Explore the Score. Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Symphony no. 45 in F-sharp minor, HOB I:45 “Der Abschied” (“The Farewell”)

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Symphony no. 45 in F-sharp minor, HOB I:45 “Der Abschied” (“The Farewell”)

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Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Symphony no. 45 in F-sharp minor, HOB I:45 “Der Abschied” (“The Farewell”)

Imagine for a moment that you’re hearing this work not tonight, on the 11th of October, 2017 here in beautiful Great Malvern Priory, but instead, are hearing it in one of the dozens of early performances it received across Austria following its premiere in 1772. As a thought experiment, imagine you are hearing this work in Graz in 1774.

The programme booklet for such a performance would surely be very different in content from what you might expect today. First of all, at that time this symphony would not have had its now-ubiquitous title, “Der Abschied” or “The Farewell.” There was no such title until sometime in the mid1880’s. And the story most classical music fans have heard about how Haydn wrote the piece as a musical plea for a long overdue vacation for the musicians at Esterháza was still completely unknown.

Instead, your programme note writer in 1774 might have pointed out it was, to the best of his knowledge, the first time a symphony had ever been written in F-sharp minor. He may even have known that this was such an unusual key that Haydn had to ask the blacksmith at Esterháza to make some extensions for the horn players’ G crooks to stretch them down by a semitone.

The programme note writer would have no-doubt described Haydn as a leading composer of the avant-garde: a man who, having codified two hugely important new genres (the string quartet and symphony) had proceeded to explore the possibilities of those genres through a staggering range of experimentation and invention. He would tell you that Herr Haydn’s most recent symphonies had been written for the magnificent court orchestra at Esterháza Palace, believed by many to not only the greatest orchestra in the world but possibly the greatest orchestra that had ever been. Hey might well tell you that Haydn’s most recent work was believed to be highly influenced by the literary Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement, an aesthetic movement which stressed art which would express the ultimate extremes of human emotion and experience.

He might then go on to explain that this F-sharp minor Symphony, Haydn’s 45th, seemed to many critics to represent a new extreme in musical expression- possibly the darkest, most turbulent, most bizarre symphony that had been written up to that time.

The first movement would be shocking enough for the use of the key of F-sharp minor as its home key, but throughout the musical language is unusually fierce. One passage in the early part of the movement includes a sequence of clusters- three stepwise pitches stuck next to each other. At the end of each part, the dissonance partially eases only for the whole group to sink down to a new cluster a tone lower. Most shocking of all, however, is the moment midway through the movement when the music lands with a lurch on an F-sharp Major chord and then collapses into silence. Silence is to play a huge role in this strange new symphony. When the music comes edging out of this moment of stasis, it does so in the remote key of D major. This is music of a different world, let alone a different symphony, but it tails off into uncertainty before the terrifying F-sharp minor music of the opening returns.

The second movement, in A major, is a slow movement as beautiful and moving as it is enigmatic. Again and again, Haydn strains the harmonic language of the day to the breaking point. Again and again, the music seems to dissipate into atoms only to pull itself reluctantly out of stasis. The muted violins give the entire thing an otherworldly atmosphere. This is music that is equal parts strange, sad and seductive.

The third movement is a Menuet in the most vertiginous of all keys- F-sharp major, a key rare as to require the Esterhazy blacksmiths to retrofit the horn crooks. It begins with disconcerting harmonic lurch, jumping without warning in the third bar from F-sharp major to D-major. The Trio section quotes one of Haydn’s favourite Gregorian chants.

Remembering for the moment that you’re listening in 1774, this symphony will, in all likelihood, have already stretched your listening resources like few works you’ve ever heard with its severity of tone, its strangeness of form and its peculiarity of language. And yet, it is the Finale which will completely surpass all that we have heard so far. It begins back in the world of Sturm und Drang, back in bleak F-sharp minor. It is a nervous and angry Presto– as fast as possible, full of fire and uncertainty. This is music that drives headlong and wild-eyed into an abyss, and then….

A moment of silence… And then a door opens into another world. Suddenly, we’re in A major, the key of the slow movement, and the tempo lilts in a gently pensive Adagio. It unfolds with bittersweet serenity, and the violence and madness of the previous 25 minutes begins to recede into memory. For a moment, the second horn and first oboe take centre stage, and then, after a phrase, they stop playing and leave the stage. The composer has written “nichts mehr” (nothing more) in their part). As they leave, the music restarts with now the first horn, second oboe and bassoon taking their solo turns, then, again, they finish their phrase and leave. What sort of theatre of the absurd are we witnessing? Is the composer a madman? Is this some kind of bizarre new manifestation of musical modernism at its worst?

And what next? A double bass solo? What kind of madman thinks of such a thing. No other composer will be so rash as to include something so strange in a symphony until Gustav Mahler over 100 years later. But this solo does something very strange- it takes us on a journey from the A major we have grown used to back to the strange and uncomfortable key of F-sharp Major. The bassist leaves, then others. Soon even the conductor abandons his post- not that we’re sure that even makes any difference. And as it unfolds, we perhaps find ourselves both perplexed and moved. As we watch the departure of player after player from the stage with Haydn’s bittersweet Adagio as a soundtrack we may find in it a powerful reminder of souls departing, of Abschied (Farewell) as something deeper than simply leaving our workplace for a vacation.

— Kenneth Woods