44 2014 Program Notes, Book 3
Friday, June 27 and Saturday, June 28, 2014
For Salomon’s 1792 concerts, which ran from February 17th to May 18th, Haydn
devised four new symphonies — Nos. 93, 94 (“Surprise”), 97 and 98. The Symphony
No. 98 in B-flat major was begun the previous summer at Roxford, the estate of
the banker Nathaniel Brassey near Hertingfordbury in Hertfordshire, and completed
in London sometime before its premiere at Salomon’s concert on March 2, 1792.
The Symphony’s reception by the London press and public, as was almost invariable
for Haydn’s new works, was rapturous. “One of the richest treats of the season,”
exclaimed the
Morning Herald
. “One of the grandest compositions we ever
heard,” added the
Morning Chronicle
. “It was loudly applauded; the first and last
movements were encored.” Salomon and Haydn repeated the work at their concert
the following week, and offered it yet again on April 13th. Haydn included it on his
Vienna concerts in December 1793 to benefit the widows and orphans of deceased
members of the
Tonkünstler Societät
, the city’s musicians union.
Haydnhad long labored tobring formal and thematic unity tohis large instrumental
compositions, and the Symphony No. 98 binds together the slow introduction and
the sonata-form main body of the first movement by beginning each section with
the same arch-shape motive — foreboding and chromatic in the introduction,
playful and diatonic as the main theme. Haydn’s mastery of motivic development
— of extrapolating a logical, organic, balanced, pleasing movement from the
permutations of a few pregnant melodic cells — is abundantly demonstrated by the
rest of the movement, nowhere with more inventiveness and expressive power than
in the dramatic central development section, which Haydn authority H.C. Robbins
Landon said assumed “the proportions of an intellectual struggle.”
Mozart died in Vienna on December 5, 1791, and Haydn was stunned by news of
the passing of his friend and colleague when word of the tragedy reached London.
He seems to have translated both his sorrow and his admiration into the somber
and dignified music of the B-flat Symphony’s
Adagio
, whose form and passionate
chromatic harmonies are a tribute to the emotional world and the characteristic
techniques of Mozart’s mature works. The
Menuet
stands at the end of a historical
evolution for which Haydn himself was largely responsible — the development
of a little dance form of courtly elegance into a movement of symphonic breadth
and cogent expression. Formal balance and instrumental contrast are provided
by the central trio, based on a charming melody led by the bassoon. The finale,
a full-fledged sonata form rather than one of the lighter rondo types that Haydn
so often used to close his symphonies, is music of both wit and seriousness, the
complementary emotional states that have been evoked throughout the Symphony.
Haydn, however, was not a man of morbid sensibilities, either in his personality or
in his music, so the dashing coda contains a delightful surprise, a tinkling ribbon of
arpeggios that the composer himself would have played on the keyboard with which
he bolstered the orchestra at all his London performances.
