JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)
Symphony No. 6 in D, Hob. 1/6 (“The Morning”)
September 14, 2025: “SINGERS” FROM THE MET ORCHESTRA
BRAD GEMEINHARDT, HORN WILLIAM SHORT, BASSOON
ANTON RIST, CLARINET MUSICIANS FROM THE MET ORCHESTRA
In May 1761 the twenty-nine-year old Haydn was hired in the newly created position of vice-Kapellmeister by Prince Paul Anton Esterházy to serve under the aging, increasingly infirm Gregor Joseph Werner. The prince was in fading health himself, but he saw the opportunity to modernize and upgrade his musical establishment and had already begun to hire top-notch musicians to create a small orchestra. His first order to Haydn was to compose three symphonies, and he suggested the “times of day” as a subject. Despite his myriad duties, Haydn fulfilled the order quickly, producing Symphonies Nos. 6, 7, and 8, which soon earned the nicknames “Le matin” (Morning), “Le midi” (Noon), and “Le soir (Night)—in French, owing to popular taste.
Having already begun to help hire musicians in April, a month before the start of his official appointment, Haydn continued to shape the orchestra throughout the decades of his employment at Esterháza. The orchestra expanded considerably under Prince Nicolaus, an even more avid music-lover than his brother Paul Anton, who died only one year after hiring Haydn. At first, however, the orchestra consisted of just thirteen to fifteen players, several of whom performed on more than one instrument: approximately six violins and one each of viola, cello and bass; pairs of oboes and horns but just one bassoon and occasionally one or two flutes. Haydn led this early ensemble as a violinist (second to the virtuoso first violinist) rather than by playing keyboard continuo.
Haydn was undoubtedly aware of Baroque precedents for programmatic orchestral works—he may have known Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and certainly Kapellmeister Werner’s twelve instrumental suites titled Der curiose musikalische Instrumentalkalender—and, given his amazing fount of originality, he could easily have made more of Prince Paul Anton’s “times of day.” Instead he limited himself to composing a storm as the fourth movement of Le soir and a “sunrise” introduction to Le matin, because he was far more interested in impressing the prince with his own ingenious approaches to abstract forms.
Further, one of Haydn’s principal aims was to display the talents, individually and as a whole, of the ensemble of virtuosos that he now had at his disposal—among them violinist Luigi Tomasini and cellist Joseph Weigl along with flutist and oboist Franz Siegl, oboist brothers Michael and Georg Kapfer, bassoonist Johann Hinterberger, bassoonist and bassist Georg Schwenda (who must have played bass in Symphonies Nos. 6–8), violinists Franciscus Garnier and Georg Hegner (and several other violin and viola players), and horn players Johannes Knoblauch and Thadteus Steinmüller. Consequently these symphonies contain prominent solos for violin, flutes (an additional player must have doubled on flute), oboes, horn, cello, and bass. With this concertante focus Haydn updated the traditional Baroque concerto grosso with an attention to shifting orchestral colors that looks toward the future.
Symphonies Nos. 6–8 received their first performance in May or June 1761, not at Esterháza in Eisenstadt, but at the Esterházy palace in the Wallnerstrasse, Vienna. Despite his failing health, Prince Paul Anton had to have been pleased because he continued his plans for musical expansion and requested many more works from Haydn.
Slow introductions to symphony first movements were uncommon at the time, but Haydn’s “sunrise”—though only six measures long—makes the perfect opening to the “times of day” trilogy and to “The Morning” Symphony in particular. Beginning with violins alone, it ascends, growing from pianissimo to fortissimo as all the other instruments enter. In the merry exposition that ensues, the flute followed by oboes enter in birdlike solos. Haydn then ingeniously combines Classsic sonata form—exposition, development, and recapitulation—with the Baroque concertante principles of solo and tutti (ensemble) alternation, which must have delighted the prince. Haydn’s renowned wit shows in the solo horn’s imitation of the flute’s “bird” theme as a “false start” of the recap, something that Beethoven famously did in the first movement of his Eroica Symphony four decades later.
The slow movement, for strings only, opens with an Adagio in which lovely dissonances create a poignant mood. A violin solo emerges, but this is just a prelude to the central Andante—an extended violin and cello duet in a stately minuet style. Haydn closes with a brief return to the Adagio’s poignant harmonies.
The full ensemble returns for the third-movement minuet, which elicits a new sprightlier character in contrast to the Andante of the previous movement. For the central trio section, Haydn must have relished writing the surprising duet for double bass and bassoon, just as his musicians must have relished playing it.
The finale barrels along with infectious enthusiasm alternating lively solos for almost every instrument with tutti ensemble passages in a concertante manner. Several times Haydn revels in pronounced dissonances that make their resolution all the more satisfying.
—©Jane Vial Jaffe