Classical Evening

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Joseph Haydn lived a long life and had a vast output, writing more symphonies than any other composer. His influence on Beethoven and Mozart, with whom he made up the First Viennese (Classical) school of music, was immense due to his perfection of the sonata form. Unlike them, he was no rebel but a cheerful, witty and well-loved servant of his noble patrons. Almost everything he composed was a masterpiece, and he took the genres of symphony and string quartet to unprecedented heights.

Te Deum
Haydn wrote his first Te Deum in 1765, but this, his second, comes from 1799-1800, in the midst of the final great phase of creativity which has left us the six late masses and the oratorios 'The Creation' and 'The Seasons'. Consequently every bar of this magnificent festive work shows the hand of a master-craftsman at the summit of a long and brilliant career. Haydn sets it in the traditional festive key of C major, and decks out his orchestra with the trumpets, drums, flutes and C-horns that the 18th Century required for grand musical celebration. There are no soloists and the work's three-part structure makes it, in effect, a concerto for chorus and orchestra. More important, though, than any technical consideration is the exuberant and whole-hearted feeling that Haydn puts into this brief sacred work. "The thought of God fills me with such confidence, such joy, that I should set even a miserere to cheerful music" Haydn wrote, and in writing a Te Deum, a hymn of praise and thanks, he surpassed himself. Nowhere in all his music will we find so spontaneous and overwhelmingly cheerful an opening as in the first movement of this Te Deum, a vigorous and brilliant march which the chorus joins with the unison shout "Te Deum laudamus!". The chromatic, C minor Lento, " Te ergo quaesumus" takes us briefly into the gloomy world of the prelude to 'The Creation', but only long enough to allow the final Allegro "Aeterna fac cum sanctis Tuis", incorporating a recklessly syncopated fugue, to burst in with even more joyful splendour. The work was commissioned by the Empress Maria Theresa and was first performed at the Eszterhazy palace at Eisenstadt on the occasion of the visit of Admiral Nelson. He reputedly presented Haydn with his gold watch, asking in return only the pen with which Haydn had written the Te Deum and D minor Mass! While it is difficult to imagine a work more different in mood from Mozart's Requiem, both are late masterpieces from the two greatest composers of the classical era, and the Te Deum expresses the good-natured and optimistic genius of its composer as surely and completely as the Requiem shows us Mozart's much darker vision.

Symphony No. 96 in D Major - 'The Miracle'
'Miracle' is one of the 12 London Symphonies written by Haydn for his concert series in London. The symphony is called the 'Miracle Symphony,' not for the music but because of an event during a performance. Haydn was as popular as pop singers are in this day. At a performance, they rushed to the edge of the stage to applaud and a huge chandelier crashed down to where the audience would have been sitting. It's called the Miracle Symphony because it was a miracle nobody was hurt. It's one of his most attractive symphonies and it has lot of little solos for members of orchestra.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an extraordinarily gifted composer, with a musical output which was prodigious as well as sublime. He began playing the piano at the age of three and composing when he was only six. His father, Leopold, a court musician and a minor composer, recognised his son's brilliance. However, his letters reveal that despite his brilliance, he also had a crude side to his character. Mozart managed in his short life to compose 600 works, including such masterpieces as The Marriage of Figaro and the 'Jupiter' Symphony.

Mass in C Minor, K 427- 'Great'
The Mass in C Minor, Mozart's first non-commissioned Mass, was probably written in celebration of his marriage to Constanze, which may well explain the music's breathtaking sense of personal utterance. What remains unexplained is why he chose to leave the score incomplete (the Credo ends after the beautiful et incarnatus est and there is no Agnus Dei). A number of suggestions have been made - the most watery-eyed being that he did not know how to finish a score already beyond perfection - but nothing convincing has yet emerged and, in fact, Mozart reused much of the music for his cantata Davidde Penitente. Whatever the truth, movements such as the Qui tollis, with its soul-shuddering subito piani (sudden quiet), eclipse anything in the Requiem, and only the latter half of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis stands comparison with this extraordinarily solemn and God-fearing work. Much of its solemnity derives from the work's deliberately 'antique' style - the start of the Credo, for instance, reveals Mozart's interest in the music of Handel.

Even in its form as Mozart left it, the Mass in C Minor is regarded as one of the three greatest settings of the Mass Ordinary (the other two being Bach's Mass in B Minor and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis). The Mass in C Minor is no more "incomplete" than Schubert's Symphony in B Minor is "unfinished". The work stands as one of Mozart's loftiest and most sublime creations. In its steady progression of celebration and ever-increasing exaltation, we are swept up by this music. After the final Osanna there is simply nothing left to say. Not even for Mozart.

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Updated: 4 October 2001
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