SCHUBERT MASS IN G MAJOR

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)

SYMPHONY NO. 8 IN G MAJOR, LE SOIR (1761)

Scored for: flute, two oboes, bassoon, two horns, continuo and strings Performance time: 23 minutes First Grant Park Orchestra performance: August 18, 1941, Hans Lange, conductor

Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 8, Le soir (“Evening”) comes as the final symphony in a set of three, following Symphony No. 6, Le matin (“Morning”) and Symphony No. 7, Le midi (“Noon”). The young composer had recently been hired as ViceKapellmeister at Prince Paul Anton Esterházy’s court in Eisenstadt, Austria. The prince, an Italian Baroque music enthusiast, asked Haydn to compose a semi-programmatic set akin to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons that tracked the passing of a day instead of a year. Eager to please his patron in his debut as court composer, Haydn wrote the set during his first few months at court in 1761.

Though Haydn is often considered the “father” of the symphony, the genre had already begun to evolve from elements of the Baroque concerto, church sonata, and Italian opera overture. This early symphony nods to the style and form of Baroque concerti grossi in which musical material passes between a small group of soloists (the concertino) and full orchestra (the ripieno). This retrospective style could be Haydn’s way of flattering the prince’s musical tastes, but it also allows the individual musicians to shine. Haydn had the rare opportunity of having a premier orchestra at his fingertips to compose for, as Prince Esterházy had assembled a newly expanded orchestra for his court with some of the most talented instrumentalists out of Vienna. In a move to curry favor with his musicians as their new leader, Haydn showcases the talents of the orchestra as a whole in his Symphony No. 8 while also highlighting the individual players, particularly concertmaster and violin virtuoso Luigi Tomasini.

The opening movement, marked Allegro molto, features a staccato melody in 3/8 time, which passes in variation between the strings and winds. The second movement is a heartfelt Andante that uses a traditional concertino group of two solo violins, echoed by paired solo bassoon and solo cello. This movement also gives the solo first violin plenty of moments to shine on its own. A pleasant Minuet and Trio follow, featuring a provincial double bass solo. The finale is the only explicitly programmatic moment of the symphony. In a nod to Vivaldi, Haydn titles this movement “La tempesta,” or the storm. Here, the sixteenth-note octaves in the first violin depict the approaching storm, the staccato notes in the orchestra below like the first droplets of rain. Then, a forte cascading figure in unison comes in like a heavy downpour. Later, tremolos in the lower strings suggest distant rumbles of thunder.

In addition to appeasing the musicians, this symphony and the other two in the set must have assured Prince Esterházy that he had made an excellent decision in hiring the young composer. As it happens, Haydn would go on to serve the Esterházy court for the next thirty years in what would be one of the most fruitful musical patronages in history.

CAROLINE SHAW (b. 1982)

ENTR’ACTE (2017)

Scored for: string orchestra Performance time: 11 minutes

First Grant Park Orchestra performance

You might be thinking that this next piece, written by a composer who has collaborated with the likes of Kanye West, couldn’t be more dissimilar to the early Haydn Symphony you just heard. But the pieces have more in common than you might expect.

Caroline Shaw, who was the youngest-ever recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music when she won in 2013 at the age of thirty, wrote Entr’acte in 2011 for the Brentano Quartet who was in residence at Princeton University where Shaw was a graduate student. She recalls being inspired by their performance of Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 77 No. 2, specifically the “spare and soulful shift to the D-flat major trio in the minuet.” The somewhat abrupt and playful transitions Haydn was prone to using served as a jumping-off point for Entr’acte. Shaw writes, “I love the way some music (like the minuets of Op. 77) suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.” What follows is a “riffing” on the Classical minuet and trio that nods to forms, techniques, and harmonies of previous centuries but blows them wide open with a refreshing infusion of dissonances, idiosyncratic rhythms, and extended string technique effects.

Entr’acte loosely retains the ternary form of a Classical minuet and trio, repeating the opening thematic material of the minuet after the contrasting trio section. However, she inverts the traditional formula that Haydn uses for these movements by contrasting a more somber minuet with a livelier trio instead of the other way around. Entr’acte begins with a mournful, almost resigned sighing theme in the vein of a Baroque lament. The quintessentially Baroque harmonies gradually dissolve into dissonant meanderings. The sweeping minuet then gives way to ebullient pizzicatos in four-part harmony in the trio, the constantly changing pulse and meter giving it a quasi-improvisational quality.

The middle section continues on the theme of abrupt transitions by shifting between numerous disparate musical ideas. At one moment, Shaw introduces a special extended technique pizzicato that Shaw instructs should be “soft but open, like the lute stop of a harpsichord.” This is contrasted with a long section of bariolage, or rapid alternation of notes on adjacent strings that was a common feature of Baroque music, in the viola, layered with rustic vertical chords in the violins. Eerie sighing gestures follow, almost as if the players are melting in the hot sun of the high harmonics. This suddenly gives way to the repeat of the opening minuet theme. The violins then disappear into the sky in “whispered arpeggios,” leaving the cello to roll off chords in a long soliloquy as if “recalling fragments of an old tune or story,” Shaw instructs.

The resulting piece is something that is at once comfortingly familiar and wildly new. As Shaw writes, “The colors are vivid and familiar, and the shapes of the leaves follow a pattern that you seem to know until you don’t.”