Portrait of Haydn by Ludwig Guttenbrunn
[If you tuned in late, this continues the new reading group for The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven by Charles Rosen. Previous posts one week ago and two weeks ago. Feel free to participate in the comments. -- The Management]
I INTRODUCTION 1. The Musical Language of the Late Eighteenth Century
By ERIC WAGNER
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Special guest
When Tom Jackson lists me as “Special Guest Blogger,” it makes me think of the 1960’s Batman credit “Special Guest Villain,” especially since last week’s post mentioned the opera Die Fledermaus (“The Bat”). I remember a Batman episode where a German man called Batman “Der Fledermausman!”
The medium seems part of the massage. I remember around 1981 reading an article by a guy who said his dad had spent his life traveling around Germany so he could hear all nine Beethoven symphonies. With the arrival of long-playing (LP) vinyl records, one could purchase all nine symphonies relatively inexpensively and listen to them repeatedly. With internet, one can listen to multiple versions of all nine symphonies for free on YouTube. In elementary school I had LP’s of about five Haydn symphonies and the Trumpet Concerto, so I got to know those pieces. In the CD era I got a two-CD set of six late Haydn symphonies which included one of the ones I had on LP (the Surprise Symphony). Now I have Spotify and I can pull up any Haydn symphony without the annoying ads on YouTube.
This week I have listened to a bunch of the Op. 17, Op. 20, and Op. 33 string quartets by Haydn, six quartets in each opus. I had never heard the Op. 17 quartets before, so far as I recall. I had an LP of two of the Op. 20 quartets my roommate Jai had given me around 1980 or 1981, and a CD of the same LP on CD which my mom bought me around 1999. I have a CD of three of the Op. 33 quartets which my wife gave me in 1997. I found it interesting to listen to the four Op. 20 quartets and three Op. 33 quartets this week which I had never heard before as well as the quartets I had listened to for decades.
Pg. 26 – In the key of C Major, C (I) serves as the tonic; F (IV) the subdominant; and G (V) the dominant, so G7 serves as the dominant seventh. A plagal cadence goes from IV to I, F to C in C Major. Some call this the “Amen Cadence” due its popularity in older Christian church music. In the eighteenth century the plagal cadence became less popular in favor of the dominant cadence, G to C in C Major. If you can play guitar or a keyboard instrument, you might play these cadences to hear the difference: F-C (“A-men”) and G-C. A ton of rock, jazz, blues, and country songs have dominant cadences.
See you next Monday, same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel!
5 comments:
A couple of things I learned from the Introduction: Anyone who knows just bit about Mozart will know that most of the pieces that are likely to be played on the radio will be ones he wrote in the last 10-15 years of his life. Rosen convincingly explains that those pieces were written when the transition from the Baroque was complete and the musical language and style of the classical period had been fully developed. It turns out there’s a better answer than “he just got better as he went along.”
It’s also clear that Rosen ranks Haydn right up there with Beethoven and Mozart, although I expect to learn more as I get further in the book.
Also, the book has a very useful index that provides the page numbers for specific works; when I wanted to look up what Rosen said about K 271, I didn’t have to page through the Introduction, I could look it up right away.
The book is not an easy read for someone like me, as it is rather technical and I don't read music. In many cases, although I don’t really fully understand what Rosen is saying, I can sense his point from being familiar with a piece from repeated listenings.
On page 23, he writes, “A considerable change is evident in the music of both Haydn and Mozart at about 1775, the date of Mozart’s E flat Piano Concerto K. 271, perhaps the first large work in which Mozart’s mature style ia in complete command throughout ….”
Many people are not going to recognize what work Rosen is talking about. Of course, I am reading this with my smartphone at hand, and a quick Google revealed that Rosen is talking about Mozart’s piano concerto No. 9, the “Jeunehomme.” So then I got what Rosen is talking about; the first early concerto that still gets played a lot, as opposed to the fact that most of what gets on the radio is going to be the 20th piano concerto and the ones after that. But I only get that because I have read Mozart biographies and many articles about Mozart and listen to his music a lot. So the more casual Mozart fans won't get the reference.
Thank you for your comment. During the Covid lockdown Rafi Zabor listened to Mozart's last eleven concertos a ton, so I did too. I love this piece by Rafi: https://rafizabor.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/sleeping-with-mozart/ .
I used to love the old Batman T.V. show. Burgess Meredith, who played the Penguin, had a close friendship with John and Toni Lilly. They lived beside each other in Malibu. Both loved dolphins.
Most of this chapter goes over my head. I watched a Rick Beato video on the Circle of Fifths to try and understand it more. I found it interesting that going counterclockwise on the Circle of Fifths makes it a Circle of Fourths. Beato says that a "perfect fourth descending is a perfect fifth ascending. G down to C is a perfect fifth descending; C up to G is a perfect fourth ascending." I have no idea why.
My favorite part in this chapter happens at the beginning when Count Waldstein tells Beethoven "You will receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Hayden." Sufis call the transmission of spirit baraka as in former U.S. President Baraka Obama.
I don't know why Rosen calls the sonata a texture and not a form. Perhaps he will explain that as we move along.
When naming musical intervals, we don't use zero. If two instruments both play the same note, say Middle C, we call that a unison and give it the number 1. I will use C Major for these examples because that key has not sharps or flats. Playing all white notes on the piano starting with C gives you the C Major scale. The interval from C to G give a fifth. We count the first note we start with as one, so C D E F G, 1 2 3 4 5, gives us a fifth (C G). If we continue going up in pitch, going from G to the next higher C (an octave above Middle C) gives us a fourth: G A B C, 1 2 3 4, a fourth (G C). One can go down as well, so going down from C to G gives a fourth, and going down from G to C gives a fifth. I hope that makes some sense.
In Rosen's "Sonata Forms" he writes, "Like fugue, sonata defines a certain kind of texture - or, better, a method of ordering many widely contrasting textures; it indicates a certain kind of instrumental music, but the style and forms of these works extend into the domains of symphony, opera, and church music as well," pg. 14. I think he wants to emphasize that the musical language of sonata forms influences all of the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, so he doesn't want to limit it to one "Sonata Form" the way some 19th and 20th century theorists did.
Thank-you for the explanation, it does make sense. I got mistaken thinking that middle C to the G gives a fifth whereas the same G back down to middle C gives a fourth. It doesn't, that also gives a fifth (G C descending). You explained is as C G ascending = a fifth while C G descending = a fourth.
I find it interesting that equal temperament tuning "distorts their relation to the natural overtones." The "ear or mind," as Rosen astutely puts it, must have gradually come to accept and resolve this distortion or maybe it didn't notice given that the overtones usually diminish in amplitude the higher they go so that when a piano tuned in equal temperament struck a higher note the difference in frequency between that note and an overtone of a lower note which would have the same frequency of a piano tuned with just intonation (now obsolete), but now has a difference in frequency due to equal temperament. The difference in frequency between a higher harmonic overtone and the same note tuned in equal temperament, what Rosen calls a distortion, must have come to get accepted by the ear/mind or not heard if the difference sounds negligible. I repeat myself trying to make the point understood; not clear if that worked.
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