Topic: Haydn's Haus

[Florestan]

There are two other marches (Hob VIII:3 and Hob VIII3 bis) on the second disc of this box:

[Gurn Blanston]

There are two other marches (Hob VIII:3 and Hob VIII3 bis) on the second disc of this box:

Yes, and they are excellent recordings too. I wish Huss had done a whole disk of marches (and dances). #3 is the Prince of Wales march mentioned a bit ago. 3bis is a reorchestration of it that Haydn did for the Royal Society of Musicians, he added several parts so it could be performed on stage by a chamber-sized orchestra. Other than the other disk I mentioned, and this one here, march recordings by orchestra are pretty darned hard to find!    I think the whole bunch are available as piano reductions though, by Brautigam and Oort certainly, and probably several others who don't leap to mind right now. Same with dances, even ones that have available orchestral scores.

[Gurn Blanston]

Things been quiet in da Haus! 

Meantime, I've been touring the Scottish Highlands and the mountains of Transylvania and just having a great time. Did you know that 18th century Londoners believed the Highlanders were cannibals? Strewth! Well, I couldn't provoke that behavior, but I did have a nice time. Here's what I discovered.

Dr. Haydn's Exotic Music Revue

Check it out!
Thanks,

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

Things been quiet in da Haus! 

Aye 

Another post of yours reminds me that it is probably time that I revisit the Van Swieten Trio . . . .

[Gurn Blanston]

Aye 

Another post of yours reminds me that it is probably time that I revisit the Van Swieten Trio . . . .

Always a worthwhile endeavor. I didn't traverse the cycle, but a goodly portion of it. Underrated.

[Sergeant Rock]

Dr. Haydn's Exotic Music Revue
Check it out!

The Austro-Hungarian army certainly had a novel way of recruiting! Thank god I didn't have to dance with my Captain and First Sergeant when I was a recruiter 

As always, Gurn, your latest post was a good and informative read.

Sarge

[Gurn Blanston]

The Austro-Hungarian army certainly had a novel way of recruiting! Thank god I didn't have to dance with my Captain and First Sergeant when I was a recruiter 

As always, Gurn, your latest post was a good and informative read.

Sarge

Thanks, Sarge. I also found it fascinating. One thing about writing on the history of a subject (any subject, really) is the tremendous number of things you discover that you never even suspected. There are some Youtubes of moderns doing these dances, Romanians actually, and they are pretty amazing. I got tired out just watching them! 

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Hi-U-6IhO4M" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/Hi-U-6IhO4M</a>

[Florestan]

Btw, Gurn

I often take Grove as gospel

In this case you shouldn't. They state that

Before the Austro-Hungarian imperial army instituted conscription in 1849

This is a mistake oftenly done, but for their academic level it is really inexcusable. The historical truth is that before 1867, the year the Emperor of Austria was also proclaimed King of Hungary, resulting in the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there was no Austro-Hungarian army. In 1849 there was only the Austrian imperial army.

The chronology is as follows:

800? -1806 The Holy Roman Empire
1804 -1867 The Austrian Empire
1867 -1918 The Austro-Hungarian Empire

[Gurn Blanston]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Hi-U-6IhO4M" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/Hi-U-6IhO4M</a>

Thanks, Karl. One of the few skills at GMG that I seem unable to master...

[Gurn Blanston]

Btw, Gurn

In this case you shouldn't. They state that

This is a mistake oftenly done, but for their academic level it is really inexcusable. The historical truth is that before 1867, the year the Emperor of Austria was also proclaimed King of Hungary, resulting in the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there was no Austro-Hungarian army. In 1849 there was only the Austrian imperial army.

The chronology is as follows:

800? -1806 The Holy Roman Empire
1804 -1867 The Austrian Empire
1867 -1918 The Austro-Hungarian Empire

Yes, you are very correct, although I couldn't change their quoted text. I did, however, point out that it was the Esterházy's that hired their own Hussars/Gypsies. Grove's expertise doesn't really extend far beyond music, and is not all-encompassing, even there. But I have a million dollars invested in them (gross exaggeration), so I have to use them sometimes.

[Florestan]

https://www.youtube.com/user/RomanianFolkDances/search?query=barbuncul

The first six videos present bărbuncul, which is the Romanian version of verbunkos both as a dance and as a word.

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

Thanks, Karl. One of the few skills at GMG that I seem unable to master...

I just keep it as a text string, and copy for pasting as needed 

[Gurn Blanston]

I just keep it as a text string, and copy for pasting as needed 

Hmmmm...

[kishnevi]

I am finally listening to the Dorati set of FJH's operas.  Looking over the track listings, I noticed an oddity:  in those operas which have three acts, the third act is much shorter than than the other two.  For instance, now I am listening to La Fedelta Premiata, which is about 2 hours 45 minutes in length. Act III is fifteen minutes long, meaning 1/11th of the opera.

Does anyone know the reason for this imbalance?

[Gurn Blanston]

I am finally listening to the Dorati set of FJH's operas.  Looking over the track listings, I noticed an oddity:  in those operas which have three acts, the third act is much shorter than than the other two.  For instance, now I am listening to La Fedelta Premiata, which is about 2 hours 45 minutes in length. Act III is fifteen minutes long, meaning 1/11th of the opera.

Does anyone know the reason for this imbalance?

I did some looking around on that subject when I first got into the operas a few years ago, what I was able to discover is that it was pretty much a standard thing for operas at the time to have a very short final act. I can't remember reading that there was a particular reason for it, just that it was like a coda at the end. I'll go back and see if I can find where I read that. I can say that it wasn't only Haydn's operas though, it was Italian operas in general.

[Gurn Blanston]

Almost all of Haydn's operas were of a form called dramma giocoso. This form is not like an opera seria (Armida was his only true opera seria), it is a mix between that and comic opera, opera buffa. This form was pioneered by Carlo Goldoni, among others. Haydn set at least 3 Goldoni operas, Le pescatrici, Lo speziale and Il mondo della luna. Up until his very last few operas, all of them were dramma giocoso, and all of them followed the pattern set by Goldoni. I steal this line from Wikipedia, although it isn't the first place I read it, just the easiest to find:

Dramma giocoso (Italian, literally: drama with jokes; plural: drammi giocosi) is a genre of opera common in the mid-18th century. The term is a contraction of dramma giocoso per musica and describes the opera's libretto (text). The genre developed in the Neapolitan opera tradition, mainly through the work of the playwright Carlo Goldoni in Venice. A dramma giocoso characteristically used a grand buffo (comic or farce) scene as a dramatic climax at the end of an act. Goldoni's texts always consisted of two long acts with extended finales, followed by a short third act. Composers Baldassare Galuppi, Niccolò Piccinni, and Joseph Haydn set Goldoni's texts to music.

Anyway, that's a start.

[kishnevi]

Thanks.

Perhaps Italian audiences expected a ballet or punchinella to round out the bill? Or wanted to get to the casino by 11 PM?

[Gurn Blanston]

Thanks.

Perhaps Italian audiences expected a ballet or punchinella to round out the bill? Or wanted to get to the casino by 11 PM?

  Perhaps all those things. Well, not the ballet, IIRC, that's a French thing. One doesn't automatically seize on the fact that the librettist was really in control of that sort of thing. Anyway, something like 8 or 9 out of 13 operas by Haydn were dramma giocoso. I think the Prince liked them.

[kishnevi]

Continuing with my traversal of Dorati's recording of the Esterhazy operas, tonight I am listening to La Vera Constanza, and I am very much reminded of a certain dude named Wolfgang as I listened, for the first time in this set.
Which made me wonder how much of Mozart's output would Haydn have known.  So I turned to Wikipedia for dates, and found this

The work was written for the Eszterházy court and first performed on 25 April 1779. It was revived there in April 1785 when Haydn apparently had to re-create much of the opera from memory, the original having been largely lost. It was given in Bratislava, Budapest, Vienna and Brno between 1786 and 1792 under the title Der flatterhafte Liebhaber.

Now, in 1779 Mozart was probably not very much on Haydn's radar.  But by 1785 the two had met, and Mozart had written the first two of his operas which are heard with at least some regularity today: Idomeneo and Abduction from the Seraglio. Plus of many of the piano concertos and symphonies and chamber music.

So now I have a double question

First, was the original score "largely lost" as Wikipedia says.
Second, how faithful a reproduction of the original was Haydn's 1785 version?  Might he have rewritten it and used some Mozartian influence picked up in the intervening years?

Even the Wikipedia article picks up on the Mozartian tinge

Haydn's finales for Acts 1 and 2 aspire to the Mozartian ideal in their attention to details of textual structure, characterization, location and stage events, pointing to Haydn’s capable dramatic technique.