The Zeitgeist
ONE OF the most annoying things about going to classical music concerts is the propensity of every audience to chuckle knowingly at complex musical jokes that are lovingly explained in the program. I only know of a few that are actually funny. One concerns Haydn’s 1772 Symphony No.45 Farewell.
By 1772 Haydn was long established as the Kapellmeister (orchestra leader) of Nicolaus Esterházy, who Haydn and his players had to follow to his Summer Palace at Eisenstadt every year without their families. Following one particularly long stay, Haydn and his musicians dearly wanted to return home, so Haydn wrote a particularly subtle hint into the orchestra’s directions for the final adagio.
Following a brief soli, each of the instrumentalists rises, snuffs out his candle and leaves, until only Haydn and the concertmaster Alois Tomasini remained, playing muted violins. Unsuprisingly, the court returned to Esterhaza the next day. In modern times the most stylish way to go is to belt out My Way Sinatra-style. In fact it would appear that it is easy to say goodbye to somebody who is leaving you because they might just come back: Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.
6 in E flat major Les Adieux suggest the possibility of the return of the departed with a final movement called Das Wiedersehn (The Return). The affected melancholy of the world of Elizabethan music gave us some far more dramatic goodbyes: the Lutenist Robert Jones entitled his 1605 collection of songs Ultimum Vale (Final Farewell) I cannot hope to match the brilliance of these goodbyes, and yet I feel that I may leave in the spirit of the final movement of Les Adieux.
Indeed, there remains so many of the darker reaches of the Zeitgeist to explore, that as the virginalist Giles Farnaby put it in his magnificent set of variations, I am “loth to depart”.
8th Jun 2006