PROGRAM NOTES by Paul Schiavo

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN

Symphony No. 104 in D major, "London"
Work composed: 1795
World premiere: on or about April 13, 1795, in London, conducted by the composer

Haydn’s visits to London brought about his crowning achievements in the field of symphonic
composition, to which he had contributed enormously during the preceding three decades.
Specifically, he bestowed upon his English audiences his final twelve symphonies, works that
represent their genre at the first peak of its development.

The last of these dozen superb symphonies dates from the spring of 1795 and has become known
as the “London” Symphony, though that designation would equally describe any of the works of
this kind the composer presented in England. It received its first performance in April of that year,
at which time a London newspaper, the Morning Chronicle, praised both the composition and its
author: “This wonderful man never fails,” the anonymous reviewer wrote of Haydn, “and the
various powers of his inventive and impassioned mind have seldom been ... listened to with
greater rapture by the hearers, than they were this evening.”

The work follows the four-movement plan that by this time had become Haydn’s standard
symphonic format. A solemn introduction in slow tempo precedes the Allegro that constitutes
the main body of the first movement. Even more than here, the moderately paced second
movement reveals Haydn’s perennial delight in the unexpected. Robust off-beat accents enliven
the third movement’s minuet, to which the flowing central section provides effective contrast. A
buoyant finale closes Haydn’s career as a symphonist on an appropriately jubilant note.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

The introduction to the first movement intimates deep poignancy through its somber harmonies
and a four-note figure sounded first by violins and finally by the oboe. From this darkness, the
music breaks into the light of the ensuing Allegro. Its single theme is graceful and exuberant by
turn, and Haydn constructs much of the movement on that brief fragment of the melody
beginning with four repeated notes. Nothing could be more characteristic of Haydn’s
inventiveness than the diverse uses he finds for this unassuming motif.

Although the theme presented by the strings appears disarmingly simple, it offers a succession of
surprises: sudden pauses, unexpected turns of melody and harmony, abrupt dynamic contrasts. It
also contains unsuspected dramatic possibilities, as Haydn reveals in the central minor-key
episode.

Following the minuet, Haydn builds the symphony’s finale around a melody whose rustic
character is emphasized by the sustained drone that accompanies it. The composer ingeniously
combines this theme with several subsidiary motifs during the course of the movement.

Scored for pairs of winds, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.

© 2016 Paul Schiavo