Sunday, September 12, 2010

He works hard for the money...

Oh Papa, we hardly knew ye.

We had our second afternoon of the Haydn project, and played through two more in the "berühmte" quartets.  In the Peters edition, they are the 2nd and 3rd quartets in the book, but the first one we played was Opus 9 number 2 and the second one was Opus 77 number 1 (David played first violin on the Op. 77 no. 1).  The first quartet was more of a violin piece with stringed accompaniment: the 1st violin had a ton of beautiful music, and the 2nd violin, viola and cello (yours truly) were there to make the 1st violin part sound even more beautiful.  This is not to say that it was boring for the rest of us, as can sometimes happen, especially for the viola and cello parts.  Once we played Haydn's Opus 1 number 1, and it was dreadfully boring for the bottom two instruments.  Del (our violist) and I basically had the same part, an octave apart, and it was straight eighth notes all the way through with little in the way of variation.  Yawn.  Next time something like that comes around, we'll take turns playing, and the other will go out for a drink.  Sorry Papa!  I've included a selection of the first page of that quartet - the viola and cello parts are the last two lines, and you'll note a similarity of the notes, whereas the top two lines have a bit (just a weensy bit) more variation.

Opus 1 number 1


The Opus 9 number 2 has a bit more for the entire quartet to do, but as I mentioned earlier, it is still really a 3 instrument accompaniment for the first violin.  Here's a link to a Youtube video of the Opus 9 number 2.  It's only the first movement.

The Opus 77 number 1 is an entirely different animal.  Quartet.  Whatever.  The difference between the two piece of music could not be more extreme, unless you were talking about two different composers.  So you can compare, here's a video of the 3rd movement of the Opus 77 number 1.  This quartet is much more of a quartet, in the sense that each instrument has a distinct part that comes together with the other three to create something entirely different than the sum of its parts.  Each part is integral to the whole, and if one drops out (say if they lose their place, which we of course, never do, no, not us), there is a definite gap in the music.
  It just sounds wrong without all of us, and you wouldn't see that with the earlier quartets.  It's clear that Haydn was figuring his way around the medium, and by his later years, he had clearly figured it out.

We've been having a lot of conversation about Haydn himself - the man.  We each know snippets about him, and we all know that he's composed an awful lot of music.  What we found today is that we don't really know much more than that.  I've been doing a little bit of research, and here's some of what I found:


125 symphonies
26 operas (11 are lost)
77 (no, 68! no, 55, no, 90!) string quartets (this has been an issue, as you can see)
47 piano sonatas
4 oratorios

Plus a bunch of other stuff.
He did most of his composing working for Prince Esterhazy, where in addition to writing music, he also had to rehearse and coordinate performances.  There were supposed to be two instrumental concerts and two opera performances a week.  A week!  And he was expected to compose a big chunk of that himself.  Yikes!  And I complain about the number of essays I have to grade.

1 comment:

  1. It's really fun to work your way through the development of a composer with him, starting with his earliest works and working up through his discoveries, isn't it? I had been told that he composed a lot of easy early ensemble works for Esterhazy to play in, on the baryton, kinda like a small cello, who wasn't a very accomplished musician. Wonder if that's a true story?

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