Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809): Schöpfungsmesse (Creation Mass) in B Flat Major, Hob XXII/13
Feted, celebrated and widely regarded as the grand old man of European music… yet Joseph Haydn hadn’t always had it so good. His long career had been something of a “rags to riches” story, offering up plenty of hurdles and hardships to be overcome along the way.
Born in Rohrau, then on the Austrian-Hungarian border, he was sent to Hamburg at the tender age of six to be apprenticed to a local schoolmaster and choirmaster. Young Joseph initially made good of the opportunity, rising to become a boy chorister at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. But then his voice broke and his croaky intonation began to attract complaints. After snipping off a fellow chorister’s pigtail as a prank, he was caned, fired from his position and literally thrown out into the streets. He was just sixteen years old.
And there the whole Joseph Haydn story might have ended, in destitution and despair. Luckily a friend found him some sleeping space in a tiny attic, after which the young man, starting out from almost nothing, set out to create a musical career for himself. He was willing during these early years to try his hand at almost anything and everything: street serenader, freelance teacher, accompanist, personal valet, occasional church organist and composer of comic operas.
Undoubtedly talented, he began to attract the attention of rich patrons, generally the route by which non-church composers managed to make a living in those days. After gaining employment in a couple of royal courts, he eventually found his way to the House of Esterházy, an old and wealthy Hungarian family with residences in both Austria and Hungary. Haydn would work for the family as Kapellmeister for the next thirty years, a job carrying a heavy workload but set within a musically well-resourced environment. Far from being able to retreat to any ivory towers, Haydn had responsibility for all the other court musicians, directing the frequent chamber and orchestral concerts and often performing himself (either on the piano or violin).
Throughout this, he was composing on an almost industrial scale and fulfilling all manner of requests. When his patron Prince Nikolaus decided to take up the baryton (similar to a bass viol), Haydn was forced to write no less than 200 works for the instrument over the next decade. Much to Haydn’s relief, the prince finally grew tired of it and developed an enthusiasm for opera instead. But writing to order in this way, allowed Haydn – a largely self-taught composer – to achieve a gradual mastery over his craft. He became a particularly prolific writer of symphonies for the court’s private orchestras, having composed at least 104 by the end of his life.
One of the peculiar aspects to the Esterházy role was that even as Haydn made his name as a composer, and he was able to start getting his compositions circulated and published more widely, his duties meant that he remained trapped at remote country estates for most of the year round. As a result, he had to turn down many professional and personal opportunities which had started to come his way.
Emancipation only finally arrived in 1790 when the old Esterházy prince died and was succeeded by his son who reduced Haydn’s salary but allowed him to travel and accept outside engagements for the first time. The rest of Europe was by now eager to see more of a composer they had heard so much about and come to admire. Haydn would build up a particularly lucrative relationship with London in the 1790s, writing several new symphonies which he was then invited him to conduct in various British venues. Although by now approaching his sixtieth birthday, Haydn was blossoming like never before, and much of his best music comes from this period. Aside from the symphonies, his output includes several superb string quartets (a genre he had practically invented), along with piano trios, masses, incidental music and songs.
He still basically wrote to order, as he had always done. When invited in 1795 to serve again as the Esterházy kapellmeister, this time on a freer and more part-time basis. Haydn accepted and duly rewarded them with six late masses, including this Schöpfungsmesse*, which he wrote at the age of 69.
*So-called Schöpfungsmesse or “Creation Mass” because Haydn re-used some material from his famous oratorio, The Creation, for a passage in the Gloria – an act of self-plagiarism common enough for the time and yet on this occasion stirring up a mild furore among certain influential nobility.
Some composers tighten up and become more mannered in old age. Others sound more short-winded, as if their ideas no longer expand so effortlessly in front of them. Others still are keen to show you how much they have learned across their creative career and how clever they are. Haydn’s Schöpfungsmesse does none of those things. Rather it wears its erudition lightly, its maturity and technical mastery swept along by a surprisingly youthful verve. It is the work of a man who has overcome a good many hurdles and obstacles in his life and is now exactly where he wants to be. He has little more prove, except to enjoy himself in the art of composition, an art which he finds just as joyful and as satisfying as ever. I believe you can hear all of that in the music.
Each movement of the Mass (there is a Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei) is divided into two or three contrasted sections. Although major keys abound and the mood is generally upbeat and warm, there are still moments of genuine edginess and disquiet – such as in the middle of the Credo or during the Agnus Dei, where passages of harmonic uncertainty and tension threaten to unhinge the piece’s entire tonal centre. At other times, the music breaks out into majestic, polyphonic flourishes, such as the playful (though complex) fugue near the end of the Gloria, or the joyous double-fugue which ends the final Agnus Dei on the words “donna eis pacem”.
It could seem from this music as if Haydn was still in fullest flow as a composer, with many years of creative productivity still ahead of him. Rather poignantly, the Schöpfungsmesse would prove to be one of his very last large-scale compositions. From here on, his activity would be increasingly limited by poor health. He was a very sick man by the time Napoleon’s army was overrunning Vienna in the summer of 1809. But no French hostility was ever aimed at Haydn – one of his last ever visitors was a French soldier, a great admirer, who apologised for what his countrymen were doing before beautifully singing an aria from one of Haydn’s oratorios.
Suggestions for Further Listening:
Although Haydn composed a good deal of sacred choral music throughout his career, some of his best and most famous examples date from the last two decades of his life. Aside from the Schöpfungsmesse, another of Haydn’s six late masses for the Esterházys was the Nelson (1798). In the same year, he completed his masterly oratorio, The Creation.
And as this is to be our only post on the wonderful Joseph Haydn, listeners might also want to check out shorter, non-choral works from this period, the Symphony no 104 in D Major (“London”) written in 1795, or his late, great string quartets, such as the “Sunrise” in B Flat Major op 76 no 4 (1797).