An arrest of attention

"I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction."
- Saul Bellow, Paris Review, 1966

The superb Haydn 2032 project of Giovanni Antonini and Il Giardino Armonico continues with "Il Distratto", the 4th volume on the way to the complete Haydn symphonies in their historical context by the year 2032. The project has three sterling characteristics which place it at the very top of similar ongoing series by other groups: the highest musical standards (style, precision, musicality); a significant scholarly/intellectual component; and top quality presentation and marketing. I included the third volume, "Solo e Pensoso", in my Top 10 Discs of 2016. This new disc will surely end up in my 2017 list.

The disc takes its title from Haydn's 60th Symphony of 1774, which is actually a symphonic suite taken from the composer's incidental music for a revival of Le Distrait by Jean-François Regnard. This is perhaps the pinnacle of the musical joke genre, though closer to J.S. Bach than P.D.Q. Bach. It's clever and knowing, way over on the proper side of the Seinfeld-Hee Haw humour continuum. Haydn has some interesting things to say, I think, about an issue that began to be discussed for the first time in human history in the 18th century: the problem of distraction. According to sociologist Frank Furedi, the idea of distraction being a social evil relates to threats to moral authority, rather than to any new technologies or structural social changes. The Enlightenment, of course, was chock full of those threats, and there was plenty more to come in 1774. Furedi quotes the Scottish political economist William Playfair, who stated that "the inattention of the nobility to their duty was one cause of the revolution". Haydn actually quotes his own subtle challenge to moral authority, his Farewell Symphony of 1772 in this work. Much of the distraction is played for laughs, but it also provides Haydn with the opportunity to produce some arresting sounds, some that sound far, far ahead of their time. Haydn was the absolute master of building a life in which he had completely free range to exercise his artistic vision, without the compromises forced on poor Mozart or the angst that Beethoven suffered because of his own transitional social position.

Giovanni Antonini has found a perfect foil for Il Distratto in the mini-opera Il Maestro di Cappella, by Domenico Cimarosa. This is another self-aware piece that seems shockingly modern, with an orchestra that acts up, turning into one of the characters in the comedy. It reminded me of Raymond Queneau's 1968 novel The Flight of Icarus, whose main character acts up in much the same way as Cimarosa's orchestra.

In the other two Haydn symphonies included here, no. 12 and 70, there are hints of extra-musical connections. In his excellent liner notes Antonini posits that "In the ascending direction of tre soggetti of the fugal finale [of no. 70], we can glimpse a favourable omen for the erection of the new Esterhaza opera house at the laying of its founding stone - the occasion on which the symphony was first performed." So consider Haydn a proto-Oulipian, in his use of constrained musical composition to create novel forms and structures. It looks forward to the moderns, yes, but back as well to J.S. Bach's mathematical games that weave through so much of his music. The astounding thing about this music is that as clever as the games are, the final result is so artistically sound, and so often arrestingly beautiful.

Telemann's surprises

We'll be hearing a lot of Telemann in 2017, the 250th anniversary of the great composer's death. I doubt, though, that many discs will be as well-planned and stylishly performed as this splendid release from Alpha Classics, with Giovanni Antonini leading Il Giardino Armonico, and playing recorder and chalumeau.

Antonini raises the curtain with a clever little Prelude for solo recorder by Jacques-Martin Hotteterre. Telemann's Suite in A Minor is quite well known, but this is a performance to take special note of. Antonini is in a groove throughout both as a soloist and conductor, providing a high level of virtuosity, but never missing out on Telemann's many expressive possibilities. Some of the other works are a bit more obscure, but there are many gems to be uncovered here. Most astonishing is the Grave movement from a Quartet for 2 chalumeaux (early clarinets), violin and continuo. This is a kind of salon piece with the slightest hints of Eastern European folk music and even tango, a very sexy number! 

Here is the entire Quartet; the Grave movement begins at 6:10. Also, listen for the mock heroics in the finale; Telemann is having fun here! And the musicians are as well.

The whole disc is full of moments like this. I am astonished by the endless surprises Telemann gives us. He has lived in Bach's shadow for a very long time; perhaps 2017 will be his year in the sun.

Here is the fifth movement from Telemann's Suite in A Minor, entitled Réjouissance (Rejoicing). We can indeed rejoice in such invention by Telemann, and such virtuosity by Antonini and his fellow musicians.

Illuminating Haydn

The Haydn 2032 project picks up steam in this third release from Alpha Classics, "Solo e Pensoso". It takes its title from sonnet XXXV from Petrarch’s Il Canzioniere that was set by Haydn in 1798:

Alone and deep in thought, through the loneliest fields
I tread with slow and sluggish steps,
and keep my eyes watchful, intent on flight
wherever a human footprint appears in the sand.

"Alone and deep in thought" is not how we think of the lively and above all social music making of the Baroque period, so this is an important milestone on the way to the solitary-genius composer whose epitome was Mozart, and in a heroic and Romantic form, Beethoven. But we're not used to thinking of Haydn in these terms at all. Putting Haydn's dramatic but still pensive setting at the centre of this new project, and presenting it in such as stylish way, with the musicians of his superb band Il Giardino Armonico and soprano Francesca Aspromonte, Giovanni Antonini once again makes us look at Haydn in a new way.



This time around the program is all-Haydn, though a Mozart aria from 1789, Vado, ma dove?
KV 583, featured in the 2015 concert programs for this project but didn't make it onto the disc. The three symphonies, #4 completed in 1760, #42 of 1771, and #64 from 1773, are given context by Haydn's Petrarch setting and another work from the stage, the overture to L’Isola Disabitata from 1779. Thus we have music from Haydn's early, middle and late periods, but Antonini has something much more sophisticated in mind than a mere chronological approach. Rather, he is following threads from the vast tapestry of Haydn's symphonic output to illustrate his theme.

Symphony #42, which begins the program, has an arresting combination of operatic incident and a more abstracted and wistful counterpoint. In tone if not always in musical style this seems quite close to Mozart. This is even more true of the great Symphony #64, with the mysterious "missing cadences" of its eccentric Largo and possibly contemporary nickname Tempora mutantur (the beginning of a Latin tag that goes "Times change, and we change with them: how so? Mankind gets worse with time.") One theory is that this music was part of a lost project of Haydn's to provide incidental music for Shakespeare's Hamlet. We're a long way from the Papa Haydn stereotype here! Symphony #4, which ends the program, is a surprisingly cultivated and refined work for its time, with its ghostly middle Andante not giving up a sense of muted melancholy in the more dramatic, but still, in the end, contemplative and thoughtful finale.

The marketing of Haydn 2032 is world-class. Go to the Solo e Ponsoso portion of the project website for the full deal, including amazing photos by Bruno Barbey and superb analysis by musicologist Christian Moritz-Bauer. There's even a Haydn 2032 shop planned for the future. But none of this matters if the music isn't special, and to my mind it certainly is. In fact, these are ground-breaking performances,  In #64 there's an immediacy and presence that clearly outshines Christopher Hogwood's version with the Academy of Ancient Music. Even the version of the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra under Adam Fischer, my reference standard for Haydn, seems less nimble and expressive. I'm so pleased with what I've heard so far from Haydn 2032, and look forward to the long journey to Haydn's Tricentennial.