Haydn: 29 Feb – 4 March

[doversoul1]

I’ve just caught up with today’s programme but it seems that this series has The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross as the focus.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b071cl19

There may be nothing much new to experts but as far as I am concerned, I don’t ever get tired of Haydn’s music even the Trumpet Concert.

[aeolium]

I’ve just caught up with today’s programme but it seems that this series has The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross as the focus.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b071cl19

I rarely listen to this work and it is rarely broadcast complete, but I always find it interesting listening to extracts and it is good that this week's CotW features examples of all the different versions - orchestral, string quartet, piano and choral - of it. It is the quartet version that I find most moving, even though the textures of the original orchestral version seem to be reflected in it. It's a work that I wish could be explored more fully in one of the analysis programmes that have disappeared from R3, like Discovering Music or Interpretations on Record (it would be an extremely difficult BaL).

There are also extracts from The Seasons in this week's CotW. I never hear this work without wishing that Haydn had been spared its composition in his failing health so that he could work on additional string quartets in the op 77 set, the two he composed being so magnificent.

[jean]

...There are also extracts from The Seasons in this week's CotW. I never hear this work without wishing that Haydn had been spared its composition in his failing health so that he could work on additional string quartets in the op 77 set, the two he composed being so magnificent.

Indeed. I have never much cared for The Seasons.

For the dearth of secular choral music, see the Choral Music thread. I can't help feeling that God is somehow necessary. Aut Deus aut nihil, you might say.

[vinteuil]

"I can't help feeling that God is somehow necessary."

Jean - I can't help feeling that you should save that sentence for your 'last words'. Or perhaps to be inscribed on the tomb...

[jean]

I didn't say sufficient, though. I'm not very keen on The Creation either.

[aeolium]

I'm not very keen on The Creation either.

Oh, I am. I think it's an extraordinary work, which reaches heights of inspiration The Seasons hardly ever does (possibly because the effort of composing The Creation seems to have taken so much out of Haydn).

Apropos the dearth of secular choral music, there is this catalogue produced by Naxos:

http://www.naxos.com/sharedfiles/PDF/SegmentCatalogue_ChoralSecular.pdf

Some of the entries are questionable (Beethoven's 9th symphony is neither wholly choral nor really secular, considering the words that are set in the last movement), though on the other hand there is plenty missing, for instance Schumann's Scenes From Goethe's Faust and Das Paradies und die Peri.

[jean]

Not to mention the entire oeuvre of Rutland Boughton.