Joseph Haydn
Symphony No. 26 in D minor, “Lamentatione”
Violin Concerto No. 1 in C
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN was born at Rohrau, Lower Austria, on March 31, 1732, and died in Vienna on
May 31, 1809. His Symphony No. 26 dates from 1770 (perhaps 1768) and was written during his early period of employment with the Esterházy family. His Violin Concerto No. 1, from that same period, was composed at latest in 1765 (though perhaps dating back to earlier that decade), when he entered it into his personal catalog with the notation “fatto per il Luigi” (“made for Luigi”), referring to Luigi Tomasini, concertmaster of the Esterházy court orchestra.
THE SCORE OF HAYDN’S SYMPHONY NO. 26 calls for two oboes, two horns, and strings, plus bassoon doubling the bass line.
IN ADDITION TO THE SOLO VIOLINIST, the score of the Violin Concerto No. 1 calls only for orchestral strings, though a harpsichord (here played by John Gibbons) is employed as continuo instrument.
One generally begins a note on a Haydn symphony by recalling his longstanding reputation as “father of the symphony.” To a remarkable extent that reputation is earned. Haydn arguably evolved more in the course of his roughly 106 symphonies than his one-time student Beethoven did in his nine. With Symphony
No. 26 we find Haydn in the earlier stages of his journey with the genre, which means that at this point the symphony was in a quite different place than it was when he put it down and Beethoven picked it up.
We think of a symphony as a big piece played in big halls. For much of Haydn’s career it was a threemovement work of modest dimensions generally played in private music rooms, whether in the palaces of the aristocracy or the houses of the wealthy. A few cities, mainly London and Paris, developed a flourishing public concert life in the 18th century, and symphonies and concertos were a feature of those.
But in German lands the setting for most symphonies was music rooms where the small audience might drift in and out, chat, play cards, browse a buffet. In other words, music-making was as much a social as an artistic occasion.
The mid-century orchestra might have nine to twelve strings and a wind section of pairs of oboes and horns plus one or two bassoons. That’s the band of Symphony No. 26, its one bassoon always doubling cellos and bass. (Flutes arrived in the orchestra later in the century, clarinets still later.) Often the ensembles were led by the first violinist or a harpsichordist, who played along. Nobody had a full score, and the parts were generally hand-copied. The players were mostly amateurs, though many amateurs of those days were excellent players. They needed to be good sight-readers, because pieces were usually done with little or no rehearsal. Many performances would have sounded, to modern ears, in a word, lousy.
So the setting and the orchestra of around 1770, the time of Haydn’s Symphony No. 26, were quite different from what we are used to. So were the programs, which were usually long grab-bag affairs that might have a couple of symphonies and two or three concertos, plus arias, chamber music, what have you, all mixed to taste. Players in one piece were listeners in another. Symphonies and concertos were often broken up through a program, or only a movement or two given. If a movement went over really well, it could be immediately encored. All of this is to say that when Haydn started writing symphonies, as well as for years afterward, the genre was a relatively minor one, seen as a festive or modestly imposing piece to start or end a program.
By the end of his career Haydn was truly father of the symphony and likewise of the string quartet, but not father of the concerto. That honor goes to the keyboard virtuoso Mozart, who created the modern sense of the genre. As with the symphony, the main reason was the position of concertos in the 18th century.
Mozart, like most soloists, wrote and performed mainly his own. For audiences of the time, how brilliantly a virtuoso played was generally more important than what he played. Haydn could handle keyboard and violin, but as he admitted was “no conjuror” on either of them, so he didn’t play concertos. Consequently, he didn’t get all that much demand for them, so wrote far fewer concertos than symphonies and quartets, so did not evolve as much in dealing with them.
Since composers of the 18th century turned out so many symphonies and quartets, many acquired nicknames as a way to keep track of them. Haydn’s Symphony No. 26 in D minor acquired the name
“ Lamentatione ” because its first movement interweaves a plainchant melody associated with Holy Week and the Passion of Christ; the second movement uses another chant melody. Appropriately, the symphony seems to have been written for an Easter week premiere. For accompaniment it uses only strings.
The D minor begins with an air of nervous energy due to its key and its unsettled syncopations. That mood will resonate through the work. It is among the first of Haydn's works to be influenced by the Sturm und
Drang (“Storm and Stress”) movement of these years. This was an atmosphere of overwrought

emotionalism that flared for a decade or so and then largely died out, but still provided inspiration for the coming Romantic movement. Haydn's Sturm und Drang pieces have a distinctive quirkiness unto eccentricity, and they are usually in minor keys—which is to say that his Sturm und Drang phase was another step toward more serious and intense symphonies.
The second theme in the Lamentatione ’s first movement brings in the plainchant melody in oboes and second violins, around which the first violins weave leaping figures. There is a striking sense of the chant theme as emotional center of the music. After a short development comes the expected recapitulation, but with the second theme there is a surprise that is the glory of the movement: D minor turns to D major, and the horns join in on the chant theme. It ends the movement not exactly on a joyful tone, but with a sense of solemn celebration.
The sonata-form second movement is quiet and meditative. Again oboes and violins present the chant with a countermelody in first violins; at the recap the horns join in on the chant as they did in the first movement. It was later in his symphonies that Haydn added a minuet as the third of four movements. The ones of this period are in three movements, but in this case the finale is a minuet and Trio. Its tone is still a bit dark for a minuet, again partly due to the D minor tonality: that key in the Classical period was generally given to somber or dramatic pieces. Even the minuet’s D major Trio section, lighter in texture like most Trios, has a pensive quality. Since symphonies in this period were often broken up in performance, there was less attention given to inter-movement relationships, something Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven later raised to great importance; but this piece shows that already Haydn saw a multimovement work as a whole, with a unified and distinct character.
If Haydn's Violin Concerto in C is conventional for the time in layout, with none of the formal variety and complexity Mozart brought to the genre, it also shows how delightful and individual convention can be.
Written for Luigi Tomasini, the first violinist of the Esterházy orchestra, the solo part is distinctly virtuosic, with a good deal of writing in the high range. The key of C major was often associated with a festive mood, and so it is in the muscular beginning of the piece. But soon in the orchestral introduction a bit of cloud seems to pass over, in the form of chromatic bits and touches of minor keys. That sense of a sunny outing with occasional cloudy and passionate moments will mark this piece.
After the orchestral introduction, the soloist enters on the main theme in rich double-stops, which will also turn up throughout. As soon as the solo arrives, a more serious and expansive mood takes over; at around nine minutes, the first movement is fairly long for the time. The solo part is nimble and in the long development section full of racing scales and arpeggios. The recap begins in the festive mood of the opening but quickly diverts from C major to minor—another cloud. The expected cadenza at the end of the movement would have been improvised by the soloist.
The second-movement Adagio begins unusually, with a pulsing crescendo leading to a little cadenza from the soloist. There follows a stately theme, but one that won’t come back—the movement is more a steady unfolding. It ends with another little cadenza and a return of the opening phrase. The Presto finale is lively and energetic, with some bracing rhythmic kinks and, again, a passing minor-key shadow here and there.
At this point in his career Haydn was writing relatively conventional music, and would not have kept his job if he didn’t. But he did so splendidly, and as his music made its way into the world, he began to redefine the conventions. He did not have the kind of personality or the virtuoso career that led Mozart to his innovations with concertos. But when Haydn reached his last symphonies, written for London concert halls, he had brought the genre to a level of weight and ambition far from the world of the palace music room that he began with. He and his younger friend Mozart made the symphony the king of instrumental genres. That is where it lay when Beethoven picked it up—which is all to say that in his music Haydn was not a splashy, but rather a slow and subtle, revolutionary.
Jan Swafford
JAN SWAFFORD is a prizewinning composer and writer whose books include biographies of Johannes
Brahms and Charles Ives, “The Vintage Guide to Classical Music,” and, most recently, “Beethoven:
Anguish and Triumph.” He is currently working on a biography of Mozart.
HAYDN’S SYMPHONY NO. 26, “LAMENTATIONE,” has been performed by the Boston Symphony
Orchestra on two previous occasions: subscription performances led by Antal Doráti in April 1982, and subscription performances led by Franz Welser-Möst in January 1997.
HAYDN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 1 has been played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on three previous occasions: first at Tanglewood on July 17, 1977, with then BSO concertmaster Joseph Silverstein as soloist and Seiji Ozawa conducting; then twice under the direction of André Previn, also with

Silverstein: subscription performances in November 1982, and a single Tanglewood performance the following summer, on July 22, 1983.