Creation Date: 1786· Instrumentation: Fl 2 Ob 2 Fg 2 Hr – Str · Duration: 22’ · Created as Symphony #87.

Hob.I:84 Symphony in E-Flat Major
According to the date on the handwritten score, Symphony No. 84 was the second to last symphony completed in 1786, before No. 86, and was originally intended by Joseph Haydn himself to be the fourth in the cycle. The sobriquet Les sept paroles, which this symphony acquired from a French author in the late 19th century, is probably due to a mix-up with the “instrumental music for the Seven Words of Our Saviour on the Cross” of the same year, 1785, but is definitely inauthentic and incongruous. On the contrary: there is probably no other work of Haydn for which such a sobriquet could be less fitting. Despite its slow introduction, the first movement is unmistakeably secular in tone. It is a monothematic sonata movement: a variant of the principal theme serves as the secondary theme. The second movement is a movement of variations: in the variations, the first of which immediately falls into the B minor variant, Haydn unfurls his celebrated instrumentational artistry. In the coda the theme reappears in stretto. The minuet is basically a typical representative of that genre which no other composer conceived of in as rich and varied a fashion as Haydn. The boundaries between rural lightheartedness and “courtly noblesse” are effortlessly blurred to create just as great of an “entertainment value” as with a “consummate” first or last movement of a symphony. The finale is again a monothematic sonata movement in which a musical cosmos dotted with counterpoint and chromaticisms is magically produced out of a folksong-like principal theme in a virtuosic and brilliant way.

X

Joseph Haydn
The Symphonies

Philharmonia Hungarica
Antal Dorati


33 CDs, aufgenommen 1970 bis 1974, herausgegeben 1996 Decca (Universal)

im iTunes music store kaufen
bei Amazon.de kaufen

Haydn
Symphonies complete

Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra
Adam Fischer

33 CDs, aufgenommen 1987 bis 2001, herausgegeben 1996
Brilliant Classics

bei Amazon.de kaufen

Haydn
Symphonies

Academy of Ancient Music
Christopher Hogwood

10 doppel- und triple-CDs
aufgenommen und herausgegeben 1990 bis 2000
Decca (Universal)

im iTunes music store kaufen

X