Haydn Symphony Number 93, in D Major

After scribbling a bit on Haydn Rides Again, a reader wrote to me about how
he felt there was a real Haydn revival going on.  Good to hear that others
are coming back from the dead, because Haydn's music certainly is in good
health.  But then Haydn's music is the kind of witty entertainment that is
meant to revive the spirits after a difficult day...

The chinese use the characters for "large" and "small" to designate "major"
and "minor" keys.  In some ways, few composers fit this view of Major and
Minor as well as Haydn, his D Major symphony has an almost coplandesque
expanse of harmonic space.

But this is Haydn at work, and Haydn at the very end of his career, and the
top of his form, even before the opening chords have died away, Haydn gives
us the kernel of the movement, a melody, which at first seems to be merely
a falling figure, which then gives way to what would be a contrapunctal
ornament - except it is in the middle of a bar.  It then appears offset
in the consequent measures.

To understand why this is important remember that Haydn, and his era
composed in ever larger blocks.  A measure joined with one or two others
became the first part of a phrase, the first part was a statement, and the
second a consequent - an answer.  A phrase was followed by another which
supplied an answer.

These could be very greatly contrasting - as with the surprise symphonies
contrasting of forte and pianismo, or Beethoven's later rhythmic hammering
of the opening bars of the fifth symphony with its lyrical second theme.
Or they could be quite close together.  The challenge in the first case is
to produce unity, the second diversity.

This little figure rests on the strong chordal part of the first measure,
and the lyrical turn already built into the second measure.  It is also
piano - telling us, after the fact, that the opening chords were not
introductory, but really the first statement of the forte idea, and these
bars are consequent to them.  For a counter example, consider the opening
bars of Eroica, which open with chords, but the statement afterward is
strong and forte, and clearly makes the chords a mere rising of the
curtain.  This is important to Haydn's style, we often know, only after
the fact, what we just heard means.  But we should be used to that - how
often does one hear someone speak, and only then parse the meaning?

But here we have an effect - the first time the forte melody is played is
*after* the piano idea, even though the forte section has been played
first.

Here Haydn uses the introduction to contrast a forte and piano idea, the
forte idea rushes to its climax - and the allegro assai section begins.
Introductions sometimes have no close relationship to what follows.  And
at first it is hard to hear any, until we realise that the first phrase is
really the forte idea we had been hearing - played first.  Haydn has begun
a shell game.  By making the opening chords the first forte statement, he
had an excuse not to put the melody in it.

So here is the allegro, and we hear the forte idea first.  Then we hear
a wavering turn which takes only a moment to realise as the piano idea,
inverted.

And then, somehow, it seems he sets both of these things aside, in that
off handed way Bach might set something aside, and turns to the rest of the
exposition being a simple repeated scalar figure, a figure which muscularly
roars up the strings and into the winds.  A careful listener might realise
that Beethoven would cull much for his funeral march movement in the third
symphony from Haydn.  And we get a repeat.

Repeats mean something somewhat different to a classicist than they
would to the more academically minded 19th century.  To the 19th century
commentator, a repeat was a formal requirement, laid down by practice of
the previous masters.  It might seem that in the 18th century this was
merely elaboration of the aria forms that the symphony was a prodigal
descendant of.  But in the 18th century, points of demarkation, boundary,
articulation, were everything.  Symphonies were like plays, with scenes,
and how one moved from one scene to another was important.  The fluid
interchange that more tragedy minded composers would have was asbent.
Instead the scene must change, and both slying and completely.  And
boundaries were the ways one made this happen, a sharp boundary made
whatever flowed over that boundary important.  How to tell the audience
where the boundary was? Tell them, play up to it, return, and then when
they hear difference - they know they have reached the boundary.

The exposition is concerned with one thing, and one thing only - proving to
us that the seemingly muscular scale theme is really a symphonic pants role
- that underneath this is really the turn we heard before.  He does this by
putting a turn into the scale figure.  18 times in the first section of the
exposition we hear the scale with a turn in it.  Haydn's shell game has
turned piano into forte, and shown that forte is really piano in disguise.
In an era where almost every successful play or opera was comedy, and
almost every comedy turned on mistaken identity or cross dressing - and
both usually, this is no small thing.

The largo adds one more bit to haydn's quest for unity in this symphony.
In the early introduction, underneath the turning figure, the harmony used
a rhythmic stutter, a stutter that Haydn scrupulously avoids for the rest
of the first movement.  At the opening of the cantible second movement,
it is back, and carries the whole of the accompanying figure, as the
baritonish bassoon warbles out his melody to be joined by the rest of the
winds.

Perhaps Haydn could seem naive to the 19th century - Hoffman, Schumann and
Wagner all commented as much.  But this scarcely seems credible.  Instead,
with Talleyrand-like calculation he carefully laiden what seemed a throw
away moment with introduction of important characters that would carry the
music and appear over and over again.  Instead Haydn is perhaps the 18th
century equivelant of the good old boy country lawyer from North Carolina
who was also phi beta kappa at harvard law.

Stirling Newberry
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http://www.mp3.com/ssn