Haydn’s six string quartets published in 1799 as Opus 76 are his supreme works of chamber music, works that show him at the very peak of his craft and imagination. The quartets were composed between 1796-1797, soon after Haydn’s return from his second residency in London. Haydn dedicated the set to his patron, the Hungarian nobleman Count Joseph Georg von Erdődy (1754-1824). The famed English music historian Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814) first heard Haydn’s Opus 76 string quartets in 1799, and he could not contain himself when he wrote that: “They are full of invention, fire, good taste, and new effects, and seem the production, not of a sublime genius who has written so much and so well recently, but one of the highly cultivated talents, who has expended none of his fire before.” (“Expended none of his fire before”? Okay; whatever.) Haydn’s Op. 76 string quartets are, indeed, brilliant; works that were – as we will soon observe – powerfully inspired by the late quartets of Haydn’s beloved and recently departed friend, Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791). Mozart’s own string quartets aside, it is Joseph Haydn who, through the example of his 68 string quartets, is rightly credited with establishing the […]
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Archive for Haydn
February 12 is one of those remarkable days in music history, remarkable for all the notable events that took place on this day. So: before getting to our featured topic, let us acknowledge some of those events and share some links to previous Music History Monday and Dr. Bob Prescribes posts that dealt with those events. On this day in 1812, Beethoven’s student (and friend), the Austrian composer, pianist, and teacher Carl Czerny (1791-1857) performed as the soloist in the premiere of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, the “Emperor.” Czerny was the subject of Music History Monday on July 15, 2019. We wish a heartfelt farewell to the German pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow, who died on this date in Cairo, Egypt in 1894, at the age of 64. Von Bülow was the subject of both Music History Monday and Dr. Bob Prescribes just last month, on January 8 and 9,respectively. Birthday greetings to the American composer Roy Harris (1898-1979), who was born on this date in 1898 in Chandler, Oklahoma. Harris and his Symphony No. 3 were featured in my Dr. Bob Prescribes post on April 9, 2019. On February 12, 1924 – exactly 100 […]
Continue ReadingA quick comment in reference to the title of today’s post, “Papa’s Last Appearance.” Not that you really need me to tell you, but by “Papa” we are not referring to Papa John Schnatter, who founded “Papa John’s Pizza” in 1984. Neither are we referring to the stand-up comedian Tom Papa, the sportscaster Greg Papa, the American rock band Papa Roach, nor the American Paul Karason (1950-2013), also-known-as “Papa Smurf,” whose skin turned to a purplish-blue color as a result of ingesting a home-made brew of silver chloride colloid. By “Papa,” we are referring to Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) who was once-and-forever nicknamed “papa” while still in his thirties by the grateful musicians who worked for him! We mark what turned out to be the final public appearance of “Papa” Joseph Haydn on March 27, 1808 – 215 years ago today – at a concert held in honor of his upcoming 76th birthday. The gala concert, held at Vienna’s University Hall, featured a performance of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, which had been completed ten years before, in 1798. The concert was what we would call today a “star-studded event”: everyone who was anyone in Vienna’s musical world was there, including […]
Continue ReadingYesterday’s Music History Monday post celebrated the premiere (on July 18, 2003) of a newly discovered piano work by Claude Debussy (1862-1918). Composed in late February/early March of 1917, Les Soirs illumines par l’ardeur du charbon (“the evenings lighted by the glow of the coals”) was, in fact, Debussy’s final piano work; he died of colorectal cancer a year later, on March 25, 1918. (Yesterday’s post also discussed the initial Dead Sea Scroll discovery, in November 1946, just because. Because it was the grandmother of all manuscript discoveries! Because any other manuscript discovery made during the twentieth century shrinks to near insignificance by comparison and because, for me, the discovery of those scrolls will always boggle my bean!) For our information, Debussy’s Les Soirs illumines. . . is not the only significant musical manuscript discovered in recent memory. For example. Where’s That Cello Concerto Been Haydn? (apologies) For nearly 200 years, the musical community knew that Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) had composed his first cello concerto around the year 1765 for his great friend, the cellist Joseph Weigl. We “knew” this because Haydn himself kept meticulous records of the music he composed. Unfortunately, that’s all anyone knew about the concerto, because […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the death, on May 31, 1809 – 212 years ago today – of the incomparable Joseph Haydn, at his home in Vienna at Kleine Steingasse 73 (today, the address is Haydngasse 19). At the time of his death, he was 77 years old and was, without any doubt, the most popular and beloved composer in the Western world. Franz Joseph Haydn was born on March 31, 1732 in the Austrian town of Rohrau. He was as self-made a person as any we’ll ever meet. A choirboy at St. Stephen’s cathedral in Vienna, he was booted out onto the mean streets of Vienna when his voice changed at the age of 16 and left entirely to his own devices. He subsisted in a Viennese garret, giving lessons and playing the violin in dance bands while he taught himself to compose. To indulge the cliché, the young dude attended the school of hard knocks and managed to graduate summa cum laude. He slowly climbed the Viennese musical ladder and in 1761 – at the age of 29 – took up a position with the Esterházy family, a fabulously wealthy family of Hungarian nobles. His position was that of Vice-Kapellmeister – […]
Continue ReadingI trust we are all preparing for it: that we’re stockpiling party hats, noisemakers, birthday candles and those blowy-things consisting of a mouthpiece and a flattened, coiled paper tube that extends obscenely when blown into, something variously called a “party horn”, “party blower”, “party pipe”, or a “blow tickler.” We’ll want to have this stuff in hand in quantity because we have a year-long birthday celebration coming up, as the year 2020 will mark Ludwig/Louis/Luigi van Beethoven’s 250th (or Semiquincentennial, meaning literally “half-of-500”) birthday. Roughly once-every-other-month through the end of 2020 – starting today – I’m going to offer up posts on some of Beethoven’s more obscure works and recordings of those works that we should all own. We begin with Beethoven’s Mass in C of 1807, which is much less well known and less frequently performed than his “Solemn Mass”, the Missa Solemnis, of 1823. Beethoven’s Mass in C was first performed on September 13, 1807, in Eisenstadt, Austria, by the musical establishment of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II. It did not go well. The mass had been commissioned by Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II (1765-1833), an excessively-wealthy Hungarian Prince. Today, we rightly consider the Mass to be the masterwork that it is (although […]
Continue ReadingOn April 29, 1798 – 221 years ago today – Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation was first performed before a star-studded, invitation-only audience at the Schwarzenberg Palace in Vienna. Getting older, or “when I’m 65.” An ugly confession. Eleven days ago, on April 18, 2019, I turned 65 years old. Don’t get me wrong; I am aware that growing older is generally preferable – generally – to the alternative. But it is, nevertheless, an ongoing shock to the system. Like many of us, I fully intended to be Peter Pan (Bob Panberg?): the eternal boy. And while one may not inaccurately assert that that is a fair appraisal of my emotional age, it cannot be said of my physical age. My eyes continue to weaken. My joints – crapped up by years in the gym – remind me of their ever-greater unhappiness by making ever more noise. My ability to dredge up names has become increasingly more difficult (although, curiously, dates and numbers come to me instantly). As my hairline beats an increasingly hasty retreat, thick, disgusting fly hairs on my shoulders and back continue to grow in ever greater profusion (this is so gross I don’t know where to […]
Continue ReadingWe mark today the 258th anniversary of the marriage of Joseph Haydn to Maria Anna Aloysia Apollonia Keller in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the great city of Vienna. The groom was 28 years old and his blushing bride 31. We contemplate the institution of marriage. Marriage is like swinging a golf club: it looks so easy on TV. But when we actually pick up a golf club and/or get married, we learn soon enough how very, very, very challenging marital reality can be. I know of what I speak. I am in my fourth marriage, though I’d hasten to point out that that’s not because I’m a disagreeable monster (although my first wife, from whom I am divorced, might beg to disagree), but because I’ve lost two wives to cancer. When I married for the fourth and final time to Dr. Nanci Tucker – a real doctor, one who can write a prescription – my old friend and colleague Dr. Frank LaRocca – not a real doctor; he cannot write a prescription – said to me “you win”. You see, Frank has been married three times, and with my fourth marriage he figured that the person with the greatest number […]
Continue ReadingIt was 219 years ago today – on March 19, 1799 – that Joseph Haydn’s epic, one hour and forty-five minute long oratorio The Creation (Die Schöpfung) received its public premiere in Vienna. Completed in 1798 when Haydn was 66 years old, The Creation is considered by many to be Haydn’s greatest work; truly, a masterpiece among masterpieces. That public premiere of The Creation on March 19, 1799 was one of the great events in the dazzling history of Viennese music. The performance was sold out far in advance, and such was the excitement preceding the performance that Haydn felt it necessary to request – on the posters announcing the premiere, no less – that the audience control itself and not applaud between the numbers (and thus encourage encores): “for otherwise, [wrote Haydn] the true connection between the various single parts, from the uninterrupted succession of which should proceed the effect of the whole, would necessarily be disturbed.” A critic in attendance from Leipzig’s Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung confirmed that the audience took Haydn’s injunction to heart; he reported that: “No one can imagine with what silence and attention the entire oratorio was heard – only gently interrupted at the most […]
Continue ReadingOn this day 221 years ago – February 12, 1797 – Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in C Major, Op. 76, No. 3 received its premiere. The quartet’s nickname – “Emperor” – stems from the theme of its second movement, a theme composed a few months before the string quartet. Background In 1761, the 29 year-old Joseph Haydn was hired as a musical functionary by the fabulously wealthy Esterhazy family of Hungary. 29 years later – on September 28, 1790 – Joseph Haydn’s boss and benefactor Prince Nicolas Esterhazy kicked the scepter and passed on to the great unknown. Nicholas was succeeded by his son, Prince Anton, who didn’t give a rat’s rump for music; one of Anton’s first acts as Prince was to dismiss almost all the musicians his father had hired. Haydn was granted a 1400 florin annual salary and sent on his way. Was a grief-stricken Haydn left wondering what to do? No he was not. In fact, we can well imagine the spry, energetic Haydn doing some flying chest-bumps around the castle, jumping into some splits, hitting a moonwalk and then the rug for some one-handed pushups, because he was free at last! Haydn left the Esterhazy […]
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