What composers' anniversaries offer are a chance to focus on work you may have previously ignored or overlooked. Concert programmes allow you to hear the music (surely, the most important thing) and the publication of complementary books give the chance to delve a little beyond the sounds. Faber's new Pocket Guide to Haydn will fill in a few gaps on surely the most under-rated of the greatest composers.
Haydn maybe inevitably suffers from being in the shadow of Beethoven and Mozart but 2009, the 200th anniversary of his death, provides an opportunity to give him a little more attention than one may have done to date.
Richard Wigmore, the distinguished musicologist, has written an accessible companion book, which skims through the life and works but serves as an ideal reference for the enquiring music-lover who can't or won't take on anything too scholarly.
At 388 pages, it can only give an overview but it's a perceptive and helpful one. There's a 70 page biographical sketch and some interesting little sections, such as "Things people said about Haydn" (ranging from the Empress Maria Theresa to Alfred Brendel) and glossaries of "Friends, patrons and colleagues" and "Haydn's composer contemporaries".
Hardly surprisingly, the bulk of the book, some 260 pages, is taken up with a review of the music itself. As music is something to be listened to more than read about, this is likely to serve as a reference in conjunction with hearing performances, whether live or recorded. Given the scope of the book, these notes more than anything resemble those in CD booklets but giving individual compositions more of a historical and stylistic context.
The symphonies take up a large section, dealt with in batches by date which, due to the dodgy cataloguing of the time, is not always in the order we're used to. The "Operas and Dramatic Music" section is particularly interesting because this is such an under-explored aspect of Haydn's output. Let's hope the anniversary year gives us the chance to put our new found knowledge to practical use in this area!
Cellist Steven Isserlis has written a brief foreword, a telling endorsement for many, of both book and composer, who he tells us "has everything". This comprehensive little volume ends with a selective catalogue of recordings and handy index of the works.
One other page that points to the snapshot feel of this kind of guide is a selection by Wigmore of "A Haydn Top 20". While this is going to be as subjective as anything else you'll read here, I for one wouldn't argue with him giving top place to The Creation, with a high ranking also for the marvellous Nelson Mass.
I certainly hope to become a lot better acquainted over the next year with the vast output of a composer I already love but many of whose works haven't yet lodged themselves in my memory or awareness. If I were browsing through the bookshop and came across Pocket Guide to Haydn, would I buy it? Yes, I would and I think it would become a valued companion to my future concertgoing.
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