NO.9 __L'ADDIO

SYMPHONY NO.35 B FLAT MAJOR HOB. I:35

Allegro di molto / Andante / Menuet. Un poco allegretto – Trio / Finale. Presto

by Christian Moritz-Bauer

The autograph of the sinfonia which opens the ninth stage on our itinerary to the jubilee year of 2032 is dated to a precise day: ‘den 1^ten 10^bris 767’ (i.e. 1 December 1767 according to modern writing conventions). What is the special significance of this date? Did Haydn, who usually dated the manuscripts of his scores only by year, intend to refer to the beginning or more likely the end of his work of composition? As the famous Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon already suspected, this particular First of December was probably the day on which Nicolaus I Esterházy ought to have returned home from a journey to Paris and Versailles – halfway between a pleasure trip and an educational one – on which he had taken with him, among others, Nicolaus Jacoby, the draughtsman of his palace complex near Süttör, known as ‘Eszterháza’, and his Konzertmeister Luigi Tomasini.¹ (The fact that he ultimately returned more than two months late is explained by an extended visit to Strasbourg, probably to see the illustrious family of the city’s Prince-Bishop Louis César Constantin de Rohan-Guéméné, and a sojourn of several weeks in the Hessian spa town of Bad Schlangenbad, highly fashionable at the time.) But the party did not include Haydn. He was merely assigned the honour of welcoming his Prince home with a musical performance. In view of this external circumstance, and because the B flat major key of the Symphony Hob. I:35 was generally described in those days as ‘splendid and majestic’ and its music seems to be filled with an eloquent, almost theatrical character, we have made an attempt here at a ‘narrative interpretation’:

The days have grown calm since His Serene Highness left for Paris, seeking final inspiration for the design of his ‘Hungarian Versailles’. But is the day of his homecoming not to dawn very soon? [Over the soft drumming of the string basses, joyful excitement begins to take hold of the music (Allegro di molto).]

The call of a horn resounds from afar, and a retinue of carriages and riders races along the dusty country roads with their deep potholes. The four-in-hand teams are going flat out. A group of children set off in barefoot pursuit of the travelling party (leaping semiquaver figuration), while in the fields and meadows the common people amuse themselves with song and dance. But Eisenstadt is still a long way off, and voices are raised in the halls of the princely palace, expressing their concern in sometimes vehement fashion: will the master return home safe and sound? The entrance of the recapitulation brings new confidence and at the same time delivers the hoped-for signal that commands the opening of the gates. The news spreads like wildfire: the theme of the movement is playfully continued in the dialogue between the violins, and brought to a joyful conclusion with the galloping motif heard at the beginning.

Nicolaus, known as ‘the Magnificent’,² is back home and – striding through his chambers – is entertained (Andante) by the sounds of a string divertimento. The mood is good, almost too good. He is within a hair’s breadth of daring to take a few small dance steps . . . In the middle of the second of the two formal sections, the music, which at first seemed so quietly cheerful, suddenly takes on melancholy features, but after a few bars that foreshadow the Symphony no.45, it manages to avert these by means of a unison forte passage.

The celebration of the Prince’s return is of course marked by a masked ball, which opens with a minuet (Un poco allegretto) giving prominence to the horns, the avowed favourite instrument of Nicolaus, an enthusiastic huntsman. The company celebrate, dance and make merry until the early hours of the morning. With its fanfare of three successive ascending chords and the intervening sections, now a soft violin duet, now a powerful orchestral tutti (but invariably maintaining the energetic, bouncy character), the Finale (Presto) long continues to resound in everyone’s ears.

_{¹ See H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol.2: Haydn at Eszterháza, 1766-1790 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), p.141.
² The traditional English translation of ‘der Prachtliebende’, literally ‘the lover of splendour’. (Translator’s note.)}

VOL. 9 _L'ADDIO

Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico

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SYMPHONY NO.15 IN D MAJOR (1761)

Adagio – Presto – Adagio / Menuet – Trio / Andante / Finale. Presto

by Christian Moritz-Bauer

Less than half a year after Prince Nicolaus I Esterhazy began his journey to Paris and Versailles in the autumn of 1767 and granted the leader of his orchestra, Luigi Tomasini, an extension of his stay there,¹ Louis-Balthazard de La Chevardière published in the same city a collection of Haydn’s compositions entitled Six Symphonies ou Quatuor[s] Dialogués. Among them was one of the first works that Haydn had written for the Esterházy court orchestra: the Symphony in D major Hob. I:15. But what links this symphony with the theme of ‘L'ADDIO’? Given its outward appearance and the inherent atmosphere of its movements, it may appear to be the ‘cheerful older sister’ of the ‘Farewell’ Symphony, composed some eleven years later, since it too presents a rousing Presto that segues surprisingly into a melodious Adagio striking a more tender note. A further point of contact, if not indeed a kind of ‘prequel to the official reading’ of Symphony no.45, is provided by the Menuet, unusually placed second. Its initially strict rhythmic bearing gradually grows more relaxed and expands into a ‘love duet’ in five-part string texture: a solo viola and a solo cello enter into an intimate ‘tryst’ with the paired violin parts. Together they create a mood that will subsequently dominate the ‘lovely Andante’, of which C. F. Pohl once wrote that its theme ‘dissolves into its individual motifs like a string of pearls in the most nonchalant manner and repeatedly rises . . . to an effective climax’.2 In addition to these delights, the 3/8 Finale also affords special listening pleasure with its remarkable middle section in the minor.

_{¹ See the introduction to Symphony no.35 in B flat major.
² Carl Ferdinand Pohl, Joseph Haydn. Erster Band. Erste Abtheilung (Berlin: 1875), p.303.}

VOL. 9 _L'ADDIO

Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico

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JOSEPH HAYDN: SCENA «BERENICE, CHE FAI?» Hob. XXIVa:10

by Pietro Metastasio

Towards the end of his second London visit, Haydn wrote the solo cantata ‘Berenice, che fai’ on commission from the Italian soprano Brigida Banti. Its text comes from one of the farewell scenes most frequently set to music in the second half of the eighteenth century, found in Pietro Metastasio’s dramma per musica L’Antigono. The work was premiered at ‘Dr HAYDN’s Night’ on 4 May 1795, which also saw the first performance of the Symphony in D major Hob. I:104, the composer’s last major orchestral work.
Although the Egyptian princess Berenice has been promised in marriage to the Macedonian king Antigonus, she is in love with his son Demetrius. Torn between the emotion of requited love and the duty of loyalty to his father’s interests, Demetrius can find no way out of his awkward predicament and has decided to take his own life. In a succession of recitative, cavatina (interrupted in the middle of a line of verse), recitative and aria, the disconsolate heroine now laments her fate, longing to die at her beloved’s side – states of mind vacillating between madness and love, which Haydn expressed in a manner as dramatic as it is grandiose.

Scena / composta / per la Signora Banti / da me Giuseppe Haydn_mpria
[Parole del signor abate Pietro Metastasio]

[Recitativo]

Berenice, che fai? Muore il tuo bene,
stupida, e tu non corri? Oh Dio! Vacilla
l’incerto passo; un gelido mi scuote
insolito tremor tutte le vene,
e a gran pena il suo peso il piè sostiene.

Dove son? Qual confusa
folla d’idee tutte funeste adombra
la mia ragion? Veggo Demetrio: il veggo
che in atto di ferir... Fermati! Vivi!
D’Antigono io sarò. Del core ad onta
volo a giurargli fè: dirò che l’amo;
dirò...

Misera me, s’oscura il giorno,
balena il ciel! L’hanno irritato i miei
meditati spergiuri. Ahimè! Lasciate
ch’io soccorra il mio ben, barbari Dei.
Voi m’impedite, e intanto
forse un colpo improvviso...
Ah, sarete contenti; eccolo ucciso.

Aspetta, anima bella: ombre compagne
a Lete andrem. Se non potei salvarti
potrò fedel... Ma tu mi guardi, e parti?

Cavatina
Non partir, bell’idol mio:
per quell’onda all’altra sponda
voglio anch’io passar con te.

Recitativo
Me infelice! Che fingo? Che ragiono?
Dove rapita sono
dal torrente crudel de’ miei martiri?
Misera Berenice, ah, tu deliri!

Aria
Perché se tanti siete,
che delirar mi fate,
perché non m’uccidete,
affanni del mio cor?

Crescete, oh Dio, crescete
finchè mi porga aita
con togliermi di vita
l’eccesso del dolor.

Scena composed for Signora Banti by me, Joseph Haydn, in my own hand
[Words by the Abbé Pietro Metastasio]

[Recitative]
Berenice, what are you doing? Your beloved is dying,
foolish woman, and you do not run to him? Oh God!
My faltering step hesitates; an icy tremor,
hitherto unknown, runs through all my veins,
and my feet can scarcely bear their burden.

Where am I? What is this confused
host of dismal thoughts that clouds
my reason? I see Demetrius: I see him
in the act of striking . . . Stop! Live on!
I will be Antigonus’ spouse. Against my heart’s desire
I fly to plight my troth to him: I will say that I love him;
I will say . . .

Woe is me! The day grows dark,
lightning flashes across the heavens! They are angered
by my wilful perjuries. Alas! Let me succour
my beloved, cruel gods.
You hinder my steps, and in the meantime,
perhaps an unexpected blow . . .
Ah, now you will be satisfied; behold, he is slain!

Wait, noble soul: together, as shades,
we will journey to Lethe. Though I could not save you,
still, faithful, I will be able to . . . But you gaze upon me, and depart?

Aria
Do not go, fair idol of my heart:
over those waters to the farther shore
I wish to cross with you.

Recitative
Wretch that I am! What am I imagining? What am I saying?
Whither have I been transported
by the cruel torrent of my sufferings?
Hapless Berenice, ah, you are raving!

Aria
Why, if you are so many
that you can drive me mad,
why do you not slay me,
O torments of my heart?

Increase (ah God!), grow ever greater,
until excess of grief
comes to my assistance
by taking my life from me.

VOL. 9 _L'ADDIO

Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico

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SYMPHONY NO.45 F SHARP MINOR «FAREWELL» HOB. I:45

Allegro assai / Adagio / Menuet. Allegretto – Trio / Finale. Presto – Adagio

by Christian Moritz-Bauer

If Joseph Haydn’s Symphony in F sharp minor Hob. I:45, the so-called ‘Farewell Symphony’, has been accorded a prominent position in the history of music, this is due above all (though not exclusively) to the variety and vividness of the anecdotes of its genesis that began to be spun from the early 1780s. Let us jog the reader’s memory by reproducing in extenso one of these, which Haydn later volunteered to his biographer Georg August Griesinger:

Among the members of Prince Esterházy’s orchestra were several lusty young husbands who had to leave their wives behind in Eisenstadt for the summer when the prince was staying at his palace of Eszterháza. On one occasion, contrary to his custom, the Prince wished to extend his stay in Eszterháza by several weeks. The fond husbands, extremely dismayed at this news, turned to Haydn and asked him for advice.

Haydn came up with the idea of writing a symphony . . . in which one instrument after another falls silent. This symphony was performed in the Prince’s presence at the earliest opportunity, and each of the musicians was instructed, as soon as his part was finished, to extinguish his candle, pack up his music, and leave with his instrument under his arm. The Prince and the audience immediately understood the meaning of this pantomime, and the next day the order to leave Eszterháza was given.¹

The reason why the musicians of Prince Esterházy’s Kapelle at one time had to leave their wives and children in Eisenstadt and live a lonely existence for months in the middle of the swampy lowlands that surrounded their master’s summer residence, situated to the south-east of Lake Neusiedl, may be found in another contemporary source: ‘Summon all the musicians and tell them in my name that I do not want to see their wives and children in Eszterháza even for twenty-four hours, except for Mmes Haydn, Friberth, Dichtler, Cellini and Tomasini’,² reads a written instruction sent by Nicolaus I from Vienna to his estates director in Eisenstadt, Peter Ludwig Rahier, on 8 January 1772. Yet this authoritarian, indeed apparently cruel order must have been motivated by entirely practical considerations. There was an acute shortage of living space in the ‘Musikerhaus’ (Musicians’ house), which had been built to accommodate all the personnel employed in the princely musical and theatrical establishments and was still being extended at the time. The situation was further exacerbated by the fact that the company of the actor Carl Wahr, which was expected on 1 May of the same year, had arrived with a roster of seventeen instead of the ‘at least twelve appropriate persons who are skilled actors’³  specified in the contract.

It nevertheless remains questionable whether Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony was actually intended to persuade Prince Nicolaus to adopt a more considerate attitude towards his orchestral musicians who were suffering from conjugal yearning and homesickness – all the more so in view of the many other versions of the tale that once circulated. Whatever the truth of the matter, we are dealing here with a work of art, in which the musical events as a whole lead up to the famous final tableau of a dissolving orchestra, while following a dramatic structure that has been thought out down to the last detail: a monothematic Allegro brimming with unbridled passion is followed by an Adagio ‘filled with tender, sweet melancholy’⁴ and a minuet in a ‘remote’ key. The Trio section of that Menuet (Allegretto) quotes a Gregorian Lamentation tone, which the art and cultural historian Thomas Tolley has linked with the Catholic rite of Tenebrae, at which the lights are gradually extinguished in the course of the evening Offices celebrated from Maundy Thursday to Holy Saturday.⁵

But what was in Haydn’s mind when he set his work down on paper on that cool, windy evening in late October/early November? Was he worried about the reaction of his Prince when he silenced one instrument after another in the Adagio section of the last movement? Did he even feel a touch of moral courage when he thought of the situation of his musicians? ‘Actually,’ says Gerhard J. Winkler, there is ‘no cause to doubt Haydn’s statement’ that ‘the so-called “Farewell Symphony” . . . really was performed in Eszterháza as a pantomime, that is, with the orchestra members making their exit. The somewhat curious anecdote can even serve as an illustration of what was possible in the triangular relationship between Prince, Kapellmeister and orchestra. For, in whichever fashion the Symphony no.45 was really performed in Eszterháza, Prince Nicolaus must have acknowledged and appreciated the demonstration – whether literally pantomimic or merely imaginary – of his orchestra disintegrating before his eyes. Otherwise, he would have had to dismiss Haydn.’⁶

_{¹ Georg August Griesinger, Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1810), p.28f.
² Quoted from ‘Dokumente aus dem Esterházy-Archiven in Eisenstadt und Forchtenstein, herausgegeben aus dem Nachlass von Janós Hárich II. Kommentar: Else Radant und H. C. Robbins Landon’, in H. C. Robbins Landon, Otto Biba and David Wyn Jones (eds.), Das Haydn Jahrbuch/The Haydn Yearbook, Vol. XIX, 1994, p.43.
³ Ibid., p.44.
⁴ Walter Lessing, Die Sinfonien von Joseph Haydn, vol. II (Baden-Baden: Südwestfunk, 1988), p.65.
⁵ Thomas Tolley, Painting the Cannon's Roar. Music, the Visual Arts and the Rise of an Attentive Public in the Age of Haydn, c. 1750 to c. 1810 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), p.86f.
⁶ Gerhard J. Winkler: ‘“Orchesterpantomime” in den Esterházy-Sinfonien Joseph Haydns’, in Winkler (ed.), Das symphonische Werk Joseph Haydns. Referate des internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Symposions Eisenstadt, 13.-15. September 1995 (= Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten aus dem Burgenland 103; Eisenstadt: Burgenländisches Landesmuseum, 2000), pp.103-116; quotation from p.113.}

VOL. 9 _L'ADDIO

Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico

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