Though Handel's "Messiah" rightly reigns supreme as the king of music for Easter, there are many other seasonal masterpieces that deserve to be heard more often. Here are ten lesser-known classical works that brilliantly depict the dramatic events of Holy Week and Easter Sunday. 1. "Resurrexit" from the Messe Solennelle, by Hector Berlioz (1824) The [...]
When Wolfgang Mozart died on December 5, 1791, fellow composer Joseph Haydn was "quite beside [himself] over his death," and the older composer soon paid a veiled tribute to his young friend in the form of a sombre slow movement of a new symphony he was writing for his London tour. "I love him too [...]
The mature music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—the Viennese Classical composers—reflects the best ideals of the Enlightenment in that it embodies rational clarity and order and makes a direct appeal to the listener without undue obscurity. What they produced forms the backbone of a repertoire of music that is recognized and celebrated as some of [...]
“He alone has the secret of making me smile and touching me to the bottom of my soul,” Mozart said of Joseph Haydn. It is a dizzying prospect to explore the vastness of Haydn’s delightful musical creations. But here are some starting points. Quite unjustly, he stands in the shadow of his young friend, Wolfgang [...]
While there have been countless classical pieces about a single season—spring music alone is almost a cliché—complete seasonal cycles are a rarity in the classical canon. If we dig into the repertoire a bit, we find a handful of seasons cycles apart from Vivaldi’s perennial favorite. Here I have settled on cycles by Haydn, Roussel, [...]
Franz Joseph Haydn is the most companionable composer. His music is accessible in an almost daily way, without overwhelming us. The whole panoply of life is there but in scale, humanely so, without grotesque exaggeration. I love Haydn. If I had to be left with only one composer in my life, it would be he [...]
Franz Joseph Haydn composed the Mass in Time of War, his tenth setting of the Roman Catholic Mass in 1796, in the city of Eisenstadt, Austria, where he was the composer-in-residence-for Prince Esterhazy. At the time of its writing in August and its premier in December, French Revolutionary were winning victories in Italy and Germany [...]
Michael Haydn's Requiem—like the composer himself—has receded into the historical mists. But this astounding work heavily influenced Mozart's own Requiem and is worthy of comparison with every other setting of the Mass for the Dead ever composed. Michael Haydn The 1984 film Amadeus brought to the general public's attention that many minor composers [...]
The Symphony No. 48 in C major, Hoboken I/48, is a symphony by Joseph Haydn written in 1768 or 1769. The work has the nickname "Maria Theresia" as it was long thought to have been composed for a visit by the Holy Roman Empress, Maria Theresa of Austria in 1773. An earlier copy dated 1769 [...]
Il mondo della luna (The World on the Moon), Hob. 28/7, is an opera buffa by Joseph Haydn with a libretto written by Carlo Goldoni in 1750, first performed at Eszterháza, Hungary, on 3 August 1777. Goldoni's libretto had previously been set by six other composers, first by the composer Baldassare Galuppi and performed in Venice [...]
The “Seven Last Words of Christ” can seen as the verbal expression of an interior reality: namely, the mind of Christ, as formed according to a deeply ingrained, habitual life practice of living mindfully according to the Lord’s Prayer. Holy Week is an especially fruitful time for prayerful meditation. There are many liturgical events at [...]
Across the centuries, composers have been inspired by the twin dramas of human conflict and the subsequent making of peace. Here are ten great pieces of classical music that dramatize war, celebrate its resolution, and recall its sacrifices. 10. Franz Liszt: The Battle of the Huns One of the composer's many tone poems, Franz Liszt's Hunnenschlacht—written in [...]
In essence, The Imaginative Conservative is a community of philosophers, dedicated to examining, understanding, and enjoying God’s creation. What better anthem for this journal than Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn’s remarkable Symphony No. 22 in E flat major, known as the “Philosopher” Symphony? Though the nickname was probably not Haydn’s, it was given to the work [...]