NO.2 _IL FILOSOFO

SYMPHONY NO.47 G MAJOR HOB. I:47 (1772)

Allegro – Un poco adagio, cantabile – Menuetto e Trio al roverso – Presto assai

by Christian Moritz-Bauer

A completely different yet no less impressive dance movement is central to the Symphony in G major Hob. I:47, and earned it the occasionally applied nickname of ‘Palindrome’. Perhaps it was the ten minuet and twelve trio bars, which the composer then brings in al roverso, i.e. in mirror-inverted form, that appealed so much to W. A. Mozart that he wanted to perform the work at a musical academy in Vienna. This can be read in a hand-written note now owned by the Historical Society of Philadelphia.

The first movement, however, which survives in Haydn’s hand without a tempo indication, has its own special charm. Terrace-like overlapping fanfares give it the air of a ‘big c-major symphony’, and its dissonant tension-filled opening chords are contrasted by finely pointed violin interjections and sequences of ‘relaxed Schubertian’ triplets with a gentle oboe cantilene above them.
So the effect is indeed intense when the recapitulation suddenly opens in the opposite sex of G minor. The shock is thankfully brief and moreover lessened by the following variation movement with an extended coda – which may have been modelled on the second movement of no. 4 of the ‘Sun’ Quartets op. 20 – with a double counterpoint in the octave, fagotto sempres col basso, and gentle wind tones in the string-dominated middle sections. The note values decrease from variation to variation, building a bridge to the final presto assai, in which the quietly speeding string theme is contrasted by loud tutti passages, whose oddest ingredient must be the grace-note figure that the great Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon, who died in 2009, once called the ‘Balkan snap’.

Although Hob. 1:47 is written in a more ‘normal’ key than the F-sharp minor of the Farewell Symphony or the B major of no. 46, it presents us with ‘a composer who is unwilling to be comfortable with tradition; each movement departs from the conventions of Haydn’s previous and the Viennese symphony in general.’

_{¹ Sonja Gerlach considers it not impossible that Haydn was ‘influenced by a fashion’, and quotes a reference, dated 1770, from Johann Adam Hiller’s Musikalischen Nachrichten und Anmerkungen [Musical News and Notes], to ‘an artificial minuet, by Herr Capellmeister [Carl Philipp Emanuel] Bach in Hamburg’, which was presented ‘as a marvel’. See S. Gerlach, ‘Joseph Haydn’s Sinfonien bis 1774. Studien zur Chronologie’, in Haydn-Studien 7/1–2 (1996), p. 178.
² Prince Nikolaus I. Esterházy also seems to have delighted in his kapellmeister’s games. Transposed into A major, it will be revived in a collection of piano sonatas presented to him on his sixtieth birthday.
³ Behind these could lie Haydn’s special affection for Johann May, who was promoted to 2nd horn in April 1772. This could certainly accord with Gerlach’s attempted dating of ‘early 1772’.
⁴ Ludwig Finscher, Joseph Haydn und seine Zeit, Laaber 2000, p. 279.
⁵ H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle And Works, vol. II, Haydn at Eszterháza 1766–1790, London 1978, p. 305.
⁶ A. Peter Brown, The Symphonic Repertoire, vol. II, The First Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, Bloomington 2002, p. 139.}

VOL. 2 _IL FILOSOFO

Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico

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SYMPHONY NO.22 E FLAT MAJOR «THE PHILOSOPHER» HOB. I:22 (1764)

Adagio – Presto – Menuetto. Trio – Finale: Presto

by Christian Moritz-Bauer

With the Symphony in E-flat major Hob. I:22 we return to the time in which Joseph Haydn still held the office of vice kapellmeister to Prince Esterházy, but in consideration of the advanced age of his superior, Gregor Joseph Werner, was already supplying the court with compositions of his own in all areas except sacred music.
The autograph of this work, dated 1764, stipulates (in contrast to most of its copies) a wind section of cors anglais (instead of the more usual oboes or flutes) and natural horns. The double-reeded cor anglais is a smaller version of the Baroque oboe da caccia, and has a pear-shaped bell. Haydn otherwise uses it, after the divertimenti of the eary 1760s (Hob. II:12, 16 and 24) and the present symphony, only in a few vocal compositions, such as the C-minor aria ‘Non v’è chi mi aiuta’, from La Canterina (1766), the Stabat Mater (1767) or the ‘Organ Solo Mass’ (1768/69).
If the orchestrational singularity of Hob. 1:22 (at least at the Esterházy court) was to go out of fashion within a few years, the symphony was the first – after the ‘times of day’ symphonies, of 1761 – to enjoy a nickname. ‘Le Philosoph[e]’ (The Philosopher/Il Filosofo) derives from a body of instrumental parts held in Modena – to be more exact from the title of some of its string duplicates – which was produced in Vienna in 1780 and probably later extended by musicians of the Dukes of Este (from the House of Habsburg).
Haydn scholars and connoisseurs have always been very divided as to the compositional qualities of Hob. 1:22; A. Peter Brown even ventured the opinion that the fame ‘it has been endowed with’ was only based on its exceptional instrumentation and ‘non-authentic title’, and that the work consequently ‘exceeds its compositional accomplishments’.
Who would not rather follow Robbins Landon, who writes of instrumental sounds of unbelievable beauty that are among some of Haydn’s ‘most original creations’ in his description of the opening adagio’s ‘combination of English and French horns, muted violins, lower strings, perhaps with a bassoon’?
According to Walter Lessing, the opening of the Philosopher, whose ‘continuous … quaver movement is underlined by the chorale-like melody of the winds, even has an ‘air of the antique’. We only have to think of the bars interwoven into the recapitulation, which sound very much like Corelli, with their downwardly gliding suspended dissonances over a sequential bass. But a look at the basso continuo and composition manuals published in Leipzig and Vienna by the now rather disregarded Johann Friedrich Daube (1730–1797) shows us that Haydn wasn’t only composing with an eye to the past here. Daube saw the idea of ‘freye Nachahmung’ (free imitation) as a characteristic of modern composition, and advocated the integration of the old ‘artificial’ style into the new ‘natural’ one.

Nothing seems more natural to Haydn, however, than to be guided during an act of creation by his ‘humour’, which should be understood – entirely according to the sensitivities of the time – as encompassing both his generally described cheerful attitude and certain situational frames of mind which critics were wont to call mere ‘Laune’ (moods).
A particular characteristic of Haydn’s humour – here of course quickened by the first and last appearance of the colour of the cors anglais – is shown in the presto second movement, which recalls the Salzburg works of his younger brother Johann Michael in its continual quavers and wealth of motifs in the string writing.
The leading position in this cheerful sound world is naturally taken by the first violins, who are not too proud to take on a supporting role, however, if their double-reeded colleagues, after laboriously gaining height, are to make the final triumphant semitone ascent to b flat''.
All the more astounding – after a momentary recovery in the divertimento-like minuet with its attendent rurally relaxed trio – is the spirited interplay between both pairs of horns in the 6/8 presto finale.

Although it was our composer’s habit to date his works imprecisely by the year only, extensive research has now made it possible to order the symphonies of 1764 in the following sequence: 23, 22, 21 and 24. So two works with a ‘normal’ structure (fast – slow – minuet – fast) frame two oriented to the sonata da chiesa.

In the same year of the Philosopher’s composition, more specifically in December 1764, there was a performance in the Kärntertortheater in Vienna – a predecessor of today’s Staatsoper – of a German-language adaptation of Il filosof inglese, by Carlo Goldoni, as Die Philosophinnen, oder Hanswurst der Cavalier in London zu seinem Unglück [The Lady Philosophers, or Pantaloon the Cavalier in London to His Misfortune].
Whether this included music from Hob. 1:22 – as suggested by Elaine Sisman – seems questionable, but certainly not impossible. An argument in favour could be the illuminating connection made by Nicolas Chamfort between Haydn’s later Symphony in F major Hob. 1:49 (‘La Passione’) and the ‘touching comedy’ La jeune Indienne, performed by Karl Wahr’s troupe of actors.

_{¹ The name English horn probably derives from the instrument’s originally curved form, which recalled the angels’ horns in ecclesiastical illustrations.
² Biblioteca Estense, sig. D.145 3 A. Peter Brown, The Symphonic Repertoire, vol. II – The First Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, Bloomington 2002, p. 89.
⁴ H. C. Robbins Landon, The Symphonies of Joseph Haydn, London 1955, p. 257f.
⁵ Walter Lessing, Die Sinfonien von Joseph Haydn, vol I, Baden-Baden, 1987, p. 82.
⁶ Generalbaß in drey Accorden, gegründet in den Regeln der alt- und neuern Autoren, Leipzig 1756; Der musikalische Dilettant, Vienna 1773; Anleitung zur Erfindung der Melodie und ihrer Fortsetzung, Vienna 1798.
⁷ See Felix Diergarten, ‘Anleitung zur Erfindung. Die Kompositionslehre Johann Friedrich Daubes’, in Musiktheorie 23 (2008), particularly pp. 312–313.
⁸ In the case of Symphony no. 22, Sonja Gerlach assumes that it was written down early than no. 21, but she also considers it to have been completed later. See Sonja Gerlach, ‘Joseph Haydns Sinfonien bis 1774. Studien zur Chronologie’, in Haydn-Studien 7/1-2 (1996), p. 110f. This ‘fact’ matches a payment order, dated ‘Eisenstadt, the 9th of July 764’, made out to a certain Mathias Rockobauer for the manufacture of reeds for oboes, bassoons and English horns.
⁹ Further symphonies by Haydn in the da chiesa form are numbers 4, 18, 34, 42 and 49.
¹⁰ Elaine R. Sisman, ‘Haydn's Theater Symphonies’, in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, 43}

VOL. 2 _IL FILOSOFO

Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico

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SYMPHONY NO.46 B MAJOR HOB. I:46 (1772)

by Christian Moritz-Bauer

The Symphonies no. 46 and 47, which Joseph Haydn committed to paper in the year of his fortieth birthday while kapellmeister to Nicholas I, Prince Esterházy, are seen as a first pinnacle of his output, together with the ‘Farewell’ Symphony, the ‘Sun’ Quartets, later published as op. 30, and the ‘Mourning’ Symphony (written in 1770/71 and offered in the Breitkopf catalogue of 1772). They unite everything that a year and a half of systematic exploration of the ‘many different possibilities of … symphonic form and symphonic expression’ had brought to fruition and – as can be read in Griesinger’s Biographische Notizen – had met with the lasting approval of the prince.

Vivace / Poco adagio / Menuet. Allegretto – Trio / Finale: Presto e scherzando

Along with Hob. I:45 – according to the famous anecdote a musical request to Prince Nicholas to allow his musicians to return home to their families in Eisenstadt after too long at Eszterháza , the Symphony in B major Hob. 1:46, considered its sister work – James Webster, for example, calls them ‘a pair of programmatic works and refers to various modal and harmonic relationships – boasts, aside from its unusual accumulation of accidentals, a final movement that is not only equally as original but also increasingly takes on strange, even grotesque characteristics, inspiring some connoisseurs to compare it with its counterpart in Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5.
A quiet but boisterous theme, announced as a duet between the first and second violins, repeatedly comes to a standstill, despite several particularly striking tutti pedals and sequences. So, in the middle of the recapitulation, a part of the preceeding minuet movement can slip in and regularly get the upper hand – a ‘formal temerity’, in the opinion of Sonja Gerlach. At this point the dissolution of the ensemble brought about in the ‘Farewell’ Symphony seems almost a foregone conclusion. But then the horns ring out, calling for general order, to which the first violins strike up a relaxed variation of the theme, which is finally brought to a proper conclusion.
The presto e scherzando movement doesn’t stand alone in the irregularities of its motivic and thematic processes. The opening vivace is characterised by fast-paced musical thought, as with its first four-note motif, which is announced in unison and then combined in many different ways – with a contrapuntal countermelody, for example, or in canon with itself. And a dynamically exposed subsidiary idea, derived from a transition in the exposition section, which hijacks us into the ‘Farewell’ Symhony’s F-sharp minor and belies one or two listening habits …
The subsequent poco adagio, which moves between a rocking siciliano melody and softly scurrying semiquaver staccati, elicits mixed emotions. The tone of the allegretto minuet, by contrast, is comparatively ‘concrete’; its characteristic flights of quavers, which have often been thought of as (Baroque) sighing figures, but are basically nothing other than strings of appogiaturas (that is, a kind of gallant figuration), set the framework for a sombrely atmospheric trio section.

But how can the special sound world of Hob. 1:65 be expressed in words, and how can its creation be explained?

To a much greater degree than with ‘modern’ orchestras, with so-called old or original instruments the use of various keys not only affects the sounds they produce but also the feelings evoked in the audience. Although listeners can of course differ according to temperament, biography and living conditions, composers and theoreticians have endeavoured over the generations to describe generally valid characteristics associated with the respective ‘tones’. For example, in Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart’s famous Ideen zu Ästhetik der Tonkunst [Ideas on the Aesthetics of the Musical Art], written around 1784, the five-sharped B major is portrayed as ‘strongly hued, announcing wild passions, composed of the most garish colours’.

A particular quality of the symphonies Haydn composed between 1768 and 1772, which are traditionally described with the literary term ‘Sturm und Drang’, lies in the intensification of expression they achieve (not least through the use of numerous minor und rarely used keys), the result of compositional and instrumental experimentation. With two ‘semitone crooks’, tubing inserted into the still valveless horns to lower them from G or C alto to F sharp or B, invoiced on 22 October 1772, the store of natural tones was able to be extended. It is almost self-evident that this purchase must have a direct connection to the composition of the Symphonies no. 45 and 46.
In tonal terms, the sections in which the horns play in B major – the opening and closing movments and the minuet of the third movement – seem distinctly sharper (especially as the strings often play in only two parts or octaves) than the B-minor adagio and trio, for which the hornists apply D-crooks, which bring about mellower tones. According to Sonja Gerlach, ‘the fact that Haydn’s manuscript shows an anomalous, rarely found watermark could support the hypothesis of a [previous] change of location’, i.e. that the Symphony in B major was written down immediately after the completion of the ‘Farewell’ Symphony in autumn 1772.

_{¹ ‘The [Farewell] Symphony was perhaps also intended to help against the prince’s plans [in the end abandoned] to reduce the size of the orchestra and cut salaries.’ Translated from Ludwig Finscher, Joseph Haydn und seine Zeit, p. 34.
² ‘The [Farewell] Symphony was perhaps also intended to help against the prince’s plans [in the end abandoned] to reduce the size of the orchestra and cut salaries.’ Translated from Ludwig Finscher, Joseph Haydn und seine Zeit, p. 34.
³ ‘The [Farewell] Symphony was perhaps also intended to help against the prince’s plans [in the end abandoned] to reduce the size of the orchestra and cut salaries.’ Translated from Ludwig Finscher, Joseph Haydn und seine Zeit, p. 34. 4 James Webster, Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style, Cambridge 1991, p. 287.
⁵ Haydn, who theoretically could have attended the performance of a symphony in B major by Georg Matthias Monn during his time as a choirboy at St Steven’s in Vienna, wrote no other works in this remote key apart from a now lost piano sonata.
⁶ Sonja Gerlach, ‘Joseph Haydns Sinfonien bis 1774. Studien zur Chronologie’, in Haydn-Studien 7/1–2 (1996), p. 180.
⁷ Ludwig Finscher attributes to it a close relationship to the main them of the first movement of the Symphony in E-flat minor no. 44, which resembles its inversion.
⁸ Sonja Gerlach, ‘Joseph Haydns Sinfonien bis 1774. Studien zur Chronologie’, in Haydn-Studien 7/1–2 (1996), p. 159.}

VOL. 2 _IL FILOSOFO

Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico

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WILHELM FRIEDEMANN BACH (1710–1784): SINFONIA F MAJOR C2 FK 67

Vivace / Andante / Allegro / Menuetto I alternativement – Menuetto 2 – Menuetto 1 da capo

by Christian Moritz-Bauer

As with the hunting piece of Haydn’s Symphony no. 22, a work for strings composed by Bach’s eldest son during his time in Dresden (1733–1746) also combines old and new compositional ideas – one of them being the traditional three-part form of the Italian opera sinfonia, which in the manner of the suite is given an additional minuet movement with a canonic middle section that according to Peter Wollny ‘was apparently a favourite of Wilhlem Friedemann’. Often appearing in other contexts [such as the Harpsichord Sonata in C major Fk 1A], it seems to be filled with the spirit of Georg Friedrich Händel in its calm, festive tone.
The minuet is preceded by a music that – to return once again to the words of Johann Friedrich Daube – never shies away from a powerful contrast in the ‘alteration and division of its melodic elements’, and can even sound strange to experienced ears: a vivace that begins like a Baroque overture but is soon invaded by increasingly bold leaps, sudden semiquaver repetitions and rhythms rutted with pauses that seem to ‘owe much to the instrumental style of Jan Dismas Zelenka’; an andante whose falling arpeggios and chains of chromatic suspensions recall contemporary works for the stage by Johann Adolf Hasse, for example; an allegro characterised by echo effects, striking rhythms and dynamic contrasts.

Although the work of Friedemann Bach, much of which has been lost, traditionally plays no special role in the development of the classical symphony – particularly because even into the composer’s final years in Berlin it was not much distributed – today it has the reputation of being a noticeably early form of the so-called sensitive style, which was to become the trademark of his brother Carl Philipp Emanuel and earn him much greater fame.

_{¹ Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Collected Works, vol. 6, Orchestral Music III: Symphonies, ed. Peter Wollny, Stuttgart 2010, p. VI.
² The resulting sequence of movements corresponds almost exactly to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 1, also in F major.
³ Translated from Johann Friedrich Daube, Der musikalische Diletantt: eine Abhandlung der Komposition, Vienna 1773, p. 162.
⁴ Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Collected Works,op cit., p. VI.
⁵ See Marc Vignal, Die Bach-Söhne: Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christoph Fiedrich, Johann Christian, Laaber 1999, p. 52ff.}

VOL. 2 _IL FILOSOFO

Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico

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