Haydn’s oratorio “The Seasons” (written 1799-1801) is well-known, yet it is seldom heard in the concert hall. The composer’s own remarks as well as those of contemporaries doubtless contributed to the title being more popular than the actual work. In particular, the quarrel between Haydn and his librettist, the 70-year-old Baron van Swieten, is reflected in all the sources and drew considerable attention from the critics. Georg August Griesingee, whose “Biographical Notes on Joseph Haydn”, were published in 1810 in Leipzig, summarized the librettist’s apparent shortcomings as follows:
“Baron Swieten, some seventy years old at the time, was a man of artistic and scientific interests, whose opinion carried considerable weight in the circle of important people that he belonged to. He was conversant with the rules of good taste that should be observed in judging works of art, but in his own products he suffered from all the errors and shortcomings that he had criticised so harshly in others. The best thing about his poetry was not what he actually said, but what he wanted to say. Strangely, his works contained none of those beauties that should have distinguished them, in accordance with his intentions and his feelings.”
Albert Christoph Dies, whose “Biographical News about Joseph Haydn” likewise appeared in 1810, but in Vienna, portrayed the quarrel in more detail: “Haydn found the many graphic depictions and pieces of mimcry tiresome. He thought it was a lot of nonsense that could better be done without,” Dies even refers to a loud argument between Haydn and van Swieten in the composers ante-chamber, and to Haydn’s comment that the effort involved in composing “The Seasons” represented an increasing strain on his health.
And Haydn really did have a head-cold after finishing the work, on account of his mind being “constantly occupied with notes and music”.
The literature gives ample space to Haydn’s grievances and tends to neglect van Swieten’s position, which we can perhaps evaluate differently today. The Austrian Emperor of the lime, Kaiser Franz, features of course in contemporary accounts. Haydn is said to have answered the Emperors question as to which of the two oratorios he Iiimself preferred in favour of “The Creation”: here, Haydn said, angels speak, and talk of God,whereas in “The Seasons” the speaker is only Simon.
Amazingly enough, the première of “The Seasons”, which was given in Vienna’s Palais Schwarzenberg on 24th April 1801, financed by the “Society of Assiciates” with Haydn conducting, failed to promote the commercial success of the work that the composer hoped for with the first public performance in the Großer Redoutensaal on 29th May 1801. The première of “The Creation” in 1799, on the other hand, had been a huge success. For “The Seasons", the concert hall was only half filled by some 700 people. The Viennese public, for reasons that are still unclear, showed little interest - similar to the concert 23 years before in which Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was performed for the second time to a tiny audience. Yet the press reports of the critics’ first encounter with the new work read enthusiastically. The première seems to have been well prepared: Haydn directed all the rehearsals personally, and the actual performance was preceded by two public full rehearsals, to which every “honest citizen” was admitted. There is no doubt that the oratorio was well received by music-lovers: this is substantiated not only by the reviews in Viennese and foreign papers, but also by a private performance for the Imperial family on 24th May 1801, in which the Empress sang the soprano parts “with great taste and expression, but with too weak a voice”.
Griesinger, a faithful disciple of his master, wrote an enthusiastic report for the “Allgemeinde Musikalische Zeitung”: “Rapt devotion, astonishment and boisterous enthusiasm alternated in the audience, for the mighty surging of colossal visions, the immeasurable abundance of felicitous ideas surprised and overwhelmed the boldest imagination... Readers of this journal have the opportunity to read the poetry in these pages, and should thus be able to judge the scope of the task that faced Haydn. And we are of the unanimous opinion that he responded to the challenge with the utmost skill. The pen of this musical Prometheus fills every word with life and feeling. The listener is enchanted by a sweet vocal melody, then he is suddenly shaken by a mighty instrumental tutti like a mountain stream that sweeps all obstacles from its path. Now the simple, ingenuous expression delights him, now he admires the lavish extravagance of bright and rapid chords. From beginning to end Haydn tears us at will from a moving passage to a frightening one, from naivety to artiticiality, from the beautiful to the sublime.”
Giuseppe Carpani, whose “Le Haydine” was published in Milan in 1812, reports with equal credibility: “The best critique came from Haydn himself. I was among the audience at the first performance of the oratorio in the house of Prince Schwarzenberg. Everyone present applauded warmly and without end. But I, amazed that two so different parts of the work could come from one and the same brain, hastened to find my Haydn at the end of the concert and give him my warmest and most sincere congratulations. I had scarcely opened my mouth when Haydn interrupted me with these memorable words: ’l am pleased that the audience liked my music, but I cannot take any compliments from you my friend. I’m sure you realise that “The Seasons” is no second “Creation”. I feelit, and you should be able to feel it too. The reason is simple: in one work the characters are angels, in the other they are peasants. ’ Volumes could be filled with comparisons between the two oratorios, but the essential difference cannot be better expressed than in these few words of Haydn’s.”
From a modern point of view, after a thorough study of the 497 pages of the score that was published in 1802 by Breitkopf & Härtel, other aspects present themselves: In particular, van Swieten produced an adequate translation of James Thomson’s poem “Seasons” of 1726 very much in keeping with the new English philosophy of Dilthey (“The ideas of the best world, of the teleological order and beauty of nature, of Man’s moral disposition, of his simple happiness in a natural life, form the background to the contemplation of nature.”). Van Swieten eliminated the philosophical, historical and geographical details, and restricted himself to those passages concerning the identity of season and life, containing depiction and atmosphere. He thus provided Haydn with a kind of ’autobiographical’ study, which he further reinforced with his remarks on the musical stmcture - these go into great detail in some cases. It is quite possible that Haydn’s difficulties in composing the work resulted from the scope of his own experience of life and depiction of nature rather than from the rejection of trite naturalistic interpretation of the text. Sketchbooks show that “The Seasons” was just as much the product of continual alteration and improvement as “The Creation” was.
The 44 brief numbers, which are far less clearly divided from one another than the numbering suggests, are divided into four sections corresponding to the seasons, each of which could almost be regarded as a cantata. It is the three characters, the farmer Lukas (tenor), the tenant farmer Simon (bass) and his daughter Hanne (soprano), that determine the dramatic structure. We find almost the same combination of voices here as in the “Creation” with the three archangels Uriel, Gabriel and Raphael. The human voices portray different constellations of human experience, and the sequence of the seasons corresponds to the world of human life and feelings.
In “Spring” and “Summer” the musical events coincide with the season depicted. “Spring” means farewell to winter, sowing the new crops, praying for rain and the coming of rain, enjoying the sweet delights of spring and thanking God for what spring brings. “Summer” seems to be shown as the summary of a single day: the soft light of dawn, the shepherd rising early, the sunrise, which rapidly (unlike in the “Creation”) culminates in blazing heat, the search for shade, the approach and the breaking of the thunderstorm and finally a gentle closing of the day. A whole season is embodied by one day.
In “Autumn” and “Winter” Haydn did not compose a corresponding musical chronology. What dominates now is the interplay between nature and Man, the idea of hard work as a symbol for the harvest, awakening love, the hunt: the sniffing of the dogs, the flight of the birds, the pursuit of the stag and the catching of the hare. Wine must not be left out in “Autumns” of course, and this leads to boisterous dancing.
The final section “Winter” is likewise marked by the contrast between sensitive depiction of nature and the world of human experience. There is thick fog and long, dark nights, lakes freeze over and waterfalls turn to icicles. The cosmic power of the snowstorm overtakes the wanderer, who seeks shelter indoors, in the idyll of a spinningroom.In the finale of “Winter”, Simon gives a resumée of human life: the brevity of youth (spring), the vigour that follows (summer), then the approach of old age (autumn) and last of all senility, i. e, winter - a compendium of mor.il reflections on the transience of life that virtue alone can withstand. The concluding apotheosis is not only a return to the new beginning of spring in the sense of human life as a perpetual cycle, it also shows allegorically that Man can only enter Heaven after the metaphorical journey through the winter.
The formal structures of “The Seasons” show that Haydn did not restrict the cyclical idea to nature depiction and the analogy with his own experience of life: the central key is the “heavenly power” C major, while “Spring” and “Autumn” clearly move in the dominant region. One can thus speak of a kind of sonata form that serves as the basis for the four sections, with “Spring” as the exposition, “Summer” the development, a kind of recapitulation in “Autumn” and finally “Winter” as the coda.
Haydn’s “Season” were not only a key work for the composer himself, but also for the demands made by so complex a subject. Haydn paid for his exertions with a state of exhaustion that could not really be diagnosed by a docton. The oratorium was subject to many expectations on account of its complexity, and audiences, because of this same complexity, were often subjected to shortened versions. A complete performance, linking the autobiographical aspect with the nature depiction, may offer the listener the chance to reevaluate Haydn's “Seasons”. The conditions for this are more favourable now than they have ever been in the past.