In Angustii

Well, Jack was bugging me, so I had to do it.

I had written about that sociopathic piece of music, the Grosse Fuge. And thrown in “And this, from a student of Haydn?”

That wasn’t right.

And Jack didn’t approve. So I struggled with him for a while. I mean, hey—how many people read this blog? How big is Haydn’s reputation, next to mine? And if we were gonna worry about anybody, shouldn’t it be Beethoven?

Not right.

Damn it. Look, Jack—and by the way, aren’t you dead?—it’s not that big a deal. And Haydn himself was famously a nice guy. Gracious. Good. One of his contemporaries called him the embodiment of Enlightenment's ideal of the honest man. (OK—give in to temptation, haul out the French. L’homme honnête! Now that’s class….) So he probably wouldn’t mind.

Marc.

Shit, am I ever gonna be free of you! I’m 56 years old, and you’re still able to say my name—Marc, and note the lack of exclamation mark! You had the quietest voice and, somehow, when you spoke, the heavens moved. Dammit—go putter in the garage. Build something. Stop bugging me—I haven’t defamed Franz Joseph Haydn.

Guess the response!

So I dug it out, the Lord Nelson Mass. Oh, hell, we’ll do the Latin (also classy): Missa in Angustii. Haven’t heard it in years, though I once played it for Raf, and argued it was a more sincere, more—well—honest work than Mozart’s Great Mass. Why not hear it again?

It’s amazing.

Also proof that the old can pull a surprise or two. It’s certainly traditional in content—the text follows the traditional Latin Mass. But wow—what the guy does, from the very first notes!

It’s pure terror.

OK, I enjoyed it enormously. Perfect music for a morning trot. Came home and looked it up. And discovered that, as usual, I’m not particularly original.

Everybody else thinks so too.

Well, that damn father of mine wouldn’t let me rest. He put me to read the whole article: here’s the skinny. The mass was written in that period when Napoleon was very near to conquering Europe. Austria was on edge, nerves were frayed. Haydn composed the work not knowing—no one did—that Napoleon had been defeated, and called it Missa in Angustii. A mass for troubled times, is sometimes the translation. But why not do the simpler thing?

A Mass in Anguished Times.

And was that enough for the old man?

NO! Then I had to download The Creation from Amazon—and pay 18 bucks as well—AND I had to read the biography of Haydn in Wikipedia.

OK—and are you listening, Jack?—here it is. Father is a barrel maker—or something, can’t remember. Mother was a servant. Musical family. Haydn at age six is sent to a relative to live and to develop himself as a musician. This the relative enables him to do, though he also doesn’t feed the child very well. Haydn serves as a choirboy until his voice changes. Actually, after. The empress complained that he sounded like a cow.

Thirty years in the employ of the Esterhazy family. Isolation for much of that time. And yes, he wore livery and did chores. Also composed like a fiend.

Had a completely unhappy marriage, which of course at the time he could not dissolve. So both he and his wife took lovers.

Several trips to London. Return  to Vienna. Teaches Beethoven, who predictably (and metaphorically) bit the hand that was trying to feed him. Composes the Creation over three years at the very end of the 18^th century.

Well, I listened to the first and part of the second sections.

And—you can guess this, right?—it’s friggin’ A.

And here again, he starts out with an amazing section of the chaos—the void before God filled the world. Full of dissonance, completely surprising.

Well the old man was right, as old men often are. The old Haydn reveals himself as something completely new. And my dead Jack is true to life—a fair guy who wants his kids to do the right thing.

Now will you go away?