Notes for: July 18, 2023
The decades Haydn spent as Kappelmeister for the Hungarian house of Esterházy were extraordinarily demanding and extraordinarily productive years. Haydn was in charge of all musical activities in the Esterházys’ music-mad court. Every week, he was expected to compose and present a number of concerts and operas, play chamber music upon request, and do whatever else musically was asked of him. Symphonies, string quartets, keyboard sonatas, concertos, piano trios, operas – compositions flowed, seemingly effortlessly. While Haydn was considered little more than a servant, for a long time his isolated life in the remote palace suited him. As he once commented, “I was cut off from the world, there was no one to confuse or torment me, and I was forced to become original.”
As Haydn’s work became more and more widely published and performed, his fame grew. But for many years the Esterházys owned everything he wrote. In 1779, though, he was given permission to sell his compositions to publishers. From then on, he was able to profit from the growing demand for music that amateurs could perform at home. In 1784 he wrote six divertimentos, Hob IV: 6-11, for flute (or violin), violin, and cello. They were his first chamber works expressly for the flute, and they had been commissioned by the London publisher William Forster, whose city was awash in amateur flutists. The second of the set is the Divertissement in G Major on today’s program. It’s a light, deftly written entertainment, full of good cheer and filled with Haydn’s characteristic lyricism and genial wit. Like many composers, Haydn recycled ideas from one composition to another. For the opening Allegro, Haydn borrowed music from another of his compositions, the aria “Se la Mia Stella” (You are my star), from his comic opera Il Mondo della Luna. That gentle aria translates easily into the lively theme of the Allegro, a movement filled with easy interaction among the three instruments as they pass genial themes back and forth. The music moves seamlessly between major and minor keys, with every minor incursion cut short by a sunny response. The playful interplay among the three instruments at times sounds almost conversational. As one expects from Haydn, there are surprising harmonic turns and unexpected modulations. Haydn shows his gift for melodic invention in the songful G Minor Adagio, with its striking ornamentation and rhythm. A surprise soulful ending leads directly into a high-spirited finale – a lighthearted Allegro whose minor-key middle section fails to put a damper on the movement’s wit and playfulness, and where the strings get a chance at virtuosic turns.