Haydn's Haus

[Mandryka]

"Optimistic" and "Apollonian" - especially when characterised by "essentially" - are so broad as not to be limitation.

The alternative is to deny the fact that individual composers have any kind of personality at all.

For all I know, most, maybe nearly all, of Haydn's music is optimistic and apollonian. However, much of the best of his music poetically that I've heard is not well described by those two ideas. So I want to say that his contribution as poet in sound (rather than as a pioneer of forms) is not essentially apollonian.

Imagine someone saying that Mozart is essentially elegant or pretty, or that Bach is essentially cheerful.  All those things would be to miss the meaning of their most important contributions to art - even though much of Mozart's popular second tier music is just elegant etc.

[Madiel]

I'm quite sure someone would say Mozart is elegant and not mean anything limiting by it.

I'm not interested in arguing about it with you further. Use words how you want to use them.

[Mandryka]

I'm quite sure someone would say Mozart is elegant and not mean anything limiting by it.

I'm not interested in arguing about it with you further. Use words how you want to use them.

Oh dear!

[Jo498]

To his contemporaries, Haydns music was witty, noisy, unconventional, but also sublime. He was castigated by some critics for "breaking rules" around 1770 and it might be that the learned fugues of op.20 were partly written to show that he could also follow the rules of counterpoint. That the late oratorios try to emulate Handelian sublimity and seriousness seems obvious.

But already for Hoffmann writing in ca. 1810 Haydn, despite being recognized as a great and influential composer, is characterized as "pastoral", "innocent" (like written before the Fall) etc. While Mozart is recognized as having at least some "demonic" aspects, especially in Don Giovanni.
Of course, for many listeners later on, even Mozart was considered predominantly "apollinian", serene etc.

I do not find such labels all that helpful. I can agree that Haydn is predominantly "optimistic" - but so is Beethoven. Haydn's (and Mozart's) drama is mainly opera buffa (as Rosen has pointed out this influences also the pacing and rhetoric of instrumental music). That does not mean it is not serious. The love tangles of opera buffa may seem conceited, they still are closer to most people's everyday troubles than Rinaldo's or Idomeneo's predicaments.

[Mandryka]

But already for Hoffmann writing in ca. 1810 Haydn, despite being recognized as a great and influential composer, is characterized as "pastoral", "innocent" (like written before the Fall) etc.

This is an interesting feature of Haydn's reception -- it makes for a chasm between Haydn and Beethoven!!! Presumably there's a link between this idea and the "papa" stereotype which has influenced Haydn's reputation.


Ooooh. I've just had this strange feeling of déjà vu. Still, I think these questions about reception are interesting. Especially interesting that some musicians buck the trend -- Rosbaud for example, and Ranki. And then there are those mega-serious Haydn sonatas played by Levy and to some extent, Richter.

[Jo498]

Re: op.42. I think it is "Stücke" in the original. Which means "pieces" literally and seems to have been the usual expression back then. I think "Sätze" (movements) was not very common until a bit later. Even Beethoven sometimes still uses "Stücke". Which sounds too general and a little strange for a modern German speaker as well. We would refer to any piece of Musik as "Stück" or "Musikstück" but it is uncommon for a part of a larger piece, especially there is now the established use of "Satz" (literally "sentence").

[Gurn Blanston]

Re: op.42. I think it is "Stücke" in the original. Which means "pieces" literally and seems to have been the usual expression back then. I think "Sätze" (movements) was not very common until a bit later. Even Beethoven sometimes still uses "Stücke". Which sounds too general and a little strange for a modern German speaker as well. We would refer to any piece of Musik as "Stück" or "Musikstück" but it is uncommon for a part of a larger piece, especially there is now the established use of "Satz" (literally "sentence").

Thanks for your reply. You confirm my understandings of the words.

I have always understood 'Stücke' to mean, as Landon uses it, 'piece', to refer to a piece of 1 movement only, like Für Elise is often called a Pianostücke.  And Hob. 15:39  - "5 Triostücken" since they are each unrelated little pieces for piano trio which an editor put together to make a single publication. And then, you have Schubert's Triosatz D471, which is the surviving fragment of an entire piano trio, whether it ever was completed or not, it wasn't meant to stand alone as a work.

I know there are differences between then and now in how words are to be understood, just as in English and any language, of course. I think Landon's unusual sentence construction is what deceives. It isn't fluent, and makes it difficult to tell which is the object of the sentence. Even so, however many times I read it, I come away just as many times with the impression of it saying "there are three short quartets" as opposed to 'there are an undisclosed number of quartets at three movements each'. Why would he even say that? Why would he suppose Artaria would care about how many movements as opposed to how many quartets?  You see? It defies logic as well as grammar!

What say you to that? 

[Jo498]

I have the bit from the letter quoted here in a little book on the quartets by Haydn scholar Georg Feder. For me it seems unspecified how many quartets. Haydn writes he is halfway done and "sind ganz klein, und nur mit 3 Stück, sie gehören nach Spanien". I would have to agree with Robbins-Landon. Although your reading is not completely impossible, the "nur mit" (with only three pieces) clearly seems to indicate that this is a characterization of the unspecified number of quartets.
It would very probably have been 3 or 6 quartets as usual. "half finished" (zur Hälfte fertig) probably does not imply an even number of quartets but can just mean that half the work on them is finished.
Feder does not say if he believes that op.42 is based on one of those lost pieces. In that case the menuet would have to have been added later.

So while I think that if the quote/extract I have is correct the obvious and most natural reading is clearly "unspecified # of quartets that are a "small" or short and have only three movements each, the lost Spanish quartets are still a puzzle. Wouldn't Haydn try to sell them not only to Spain but also in Vienna/Austria? Are there any other pieces from so late in Haydn's carreer (mid-1780s) that care completely lost? There are not incipits (starts of movements) and nothing. How would they just vanish in Spain? And why would Haydn write only 3 movements? (The really short quartets by Boccherini are only with 2 movements)

[Gurn Blanston]

I have the bit from the letter quoted here in a little book on the quartets by Haydn scholar Georg Feder. For me it seems unspecified how many quartets. Haydn writes he is halfway done and "sind ganz klein, und nur mit 3 Stück, sie gehören nach Spanien". I would have to agree with Robbins-Landon. Although your reading is not completely impossible, the "nur mit" (with only three pieces) clearly seems to indicate that this is a characterization of the unspecified number of quartets.
It would very probably have been 3 or 6 quartets as usual. "half finished" (zur Hälfte fertig) probably does not imply an even number of quartets but can just mean that half the work on them is finished.
Feder does not say if he believes that op.42 is based on one of those lost pieces. In that case the menuet would have to have been added later.

So while I think that if the quote/extract I have is correct the obvious and most natural reading is clearly "unspecified # of quartets that are a "small" or short and have only three movements each, the lost Spanish quartets are still a puzzle. Wouldn't Haydn try to sell them not only to Spain but also in Vienna/Austria? Are there any other pieces from so late in Haydn's carreer (mid-1780s) that care completely lost? There are not incipits (starts of movements) and nothing. How would they just vanish in Spain? And why would Haydn write only 3 movements? (The really short quartets by Boccherini are only with 2 movements)

Thanks for finding that! While it doesn't solve the issue, of course, it does shed at least some light on it.

All you say in the last paragraph is true and an equal mystery to me. Jeffery suggested yesterday that the Spanish commission might have nothing to do with Op 42, and he is correct, of course. Although it is important to remove the years of encrusted belief before moving ahead with a new outlook, I think. But Haydn could have easily done exactly what Mozart did; answer the request by Hoffmeister with a new, single quartet, included a copy of the often used Hob 1a:4 overture along with it, and be done with the whole affair. Because if that isn't what happened, then all the questions you raise, and likely more of them, would remain to be answered. 

[Jo498]

I agree that the presumeably lost Spanish works might be completely independent of op.42. (Not the least because while short it is obviously in 4 movements.)
People have been puzzled because it seems so short and slight. It is short but only a little shorter than the shorter pieces in op.33, if at all.
In fact, were it a piano sonata or a piano trio we would not be wondering about a shorter single piece. Haydn wrote the 3 shortish sonatas 40-42, all in 2 movements only, roughly around the same time, I believe.

[Gurn Blanston]

I agree that the presumeably lost Spanish works might be completely independent of op.42. (Not the least because while short it is obviously in 4 movements.)
People have been puzzled because it seems so short and slight. It is short but only a little shorter than the shorter pieces in op.33, if at all.
In fact, were it a piano sonata or a piano trio we would not be wondering about a shorter single piece. Haydn wrote the 3 shortish sonatas 40-42, all in 2 movements only, roughly around the same time, I believe.

He actually wrote quite a few works which could be considered miniatures by the standards of any era. The 6 Scherzandi of 1761, possibly his first works for Prince Paul, were exquisite miniature symphonies, 4 movements each, lasting perhaps 10 minutes each on average. And the sonatas you pointed out (1783), and Op 42 (15.5 mins) and some of Op 33. Op 33 #2 & 4 are exactly 20 minutes each, while 5 & 6 are barely over 19. And the London Trios for flutes. Some of his works were very condensed, as though stripped of all extraneous thoughts. Even some operas, like L'Isola disabitata which he pared down to the minimum.

As for slight, it isn't really slight in content,  it is pretty complete that way. As though it says what he wants to say and nothing extra. 

[Pat B]

As for slight, it isn't really slight in content,  it is pretty complete that way. As though it says what he wants to say and nothing extra. 

I am now imagining Jeffrey Jones saying "there are simply not enough notes."

[Gurn Blanston]

I am now imagining Jeffrey Jones saying "there are simply not enough notes."

Well, it is damned hard to say something which has never been said before; a man's gotta say what a man's gotta say. 

[Florestan]

Now, that´s quite a rarity: Austrian pianist Ilse von Alpenheim (Antal Dorati´s wife) plays 6 Haydn piano concertos.

Complete on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCVAKwNJ0vk

Enjoy!

[Gurn Blanston]

Now, that´s quite a rarity: Austrian pianist Ilse von Alpenheim (Antal Dorati´s wife) plays 6 Haydn piano concertos.

Complete on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCVAKwNJ0vk

Enjoy!

Yes, hadn't seen that LP, but those are also available in a 2 CD Vox Box. I have it somewhere from long ago, she is really quite good.



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[Karl Henning]

I think the characterization is not totally wrong but it does not imply a limitation.

Agreed.

[North Star]

I think the characterization is not totally wrong but it does not imply a limitation.

Agreed.

Hear, hear.

[Wakefield]

Now, that´s quite a rarity: Austrian pianist Ilse von Alpenheim (Antal Dorati´s wife) plays 6 Haydn piano concertos.

Complete on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCVAKwNJ0vk

Enjoy!

Interesting... It's a new name to me. 

But quite important because Wiki says she recorded all the Haydn piano sonatas, concertini and concerti.

[Gurn Blanston]

Agreed.

Hear, hear.

I don't do characterizations. Certainly not based on any single work in an oeuvre of over 1000...

[North Star]

I don't do characterizations. Certainly not based on any single work in an oeuvre of over 1000...

What about personation?