Is Haydn the new Beethoven?

[Petrushka]

But where are the live performances?

Good point. The 2016 Proms have just one Haydn symphony (No 34) among the season's delights, not much different from previous seasons and I find this neglect puzzling. KCC are performing the Paukenmesse (I have a ticket for this one) and there's a cello concerto and the inevitable Trumpet concerto.

Beethoven is, and always will be, the guv'nor for me and comparisons are odious anyway. Haydn's wit, humour and dash in the symphonies is enough to put him in the forefront of composers and I play them often. I played The Creation tonight and much of the orchestral effects are streets ahead of anything pre-Berlioz.

Haydn is ripe for re-discovery and a symphony preceding a Bruckner or Mahler in the second half works as well, if not better than, a Mozart piano concerto for me.

[Richard Barrett]

Beethoven and Mozart would have had much less fertile examples to base their own work upon.

Haydn damned with faint praise yet again...

[David-G]

I am not clear how the term "the guv’nor" should be interpreted. If it is "the greatest composer of all time", many people would say Beethoven - but personally, I would give the accolade to Mozart. Beethoven’s fire and revolutionary spirit are of course unique, but I find that Mozart can wring the heart like no other. That said, I fully share the appreciation and admiration of Haydn that has been expressed in this thread. I don’t personally feel a great want of hearing Haydn live. This is perhaps because I regularly attend the concerts of the OAE, and Haydn symphonies feature regularly in their programmes; and over the years we have heard various Creations and Seasonses (is that the correct plural?), not to mention "The Return of Tobias". I love the Haydn piano sonatas (and am diligently trying to learn one at the moment); I have heard these played in recent months at St Lukes (Ronald Brautigam) and at Finchcocks, and, last but not least, by Sir Andras Schiff at the Wigmore Hall. There is gorgeous music in the operas, which are hardly ever heard. Every now and then one is staged, but the productions that I have seen have failed to convince. With the operas, it is of course hard to avoid comparisons with Mozart. But I live in hopes of seeing an enthralling production of a Haydn opera. Much of Haydn’s finest music comes from the end of his career – the London visits and afterwards. This includes the last six Masses, which I mentioned before. I still remember nostalgically an OAE season from their early years, which was a sort of Haydn Festival. Six concerts, each with one of the Masses; with an opening concert with the Seasons, and a final closing concert with the Creation. That is the sort of programming which is hard to find nowadays.

I have to admit that I had never consciously listened to any of Haydn's non-wind-powered keyboard music until I heard John Tilbury play the F minor Variations Hob. XVII-6 in a concert mainly devoted to the music of Christian Wolff, at Conway Hall in the early '80s. That opened my ears to a whole panoply of keyboard music.

Just read Bryn's post. I love the F minor variations! I just wish I could play them beyond the first few pages.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Haydn damned with faint praise yet again...

In addition to providing works of the very highest levels of achievement in all these genres, Haydn set examples of what these genres could do that fuelled the imaginations of subsequent masters.

[ahinton]

Indeed; selective something or other apparently at work there...

[jean]

In the last few weeks I have heard "The Seasons" with the LSO and Rattle at the Barbican, and "The Creation" with Barts Choir at the Festival Hall.

What are indeed lacking are opportunities to hear the great last six Masses.

I seem to have sung about four Creations in the last two years, and a Paukenmesse and one or two of the others. And I've heard a Trumpet Concert or two.

But I'm really talking about the absence of the symphonies (even the better-known ones) from the standard orchestral repertoire, and (even worse) of the string quartets from your local chamber music season. I'm going to the RLPO season launch this coming Wednesday. I'll be very surprised if Haydn makes much of an appearance.

[jean]

(Without Haydn's evolution of the genre - and of the String Quartet and the Piano Sonata and the Piano Trio and the Mass - Beethoven and Mozart would have had much less fertile examples to base their own work upon. In addition to providing works of the very highest levels of achievement in all these genres, Haydn set examples of what these genres could do that fuelled the imaginations of subsequent masters.)

But the problem with thinking of any composer in terms of what he [sic] offered to subsequent generations to build on is that it enshrines the rather Victorian idea of progress towards perfection, and diminishes hes actual achievement in the process.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Oh, the String Quartets (which display a profundity of intellectual and psychological invention quite unmatched, let alone surpassed by those of any other composer - happy now, Richard?) feature regularly at my own "local" (Leeds, Bradford, Ilkley, Skipton) Chamber Music concerts - and less than a fortnight ago, I heard Angela Hewitt playing one of the B minor Piano Sonatas. The mid-period Symphonies also feature fairly regularly in the International Concert Seasons nearby, too ("regular" being a relative term, here - about two or three per year; not nearly as much as they deserve).

The choral works and operas are the most neglected of his output hereabouts: The Creation appears quite regularly, but I don't think I've ever seen The Seasons programmed.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But the problem with thinking of any composer in terms of what he [sic] offered to subsequent generations to build on is that it enshrines the rather Victorian idea of progress towards perfection, and diminishes hes actual achievement in the process.

It would if that were the only criterion by which any composer was "thought of". I think that you will notice that in my previous posts, AS WELL AS IN THE QUOTATION YOU CITE, it is clear that this was not the case.

It is also quite valid to take into consideration the effect that any Artist has on subsequent generations - it demonstrates how the new ways of thinking about the Art that the works display provoked/challenged/inspired other Artists to think of their own work in different ways, and were not just of "local" significance. So long as the idea is avoided that, if a composer had no such "influence" on others, her work is somehow "limited" as a result: a superbly crafted work of Art is sufficient of itself. But, in Haydn's case, there is a history-altering effect, that cloughie's comment on the Symphonies (which was the cause of the quotation you cite) seemed to be overlooking.

[verismissimo]

If I'm consigned to the proverbial desert island accompanied by the music of one composer, it would have to be Haydn.

Not at all sure this is a guvnorship endorsement, more what I think might best suit my needs there.

And I'd want the operas as well as all the other genres previously mentioned in this thread.

[Pulcinella]

The choral works and operas are the most neglected of his output hereabouts: The Creation appears quite regularly, but I don't think I've ever seen The Seasons programmed.

The music society I sing in is doing Spring and Summer (and the final chorus from Winter) from The Seasons in our July concert, together with three of Moeran's Songs of Springtime; the orchestra is adding some Delius.

Sadly, I can't take The Seasons that seriously, having been influenced by PDQ Bach's The Seasonings!

[teamsaint]

It would if that were the only criterion by which any composer was "thought of". I think that you will notice that in my previous posts, AS WELL AS IN THE QUOTATION YOU CITE, it is clear that this was not the case.

It is also quite valid to take into consideration the effect that any Artist has on subsequent generations - it demonstrates how the new ways of thinking about the Art that the works display provoked/challenged/inspired other Artists to think of their own work in different ways. So long as the idea is avoided that, if a composer had no such "influence" on others, her work is somehow "limited" as a result.

There are also issues around our understanding of how composers/musicians thinking and development are connected to each other.
So we may think for instance , as has been suggested, that Gesualdo went down some sort of musical Cul de Sac, but that can surely only be an opinion based on rather vague understandings ( given the time scales, loss of material etc) of his effects on others .

[cloughie]

It would if that were the only criterion by which any composer was "thought of". I think that you will notice that in my previous posts, AS WELL AS IN THE QUOTATION YOU CITE, it is clear that this was not the case.

It is also quite valid to take into consideration the effect that any Artist has on subsequent generations - it demonstrates how the new ways of thinking about the Art that the works display provoked/challenged/inspired other Artists to think of their own work in different ways, and were not just of "local" significance. So long as the idea is avoided that, if a composer had no such "influence" on others, her work is somehow "limited" as a result: a superbly crafted work of Art is sufficient of itself. But, in Haydn's case, there is a history-altering effect, that cloughie's comment on the Symphonies (which was the cause of the quotation you cite) seemed to be overlooking.

I don't think I did overlook it.

[Richard Barrett]

Let me make my position a bit clearer. I don't much like to make comparisons between composers, it leads to X being described as a more or less interesting sort of Y, which involves simplifying what there is in both X and Y. While of course I wouldn't claim it isn't "valid" to assess a composer's work in terms of its influence (especially in the sort of Whiggish terms that jean mentions), again I don't think this does justice to his/her work. Bodies of work can be influential for all sorts of reasons which aren't necessarily directly connected with their more intrinsic qualities. And, historically, Haydn's work has had to take more of this sort of assessment than that of many others, partly, as has been said, because a large proportion of it isn't very well known, and partly because of the extreme hero-worship accorded in the 19th century to Mozart and Beethoven, which still colours general perception (and performance!) of their work. So probably I'm a bit oversensitive to this.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't think I did overlook it.

My apologies ...

... in Beethoven we saw an incredible evolution over nine symphonies which was probably greater than Haydn's over 104.

Replace "seemed to be overlooking" with "demonstrated a severe lack of appreciation for", then?