PROGRAMME NOTES

written by JASPER CROONEN

Joseph Haydn Symphony No. 67 in F major, Hob. I:67 (1779)
Jean-Philippe Rameau Les Boréades (suite), RCT 31 (1763)
Joseph Haydn Symphony No. 60 in C major, ‘Il Distratto’, Hob. I:60 (1774)

[all programme notes]

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30.11.2024 FLAGEY BRUSSELS

Prima la musica e poi le parole ...

… First the music and then the words, announced composer Antonio Salieri in the title of his opera. In reality, it often happens somewhat differently. Certainly in the second half of the eighteenth century, an interesting cocktail of developments ensured that the theatre of the spoken word in Western Europe became increasingly popular.

Sovereigns had more theatres built, which were also visited by an ever-growing middle class. That new public were not so keen on the melancholy, allegorical plays so beloved by the nobility. They wanted to be entertained. And so contemporary tastes increasingly evolved in the direction of comedy acting. In the meantime a number of technical developments took place in the theatrical world, such as hidden stage lighting. And the increasing professionalisation of companies even led to the first superstars in the acting sector.

A powerbroker like Jean-Philippe Rameau felt the pressure of that changing taste at the end of his career. In the footsteps of Jean-Baptiste Lully, Rameau had modernised the megalomaniac musical tragedies and the pompous opéra-ballets of the French court, but in the last decade of his life the composer hardly wrote any more drama scores, surpassed as he was in popularity by the upcoming opéra-comique. Les Boréades, one of the few operas that he did write in that period, was never performed in his lifetime. It was not until 1982, more than two hundred years after Rameau's death, that the scenic premiere took place.

Yet the suite that was put together afterwards from parts of Les Boréades shows how ornate the music is. Even without actors, the essence of the plot and the main characters comes through. In Les Boréades the female protagonist Alphise marries one of the descendants of Boreas, the god of the north wind. Rameau therefore puts a lot of emphasis on rendering the sound of storms and hurricanes. For instance, he uses – like Vivaldi in the Four Seasons – incredibly fast scales to mimic the roaring, or the piccolo plays a rippling melody to suggest a light breeze. A wind machine is even added to the arsenal of the percussion player; this consists of a wooden drum with a silk cloth that sounds like wind blowing when you rotate the instrument.

But Rameau didn't limit himself to composing the wind. He also uses orchestral colours to frame scenes from the story. One of the clearest examples of this is his combination of horns and clarinets in the overture. This previously seldom heard combination serves as the introduction to the first act, a hunting scene. Because of the way in which Rameau combines the pastoral clarinet with the military brass, the combination of these two instruments would in later centuries become synonymous with hunting scenes.

In the court of Prince Nicholas Jozef Esterházy, a certain Joseph Haydn had been following the evolutions in the theatre world with a great deal of interest. In 1766, the composer had been able to obtain a position as kapellmeister there. Until 1790 he would write pretty much all his music in service of the nobility. When Nicholas engaged a theatre company every summer from 1769 onwards, Haydn was therefore left with little choice but to offer his services for the stage. Thus, he wrote fifteen operas for the court, and when the prince brought in a permanent opera company from 1770 onwards, Haydn acted as its de facto director for more than a decade.

From 1772, when the famous impresario Carl Wahr was the summer attraction at the Esterházy court on a number of occasions, this resulted in a lot more music. Press articles from that time show that Hayden’s theatrical output was not limited to opera. For instance, the Pressburger Zeitung writes, ‘[...] Herr Kapellmeister Joseph Haydn. This amazing composer recently also wrote original music for Herr Wahr’s production of the comedy Der Zerstreute, which is regarded by experts as a masterpiece. Here, as expected in a musical comedy, you get a sense of the same frivolous spirit that embodies all Haydn’s works.’ In honour of a visit by the French ambassador Louis René Édouard de Rohan, Haydn and Wahr collaborated again on a production of Die Jagdlust, also a light-footed comedy.

But the incidental music that Haydn wrote for theatre plays has not been handed down to us. At least not in the usual way. They were not distilled into suites, rather the melodies were recycled into two of his symphonies. For Symphony No. 60, we know that thanks to one of Haydn’s own letters. Years after the premiere of the play, the composer contacted an oboist friend. ‘Would you be so kind as to send the old symphony DIE⁠ ZERSTREUTE at the first available opportunity, because Her Majesty the Empress has expressed a desire to hear this old chestnut.’ In the archives of the Esterházy family, historians did indeed find a ‘Sinfonia in C... per la commedia intitolata Il Distratto’, which was later classified as Haydn’s No. 60.

For Symphony No. 67, musicologist Christian Moritz-Bauer pointed to ‘associations [...] between the comedy of Collé and the multi-part theatre music [....] in one of the symphonies of Haydn from the 1770s – associations of various kinds that theatre audiences could observe, decode and, using their own imagination, translate into new content that the action on stage interpreted, anticipated or even narrated in fresh form.’

A whole narrative in notes

But what exactly are those associations? How are those two plays interpreted in the symphonic music? As with Rameau, in Die Jagdlust Heinrich des Vierten – and therefore in Haydn’s No. 67 – a hunting party appears. Here again, the choice of instruments plays an essential role. The presence of the horns again depicts the scene for the listener, and even when the brass is not playing, the strings taken over a military motif that is typical for the cornet.

But Haydn also sets the plot to music in a somewhat subtler way. Thus he plays a refined contrapuntal game in the adagio movement by making full use of pauses whereby the melodic lines almost seem to be hiding, just like the eponymous king in the play who also keeps himself concealed.

In Symphony No. 60, there is a much more pronounced connection with the play. Haydn opens his score with abrupt signal chords. These no doubt once served to keep the audience quiet. Throughout the work, Haydn also ensures that the musicians seem to be effectively distratto. There is a passage that has to be played ‘perdendosi’, as if they have lost their way. Right at the end, in the clamour towards the final bars, the musicians – just like the protagonist – again forget exactly where they are and where they are headed, and they start tuning their instruments again, as if they are only now going to start the piece.

It's of course just a fraction of the narrative force of these parts. Each one of them is packed with this kind of this cleverness, which shows that something as abstract as music can depict more than you would originally think possible. It is music that also tells an entire story without actors. Or, as a YouTube reaction to Symphony No. 60 best sums it up: ‘This is not a symphony but more of an essence of an opera.’