Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)

Symphony No. 99 in E-flat Major Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) Franz Joseph Haydn was one of the 18th century's most prolific composers. Merely writing 104 symphonies (plus a couple that are unnumbered) and 68 string quartets (not to mention two great oratorios — The Creation and The Seasons — and innumerable instrumental sonatas and vignettes, piano trios and other chamber pieces, operas and religious works) enshrined Haydn's place in music history.

He has been rightly hailed as "father of the symphony" and "father of the string quartet." While these musical forms existed before he made his first compositional attempts in the genres, Haydn created the four-movement formal structure that would endure to the present day as a template for symphonic and chamber scores. Moreover Haydn raised the musical substance and complexity of these works to a new level. One can scarcely imagine the symphonies of Mozart, Beethoven or Brahms without Haydn's pioneering contribution.

Born to modest circumstances in the rural village of Rohrau in 1732, Haydn would receive his most important musical training as a member of the boy choir at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna and as accompanist and valet to the composer Giovanni Popora. In Vienna Haydn befriended the young Mozart (often playing chamber music with the Salzburg genius) and taught numerous students, including the rebellious Beethoven. (Haydn did not have a good relationship with the genius from Bonn. Beethoven's personality precluded many friendships.) Eventually he sought employment from royalty. After several part time positions composing and performing for aristocrats, Haydn became Vice-Kapellmeister (or music director) to Prince Anton Esterhazy, one of the wealthiest men of the day, in 1761. When Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy succeeded his late brother in 1762, Haydn became a fixture at the family estate at Eisenstadt. In 1766 the elderly Kapellmeister Gregor Werner passed away and Haydn took over the esteemed position.

The Prince constructed an opulent palace Esterhaza in the rural Hungarian countryside. Wearing an official uniform as a State Officer, Haydn composed symphonies and orchestral works, much chamber music, operas for the court theater and sacred works for the family chapel. He even scored pieces for the baryton, a bowed string instrument (now long extinct) that the Prince played. With a sizable orchestra and choral and vocal forces at his command, Haydn had free creative reign, his scores taking on a distinctive musical voice. For all its beauty and palatial splendor, Esterhza was isolated; Haydn was barely known outside the estate's walls. Except for a commission from Paris to write a group of symphonies, Haydn's music was rarely performed in the music capitals of Europe. The composer longed for the cosmopolitan world of Vienna with its creative ferment and the support of his friends in that musical oasis. When Prince Nikolaus died in 1790, his successor dismissed virtually his entire musical establishment while providing a generous pension for Haydn.

The composer accepted an invitation from the British impresario and violinist Johann Peter Solomon to come to London for a series of concerts in 1791. Haydn wrote his first set of London symphonies for that highly successful engagement. Overnight he was discovered by the wider artistic world, and celebrated as a genius and musical icon.

Reveling in the larger orchestral forces Solomon provided, Haydn wrote his last six symphonies for his second London engagement in 1794–95. Beyond more grandiose scoring, Haydn's final symphonies are larger in scope and more profound (in an unpretentious manner) than any of his previous efforts in the genre. New acclaim brought fresh inspiration and ambition to his creative powers. The Symphony No. 99 was composed in early 1794 prior to Haydn's arrival in London. On February 10, 1794 Solomon presented the premiere as part of a concert at Hanover Square that included a piano concerto by Dusseck and a new violin concerto by Viotti (with the composer doing the solo honors). The work is scored for two clarinets (the instrument appearing for the first time in a Haydn symphony), pairs of flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns and trumpets plus strings and timpani.

A slow introduction leads to the Vivace assai in which the violins introduce the sprightly theme, repeated by the winds. The second subject features the clarinet. The winds are even more prominent in the Adagio (second movement), echoing the initial thematic material of the strings. Haydn's typical humor abounds in the Menuet which features sudden contrasts of dynamics while the Trio section provides a folksy contrast. The Vivace finale (in rondo form) features two principal themes and elaborate fugal counterpoint, the recapitulation section providing several Haydn-esque surprises before the high spirited conclusion.

—Program Notes by Lawrence Budmen

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) While Mozart's favored instrument was the piano, he was also a highly accomplished string player. While he preferred the dark toned viola (producing the exuberant Sinfonia Concertante and a luminous group of quintets with an additional viola joining the usual string quartet configuration), Mozart was an adept and Program Notes 70 enthusiastic violinist who often played the instrument in impromptu chamber music sessions (sometimes with no less a distinguished collaborator than Franz Joseph Haydn). In 1775, before he turned twenty, the genius from Salzburg penned no less than five concertos for the instrument. While these works are not comparable to the monumental achievement of Mozart's twenty-seven piano concertos (which changed that keyboard genre forever), the five scores nevertheless find Mozart writing at white heat. Indeed the last two concertos contain some of his most melodic and innovative creations.

Employed as a court musician by the domineering Archbishop of Salzburg, Mozart definitely wrote these violin works for performance by the Salzburg Court Orchestra but it is unclear whether Mozart or Antonio Brunetti (concertmaster of the group) or Franz Xavier Kolb (a Salzburg violinist and teacher) played the initial performances. Letters from Mozart's father Leopold indicate that Brunetti and Kolb subsequently played the scores while Mozart was away seeking higher profile employment in Mannheim and Paris. Composed shortly after the successful premiere of the opera Il Re Pastore, these scores are light years away from the carefully sculpted, strict formality of the concertos of Vivaldi or Bach or the graceful melodic felicities of Haydn's sole contribution to the genre. Employing winds in addition to the customary string palette, Mozart infuses new color and variety into the instrumental texture. The solo writing demands the utmost virtuosity and musicality from the protagonist, the solo cadenzas providing a bravura tour de force while flowing seamlessly into the music's structural conception.

The A Major Concerto is full of surprises. The orchestral introduction to the initial Allegro aperto follows strict classical form, introducing two themes — the first lively and vigorous, the second elegant and aristocratic. (Indeed this thematic material could only have been written by Mozart, so distinctive is its melodic curves.) When the soloist enters, instead of taking up the initial melody, the violin plays an Adagio — at first unaccompanied, then over murmuring strings — before bursting into an incisive Allegro that introduces a totally new theme. A master stroke of striking originality! Eventually the soloist returns to the initial material and, after a vivacious development and brilliant cadenza, the movement comes to a high spirited close. The Adagio features a melody of great nobility, yet an emotional undercurrent seems to provide a more dramatic subtext. The sudden pauses at the conclusion of the melodic arc intensify the underlying turmoil. Mozart conceived an unusually lengthy orchestral prelude before the soloist offers a series of elaborate transformations of the interweaving melody.

The finale is a Rondo, the lovely main theme in the form of a minuet. The soloist's elegant classicism is followed by a more robust orchestral statement of the melody. A central alla turca episode reveals the eighteenth century's fascination with the sound of Turkish military bands. Mozart's famous rondo finale of the Piano Sonata, K. 331 and the vernacular tinge of the martial music in the opera The Abduction from the Seraglio (as well as Beethoven's "Turkish March" in his Ruins of Athens incidental score) are further examples of this oncefashionable appropriation of nationalistic exoticism. Here Mozart's writing turns violent and fiery, the wood of the bows striking the cellos and double basses, a novel effect that Rossini would adapt with wit and élan in his Il Signor Bruscchino overture. After a restatement of the initial Program Notes 71 minuet, the concerto ends quietly, bereft of any brilliant final pronouncement, one final surprise in a score that constantly astounds with its unexpected invention and originality. Indeed the influence of Mozart's final concerto for violin can be found in the later monumental concertos of Beethoven and his contemporaries.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

The city of Prague held a special place in the affections of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He found Salzburg (his birthplace) provincial. The musical capitals of Mannheim and Paris exhibited little interest in his work. Vienna proved to be fickle, at first embracing the youthful wunderkind, then ignoring him as he approached his tragic final year of 1791. Viennese audiences were interested in the hottest new celebrity. As Mozart's star waned, they found other artists to admire. Audiences in Prague, however, recognized the composer's exceptional gifts and proved loyal. Unlike the Viennese, this public was not just interested in entertaining diversions. As Mozart's music became darker and more emotionally wrought, Prague concertgoers appreciated his artistic maturity.

On October 29, 1787 Prague hosted the premiere of Don Giovanni, an operatic retelling of the Don Juan legend with libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's greatest collaborator. Don Giovanni was the second of Da Ponte's scenarios for Mozart, preceded by The Marriage of Figaro and followed by Cosi fan Tutte — three truly great operatic masterworks. (Da Ponte would eventually become an American citizen and teach Italian literature at Columbia College -— now Columbia University — in New York). Da Ponte referred to his libretto as a "drama giocoso" — a drama with comedic elements. Indeed this operatic masterpiece is singular combination of comedy, tragedy and elements of the supernatural. The opera has not only proven one of Mozart's most durable works but has become one of the most frequently produced pieces in the entire operatic repertoire. In 1979 the late film director Joseph Losey produced a cinematic version (with Ruggiero Raimondi and Kiri Te Kanawa heading the cast). In the opera's first scene the libertine Don kills the Commendatore, father of Donna Anna who he has attempted to seduce. At the opera's conclusion, the stone statue of the Commendatore drags Don Giovanni down to hell, in a final moral summation of crime and punishment. That is where the overture begins. Two stern chords symbolize the statue of the dead Commendatore as he enters the Don's villa.

The remainder of the slow introduction quotes the Commendatore's command that Don Giovanni repent (sung by the bass in the opera). Mozart's use of brass instruments here is particularly striking. This is followed by an incisive allegro, the principal theme stated by the strings with interjections from winds and brass.

A second brief figure provides a more abrupt contrast. While the overture did not originally have an ending and flowed directly into the first scene of the opera, the ever resourceful Mozart saw the possibility of the overture as a concert piece and conceived a thirteen bar concert ending. In 1909 composer-pianist Ferruccio Busoni wrote his own symphonic conclusion to the overture which has been infrequently played. The overture is scored for double woodwinds, horns, trumpets, timpani and strings.