Haydn's Haus

[Mandryka]

Hob XV: 28 in E major

This must be one of the funniest opening in all Haydn's output. Pure bliss! Who would have expected, after so much fun, that eerie second movement. almost Bartok-esque in atmosphere? As for the finale... And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor / Shall be lifted—one time more! .

There's a really nice PI recording of this one with Levin and Beths and Bylsma. It's one of the best Haydn records I know.

[Gurn Blanston]

Well, and "the feelings point of view" angle here is worth re-examining.

Aw, what's the use, Karl? If people want their Classical music played in a Romantic style, who can say no?  Not me....

There's a really nice PI recording of this one with Levin and Beths and Bylsma. It's one of the best Haydn records I know.

Yes it is, an excellent disk that should be in everyone;s collection.

[Karl Henning]

Levin, local boy, you know.

[Karl Henning]

Aw, what's the use, Karl? If people want their Classical music played in a Romantic style, who can say no?  Not me....

Pardon me while I groove to some Stokowski arrangements of Bach ; )

[Daverz]

Well, and "the feelings point of view" angle here is worth re-examining.

To clarify, it would be wrong to say Schornsheim plays without feeling here.  My unfamiliarity with the sound of the instrument she plays here got in the way of hearing what she was doing.

I spent the rest of the morning comparing the Festetics and Mosaïques in Op. 20/1.  The Festetics are good, but the Mosaïques really hit it out of the park.  One problem I have with some Haydn quartet playing is a certain chugga-chugga pattern that sets in, or a choppy start-stop feeling.  The Mosaïques's playing flows and sings.

[Mandryka]

Aw, what's the use, Karl? If people want their Classical music played in a Romantic style, who can say no?  Not me....

Sure, but no-one mentioned romantic style, the discussion was about feeling.

There are interesting issues that are around here -- at least, I find them interesting. Does the music Haydn wrote somehow express feelings? Should the performer add expression when he plays? Harnoncourt would answer yes to both questions I expect, at least in the Paris symphonies. Hogwood maybe would answer both questions negatively. Norrington -- I don't know. 

[Karl Henning]

To clarify, it would be wrong to say Schornsheim plays without feeling here.

Thanks! The various recordings by Schornsheim which I've heard certainly strike me as possessed of feeling.

The question, I expect, becomes How much feeling need there be, for a certain listener to feel that there is feeling? ; )

[Mandryka]

My own personal view is that for all but the late sonatas, playing them on a modern grand is unidiomatic.  For sure, it may produce a pleasing performance, but one that would not fit into the sound world of Haydn's time.  For most of the 18th century, despite the fact that fortepianos were in existence before the end of the century, the most common instrument used was still the harpsichord.  Most amateurs, who were the primary performers of keyboard sonatas, still had a harpsichord but had not bought the new fortepiano.  It is questionable if Haydn used one regularly, or owned one, until late in his career when he was given one, but later sold it a few years before his death in 1806.

There is at least one letter from Haydn to his friend Ms. Gensinger urging her to invest in a fortepiano since his keyboard sonatas written at that time would benefit from the difference.

My favourite Haydn keyboard sonata is Hob 19, no 30, and it has been for twenty or more years. And so I always listen to all the performances of it I can find. The one which, all in all, I find the most satisfying, for drama, colour, feeling, is Robert Hill's. He uses a harpsichord, and I can't help feel that the qualities  of the instrument help make the performance so wonderful.

[Gurn Blanston]

My favourite Haydn keyboard sonata is Hob 19, no 30, and it has been for twenty or more years. And so I always listen to all the performances of it I can find. The one which, all in all, I find the most satisfying, for drama, colour, feeling, is Robert Hill's. He uses a harpsichord, and I can't help feel that the qualities  of the instrument help make the performance so wonderful.

That Hill disk (on Ars musici) is one of my favorites. Listened to it as recently as Monday or Tuesday evening. For all of the sonatas up to 1780 I play my harpsichord versions 10 times for every time I play the fortepiano ones. That said, the clavichord ones are the best of all, IMO. 

[Florestan]

Does the music Haydn wrote somehow express feelings?

Haydn's own answer: I sit down at the keyboard, and begin to improvise, sad or happy according to my mood. Once I have seized on an idea, my whole endeavour is to develop and sustain it, always in keeping with the rules of art. (emphasis mine).

Case closed.

Should the performer add expression when he plays?

Those who feel (pun intended) that music from the classical era is detached, cold and emotionless do the composers a great injustice. Yet still greater injustice is done to them by those who think that this is how the music should sound.

Those people were human beings just like us: if pricked, they bled; if tickled, they laughed. They were not soulless automata; they had hearts, they had feelings, they had emotions, they had their joys and sorrows. What they lacked was the idea that violent expression of extreme feelings is the true mark of a great artist (and the more violent and extreme, the greater the artist); the idea that the tribulations of their private lives might be and should be of interest to anyone else than themselves and those directly involved; and finally, that there is no difference between writing music and writing an entry in the personal diary. They had instead other ideas: that proclaiming loud and bold, to all four corners of the world, one's own feelings and emotions was not exactly an exercise in good taste; that emotions and feelings are universal human traits and expressing them musically does not depend on one's own particular nationality (the notion of a specifically German, or French, or Italian, or Russian, or Scandinavian music, essentially and qualitatively different from each other and in competition for the supremacy over the audience was completely alien to them); and finally, that "the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music".

Thus, when Mozart's mother died, he composed a sorrowful violin sonata; but the feeling one gets form hearing it is that of a universal, generally humane sorrow, not in anyway related to that specific event in his life, nor to his nationality; nor is it chock full of dissonances. The music is very far from crying out loud: "Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! I am Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, of Austrian stock, and hereby I lament the loss of my dear mother; weep and mourn with me or else be damned, ye philistines!"

Even the Sturm und Drang music, a vehicle for much darker and sharper sentiments than the galante style, never abandoned universalism, cosmopolitanism and musicality.

Bottom line: are there emotions and feelings in the Classical era music? Yes. Are they heart-on-sleeve-ishly, violently and openly expressed? No. Playing Haydn, Mozart or Boccherini* in an analytical, emotionally unengaged and mechanical way is just as wrong as presenting them as a sort of Late Romantics avant la lettre.

(* Speaking of Boccherini, Gurn: if Haydn's treatment in the 19th century was condescending, what about poor Luigi, nicknamed "Haydn's wife"?)

[Gurn Blanston]

Haydn's own answer: I sit down at the keyboard, and begin to improvise, sad or happy according to my mood. Once I have seized on an idea, my whole endeavour is to develop and sustain it, always in keeping with the rules of art. (emphasis mine).

Case closed.

Those who feel (pun intended) that music from the classical era is detached, cold and emotionless do the composers a great injustice. Yet still greater injustice is done to them by those who think that this is how the music should sound.

Those people were human beings just like us: if pricked, they bled; if tickled, they laughed. They were not soulless automata; they had hearts, they had feelings, they had emotions, they had their joys and sorrows. What they lacked was the idea that violent expression of extreme feelings is the true mark of a great artist (and the more violent and extreme, the greater the artist); the idea that the tribulations of their private lives might be and should be of interest to anyone else than themselves and those directly involved; and finally, that there is no difference between writing music and writing an entry in the personal diary. They had instead other ideas: that proclaiming loud and bold, to all four corners of the world, one's own feelings and emotions was not exactly an exercise in good taste; that emotions and feelings are universal human traits and expressing them musically does not depend on one's own particular nationality (the notion of a specifically German, or French, or Italian, or Russian, or Scandinavian music, essentially and qualitatively different from each other and in competition for the supremacy over the audience was completely alien to them); and finally, that "the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music".

Thus, when Mozart's mother died, he composed a sorrowful violin sonata; but the feeling one gets form hearing it is that of a universal, generally humane sorrow, not in anyway related to that specific event in his life, nor to his nationality; nor is it chock full of dissonances. The music is very far from crying out loud: "Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! I am Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, of Austrian stock, and hereby I lament the loss of my dear mother; weep and mourn with me or else be damned, ye philistines!"

Even the Sturm und Drang music, a vehicle for much darker and sharper sentiments than the galante style, never abandoned universalism, cosmopolitanism and musicality.

Bottom line: are there emotions and feelings in the Classical era music? Yes. Are they heart-on-sleeve-ishly, violently and openly expressed? No. Playing Haydn, Mozart or Boccherini* in an analytical, emotionally unengaged and mechanical way is just as wrong as presenting them as a sort of Late Romantics avant la lettre.

(* Speaking of Boccherini, Gurn: if Haydn's treatment in the 19th century was condescending, what about poor Luigi, nicknamed "Haydn's wife"?)

In general I agree with your analysis. More than emotion, what bothers me is that the style of playing (we were talking keyboard music when this came up) that developed during the 19th and 20th centuries, which is no doubt eminently suitable for music composed to be played in that style comes off as far less convincing when it is applied to Classical Era style. Thus the smooth, entirely legato that may be suitable for Beethoven is not so for Haydn or Mozart. And it doesn't make a damn bit of difference whether you like it better that way, that isn't the point. Mozart is well known to have played very detaché and staccato, and unless specifically marked 'legato' it shouldn't be played that way. That isn't an emotion, it's a playing style. And it applies to Haydn too, and pretty much to all fortepianist/composers who learned their craft on a harpsichord.

Boccherini is such a tragedy that it almost doesn't bear thinking about. He died in abject poverty, totally forgotten musically before he was even dead. Some things about humankind never change....

[Sergeant Rock]

Mozart is well known to have played very detaché and staccato...

And that's the way Glenn Gould plays Mozart...and yet he's almost universally reviled. Me, I truly enjoy his Mozart.

Sarge

[Gurn Blanston]

And that's the way Glenn Gould plays Mozart...and yet he's almost universally reviled. Me, I truly enjoy his Mozart.

Sarge

It's the way that Paul Badura-Skoda plays him too, and even moreso, Ludwig Semerjian (on Atma). I don't dislike his playing so much as the sound of the instrument, just sayin'....

[Sergeant Rock]

I don't dislike his playing so much as the sound of the instrument, just sayin'....

Yeah, I understand. Those monster Steinways just sound ghastly 

Sarge

[Florestan]

Me, I truly enjoy [Gould's] Mozart.

And me I truly enjoy his Haydn. Anyway, I don't think there is one single right way to play this or that music --- not even the composer's own way qualifies. 

[Mandryka]

What's interesting here is how the discussion slipped from ideas to do with expression in performance to ideas to do with touch and articulation. I tend to see romanticism as in fact very centrally to do with articulation, to do with sustaining very long singing lines, building up tension  to climaxes very slowly. I see that sort of idea as rather more central to romantic peorformance practice (as defined by paradigms like Furtwangler and Cortot) than ideas to do with expressiveness and emotional intensity.

What I'm not at all clear about is how the expression in something like Davidsbundlertanze is of a different order than the expression in, say, Hob 19 sonata 30 or Symphony 46. Is the idea that Schumann was more personal, less universal than Haydn?

Thanks, by the way, to everyone from some stimulating ideas.

[Gurn Blanston]

Yeah, I understand. Those monster Steinways just sound ghastly 

Sarge

I was reading something in Robbins-Landon's Mozart "The Golden Years" the other day and he went on at some length about keyboard instruments (which is really sort of surprising if you know his work), and he said that most people just don't realize that a fortepiano and a piano are 2 entirely different instruments, not just a natural evolution of one into the other. And really, you can hear it, I bet you really can tell if you play them.

[Florestan]

Is the idea that Schumann was more personal, less universal than Haydn?

Absolutely. One doesn't need to know anything about Haydn's personal life in order to enjoy his music; while someone ignoring completely the details of Schumann's personality and life, although he might enjoy Davidsbundlertanze in purely musical terms, yet he will entirely miss its very meaning. 

The same goes for Kreisleriana, of which Schumann wrote to Clara Wieck: But, Clara, I'm overflowing with music and beautiful melodies now—imagine, since my last letter I've finished another whole notebook of new pieces. I intend to call it Kreisleriana. You and one of your ideas play the main role in it, and I want to dedicate it to you—yes, to you and nobody else—and then you will smile so sweetly when you discover yourself in it (emphasis mine). Being aware of that, I feel that listening to it is like reading a love letter which was not addressed to me and therefore concerns me not at all: it is almost an impudence.   

[Florestan]

Pushing buttons is my favorite pastime: there's always one that works. 

[Gurn Blanston]

Pushing buttons is my favorite pastime: there's always one that works. 

And yet I totally believed it of you...

I have no idea about the background of Schumann's works. As a believer in absolute music, I don't really care. And I like them a lot (although he's no Haydn).