2 of 9 out of 104: Michael Haydn's Symphony No. 2 in C major

To celebrate my new Smashwords book 104 Great Symphonies You Haven't Heard Yet, in which I list 104 great Symphonies outside the core repertoire of overplayed works and describe them in 104 words or less, I will be presenting in this blog a write-up on each of the first 9 Symphonies listed in the book with far more detail, and oriented more for musicologists and performers than for listeners. Today's installment is #2 in the list of 104.

Symphony No. 2 in C major, “The Baroque,” MH 37, Perger 2, Sherman 2

Scored for 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings. Written in Großwardein in 1761.

This is the very first Symphony of Michael Haydn’s that I studied. In some ways it’s more Baroque than Classical. The score puts the bassoons, cellos, basses and continuo (left hand) all on the same bass clef staff. I made my own figured bass realization of it, though I wouldn’t call it original composition by any stretch. For the unison passages that occur in the first and last movements, I simply have the right hand play those passages in octaves.

The way this Symphony starts it could very well be a Concerto Grosso: all at once all the instruments start off with a bang, with the brass presenting a dotted rhythm, the violins with their emphatic triple stops and the bass instruments engaged in a motor rhythm in eighth notes. This headlong rush, without any loss of momentum is an introduction to the first real melody, at measure 8. After scale passages for the violins and high soloistic passages for the brass, at measure 15 we get what will be a characteristic feature in most of Haydn’s later Symphonies: a unison passage for all or most of the orchestra. Here the unison passage arpeggiates the tonic chord for two measures before settling on the note G, at which point the oboes by themselves (assuming no figured bass) harmonize the dominant triad and the orchestra comes to rest on the first significant cadence and pause, giving the music more of a Classical (rather than Baroque) flavor. Continuing in the Classical vein, a graceful arpeggiation of the dominant triad  soon leads to trouble with the suggestion of G minor. The augmented sixth chords at measures 25 – 26 (these should be realized by the harpsichordist as German sixth chords at each occurrence) leads to a hollow cadence on D (which the harpsichordist could realize as a V of G major chord) and so the transition from C major to G major has been executed. The second subject group begins with a mostly stepwise theme. Things gets excited with the violins playing patterns of sixteenths derived from measure 3. This has the character of a codetta, and at measures 45 and 47 the brass section gets another group solo, these times answered by a unison melody in the next measure for the rest of the orchestra. The exposition is then concluded and marked for repeat.

In those days, before the codification of sonata form, there was no prescription for the proportion of the development. Here in this first movement the development is just ten measures, scored for the violins alone, a bareness of texture unthinkable in a Baroque Concerto Grosso. The material those violins develop comes from the end of the exposition’s transition from the first subject group to the second subject group.  It makes for a strong contrast to mark the beginning of the recapitulation, when the rest of the orchestra suddenly comes back in all at once.

The odd thing about this recapitulation is how quickly it veers off to F major. This makes sense, however, given how short the development was and how little time has been allotted to keys besides C major and G major. C major is reasserted for the beginning of the transition, but even now the recapitulation is not going to be a verbatim transposition: measures 27 – 35 in the exposition are collapsed to just measure 106 in the recapitulation. But after recapitulating in modified form the last few measures of the exposition, the second subject group makes an unexpected appearance prior to the lively coda.

For the slow movement, the winds are dismissed entirely, but continuo is presumably still expected. Interestingly, the violas double the first violins at the octave, while the second violins are the ones to whom the running semiquaver figuration is given.

The Minuet starts on a downbeat and is full of regal pomp, and in the Trio the trumpets get a real chance to shine.

For the concluding Presto I recommend a somewhat faster tempo than you’ll hear in the Warchal recording. Other than this one particular case, I tend to choose slower tempos for Haydn’s music.
This one and nineteen other Symphonies are available on a boxed set of the Slovak Philharmonic conducted by Bodhan Warchal on the CPO label. Warchal observes the development-recap repeat and has a harpsichordist realize the figured bass. Pál Németh conducting the Savaria Baroque Orchestra also has a figured bass realization but he dispenses with the development-recap repeat. Németh, however, takes the slow movement slower than Warchal so their recordings clock in at about the same time.