Franz Joseph Haydn: Symphonies Nos 1-20

A recent reading of a biography of the remarkable composer Charles Ives by the equally distinctive composer Henry Cowell and his wife Sidney, included some interesting perspectives by Ives about the "pretty music" made by composers of bygone eras.  This also came out in a reading several years ago of Harry Partch's Genesis of a Music.  In both cases, highly idiosyncratic composers seeking to exercise their creativity in breaking molds and expanding ideas outside traditional areas of melody, harmony and time offered pointed criticisms of "pretty music."

For this listener, music is usually about mood.  In other words, what do we feel like listening to today based on a number of factors?  Where Ives, Partch and many others felt the need to make a clean break, at least theoretically, from their precursors, there may be times for this blogger in which their music, say, Ives' "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven" or Partch's "The Bewitched" sounds really appealing.

Then again, there are those times when "pretty music" is best suited for a certain frame of mind.  As often as we may have heard Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and other purveyors of "pretty music," those composers and their works just happen to fit a mood at a given time.

The reasons are not entirely clear from a technical standpoint to this amateur, but the music of Franz Joseph Haydn is particularly appealing a great deal of the time. It stands to reason that his brilliance in perenially writing beautiful, flowing, lilting melodies with a steady and confident handling of harmony in a consistent and reliable sense of time make his music so attractive that it is easy to go back regularly to indulge in the richness and emotionally uplifting dynamics of his work.

An excellent presentation of the master's 104 symphonies is through the Esterhazy recordings by the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra led by conductor Adam Fischer on Nimbus Records.  The orchestra was built to play the composer's music with a conductor and performers deeply committed to performing these works with the passion and feel that shines through on these recordings.

The only reason that this initial set of the first numbered symphonies, which are not necessarily those in order of actual composition, though they are all early (meaning around 1760), is the subject of this post, rather than some other set in the series, is that, eventually, the whole run will be featured.

Basically, for this admirer, the work of Haydn is full of "pretty music" that will be uplifting at just about any time. As much as more atonal and dissonant work has interest, given the mood at the moment, it's hard to go wrong by listening to Haydn's symphonies at any time, especially when they are as well performed as they are by the orchestra on these recordings.

Charles Ives: An American Journey

Charles Ives was the head of a successful insurance agency in Connecticut who happened to also be a masterful composer, though this was largely unknown until the 1930s and afterward.  He produced a body of work through 1926 that was a striking combination of modern experimentalism and eclecticism with a timely concern for older American music traditions that were disappearing as American modernized, industrialized and urbanized.

It was not until he was in his early seventies that real recognition came, thanks for the tireless work of his admirer, the California composer Lou Harrison, who conducted a performance of Ives' Third Symphony, which was then given a Pulitzer Prize in 1947.  Ives gave Harrison half the money that came with the honor and waved off the attention.  Slowly, however, Ives' work began to be performed more often, mainly in Europe, although Michael Tilson Thomas, who has been the music director at the San Francisco Symphony since 1995, has been a champion of the composer.

Hence this interesting compilation that gives some idea of the vast range of types of music created by Ives from the 1890s to the mid-1920s.  Much of these have march-like qualities, not surprising since Ives' father was a band master and, during the Civil War, led a Union Army band.  A number of these are songs with vocals by baritone Thomas Hampson and they are redolent of Ives' fascination with everyday people and their lives.  One piece, "Charlie Rutlage: is about a cowboy; another evokes popular music played in what appears to be a small-town opera house; there is one about a circus band; a couple deal with the horrors of the First World War; and so on. 

The opening piece, "From the Steeples and the Mountains," has the soaring quality the title implies, but there are interesting contrasts between tolling bells and wild and wonderful brass playing.  The Things Our Fathers Loved," with its brief lyrics referencing small town bands, religion and patriotism, is a subtle and beautiful work.

The staggering "Three Places in New England" include a dreamy, atmospheric first section dedicated to a monument that commemorated a segregated black military unit in the Union Army during the Civil War; a wildly diverging second movement with dramatic shifts that almost seems like a travelogue through the bracing combination of traditional and new forms of music that Ives championed and which took its theme from the Revolutionary War.  The third returns to a quieter, stately mood with a chorus beautifully singing "The Housatonic at Stockbridge," which was inspired by a walk by the composer on his honeymoon along the titular river in Massachusetts.  This movement was initially instrumental, but Tilson Thomas recorded the choral element in the spirit of what Ives had done elsewhere by adding choral performance to instrumental works.

Other works include lyrics directly from Ives' childhood or are religious expositions with one of these based on the poet John Greenleaf Whittier or pay tribute, via the poem of Vachel Lindsay, to the founder of The Salvation Army (General William Booth.)  These are the kinds of themes that animated so much of Ives' work as he surveyed the landscape of American society through new, evocative forms of music fused with earlier styles.

The liners are very helpful in understanding the amazing breadth and depth of what Ives did in his three or so decades of active composition, with one written by Tilson Thomas and the other Jan Swafford.  To a novice like YHB, they were exceedingly helpful in identifying what motivated Ives in his fascinating work and this album is a remarkable survey of the long and diverse career of one of America's great musical masters.

Charles Ives:  An American Journey (RCA, 2002)

1.  From the Steeples and the Mountains  4:15
2.  The Things Our Fathers Loved  1:47
3.  The Pond (Remembrance)  1:42
4.  Memories  2:30
5.  Charles Rutlage  2:38
6.  The Circus Band  3:02
7-9.  Three Places in New England  18:19
10.  In Flanders Fields  2:41
11.  They Are There!  2:52
12.  Tom Sails Away  2:48
13.  Symphony No. 4—III: Fugue  6:38
14.  Psalm 100  1:35
15.  Serenity  2:00
16.  General William Booth Enters Into Heaven  5:42
17.  The Unanswered Question  6:19