But the musician takes the confession as confession of faith by a community, aloud, pronounced for God and mankind: now, nobody can do this without participation of the heart, without feeling; not without different feelings, according to whether one confesses something consoling or disheartening, something happy or sad. These are the feelings that the composer seeks to capture in his music and to arouse in his listeners; if he succeeds, the listener will be in tune with the confession in spirit [Geist] and will, at this public pronouncement, feel what he should feel.
Friedrich Rochlitz - AMZ - 1803
It is important to note here how Rochlitz has greatly expanded upon Haydn in the final phrase. The fact he had never seen Griesinger's book (it was not published until nearly a decade later) gives it that cachet of credibility which both validates the argument and also shows how it was a shared cultural feature.
Rochlitz was one of the foremost theoreticians and writers on music of the time. It is much easier to accept his opinions and conclusions about 18th century Viennese music (sacred or otherwise) than those proposed nearly 100 years later by writers who were, by then, heavily influenced by the Germany-based Caecilian Society. This hugely-influential group proposed reform of church music, which may well have been a good thing. But the advocates of this reform would only accept a style which was polyphonic in texture, often unaccompanied, in imitation of Renaissance polyphony but highly influenced by romanticist harmonies. It was what, in Haydn's youth, was called stile antico, and was the style in which he composed his Missa sunt 'bona mixta malis', only nothing like as simple. This is not something I have read somewhere, but strikes me as extraordinary how their big rise to prominence as a movement in the late 19th century, and Pope Pius X's encyclical of 1903, which not only outlawed inaccurate texts but also most forms of music which might have secular overtones, and nearly all instruments except the organ, were nearly contemporaneous. Could this be anything other than cause and effect? And while it isn't as though these subsequent events could have possibly affected Haydn, they might very well have affected what you heard of his sacred music before recent times. Unless you are Austrian, of course, in which case this was all largely ignored. Ave Austria!
Something which DID make a difference to Haydn, though, were the accusations that he wrote in a theatrical style which wasn't suitable for Church. As James Dack tells us in his essay on Haydn's sacred music;
Already in Haydn's day voices had been raised against the claimed theatrical style of modern church music, and the implied unease in Leipzig opinion with respect to the later masses has resonated through the reception of Haydn's sacred music ever since, in a range of predominantly adverse opinion, which reaches its nadir in assessments such as "the masses of Haydn . . . lack dignity, solemnity and depth, and may be fitly termed pleasing toys of the Papacy." At best, apologists have sought to deflect the charge that Haydn's sacred music was unfitted for the liturgy by pleading "the topos of rural innocence" – a cheerful "Volkstümlichkeit" that informed Haydn's background, character, and attitude to the composition of church music – and citing in support Haydn's reported comment that "when he beheld God his heart leapt for joy and therefore his music did likewise".
James Dack2
Dack's last quote, from Griesinger's correspondence with Breitkopf & Härtel is indeed rather famous, cited in many places. But I think this one from Dies is even more to the point when it comes to explaining so many things about Haydn's style in sacred music.
Now let us hear how Haydn in his own personal way achieved all these perfections [NB - Specifically his Masses]. He spoke to himself during the composing.
"I prayed to God not like a miserable sinner in despair but calmly, slowly. In this I felt that an infinite God would surely have mercy on his finite creature, pardoning dust for being dust. These thoughts cheered me up. I experienced a sure joy so confident that as I wished to express the words of the prayer, I could not suppress my joy, but gave vent to my happy spirits and wrote above the miserere, etc. 'Allegro'."
A.C. Dies - Biographical Accounts of Joseph Haydn pg. 139
This sort of criticism of Haydn is the final holdover from the earliest days when his music was considered to be at the forefront of the violators of the 'rules' of affekt. Once again he is exactly that, a violator. But when I read those two statements he made, I only see a man, a genius, who was supremely confident in his beliefs, and who used his talents to express those beliefs in the best way he knew how. The Theresienmesse is no more nor less guilty of representing Haydn's genius than any other of the Late Masses, as we will see next year when we look at the so-called Creation Mass.
While we have now looked at the new completed compositions for the year, there is still so much that Haydn was up to in 1799, we cannot help but taking a broader look at it next time.
Thanks for reading!
Recommended Reading:
1. Beghin, Tom - Credo ut intelligam: Haydn's reading of the Credo text in
Engaging Haydn: Culture, Context, and Criticism –
Ed. by Mary Hunter and Richard Will (Cambridge University Press – 2012)
2. Dack, James – Sacred Music – in The Cambridge Companion to Haydn
Edited by Caryl Clark (Cambridge University Press – 2005)
3. Heartz, Daniel – Mozart, Haydn and Early Beethoven – (W. W. Norton – 2008)
4. Demaree, Robert & Moses, Don – The Masses of Joseph Haydn – History, Style, Performance –
(Classical Heritage - 2008)
5. Landon, H.C.R. – Joseph Haydn – Chronicle & Works Vol. 4 – The Years of "The Creation" 1796-1800 – (University of Indiana Press - 1977)
6. Gotwals, Vernon (trans.) - JOSEPH HAYDN - Eighteenth-Century Gentleman and Genius –
(Univ. of Wisconsin Press - 1963)