1 CD - 3984-21474-2 - (p) 1999

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)





Harmoniemesse in B flat major, Hob. XXII:14 - for soloists (SATB), four-part chorus and orchestra
43' 09"
Kyrie 7' 49"
1
Gloria 10' 25"

- Gloria in excelsis Deo
 2' 15"
2
- Gratias agimus tibi 4' 58"
3
- Quoniam tu solus 3' 12"
4
Credo 11' 19"

- Credo in unum Deum
 3' 07"
5
- Et incarnatus est
 3' 18"
6
- Et resurrexit tertia die
 4' 54"
7
Sanctus 3' 09"
8
Benedictus 4' 08"
9
Agnus Dei 6' 19"

- Agnus Dei
 3' 23"
10
- Dona nobis oacem 2' 56"
11




Cantata "Qual dubbio ormai", Hob. XXIVa:4 - for soprano, chorus and orchestra
15' 00"
- Recitativo accompagnato - "Qual dubbio ormai"
 1' 54"
12
- Aria - "se ogni giorno Prence invitto" 8' 50"
13
- Recitativo - "Saggia il pensier" 0' 20"
14
- Coro - "Scenda propizio un raggio" 3' 56"
15




Te Deum in C major, Hob. XXIIIc:1 - for soloists (SATB), four-part chorus and orchestra
7' 34"
- Te Deum Laudamus
 3' 07"
16
- Te ergo quaesumus
 0' 47"
17
- Aeterna fac cum sanctus tuis
 3' 40"
18



 
Eva Mei, Soprano
Elisabeth von Magnus, Contralto
Herbert Lippert, Tenor
Oliver Widmer, Bass

Arnold Schoenberg Chor / Erwin Ortner, Chorus Master

CONCENTUS MUSICUS WIEN (with original instruments)
- Erich Höbarth, Violin - Dorle Sommer, Viola
- Alice Harnoncourt, Violin - Herwig Tachezi, Violoncello
- Anita Mitterer, Violin - Dorothea Guschlbauer, Violoncello
- Walter Pfeiffer, Violin - Andrew Ackerman, Violone
- Editha Fetz, Violin - Enno Senft, Violone
- Thomas Fheodoroff, Violin - Robert Wolf, Traverflöte
- Annelie Gahl, Violin - Hans Peter Westermann, Oboe
- Silvia Iberer-Walch, Violin - Marie Wolf, Oboe
- Barbara Klebel, Violin - Gerald Pachinger, Clarinet
- Annemarie Ortner, Violin - Herbert Failtynek, Clarinet
- Peter Schoberwalter, Violin - Eleanor Froelich, Fagott
- Elisabeth Stifter, Violin - Christian Beuse, Fagott
- Christian Tachezi, Violin - Andreas Lackner, Naturtrompete
- Mary Utiger, Violin - Herbert Walser, Naturtrompete
- Gertrud Weinmeister, Violin - Glen Borling, Naturhorn
- Lynn Pascher, Viola - Edward Deskur, Naturhorn
- Gerold Klaus, Viola - Dieter Seiler, Pauken
- Ursula Kortschak, Viola - Herbert Tachezi, Orgel

Nikolaus Harnoncourt
 
Luogo e data di registrazione
Pfarrkirche, Stainz (Austria) - luglio 1998
Registrazione live / studio
studio
Producer / Engineer
Wolfgang Mohr / Martina Gottschau / Martin Sauer / Michael Brammann
Prima Edizione CD
Teldec Classics "Das Alte Werk" - 3984-21474-2 - (1 cd) - 65' 56" - (p) 1999 - DDD
Prima Edizione LP
-

Notes
On Wednesday 8 Septemher 1802 the seventy-year-old Joseph Haydn conducted his last great work in die Bergkirche at Eisenstadt: like its five predecessors, his Mass no 14 in B flat major Hob XXII:14 was written to celebrate the name-day of the Princess Maria Hermenegild Esterházy. The magnificence of the occasion is clear from a description left by the Austrian diplomat Prince Ludwig Starhemberg, who noted in his diary how the guests waited upon the princess, after which they all “drove in a large procession of several carriages to the Mass. - Superb Mass, excellent new piece by the celebrated Haydn [...]. Nothing could have been more beautiful or more finely executed; after the Mass we returned to the palace. [...] Later a great and splendid banquet, as exquisite as it was wellattended, music during the meal, The prince drank the princess's health, fanfares and twentyone gun salutes in reply, - then several other toasts, including my own and that of Haydn, who was dining with us. I myself proposed it. After dinner, in evening dress to the ball, which was quite superb, like a court ball; together with her daughter, Princess Maria opened it with a menuet à quatre; afterwards nothing but waltzes."
As in London. where, between 1791 and 1795, he had frequented the highest circles in society, so, too, in Eisenstadt, Haydn sat at the same table as aristocrats and diplomats and was treated as their equal, an accolade rnarking the culmination of an association with the Esterházy family which, beginning with his appointment as their vice-Kapellmeister in 1761, had lasted lor more than forty years.
Although Haydn had suffered from poor health following the exertions bound up with the composition of his two oratorios, Die Schöpfung (1796-8) and Die Jahreszeiten (1799-1801), and described himself as “an increasingly sickly old boy", his final Mass continues to demonstrate his ability to engage with the most modern trends in music. The work hecame known as his Harmoniemesse on the strength of its unusually large complement of wind instruments (in Austria, wind ensembles were known as Harmoniemusik), but the name could equally well be applied to its forward-looking harmonic textures. Not only in the dark-hued, unusually long Kyrie, with the chorus's literally terrifying fortissimo entry on the chord of a diminished seventh, but above all in the "Cricifixus", Sanctus and Agnus Dei, Haydn’s harmonic writing emerges as his most irnportant means of expression. He had grown up in the late Baroque tradition - a tradition typified by strict counterpoint and the use of rhetorical figures in the melodic line - but by the end of his career he was exploring a musical language that already bears within it many of the hallmarks of early Romanticism. Time and again the listener is surprised by unexpected modulations, especially to third-related tonalities. And nowhere is this surprise greater than in the transition from the first part of the Agnus Dei, which ends in D major, to the B flat major fanfares of the "Dona nobis pacem", a tutti that erupts with elemental suddenness and might almost suggest the trumpets of the Last Judgement. But for Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who sees a direct link between Haydn's "Dona nobis pacem" and the corresponding movement in Beethoven's Missa solemnis, this etherwordly element is less important than the wholly secular contrast between "the joy of peace and the despair of conflict".
If Haydn took an interest in eschatological matters in the years around 1802, it was not only because of his age. He was also thinking of writing a third great oratorio on the theme of the Apocalypse, for which he wanted Christoph Martin Wieland to provide the libretto. In the event, nothing came of their proposed collaboration, and, with the exception of the unfinished String Quartet op. 103 and a handful of English folksongs, Haydn published no more works. He made his final public appearance on 26 December 1803, conducting his own Seven Last Words from the Cross, after which he withdrew from active music-making.
The Te Deum no. 1 Hob. XXIIIc:1 and the cantata Qual dubbio ormai Hob. XXIVa:4 take us back to Haydn's early years in the service of the Esterházys, when the young vice-Kapellmeister was contracted to write sacred and secular occasional pieces for performance at court celebrations. It is not entirely clear for what occasion Haydn wrote the present Te Deum, although it may have been heard for the first time at an official reception for Prince Paul Anton and his new wife, Marie Therese Erdödy, at Eisenstadt on 10 January 1763.
The work, which is only 150 bars long, falls into three sections in keeping with the late Baroque Viennese tradition. The opening section ("Te Deum laudamus") begins with a largely homophonic choral passage accompanied by the sort of violin figurations that are typical of this period. Next comes an extended tenor solo ("Tu Rex gloriae, Christe") that is iteself divided into two contrastive sections, the second of which ("Te ergo quaesumus") is a sustained appeal for divine assistance that explores minor-key tonalities. With the third section ("Aeterna fac"), Haydn whips up the tempo and returns to the earlier mood of jubilation, with the obligatory fugue on the words "In te Domine speravi", an emotionally charged passage full of hope that leads back to the music of the work's beginning, thus giving the whole a fine sense of unity. Contemporary copies of the score and parts in several Austrian monastery libraries attest to the work's popularity in the 18th century. After 1800, however, it fell into total neglect and was not heard again until its revival at the 1967 Holland Festival.
Also in around 1763/4 Haydn wrote a set ol five Italian cantatas for one or more solo voices, chorus and orchestra. Like Johann Sebastian Bach's secular cantatas and the "court odes" of Purcell and Handel, they served to provide an official and poetically charged record of important events in the lite of the court - events such as the prince's return from abroad or his recovery from some serious illness or other. The cantata Qual dubbio ormai, which received its first performance at Eisenstadt on 6 December 1764, celebrated not only Prince Nikolaus Esterházy's name-day but also his appointment as Captain of the Noble Hungarian Bodyguard, an appointment that was a mark of particular honour.
It is clear from the orchestral and solo writing that by the date in question Haydn had already gained some experience in the field of music theatre, although the virtuoso writing for obbligato harpsichord in the soprano aria, "Se ogni giorno", that forms the cantata's central section is certainly unusual. But there is little doubt that Haydn played this part himself and that the enjoyed accompanying the soprano's breath-taking fioriture. (In the present recording, the haipsichord part is played on the organ.) Although this piece was one of the last examples of a Baroque convention that died out in Austria with Haydn’s Eiseintadt cantatas, it is none the less still capable of giving us a fair impression of the much-vaunted splendour of the Esterházy court.
Dorothea Schröder
Translation: Stewart Spencer

Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
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