The Musical Genius of Haydn

[gprengel]

I couldn't disagree more, Gerd. I think Haydn's masses are glorious music

Please give me some recommendations! Maybe I just don't know the masses/passages you have in mind...

[Quijote]

Again, Philipp, we see that we both have a very different approach to music. If you can't perceive the kind of spirituality I am talking about, if they are just a "gestural content" and Romantic nonsense then it's up to you. For me it is very real and prescious.

You ask "Is it the music per se, or is it the text that accompanies it?" - It is the combination of text and music, when music is ignited by the words - especially when the text is directly from the Bible like in Mendelssohns Oratorios and Psalms!

Your question regarding Arvo Pärt and Olivier Messiaen I cannot
answer for I don't know them. I hardly know music beyond Gustav Mahler.

OK Gerd. I'm not going to question your "reception" of music you choose to call "sacred" (I think this is the term, by consensus). You said it : music ignited by the words (nice expression; original, and well put!), but it doesn't answer my reservations. I have played (as 'cellist) Mendelssohn's "Elias" oratorio - it was sheer hard work, and never did the word "spiritual" enter my mind (or my ears) : 2 hours (more!) of sheer string plodding. Nothing in the music reminded me of anything "spiritual", only the words sung by the soloists and choir (which for me might as well have been Tra la la ding dooh dooh in extremis ouw ouw...).

[Quijote]

Please give me some recommendations! Maybe I just don't know the masses/passages you have in mind...

Saint Nicholas Mass : apart from the words (such as Dona Nobis Pacem blah blah blah ...) it is great, superbly constructed music.

[Bonn1827]

Especially if sung in the Hofburg by the Vienna Boys' Choir. Philip, we agree at last!!

[Quijote]

Especially if sung in the Hofburg by the Vienna Boys' Choir. Philip, we agree at last!!

Lordy! You agree with me? That I call progress. But then, everyone on this forum will eventually come round to my way of thinking. Such is the scope of my enormous ego.

[Chris]

I also love Haydn's masses, probably more than Mozart's. Like his operas, they are unjustly neglected, especially compared to Mozart. I was just listening to the Harmoniemesse today, one of my favorites. Here's a bit from the Gloria:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6OwdsWWuMU

[Peter]

Hello Gerd. I don't think calling Haydn "an amoeba" is an exaggeration, as that does rather tend to belittle old "Papa Joseph". That said, Baldaniel's effusive comments concerning "the divine", the "transcendent", the "higher truth" and all that Romantic nonsense does find, in my view, an echo in your thread about "spiritual" music (or sacred, or religious, or whatever ...). Whilst refusing to enter the debate you have launched elsewhere, I do wonder what your position might be regarding so-called "spiritual" composers such as Arvo Pärt, Olivier Messiaen et al.
As a recovering formalist, I wonder where exactly in the score this "spirituality" (or divinity, or whatever) resides. Is it the music per se, or is it the text that accompanies it? Can the combination of any set of given notes and its instrumentation embody "spirituality"? I do accept (reluctantly) of course that music, if it is to have any meaning at all, has to function on some supra-structural platform (to coin a phrase; I like that one : it is original), but I will need considerable persuasion to accept your position. For example, you recently posted a Cherubini extract (Requiem). You asked us to listen specifically to a section around the 3-minute mark. I listened. The words got rather in the way. It then occured to me that its "gestural content" (another original phrase of mine), that is to say, high scoring, thinned out textures, high register voices etc are simply "learned reactions". This is to say that what you call "spirituality" in music is culturally conditioned. There is nothing "inherently spiritual" in its sonic combinations.

Then again, we have been mislead by linguistic obfuscation : "spiritual", "religious", or "sacred"; to which of course, we may add the catch-all term "transendence", which is a particular pet-hate of mine. I intend to address this (for me, nauseous) term later in a relevant thread.

I think the whole argument is a non-starter, a wild goose-chase, and a relic of 19th-century romanticism that continues up to our present day and serves to undermine a more generally positive reception of "classical" music (or as Bonn would term it, "art music").

Not a surprising response from your perspective Philip - but we could easily argue that your views are clowded by the extreme anti-Romantic reactions of your musical heroes (Cage etc..). Personally I hear and feel more in music than the mere notes and I think the problem with the world today is this soulless attitude that strips everything of value - it is a clinical almost robotic response to art that leaves you wondering, why bother? I would like to know what you feel the purpose of art is? I think it does enlighten us, I think it does enrich us and I think it educates us.

[Preston]

That said, Baldaniel's effusive comments concerning "the divine", the "transcendent", the "higher truth" and all that Romantic nonsense does find, in my view, an echo in your thread about "spiritual" music (or sacred, or religious, or whatever ...).

Philip, do you not believe in the sacred, spiritual, pure, etc.? I understand that you are an atheist, right?

Personally I hear and feel more in music than the mere notes and I think the problem with the world today is this soulless attitude that strips everything of value - it is a clinical almost robotic response to art that leaves you wondering, why bother? I would like to know what you feel the purpose of art is? I think it does enlighten us, I think it does enrich us and I think it educates us.

Well said, Peter. I too, believe that much art can enlighten us. That is why I am into music and the arts, and why I got into the arts in the first place.

This soulless attitude, which you speak of, is as disgusting as it is repulsive. Quite sad, too.

Also, the greatest geniuses who have ever lived, found their sanctity in true art. That is what to them to the sacred, sublime, profound, etc. That is what they dwelt in.

[Preston]

This is one of the biggest exaggerations I have read for quite some time. In contrast to Mozart and Beethoven there is not much of the Divine in his music.

Gerd, I do agree with you. Haydn was clearly a musical genius, and I imagine he took spirituality as serious as he could. Though, when it comes to depth, sacrifice, spirituality, etc.- I do not believe he was a man who focused heavily on the sacred.

[gprengel]

I have played (as 'cellist) Mendelssohn's "Elias" oratorio - it was sheer hard work, and never did the word "spiritual" enter my mind (or my ears) : 2 hours (more!) of sheer string plodding. Nothing in the music reminded me of anything "spiritual", only the words sung by the soloists and choir (which for me might as well have been Tra la la ding dooh dooh in extremis ouw ouw...).

Then I feel sorry for you that you have ears at the sides of your head but don't have them in your heart. Elias just as the Paulus Oratorio and fragmentary Christus Oratorio, Psalm 42, Lauda Sion, the Chorals, ... are just awesome in their sprituality!! Not a single note is "Tra la la ding dooh dooh ". And if the "Dona Nobis Pacem" call is just "blah blah blah" for you then I don't see any sense in any further discussion ...

[Peter]

Gerd, I do agree with you. Haydn was clearly a musical genius, and I imagine he took spirituality as serious as he could. Though, when it comes to depth, sacrifice, spirituality, etc.- I do not believe he was a man who focused heavily on the sacred.

Haydn was a deeply religious man - 14 masses, Stabat mater, Salve regina, Litanie, Offertories abd motets, settings of psalms, the seven words of our saviour of the cross and the oratorio 'The Creation' hardly suggest a man with little spirituality! On top of that he signed every autograph 'Laus Deo'.

However we already have a thread for spirituality in music so let's try to continue this topic in that one! Any responses to points made here would be best in the thread on spirituality (sorry Philip, but you may have to appear there!). I think it probably best to close this thread as it has merged with the other and there is some controversy surrounding the original post of this thread in any case.