Michael Haydn's Symphony No. 39 in C major, Perger 31, Sherman 39, MH 478, written in
Salzburg
Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label= Austro-Bavarian) is the fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872.
The town is on the site of the Roman settlement of ''Iuvavum''. Salzburg was founded ...
in 1788, is the last
C major symphony he wrote, the sixth of his final set of six symphonies.
The symphony is scored for 2
oboe
The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range.
...
s, 2
bassoons, 2
horn
Horn most often refers to:
*Horn (acoustic), a conical or bell shaped aperture used to guide sound
** Horn (instrument), collective name for tube-shaped wind musical instruments
*Horn (anatomy), a pointed, bony projection on the head of various ...
s, 2
trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
s,
timpani
Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally ...
and
strings. The edition by
H. C. Robbins Landon for Verlag Doblinger has the cellos and basses on the same
staff for most of the work even though the cellos occasionally are independent of the bassoons and basses in the first movement. Close to the beginning of the third movement it becomes necessary to split the cellos and basses on to different staves as the cellos switch to
tenor clef
A clef (from French: 'key') is a musical symbol used to indicate which notes are represented by the lines and spaces on a musical stave. Placing a clef on a stave assigns a particular pitch to one of the five lines, which defines the pit ...
and double the violas, leaving the bass to the bassoons and basses.
The three movements are:
#
Allegro con spirit
#
Andante
Andante may refer to:
Arts
* Andante (tempo), a moderately slow musical tempo
* Andante (manga), ''Andante'' (manga), a shōjo manga by Miho Obana
* Andante (song), "Andante" (song), a song by Hitomi Yaida
* "Andante, Andante", a 1980 song by A ...
, in
G major
G major (or the key of G) is a major scale based on G, with the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Its key signature has one sharp. Its relative minor is E minor and its parallel minor is G minor.
The G major scale is:
Notable composi ...
#
Fugato
In music, a fugue () is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (a musical theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and which recurs frequently in the co ...
.
Molto vivace
The first movement is notable for its use of horns in G instead of the usual horns in C (compare Haydn's earlier C major symphonies and those of his brother Joseph), so that the horns can participate in the
harmonization
In music, harmonization is the chordal accompaniment to a line or melody: "Using chords and melodies together, making harmony by stacking scale tones as triads".
A harmonized scale can be created by using each note of a musical scale as a root ...
of ii chords. The music begins straightaway with a
triadic theme
Theme or themes may refer to:
* Theme (arts), the unifying subject or idea of the type of visual work
* Theme (Byzantine district), an administrative district in the Byzantine Empire governed by a Strategos
* Theme (computing), a custom graphical ...
and bass on the
beat
Beat, beats or beating may refer to:
Common uses
* Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area
** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols
** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men
* Battery (c ...
, offset by half-beat
syncopation in the second violins and violas.
For the
recapitulation, the horns change to horns in C. There are even more horn
crook
Crook is another name for criminal.
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* Crook, County Durham, England, a town
* Crook, Cumbria, England, village and civil parish
* Crook Hill, Derbyshire, England
* Crook, Colorado, United States, a ...
changes in store for the players: in the second movement, the first horn switches to horn in E while the second player switches to horn in D, "a clever use ... to increase the range of notes available on instruments without valves." Robbins Landon also points out that in the Andante of this symphony of Haydn's uses the low C of the second trumpet, something
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition r ...
also did later when he wrote his
Symphony No. 41 in C major (also written in 1788).
The last movement is a vigorous fugato, something else this work has in common with Mozart's Symphony No. 41 and Haydn's own
Symphony No. 28 in C major which Mozart certainly studied. Unlike the "Jupiter" Symphony, in this symphony the fugal theme is at its first instance accompanied by its usual countersubject:
Robbins Landon speculates that Mozart also studied Haydn's No. 39 before writing his No. 41, since he "often requested his father
Leopold
Leopold may refer to:
People
* Leopold (given name)
* Leopold (surname)
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional characters
* Leopold (''The Simpsons''), Superintendent Chalmers' assistant on ''The Simpsons''
* Leopold Bloom, the protagonist o ...
to send him the latest fugue that Haydn had written." (Robbins Landon, 1967) Whether Mozart knew Haydn's later
C major symphony has not been proven conclusively by historical means, but
Alfred Einstein ranks among the convinced, because of comparisons of the music. As in the first movement, in the last movement the two horns again begin in G and switch to in C for the recapitulation.
According to
Leopold Mozart, Michael Haydn considered continuo to be essential even for his most fully instrumented works.
[C. Sherman, Foreword to score of Sinfonia in F, Perger 30 Vienna: Doblinger K. G. (1988)] Yet only one recording of Symphony No. 39 uses harpsichord continuo, Pál Németh with
Capella Savaria; the bass line for the figured bass realization is the bassoons' and not the celli's. Neither Johannes Goritzki nor Hans-Peter Frank have continuo in their recordings.
Notes
References
* H. C. Robbins Landon, Foreword to score of Sinfonia in C, Perger 31 Vienna: Doblinger K. G. (1967)
* C. Sherman, "Johann Michael Haydn" in ''The Symphony: Salzburg, Part 2'' London: Garland Publishing (1982): lxviii
* Charles H. Sherman and T. Donley Thomas, ''Johann Michael Haydn (1737 - 1806), a chronological thematic catalogue of his works''. Stuyvesant, New York: Pendragon Press (1993)
{{portal bar, Classical music, Music
Symphony 39
Compositions in C major
1788 compositions