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SYMPHONIC POLITICS: HAYDN'S ‘NATIONAL SYMPHONY’ FOR FRANCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2011

MARK EVAN BONDS
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Abstract

In a letter written in late August 1789 to the Parisian publisher Jean-Georges Sieber, Joseph Haydn either agreed or proposed that one of four new symphonies under negotiation ‘should be called The National Symphony’. In the end, Haydn never wrote any of the four symphonies for Sieber, yet the very notion of naming one of them in honour of the French nation at this particular juncture, six weeks after the fall of the Bastille, raises intriguing questions about the composer's political sympathies, his knowledge of recent events in France, the concept of the ‘national’ in contemporaneous discourse, the communal tone of the symphony as a genre and the strategy of marketing a new work by associating it with a term full of political implications. Reports of the French Revolution transmitted to Vienna in July and August 1789 had not sugar-coated the gravity or violence of the situation in Paris, making the proposed title all the more remarkable. While we can only speculate as to what form the ‘National’ Symphony might have taken, the idea itself points to the emerging potential of the symphony as a vehicle of political ideas.

Type
Research Article
Information
Eighteenth-Century Music , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 9 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 The original letter is in the Mary Flagler Music Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library; a facsimile, transcription and translation are available in Landon, H. C. Robbins, ‘Haydniana (II)’, Haydn Yearbook 7 (1970), 308, 312, 317Google Scholar . The version in The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn, ed. Landon, H. C. Robbins (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1959), 88Google Scholar , is based on incomplete transcriptions (translated into English) from two earlier auction catalogues, the original letter having been unavailable to Landon at the time. The version given in Dénes Bartha's edition of the correspondence (Haydn, Joseph, Gesammelte Briefe und Aufzeichnungen (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1965), 212Google Scholar ), is a translation into German from the same English-language source used in The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks. My translation here differs substantially from the one given in Landon's ‘Haydniana II’ (and again in his Haydn: Chronicle and Works, volume 2: Haydn at Eszterháza, 1766–1790 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), 726), in which he interpolates the word ‘nicht’ into the phrase ‘ich werde mir auf meiner Ehre [nicht] vergessen’, rendering this as ‘I shall not forget my reputation’. It seems far more likely that Haydn is using an idiomatic expression here that makes sense without the interpolated negative, saying, in effect, that he shall forget his reputation (‘Ehre’) and apply himself industriously to the work at hand in spite of his fame. This fits with the traditional German saying ‘Wer am fremden Tisch will essen, muss Fußtritte nehmen und die Ehre vergessen’ (Whoever would partake at a stranger's table must absorb the kicks and forget his honour [that is, his station in life]).

2 See Gerlach, Sonja, ‘Johann Tost, Geiger und Grosshandlungsgremialist’, Haydn-Studien 7 (1998), 344–365Google Scholar .

3 Haydn, The Collected Correspondence, 84, and Gesammelte Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, 204–206. See also Landon, , Haydn at Eszterháza, 719Google Scholar .

4 Sotheby's Catalogue, Music, 10 June 2009, Lot 71. The ellipses are from Sotheby's transcriptions. I am grateful to David Wyn Jones for calling my attention to the sale of this item. The publication history of this two-page letter is convoluted. The letter was auctioned to an unknown buyer in 1914 by Maggs Brothers, whose catalogue (no. 320) provided a summary of the first page of the text and an English translation of the second. The text of the letter as transmitted by Landon (Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks, 87–88; also Haydn at Eszterháza, volume 2, 725) is based on the Maggs Brothers text. The text in Bartha's Gesammelte Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, item 126, 211, is a translation into German from the same English-language source used by Landon. The full text of the entire letter in its original form remains unpublished. The dating of the letter is also somewhat unclear. The annotation in the Sotheby's catalogue asserts that ‘the date of the letter is 21 June 1789, and not 27 June 1789 as previously reported in the literature’. While the correction of ‘27’ to ‘21’ seems understandable enough, no discussion of this letter has ever placed it in the month of June; all relevant sources, including the Maggs Brothers auction catalogue of 1914, give the date of the letter as 27 July 1789. A date of 21 (or 27) July seems more plausible in any case, given that Sieber would in all probability not have waited more than six weeks before responding to the composer (until 8 August, that is: see the following entry in the list above).

5 Catalogue, Sotheby's, Music, 10 June 2009, Lot 71Google Scholar .

6 Catalogue, Sotheby's, Music, 10 June 2009, Lot 71Google Scholar .

7 Devriès, Anik, ‘Les Éditions musicales Sieber’, Revue de musicologie 55/1 (1969), 20–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

8 Harrison, Bernard, Haydn: The ‘Paris’ Symphonies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 21–23Google Scholar . On the rapidly growing market for orchestral music in Paris in the 1770s and 80s see Hennebelle, David, ‘Nobles, musique et musiciens à Paris à la fin de l’Ancien Régime: Les transformations d'un patronage séculaire (1760–1780)’, Revue de musicologie 87/2 (2001), 395–418CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

9 Landon, (Haydn at Eszterháza, volume 2, 724Google Scholar ), for example, states that Haydn ‘was not for the Revolution’ yet provides no evidence to support this. Landon then goes on to say that ‘if he had an opinion it was probably that of the famous graffito which we recently saw in the old Fort Charlotte above Nassau: “Only Evil lies under 1789”’. Taruskin, Richard, in his Oxford History of Western Music, volume 2: Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 550Google Scholar , asserts more plausibly that ‘Haydn's politics, like that of his patrons, was a dynastic politics’.

10 See Blanning, T. C. W., Joseph II (London: Longman, 1994), 64Google Scholar .

11 Sashegyi, Oskar, Zensur und Geistesfreiheit unter Joseph II (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1958), 141Google Scholar .

12 Wangermann, Ernst, ‘The Austrian Enlightenment and the French Revolution’, in Austria in the Age of the French Revolution, 1789–1815, ed. Brauer, Kinley and Wright, William E. (Minneapolis: Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota, 1990), 1–10Google Scholar . For a brief overview of the reportage of the Wiener Zeitung on events in France see Alex Balisch, ‘The Wiener Zeitung Reports on the French Revolution’, in Austria in the Age of the French Revolution, 185–192. On the Viennese press in Josephinian Vienna in general see Strasser, Kurt, Die Wiener Presse in der Josephinischen Zeit (Vienna: Verlag Notring der wissenschaftlichen Verbände Österreichs, 1962)Google Scholar . On newspaper censorship during this time see Sashegyi, Zensur und Geistesfreiheit, 100–126, and Reinalter, Helmut, Aufgeklärter Absolutismus und Revolution: Zur Geschichte des Jakobinertums und der frühdemokratischen Bestrebungen in der Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1980), 69–81Google Scholar .

13 Letter of 4 January 1782 to Artaria, in Gesammelte Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, 109.

14 On the role of Viennese Freemasonry in the spread of democratic ideals in Austria see Reinalter, Aufgeklärter Absolutismus und Revolution, 186–218.

15 There is a sizeable literature on Austria's response to the French Revolution, including Wangermann, Ernst, From Joseph II to the Jacobin Trials: Government Policy and Public Opinion in the Habsburg Dominions in the Period of the French Revolution (London: Oxford University Press, 1959)Google Scholar ; Reinalter, Aufgeklärter Absolutismus und Revolution and Österreich und die französische Revolution (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1988); and Brauer and Wright, Austria in the Age of the French Revolution, 1789–1815. These and similar studies focus on the period from 1790 onward, however; very little has been written about Austrian responses during the weeks and months immediately before and after the storming of the Bastille.

16 Wiener Zeitung, 5 August 1789, 1991–1992.

17 See Lewis, Ludwig, Geschichte der Freimaurerei in Österreich und Ungarn (Leipzig: C. W. Vollrath, 1872), 206Google Scholar , and Koplenig, Hilde, ‘Conrad Dominik Bartsch (1759–1817): Freimaurer und Journalist’, Wiener Geschichtsblätter 32 (1977), 215–230Google Scholar .

18 Wangermann, ‘The Austrian Enlightenment’, 4.

19 Wiener Zeitung, 22 August 1789, 2142.

20 Pressburger Zeitung, 1 August 1789, 540–541.

21 Pressburger Zeitung, 8 August 1789, 558; 22 August 1789, 606.

22 See Bodi, Leslie, Tauwetter in Wien: Zur Prosa der österreichischen Aufklärung 1781–1795 (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1977), 241Google Scholar .

23 Wangermann, From Joseph II to the Jacobin Trials, 46, note 2.

24 For a summary of the concept of ‘nation’ in France from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century see Fehrenbach, Elisabeth, ‘Nation’, in Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundgbegriffe in Frankreich, 1618–1820, ed. Reichardt, Rolf and others (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1986), 75–107Google Scholar .

25 See Fehrenbach, ‘Nation’, 97.

26 Palmer, Robert R., ‘The National Idea in France Before the Revolution’, Journal of the History of Ideas 1 (1940), 95–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Godechot, Jacques, ‘Nation, patrie, nationalisme et patriotisme en France au XVIIIe siecle’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française 43 (1971), 481–501Google Scholar ; and Bell, David A., The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001)Google Scholar .

27 On the use of the term ‘Nation’ in the Viennese press during this time see Bodi, Tauwetter in Wien, 63–67.

28 Haydn to Artaria, 8 April 1783, Gesammelte Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, 127.

29 Devriès-Lesure, Anik, L'édition musicale dans la presse parisienne au XVIIIe siècle: catalogue des annonces (Paris: CNRS, 2005), 250Google Scholar , identifies an announcement in the Journal de la Librairie of 16 September 1786 for ‘Menuets & Andante de la Symphonie d’HAYDN, nommée la Reine de France, arrangée pour le clavecin', published by Imbault of Paris in 1786.

30 See von Janko, Wilhelm Edler, ed., Loudon im Gedicht und Liede seiner Zeitgenossen (Vienna: Braumüller, 1881)Google Scholar .

31 Haydn to Marianne von Genzinger, 30 May 1790 and 27 June 1790, Gesammelte Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, 235–237, 242–243.

32 Haydn to Marianne von Genzinger, 17 September 1791, Gesammelte Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, 260–261. The translation here differs from that given in Landon, The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks, 118. Most significantly for present purposes, Landon's translation of the phrase ‘mus[s]te aber zu zeiten von niedrigen Seelen abhangen’ as ‘sometimes I was forced to be dependent on base souls’ overlooks the decidedly hierarchical implications of the word ‘abhangen’. Adelung, Johann Christoph, in his Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart, 4 volumes (Vienna: Pichler, 1808)Google Scholar , cites as the principal figurative meaning of ‘abhangen’ the following: ‘Von einem abhangen, ihm unterworfen, Gehorsam schuldig seyn’ (to be dependent upon someone, subservient to him, to owe obedience).

33 For a list of symphonies whose titles or individual movement titles include ‘national’ elements see Will, Richard, The Characteristic Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Beethoven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar , Appendix 3d (‘National and Regional Styles and Dances’), 300–301.

34 On the idea of the symphony as a distinctively public genre in the eighteenth century see Bonds, Mark Evan, ‘The Symphony as Pindaric Ode’, in Haydn and his World, ed. Sisman, Elaine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 131–153Google Scholar .

35 The translation is from Ferenc, Bónis' edition of the work: Paul Wranitzky, Sinfonia C-dur (Budapest: Editio Musica, 1978)Google Scholar . Both the original and revised title pages are reproduced in Jones, David Wyn, The Symphony in Beethoven's Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 81, 83Google Scholar .

36 See Ferenc Bónis' Preface to his edition of Wranitzky's symphony (see note 35). On the ‘gypsy’ style see Bellman, Jonathan, The Style Hongrois in the Music of Western Europe (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993)Google Scholar .

37 Jones, The Symphony in Beethoven's Vienna, 84. See also Lettner, Gerda and Pasetzky, Gilda, ‘Revolutionärer Patriotismus und Friedensforderungen in der Musik des ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts: Haydn, Paul Wranitzky, Hebenstreit und Horix: Das historisch-musikalische Umfeld der ‘Schöpfung’ (1793–1800)’, Francia 30/2 (2003), 45–71Google Scholar .

38 Later examples of explicitly ‘national’ symphonies include three by Arnošt Vančura (c1750–1802), the Sinfonie nationale russe, the Sinfonie nationale ukrainienne and the Sinfonie nationale polonaise (published in St Petersburg in 1798, RISM A/I W198); Georg Joseph Vogler's Bayrische nationale Sinfonie, whose finale incorporates a choral setting of an earlier song, also by Vogler, ‘Ich bin ein Baier, ein Baier bin ich’ (1806); and Muzio Clementi's ‘Great National Symphony’ (1824), whose slow movement and finale incorporate versions of ‘God Save the King’.