In Mozart's Shadow

Judit Péteri in Conversation with Katalin Komlós

 

Judit Péteri: A recording executive told me back in the late 1970s that Haydn records don't sell. Do you think Haydn is a tough-sell?

Katalin Komlós: Haydn has been long overshadowed by Mozart, not just in Hungary but all over the world. This is unfair and hard to fathom. Among the few music books published in Hungary are translations of four or five Mozart biographies, but Haydn: nothing. [Since the time of the interview two Haydn books appeared in Hungary: one is the new edition of Joseph Haydn élete dokumentumokban, eds., Dénes Bartha and Dorrit Révész; the other is the Hungarian translation of the New Grove monograph, written by Georg Feder and James Webster.] This may be explained by the fact that it has become fashionable for music historians to psychoanalyse composers and their lifejourneys, poring over their diseases, sex lives and psychological complexes. Haydn is a poor subject for them because he was too normal: a healthy peasant who went to London without speaking a word of English. This didn't bother him at all—I can't imagine a healthier temperament. But the picture of Haydn today is far from complete and he is often misunderstood. At first he was jovial "Papa Haydn", and now scholars go to the other extreme, turning him into an intellectual. He was highly cultured, of course, and had a lively intelligence, but he was not an intellectual—he was much more than that. The English composer Robin Holloway wrote a superb essay for the volume Haydn Studies in 1998 called "Haydn: the Musicians' Musician". The title implies that musicians understand Haydn's music best. He expressed himself entirely in music rather than in letters or diary entries.

Is his music for connoisseurs, then?

I wouldn't say so. Haydn aimed to please both professionals and amateurs— though there's a side to him that not even musicians know well enough or appreciate sufficiently. Holloway put it like this: "Then there is a deep still contemplation, simultaneously remote and glowing, giving utterance to an extreme inner solitude." His late works such as the slow movement of the last piano sonata, the final quartets, the English canzonettas or the German partsongs show this intimate, poetic side. Serious and sublime aspects of his personality rub alongside his witty and sparkling side. Still most people think of him as "Papa Haydn".

It must be said however that audiences have changed: Haydn's symphonies were hugely successful in England at the time; not only did they get the jokes but they appreciated the works' subtleties too—the slow movements were especially popular.

Very few people in England knew of Mozart—his music was neither played nor published. Perhaps Haydn was closer to the English mentality and this is why they begged him to travel there and commissioned hundreds of arrangements of Scottish folksongs.

Is the fact that Haydn is overshadowed by Mozart reflected in the number of performances and recordings?

In the 1960s, hardly anyone played Haydn's piano sonatas. They played Mozart, but not Haydn. His sonatas weren't really discovered until the late ‘70s, in great part thanks to the research of Christa Landon and László Somfai, as well as their Wiener Urtext edition. In those days, Hungaroton issued the complete Haydn sonatas, which was an important event. First-rate pianists started to play them, including Alfred Brendel, Rudolf Buchbinder, Malcolm Frager (who unfortunately died very young), Dezső Ránki and András Schiff.

In the meantime, the historical performance practice evolved.

Of course, the situation has vastly improved since the 60s, thanks primarily to Malcom Bilson and his students. For some time now, Haydn sonatas are even taught in conservatories—but that's still not enough! It really irks me that if a Haydn piano trio is performed at all, it is almost always the one in G major with the Rondo all'ongarese. The composer wrote more than thirty trios, each more wonderful than the others! As regards the sonatas, many pianists still don't know how to tackle them, even though their emotional range is much broader than that of Mozart's.

Is it possible to say how the Haydn and Mozart sonatas differ from one another?

Haydn had a Baroque musical education. Let's not forget that he was a whole generation older than Mozart. This is a fundamental difference between the two of them. To Haydn, the key of c minor meant something different than for Mozart or Beethoven. He was multifaceted when it came to musical forms and their affects. He never did anything the same way twice. His imagination was boundless. In this respect, Mozart is much more uniform. In order to discover Haydn's diversity, we must know his musical language very thoroughly. If you don't do that, then all you'll see is that Haydn's sonatas, for example, don't have those beautiful tunes you find in Mozart.

Could this have anything to do with the fact that Mozart was a born opera composer while Haydn was not?

That's a fundamental difference between their styles and personalities. Even though they spoke the same musical language, their music is completely different. I couldn't name a single stylistic feature they have in common. Charles Rosen is right when he says that Haydn's way of composing is much closer to Stravinsky's than it is to Mozart's. The fact that two composers live in the same period doesn't mean that they necessarily think the same way... (There are other well-known examples for this in the history of music: Palestrina and Lasso, Bach and Handel.) Their careers were also completely different. Haydn was an employee who fulfilled his duties like Bach or other earlier composers. Mozart, on the other hand, became a freelancer after leaving Salzburg. If Haydn's personality resembled another composer, it would be Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Aside from the influence Bach's son had on Haydn, there was something similar in their makeup. Both loved surprises, both were highly imaginative, and both composed in a rhetorical way... (A special conference report on the rhetorical interpretation of Haydn's works was published in English last year.) Composers who travelled south of the Alps composed very differently from those who did not. This is true from Dufay to Stravinsky. It is surely no coincidence that Haydn never went to Italy while Mozart was really an Italian at heart.

[...]

 

Katalin Komlós,
a musicologist and fortepiano recitalist, is Professor of Music Theory at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. She is the author of Fortepianos and Their Music (Oxford University Press, 1995) and a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Mozart (2003) and The Cambridge Companion to Haydn (2005).

Judit Péteri,
a musicologist and harpsichord player, is an editor at Editio Musica in Budapest. She is the harpsichordist of the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra and a member of the governing board of the Hungarian Haydn Society.