The 106 Symphonies of Joseph Haydn

Подробнее о видео

Learn about Joseph Haydn's huge influence on the modern symphony, how he was a musical revolutionary and his lasting legacy on classical music.

Discover more classical music at www.colstonhall.org/classical

Transcript
So – who was music’s greatest symphonist? Beethoven? Mahler? Bruckner? Shostakovich? There’s a strong argument for it being Joseph Haydn, the man who wrote some 104 symphonies within 40 years. Of course, that’s quite some workload, but his claim to being the master of the symphony is not about numbers. Although he might not have thought it at the time, Haydn was a musical revolutionary, pure and simple. He practically invented the string quartet for his employers at the Palace of Esterhazy where he worked in splendid isolation for some 30 years, and it’s a genre that dominates chamber music even today – but Haydn also laid the foundations for the modern symphony, too – and thanks to him, music would never be the same again. We certainly wouldn’t have Beethoven’s Nine masterpieces without Haydn. So how did he accomplish this? Not overnight, that’s for sure – the first 31 symphonies were composed in the old three-movement form, fast, slow then fast again. But as Haydn grew more adventurous, he added in a fourth movement, usually a Minuet to smooth the transition between the slow movement and an often fast-moving finale. And within his final 60 or so symphonies, Haydn writes the most inventive, elegant, deeply felt music of the 18th century – the final 12 or so are undoubtedly great, works of utter brilliance of form and style that even Mozart worshipped.

So why have Haydn’s symphonies stayed somewhat in the shadows? They rarely get record label chiefs very excited, and they don’t appear that often on concert programmes. Of course, it’s near impossible to know all 104 of Haydn’s symphonies – listening to them all is a daunting task. And each of their characters are very different, from the Sturm und Drang, or storm and stress of the 20 or so symphonies Haydn wrote in the 1760s and ’70s, to the sophisticated and refined later works, written in London during 1790s. And then there are the Symphonies with handy nicknames – the Farewell Symphony, No. 45, where the players gradually go on strike and leave the stage throughout the final movement; or The Bear, No. 82, whose last movement, with its rustic drones, appears to mimic a lumbering bear. No. 83 is called the Hen, thanks to its clucking motifs in the first movement, and let’s not forget the Surprise Symphony, No. 94, with its heart-stopping timpani bang in the middle of a supposedly calm second movement.

So it really is no surprise that Papa Haydn, as he was affectionately known, really was the father of the symphony.