Michael Haydn: Symphonies 34-39. Perfice Gressus Meos

Symphonies 34-39

by Haydn, Michael, 1737-1806.

Georgsmarienhütte, Germany: CPO (Classic Produktion Osnabrück), p1996.





No. 34 in E flat major (P. 26) (8:25) (1-3)

No. 35 in G major (P. 27) (6:28) (4-6)

No. 36 in B flat major (P. 28) (8:31) (7-9)

No. 37 in D major, P. 29 (8:43) (10-12)

No. 38 in F major (P. 30) (9:26) (13-15)

No. 39 in C major (P. 31) (11:33)(16-18)



Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss ; Johannes Goritzki, conductor.

(Johann) Michael Haydn (14 Sep 1737 - 10 Aug 1806)



Perfice gressus meos (19 and 20)



Composed: c. 1794



Librettist(s): Johann Michael Haydn



Ensemble: South-west German Philharmonic, Konstanz



Conductor: Mario Schwarz



Label: Hänssler



Catalogue Number: CD 98.432



Recording Location: St. Laurenzenkirche, St. Gallen



Recording Date: 2002



Mvt. 1 Perfice gressus meos (7'38'')

Judith Graf as (Soprano)

South-west German Philharmonic, Konstanz



Mvt. 2 Dominus firmamentum (2'13'')

Collegium Cantorum St. Gallen

South-west German Philharmonic, Konstanz















1. Life.

Michael Haydn was born in the village of Rohrau on the Leitha river, near the current border of Austria and Hungary. He went to Vienna at the age of eight and entered the choir school at the Stephansdom, where he will have participated in numerous performances of sacred works by the most prominent Viennese composers, especially the Kapellmeister, Georg Reutter (ii). By his 12th birthday he was earning extra money as a substitute organist at the cathedral and had, reportedly, performed preludes and fantasies of his own composition. About 1753 his voice broke and he was dismissed from the choir school. After this he probably had some affiliation with the local Jesuit seminary; a biographical sketch of 1808 notes that he ‘made rapid progress in Latin, … obtained familiarity with classical literature’, and Maximilian Stadler wrote that Haydn ‘continued to perform on the organ together with Albrechtsberger in the Jesuit church’ (c1816–25). Judging from a signed and dated score that he copied in 1757 of Fux's Missa di S Carlo (A-Wn), Haydn studied some of that composer's works during his formative Viennese years. The authors of the biographical sketch mention that he also studied works of Bach, Handel, Graun and Hasse. Stadler's history continues: ‘Even during [Michael Haydn's] student years he composed masses, litanies, hymns, Salve reginas etc., which, because of their correct setting and pleasing new taste, were taken in by everyone with great approval.’ The genres mentioned here correspond remarkably well to a repertory of works known from performance parts copied at abbeys and parish churches in Lower Austria and Moravia between 1759 and 1763.



The biographical sketch suggests that Haydn left Vienna for Grosswardein (now Oradea, Romania) about 1757, although there is no evidence of his arrival there before April 1760. Dittersdorf, who succeeded Haydn there in 1765, later noted in his autobiography (1801) that Patachich augmented the Hofkapelle to 34 musicians on Dittersdorf's arrival in 1765; the forces at Haydn's disposal would therefore have been relatively meagre. The festive Missa SS Cyrilli et Methodii (1758), one of few dated works composed before 1760, was probably not conceived for such modest forces. Haydn's known compositions for Grosswardein are small in proportion and simple in their orchestration. Taken together, the pre-Salzburg works represent a formidable accomplishment: 15 symphonies, 14 masses, six divertimentos for three string instruments, several wind partitas and a few concertos, as well as a number of settings of Latin texts for four-part chorus with orchestra.



Haydn was apparently back in the vicinity of Vienna in 1762: a concert programme for one of the Durazzo academies in that year mentions a horn concerto ‘de la Composition du S.r Michel Hayde’, and details survive of a lost wind partita (st59) bearing the inscription ‘Posonii 22 Xbris 762’. It was perhaps during this time that he came to the attention of Count Vinzenz Joseph Schrattenbach, the nephew of Sigismund Christoph, Archbishop of Salzburg, who, according to the biographical sketch, recommended that Haydn be offered a position in Salzburg. From the quantity of Haydn's music that was copied for performances in eastern Austria during the 1750s and 60s, it would seem that he was quite well known throughout the region.



The death of J.E. Eberlin in 1762 led to a reshuffling of the prominent musicians in Salzburg and eventually to Haydn's appointment as court Konzertmeister. Among his colleagues were Leopold Mozart, A.C. Adlgasser, G.F. Lolli and later W.A. Mozart. On 24 July 1763 some ‘Tafelmusique’ by him was performed, and on 14 August he officially assumed his new position, which involved playing the organ (his principal instrument) as well as the violin. From then until the death of Archbishop Schrattenbach late in 1771, Haydn composed predominantly dramatic works for the theatre of the Benedictine University; Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots (1767) was the result of a collaboration between Haydn, Adlgasser and the 11-year-old Mozart. Haydn and several other Salzburg musicians were in Vienna late in 1767 and there met the Mozarts. By mid-February he was back in Salzburg, and on 17 August 1768 he married Maria Magdalena Lipp (1745–1827), a singer in the Hofkapelle and daughter of the court organist, Franz Ignaz Lipp. The couple lived in an apartment owned by the Abbey of St Peter, for which Haydn composed a number of occasional works; he also performed on the organ there from time to time. The Haydns’ only child, Aloysia Josepha, was born in 1770, but died within a year.



Hieronymus, Count Colloredo, was enthroned as Prince-Archbishop in March 1772, and he immediately instituted tighter fiscal controls which greatly restricted the activities of the university theatre. It was closed permanently in 1778. However, Haydn apparently thrived during the early years of Colloredo's rule, and by 1777 his status in Salzburg was such that he was said to be a candidate for the post of Kapellmeister. It was probably no coincidence that rumours of certain weaknesses surfaced about this time. A planned trip to Italy probably never materialized because Haydn was promptly given the position of organist at the Dreifaltigkeitskirche when Adlgasser died suddenly on 22 December 1777. Bitter that the position was not given to his son, Leopold Mozart, who had previously praised his colleague, described Haydn as prone to heavy drinking and laziness. Haydn composed his best-known works between 1771 and 1777: the Requiem st155 (1771), the Missa S Hieronymi st254 (1777) and the offertories Tres sunt st183 (1772) and Lauda Sion st215 (?1775). In 1782 he assumed the position of court organist, not long after W.A. Mozart vacated it. On the 1200th anniversary of the archiepiscopate, in the same year, Colloredo published a pastoral letter, the first of a series of proclamations intended to simplify church services. In response, Haydn composed about 100 settings of Mass Propers in a simple homophonic style between late 1783 and 1791. He was also named as editor of a second Salzburg edition (1790) of Johann Kohlbrenner's German hymnal (originally published in Vienna in 1777).



During the 1780s, Haydn completed 20 symphonies, some of which achieved a modest circulation outside Salzburg. Writing from Vienna in 1784, Mozart expressed his astonishment at how quickly he was able to obtain copies of Michael Haydn’s most recent symphonies. A year later Artaria published editions of two symphonies (st384, 393). Many of Haydn's orchestral marches and minuet cycles date from these years too. In the field of chamber music, he composed five divertimentos for mixed ensembles between 1785 and 1790, but he did not pursue the string quartet as an elevated genre.



During the 1790s Haydn enjoyed an expanding sphere of influence as a teacher of composition. One of his pupils, G.J. Schinn, left Salzburg in 1808 to take up a position in the Munich Hofkapelle, where Haydn's Latin and German sacred music continued to be performed regularly throughout the 19th century. Anton Diabelli, a pupil and friend, was involved in the publication of many of Haydn's sacred works by the Viennese publishing firm that later bore his name. Sigismund Neukomm was a pupil of Haydn in the 1790s before going to Vienna, where he studied with Joseph Haydn, perhaps on Michael's recommendation. The young C.M. von Weber came to Haydn in 1797 and learnt the fundamentals of harmony and counterpoint from him; and Franz Schubert, though never one of his pupils, visited Haydn's grave in Salzburg and included words of admiration for him in a letter to his brother Ferdinand.



Late in his life, Haydn made two trips to Vienna. He set out on the first in August 1798 and had returned to Salzburg by early November. In January 1801 his apartment was plundered by French soldiers, and this was possibly a catalyst for the second trip. By September 1801 he was again in Vienna rehearsing a mass commissioned by Empress Maria Theresia (st796/797), who sang a solo part in a performance. In October the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported that Haydn was to serve as Kapellmeister to Prince Nicolaus Esterházy, a position that he evidently accepted but never actually filled. With the archbishop in exile, Haydn obtained a rise in salary from Archduke Ferdinand in 1803, and evidently entertained no further thoughts of moving. By April 1803 additional commissions for sacred works arrived from Vienna, and he completed a Te Deum for the empress (st829) in September 1803. Her request for a mass for Emperor Leopold's nameday (st837), however, took Haydn until December 1805 to fulfil, partly because of his recent induction into the Swedish Royal Academy of Music in 1803 and its commission not for new works but for scores of works already composed (Haydn's numerous copies of his own autograph scores remain in the library of the academy, S-Skma). On completing the mass, he began work on a requiem (st838), commissioned by the empress, but owing to his declining health he never finished it. Although he expected the coming spring to bring an improvement in his health, it did not; and he died, with friends and students at his bedside, on 10 August 1806.



2. Vocal works.

Haydn's sacred vocal music was viewed by most early 19th-century writers on the subject as superior to his instrumental and dramatic works. In a catalogue of his works (1814), his friend Rettensteiner described Haydn as ‘the great, unique, inimitable master in the church style’, possibly referring to his numerous contributions in the ‘new’ church style encouraged by the Austrian reformers of the late 18th century. E.T.A. Hoffmann even considered his church music superior to that of his brother Joseph. Like many 18th-century composers, Haydn cultivated the contrapuntal stile antico, especially in works for Lent and Advent. His setting of the gradual Christus factus est st38 and the Missa Crucis st56, both composed in Grosswardein in 1762, demonstrate the young composer's proficiency with Fuxian counterpoint. As late as 1796, Haydn still made use of stile antico in a collection of Mass Proper settings, In coena Domini ad missam st628. The staggered vocal entries at the opening of the Requiem of 1771 (st155) create a veiled reference to the austerity of Fuxian imitative counterpoint, one that must have impressed Mozart, who 20 years later opened his Requiem in similar fashion.



More prominent among Haydn's early sacred works are those in the florid Neapolitan style, in the spirit of Hasse and Caldara. Like his Viennese predecessors, he set each text in many sections, sometimes in a series of recitative–aria pairs concluding with a chorus. In the Mass Proper st48 a setting of the text ‘Vidi civitatem’ in recitative proceeds to the virtuoso aria ‘Caelestis inter caetus’, for soprano with clarino trumpets, strings and organ, which concludes with a relatively brief choral Alleluia. In an Advent offertory composed in 1765 in Salzburg, Ave Maria (st72), Haydn similarly recalls the florid Neapolitan style but integrates small choral passages into a single movement. Viennese concerted masses of the late Baroque in the so-called stile moderno were not unlike these Neapolitan offertories, especially in the solo numbers. Early in his career Haydn composed three such festive masses, which are steeped in the Viennese tradition of Reutter and Wagenseil: the Missa SS Trinitatis st1 (1754), Missa SS Cyrilli et Methodii st13 (1758), and Missa S Josephi st16 (c1754–7). As well as solo voices, chorus and the standard church trio of two violin parts, bass and figured organ part, Haydn included clarino trumpets and timpani; in the first two masses he added a viola part col basso, and in the latter two a pair of trombones that play with the inner parts of the chorus. The 15-movement Missa SS Cyrilli et Methodii, the largest mass Haydn composed, includes low trumpets (trombe) as well. The violin parts in Haydn's early masses, like those in other Austrian works, feature persistent semiquaver scale motion, and the Gloria and Credo sections conclude with large fugal movements. Obbligato instrumental solos are common in the Benedictus; an example is the extended organ solo in the Missa SS Trinitatis, which belongs to the same tradition as Joseph Haydn's Missa in honorem BVM (‘Great Organ Mass’, h XXII:4). Haydn recalled the majesty of these mid-century masses later in his career with the Requiem on the death of Archbishop Schrattenbach in 1771 (st155) and with the Missa a due cori composed for the Spanish court in 1786 (st422).



The stile antico and stile moderno represent two extremes in Haydn's vocal music. He cast most of his works from the early 1770s onwards in a simple, homophonic style, favouring the top voice. The phrases in these works tend to be shorter, the cadences well defined and the melodies predominantly diatonic with some rhythmic interest, but without intricacies. One may look to the German sacred arias of Eberlin and Adlgasser as possible forerunners of Haydn's cantabile style. His earliest known sacred German arias, O glorreiche Himmelssonne st168 and Grosse Frau, wir rufen Dich st169, date from the early 1770s, but in his own dramatic works from the 1760s and early 1770s, most of which are in German, the melodic, cadential and textural characteristics of the style are already present. In Haydn's contribution to the oratorio Der Kampf der Busse und Bekehrung st106, composed in 1768, for instance, one encounters numbers in the florid Neapolitan vein together with cantabile arias. (Indeed, it was not unusual for movements in both styles to be extracted from these dramatic works as Latin contrafacta and pressed into service as offertories.) A simple homophonic style prevails as well in Haydn's numerous graduals of the 1780s and early 1790s and in most of the partsongs for men's voices that occupied him during the 1790s. The German settings place him in a position of some significance in the histories of both German sacred music and German song.



3. Instrumental works.

Probably composed in the 1750s, the six divertimentos for two violins and bass (st5–10) are Haydn's contributions to the most prevalent category of chamber music in Austria from about 1750 to 1770. Crisp, rhythmic themes with an almost Baroque perpetual motion dominate many of the movements. All but one have four movements including a minuet and trio; st8 concludes with an alla breve fugue, and three of the trios are in the tonic minor of the preceding minuet, harking back to the partitas of Fux and Giuseppe Porsile. Haydn's early symphonies, too, favour the four-movement structure with minuet and trio. Among the sources of the eight surviving early symphonies, only one