#symphony orchestra

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

Brahms-Symphony no. 3 in F Major(1884)

Despite how often people say Brahms was a conservative (which is true to a point), I think a lot of people underestimate his intensity of expression. The volume, bombast, and sometimes theatrical or operatic drama, are all underscored by the more traditional minded attitude toward structure and making sure the musical components are “functioning” in a logical way. Take the old form, and make something new out of it. Brahms had preferred that view to the newer Romantic school of thought favoring free-form and new forms created by the musical ideas themselves. Because of that, Brahms will always be the old scruffy severe German looking down at you from his wizened beard. Tangential, but I’ve talked with people who don’t like Brahms and they seem to come from this popular image: “Old fashioned”, dull, too theoretical, no good melodies, and (one extreme opinion) not truly “artistic”. But if we ignore the baggage of academicism and the symphony as a serious genre for developing complex musical thoughts, we should be thrown at the edge of our seats from the sound of the orchestra, and the long emotional melodies that people say aren’t there. I’ll take a moment to be more personal: I was surprised to find out that I’d made blog posts about the other three Brahms symphonies, but not this one. It was the first one that I fell in love with way back in high school. I remember listening to it and imagining knights in armor and large gothic castles. Brahms would turn in his grave. I got the idea from the bold and majestic opening movement. It begins with a statement of F-Ab-F, standing for Brahms motto “Frie aber froh”, Free but Happy. Somewhat leaning toward the 19th century trend of cyclical works, this symphony’s opening idea comes back in later movements as well. The motto of free but happy seems to radiate strongest in this opening movement. My favorite moment here is when the music quiets down a bit and teh flutes and bassoons play a an arabesque-like wavy melody over the strings fragmenting the same material, growing into a loud and stormy proclamation with chromatic lines (a very “Romantic” sound from a ‘Classicist”). The andante builds out of a chorale theme introduced in the winds. This more pastoral sound reminds us that this was a “vacation” work written while he was staying by the Rheine in Wiesbaden. The next movement, despite the unassuming title ‘poco allegretto’, has one of the more gorgeous melodies Brahms had written. It sings out of the cello and is punctuated by longing harmonies. Typical of Brahms, these harmonies are written out through counterpoint of fragments based off the contour of the melody. The last movement brings back the heaviness of the opening through a modified sonata. In the minor, it opens with a long and somewhat bouncy melody that could be like a Bach fugue subject. The music builds up energy into more drama, before shifting right into the “happy” counter melody. You could imagine this theme coming back with golden brass chorales. Instead, despite the dizzying effects done with the themes, and the noisy development that doesn’t let up in tension, the piece starts to sizzle up in agitated strings. A soft chorale brings back the opening motif, and then the symphony sighs away into a soft F major chord.

Movements:

1. Allegro con brio
2. Andante
3. Poco allegretto
4. Allegro - Un poco sostenuto