Haydn Theresienmesse

 Day 13

Haydn Theresienmesse

Erna Spoorenberg

Bernadette Greevy

John Mitchinson

Tom Krause

Choir of St John's College Cambridge

Academy of St Martin-in-the-fields

George Guest

Haydn has a central part in my musical life. I find his range of invention absolutely astonishing and I don't think that I have ever heard a piece of his which did not contain at least one moment of astounding individuality. I've been lucky enough to perform a lot of Haydn over the years - including conducting the London symphony, which was a real treat. 

Haydn's masses - especially the six late masses of which the Theresienmesse is one, have been regarded with some suspicion by some musicians because they sit too close to the sound world of the symphonies and hence not 'religious 'enough. I'm not really sure what people expect from a composer who had more or less single-handedly developed the symphony and string quartet into major art forms. Was he expected to drop everything that he knew and find a different way of composing, just because he was setting the mass?

My experience of the Haydn Masses goes back a long way. As a boy treble before my voice broke I sang in a School performance of the Nelson Mass.  I still remember the terrifying exposed entry on the top A in the Dona Nobis Pacem.

The Theresienmesse does not have quite the white hot level of inspiration of the Nelson Mass, but then what has? Robbins Landon called that mass 'arguably Haydn's greatest single composition, and who am I to disagree with him. But is still a splendid piece full of inspired moments. I'd call out two. First the unison choral opening of the Agnus Dei, which comes as a real surprise, and secondly the whole of the Et incarnatus est, particularly the quiet but menacing entry for the trumpets and drums towards the end.

The recording I have of the mass is quite old (1965). It comes from the famous series of Haydn masses conducted (mainly) by George Guest which gave the first opportunities people had, at least in this country, to hear the masses as a collection in good sound. The performance holds up well as far as the orchestra and choir are concerned but the solo voices now seem rather too operatic and over the top - with much more vibrato than one would expected nowadays. I think that Haydn would have expected members of the choir to sing the solo parts rather than engage separate soloists (I don't know for certain) and if that was the case there would be much better integration of choir and soloists than there is here. But still it was a performance full of vigour and the true Haydn spirit.

I don't know how much more Haydn there will be in this series, simply because I have put a lot of time in recent years in listening to as much of his music as I can. Last year I did a project listening to one symphony a day in number order and I also listen to a lot of the string quartets. The piano trios I have only dipped into occasionally so there are plenty there that I could used, and the Haydn Operas are very much unknown territory so one of those might feature at some point.