Haydn-Symphony no. 80 in d minor(1784)

I may have said this before, but something that I’m semi-surprised by is how Haydn has kind of fell out of popular taste. While he was alive during the second half of the 18th century, he was a cosmopolitain composer loved by the public across Europe. And he couldn’t be dismissed as a ‘populist’ or whatever; the music critics and intelligentsia of the day also hailed him as the greatest living composer. And yet his reputation has been kind of dwindling in comparison to Mozart and Beethoven. I’ve wondered why that is, and I think what really hurts Haydn is that he wasn’t as much of a “melody writer” like Mozart was. HIs interest was in motivic development and breaking up musical ideas, like Beethoven. But unlike Beethoven, Haydn’s contrasts and dramatic expressions aren’t nearly as intense and theatrical. He is much more subtle, and prefers light-heartedness and comedy over tragedy. So our post-romantic world would much rather listen to angsty Beethoven, or lusciously melodious Mozart, than more 'straightforward’ Haydn. Which is a shame because in some regards, Haydn is underrated. It can be hard to get into him because of the sheer amount of music he wrote. When there are over 100 symphonies, where do you start? Especially if the last one is the most popular…that implies the earlier ones aren’t worth the attention and time. This by itself can be detrimental to appreciating Haydn, especially because not everything is going to be a masterpiece or super gripping. I first came across this symphony through the finale, which is a lot of fun and is one of my favorite of his symphony movements. The opening is dramatic by its immediacy, throwing us into the 'action’ of the music right away. What interests me here is how at the end of the exposition, what starts out as a frantic and anxious theme gets turned into a thinner, calmer, and pretty quaint melody with the flutes. It’s a reminder of where Beethoven got some of his ideas from: instead of only developing the motivic elements with pitch, harmony, counterpoint, Haydn is developing the sound of the initial musical idea as well. The atmosphere is developed from restless/serious into something tame/lighthearted. The second movement is a long adagio that’s also in sonata form. What stood out the most to me here is how it exemplifies the way Haydn wrote for orchestra, which made him unique compared to other composers of the day. While winds were usually used for coloring, or where a lot of instruments were doubling each other to keep the focus on pitch and counterpoint etc., Haydn wrote instrumental groups “against” each other to have them stand out, and to make the contrast of sounds become part of the music. Rimsky-Korsakov (hailed as one of the great orchestrators of the 19th century) loved Haydn for this reason. And in retrospect we can now see that Haydn’s attitude to orchestral writing was closer to 20th century composers than it was to the composers of his day. As I mentioned above, the finale is my favorite part of the symphony. It also sounds like an 18th century 'audience pleaser’ with its fun syncopated rhythm, contrasts of instrumental color, and folksy drones. No this symphony doesn’t have a nickname to draw in a listener’s curiosity, but it’s still a great symphony from the Father of the Symphony.

Movements:

1. Allegro spiritoso
2. Adagio
3. Menuetto
4. Finale: Presto

Strauss - Symphonia Domestica (1903)

“What can be more serious than family life? I want the Symphonia domestica to be understood seriously.” For fun, friends will ask each other what their “guilty pleasure” music is, and usually I think “well, obviously none of my classical favorites count. what’s ‘guilty’ about classical music?” But that was me thinking with a kind of classical-superiority bias. There’s plenty of works that aren’t “great”, but are a lot of fun, for the sake of spectacle. In this case I’ll say that my recent 'guilty pleasure’ favorite is Richard Strauss’ last tone poem, the “Symphonia Domestica”. To me it kind of exemplifies reasons people would dislike late and post Romanticism. The “story” is a musical portrait of a daily life in a family. Specifically, Strauss’ family. He has a heroic theme for himself, the husband/father, a gorgeous Hollywood love theme for the wife/mother (the singer, Pauline), and the ferocious wailing of their crying baby. We hear the family having fun together, the baby crying, soothed by a lullaby (here quoting Mendelssohn’s Venetian Boat-Song op.19 no.6, another piece close to my heart), then an intimate scene when the parents are alone (another instance that made critics roll their eyes), then an argument or “merry dispute” in the form of a double fugue, with an over-the-top apotheosis of the themes. Filtering the model for the “traditional” family, an otherwise banal topic, with the sonic vocabulary of Wagner’s “Twilight of the Gods”, made a lot of audiences and critics roll their eyes. It also doesn’t help that the themes aren’t really transformed as much as they’re re-orchestrated. At the same time I think people are ignoring the Mozartian side of Strauss. This piece is silly, in good ways, and has charm and fun. I opened this post quoting Strauss about the music. Maybe it’s a good reminder that we can romanticize our own lives, and treat our daily struggles and interactions as being significant enough to be depicted with such lavishness. And that lavishness is why I enjoy this work, and many others by Strauss which I’m ok with admitting are “second rate” (as he said of himself, “I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.”) because of the shear sounds, textures, and colors he creates with the orchestra. Hans Richter poked fun at the baby’s depictions in this piece with “All the cataclysms of the downfall of the gods in burning Valhalla do not make a quarter of the noise of one Bavarian baby in his bath.” The intense orchestral noise here, the over-abundance, is what brings me back to Strauss again and again. I especially love the last five minutes of the finale, where the themes come back with more extravagant orchestration, and with a nod toward Haydn and Beethoven’s musical humor, the piece refuses to end!

Movements:

1. Introduction and development of principal themes

2. Scherzo

3. Adagio

4. Finale

TheBBC Merlin SountrackhadNO RIGHT to go that hard.

Listen to this! 2:10 - 2:41 of ‘Merlin buries lancelot’ has me in literal CHILLS. The grief and loss and magic and love that crescendo conveys is just so extraordinary I have to go and be alone for a while.