Haydn's Haus

[SurprisedByBeauty]

Oh, yes, I certainly agree. Speaking of music, would you agree that Weimar during Liszt's Kapellmeister years was more important than both Vienna and Berlin back then? 

No - not more important than the imperial capital. But more important -- as a cultural capital decidedly so -- than Berlin. Mainly because of Goethe... and then Liszt, as you say.

[Florestan]

No - not more important than the imperial capital.

A-hah! 

But more important -- as a cultural capital decidedly so -- than Berlin. Mainly because of Goethe... and then Liszt, as you say.

Liszt it was, decidedly.

But really, I'm really interested in your thoughts about Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. I see them as polar opposites, at least apparently. The former is the poet of the bourgeois life (much like the Austrian Adalbert Stifter), the latter the poet of the bohemian life (much like the Prussian von Eichendorff) --- talk about coincidentia oppositorum.  What's your take on them?

[SurprisedByBeauty]

But really, I'm really interested in your thoughts about Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. I see them as polar opposites, at least apparently. The former is the poet of the bourgeois life (much like the Austrian Adalbert Stifter), the latter the poet of the bohemian life (much like the Prussian von Eichendorff) --- talk about coincidentia oppositorum.  What's your take on them?

I do not see them as that different, although the general characterization does seem to fit. (Stifter is unique altogether; himself anything but bourgeois, he created these mastubatory Ersatz-erotic fantasies of the absolutely perfectly admirable do-gooderish, noble lives of self-betterment, honesty, earnestness... very little to do with Mann or anyone else, for that matter. Mind you, I love reading Stifter and have everything by him and read most everything except his Wittiko. There's a major masochist streak in my reading him, though, and I like to torture those near me by reading Stifter out loud to them. And after intensive reading of Stifter, I start talking like Stifter writes.  )

Anway, I recommend reading the letters between Mann and Hesse, which are illuminating. I think I, erm, liberated my copy from my college library (I hope the statute of limitations has passed on that; it had never even once been checked out... which was my rationalization at the time; I do feel  bad about it.) Fascinating. It was Mann, of course, who lobbied the hardest to get Hesse the Nobel Prize. It was a bit like Strauss-Mahler ... except Mann was (even) more 'powerful', relative to Hesse and in the literary world, than Strauss was to Mahler. Oh, and Hesse was not a neurotic wreck who questioned everything that Mann said and might be a barb. For all his "Glasperlenspiel", interest in India, sinology, and Steppenwolf, I don't think of Hesse as particularly bohemian. His readers  - post 1950 - might be, though.

[mc ukrneal]

One statement I strongly disagree with is the idea that 'Austrians always considered themselves Germans'. But perhaps it's a question of interpretation as I read this as meaning they always wanted to be united in one country and that is simply not the case despite similarities brought up already. But I think this is a bit beyond Haydn, and I've not revised this message twice because you guys keep posting before I can!

[Florestan]

I do not see them as that different, although the general characterization does seem to fit. (Stifter is unique altogether; himself anything but bourgeois, he created these mastubatory Ersatz-erotic fantasies of the absolutely perfectly admirable do-gooderish, noble lives of self-betterment, honesty, earnestness... very little to do with Mann or anyone else, for that matter. Mind you, I love reading Stifter and have everything by him and read most everything except his Wittiko. There's a major masochist streak in my reading him, though, and I like to torture those near me by reading Stifter out loud to them. And after intensive reading of Stifter, I start talking like Stifter writes.  )

Anway, I recommend reading the letters between Mann and Hesse, which are illuminating. I think I, erm, liberated my copy from my college library (I hope the statute of limitations has passed on that; it had never even once been checked out... which was my rationalization at the time; I do feel  bad about it.) Fascinating. It was Mann, of course, who lobbied the hardest to get Hesse the Nobel Prize. It was a bit like Strauss-Mahler ... except Mann was (even) more 'powerful', relative to Hesse and in the literary world, than Strauss was to Mahler. Oh, and Hesse was not a neurotic wreck who questioned everything that Mann said and might be a barb. For all his "Glasperlenspiel", interest in India, sinology, and Steppenwolf, I don't think of Hesse as particularly bohemian. His readers  - post 1950 - might be, though.

Thanks a lot, lots of food for thought here. I'll take my time absorbing it and then come back with a reply. Please be patient.  It'll probably come as a PM since it is way off topic here.

[SurprisedByBeauty]

One statement I strongly disagree with is the idea that 'Austrians always considered themselves Germans'. But perhaps it's a question of interpretation as I read this as meaning they always wanted to be united in one country and that is simply not the case despite similarities brought up already. But I think this is a bit beyond Haydn, and I've not revised this message twice because you guys keep posting before I can!

There was no "Germany" the country to which they could have belonged for feeling German. Only now is it awkward for them to think themselves of as German, because for the last 100+ years there's been a country with the same name as the culture. "German" had, for the longest time (until less than 100 years ago, as the Vienna Konzerthaus statement on its facade shows), not meant the nation we now think of.



Built by the K&K architects' par excellence... not by some immigrants from Berlin, btw. 

[Florestan]

Built by the K&K architects' par excellence... not by some immigrants from Berlin, btw. 

Hey, you begin to sound like Thielemann defending Pegida... 

[SurprisedByBeauty]

Hey, you begin to sound like Thielemann defending Pegida... 

First of all: No; for all the smileys in the world, one has nothing to do with the other. At all.

Secondly:...something which he was right to do [this answer assumes you know the wording he used], that I wish I had heard from more (classical liberal) politicians -- and every liberty and freedom loving person would do well to heed his advice, too! When the brown wave of the great unwashed, those who will happily trade security and self-esteem for those freedoms we cherish, comes our way, we will need EVERY ally we can get to withstand the tide. And we can ill afford to lump inherently salvageable, perhaps temporarily misguided or disgruntled conservatives in with the worst of the worst. I've said so much (in writing, I believe) 20 years ago (when the first wave of Pim Fortuyn and J.M.Le Pen and Gianfranco Fini and Joerg Haider et al. came to the fore). It's all coming true now. And where it was political convenience that brushed actual (however illegitimate; though also some legitimate) concerns of a right-leaning population aside, now it is political righteousness. I'm not looking forward to suffer the illiberal consequences because some ironcially-so-called liberals suppressed the necessary dialogue with the disgruntled until it was too late. But now we are really off topic. My apologies.

[Jo498]

Although the Prussian - Austrian opposition existed in Haydn's time (e.g. in the Silesian wars) it was not comparable to the 19th century. Hardly anybody would have tried to think of "German" in opposition to either.
German as cultural identy could not be put against Austrian cultural identity but against French or Italian. As can easily be seen from Mozart's letters and similar writings. The emperor Joseph wanted to establish a German opera (i.e. German language by "German" (who could be Austrian, Bohemian, whatever) as opposed to the dominating Italian opera (the best of which were composed also by the German/Austrian Mozart).

Of course this is not to deny that there were lots of differences in local culture. But again there was no local German culture, only local cultures of the different German language regions, duchies, kingdoms, free cities etc. of the Holy Roman Empire. With the most important difference from the late 16th century on that most of the North was Lutheran/Protestant and the South remained Catholic. The "high culture" was mostly transcending these local differences and could,  as said above, be contrasted with Italian culture (which itself was not homogeneous, of course, but homogeneous enough to be as a whole in contrast with e.g. German music).

And while the Hapsburg dynasty dominated the HRE for its last 400 years or so by providing the Emperors, this does not mean that "Austria" dominated all of the HRE.
It was not at all centralized. The emperor was residing for years in Prague around 1600. The coronation usually took place in Frankfurt. The "everlasting" Reichstag was in Regensburg. The Reichskammergericht was in the 18th century in Wetzlar (small city about 60 kilometers north of Frankfurt) where the young Goethe worked as a law clerk when he wrote Werther.

All this changed obviously after 1806 with the Fall of the old HRE and the re-shuffling of Europe. So in the mid-late 19th century there would be a more meaningful difference between Prussian-dominated "German" (although of course before 1871 there were only Prussia and Saxony and Bavaria etc. and culturally Prussia was too backwards to ever really dominate regions with a much older and stronger local culture) and Austrian culture.
Still, the "north German" Brahms had no problems at all establishing himself in Vienna, the Saxon Wagner in Bavarian Munich etc.

[Madiel]

Austria and Germany at the time were two different concepts, not only politically, religiously and culturally, but also linguistically: imagine an echt-Austrian peasant met an echt-Prussian peasant in 1820. (Both countries claimed to true Germanness). Would they have understood each other's talk? AfaIk, and please correctly me if I'm wrong, not very much (similar perhaps to a Neapolitan peasant meeting a Milanese one around the same time --- with the marked difference that the Italians still shared the same religion)

Ahem. People from the opposite ends of Germany (as in, the modern country) would still today, if they both spoke in their dialect rather than consciously switching to 'standard' German, have considerable difficulty understanding each other. You're not describing some kind of criterion that demonstrates the inherit rightness of drawing a dividing line between German peoples at a particular point so that there are "Austrians" on one side of the line, you're just describing the way any language dialect continuum works if you bring together people from opposite ends of the continuum.

[Florestan]

Ahem. People from the opposite ends of Germany (as in, the modern country) would still today, if they both spoke in their dialect rather than consciously switching to 'standard' German, have considerable difficulty understanding each other. You're not describing some kind of criterion that demonstrates the inherit rightness of drawing a dividing line between German peoples at a particular point so that there are "Austrians" on one side of the line, you're just describing the way any language dialect continuum works if you bring together people from opposite ends of the continuum.

Why, of course  --- as in Las Españas --- it's right there in Cervantes's Don Quijote for anyone to read it in plain Spanish original or English / Romanian / whatever translation --- a crime in The Kingdom of Castilla was not the same as one in The Kingdom of Aragon --- so much for any unified Spain... 

[Madiel]

Well if you're going to bring up Spain, Catalonia is the region to really look at. Try telling a Catalan separatist that they speak "Spanish" and see what happens.

[Florestan]

Well if you're going to bring up Spain, Catalonia is the region to really look at. Try telling a Catalan separatist that they speak "Spanish" and see what happens.

I happen to have an aunt married to a Spanish (ie, non Catalan-born) husband. Don't ever get me started on it. 

[Gurn Blanston]

In reply to those who have asked me for book recommendations, here is a new blog page with a few more, specifically about Haydn in England. Of course, a lot of info comes out of the big, general purpose books, but these are nice and informative, and were a great help when I was doing that part of his bio.

Also, my latest post, more of a TTT than anything else!


A monster year!


Thanks,

[schnittkease]

How highly would you guys rate the London String Quartet's Op. 33? Especially when compared to Quatuor Mosaïques, is it a must-buy?

[Gurn Blanston]

How highly would you guys rate the London String Quartet's Op. 33? Especially when compared to Quatuor Mosaïques, is it a must-buy?

I like it better, the QM is very buttoned-down (not to say it isn't perfect, it certainly is) while the LHQ, since Op. 20, have got a little more laid back. Not to the point where the Festetics are, but nicely relaxed, IMO. For Op 33, I am also quite partial to the Appónyi Quartet, who are members of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra BTW. If you can stream theirs you might try it out, I doubt you would DISlike it!

[schnittkease]

Thanks! I'll try to give the Appónyi a listen.

[Karl Henning]

This is a classically unhelpful respon5se, but I have yet to hear a Haydn string quartet performance which I did not lke.

[mc ukrneal]

I have been ripping the Haydn set of complete folksongs (see picture below) over the past few days. And along the way, I have been sampling the discs. What joy these bring. First, the singing is better than I was expecting. Jamie MacDougal and Lorna Anderson are quite good. The music is beautifully performed by the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt. Considering the enormous number of songs, the consistently high level of performance puts these forward in their best light. So far, I've enjoyed the duets (with accompaniment) the most. I bought this for about $10 at jpc (no longer available) and it is probably the highlight of my 2018 purchases.
This far, far, far exceeded my expectations. And with 18 discs to enjoy, I have a lot of exploring ahead of me!



I cross-posted this from the listening thread. This set is the prime example of a post that caught my eye here. I thought about it at the time, but so many songs and so much money, is it worth it? So I wishlisted it. I considered it when it came up at Berkshire. I thought that $40 was just too much for something I might never listen to or never like. And it percolated for years until I finally got it. I love songs/lieder, so this really will be a joy to explore. As I wrote, this won't be fore everyone, but it's definitely for me. Incidentally, the booklet on the cd-rom is over 350 pages! It looks pretty interesting as well.

Thanks Gurn for posting about this all those years ago. You never know the financial ruin (haha!) a post can bring. I mean, of course, you never know how one post can ultimately bring new music to our ears. And that's one of the things this forum is all about.

[mc ukrneal]

This is a classically unhelpful respon5se, but I have yet to hear a Haydn string quartet performance which I did not lke.

I dare you to find one!! haha!