a cello concerto
“Portrait of Marquise de Pompadour”
__________
Joseph Haydn, 1732 to 1809, who preceded and outlived
Mozart, 1756 to 1791, was also an older contemporary of
the more imperious Beethoven, 1770 to 1827
Mozart, 1756 to 1791, was also an older contemporary of
the more imperious Beethoven, 1770 to 1827
of the three Haydn is the most pleasant, polite, courtly,
witty, elegant, congenial, the musical equivalent of, say,
more restrained sensuality
his audience, and indeed his sponsors, were aristocrats,
his music makes no political, emotional, ideological
demands, it is meant merely to delight, which it does
in spades
one of his symphonies, the number 45, for instance, loses
one of his symphonies, the number 45, for instance, loses
instrumentalists one at a time in its final movement until
two only remain, Haydn himself and the concertmaster,
the orchestra had been wanting to go home but had been
longer than anyone expected, each one, according to
instructions in the score, was to put out the candle on
his music stand, in Vienna, incidentally, not one of
them of course was a woman, then was to leave the
shrinking stage, the not inconsiderate count let them
scurry the very next day
Mozart is more spontaneous, less academic than Haydn,
playful, unaffected, less inhibited, younger, by very
definition therefore less refined, more maybe, as a
consequence, unintentionally magical
Beethoven meanwhile is a quantum leap from their
Classicism, which is to say the musical groundwork
for our epoch set down by both those other
foundational pillars, into Romanticism, unleashing
upon his forebears’ firm structural, Classical, base
his more humanist, less formalized, view of the
emotions, paving the way, for instance, blazing a
very trail for, among others, its later towering
figure, Chopin
here is Haydn’s Cello Concerto no 1 in C major, written
in 1761, Eve-Marie Caravassilis plays the cello, Patrick
Botti conducts the Concilium Musicum de Paris in the
Church of St-Catherine of Hungary in Paris, all of these
to me unknown, August 10, 2011, just last year
I was not unimpressed
note the consistency throughout of the pace, and the
courtly discretion ever, in even the nimble, never
boisterous or brash, concluding, for instance, presto,
pithy, pert, but always peremptorily polite, it would
never come crashing down
what Revolution, it assumes, what 1789, let’s party
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