Joseph Haydn’s Final Oratorio

The catalogue of the musical compositions by Joseph Haydn compiled by Anthony van Hoboken contains over 750 entires. Ironically, that puts him in “second place” where the First Viennese School is concerned when one finds that, in Otto Erich Deutsch’s thematic catalog of the music of Franz Schubert, the final entry (which is only a fragment) had the catalog number D. 998. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the Hoboken catalog is structured into 32 different categories, which is almost certainly more diverse than any attempt at creating categories for the Deutsch catalog!

The Hoboken entries are two-fold. There is a category, designated by a Roman numeral, followed by an Arabic numeral, the two separated by a colon. The latter is sometimes prefixed by letters denoting the key of the composition. For example, Hoboken XIIa:Es11 is a Requiem setting (of doubtful origin) in E-flat major.

The shortest of the categories is XXI, which consists of only three oratorios. The best known of these is Hoboken XXI:2, The Creation, composed in 1798. The earliest is XXI:1, Il ritorno di Tobia (the return of Tobias), based on one of the books in the Apocrypha, composed in 1775, and subsequently revised twice (with the composer’s consent) in 1784 and 1806. The last entry, XXI:3 is The Seasons, setting a four-part poem of the same title by James Thomson. These poems were translated into German by Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who had also prepared the German text for The Creation.

Cover of the album for the new release of The Seasons (from the Amazon.com Web page for the album)

While there are a generous abundance of recordings of The Creation, this Friday will see a release of The Seasons, which tends to be better known for its name than for its performances. This will be a two-CD album produced by Alia Vox. Jordi Savall conducts the Le Concert des Nations instrumental ensemble with the chorus of La Capella Nacional de Catalunya. As was the case in The Creation, there are three vocal soloists, soprano Lina Johnson, tenor Tilman Lichdi, and baritone Matthias Winckhler. As most readers will expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

To put all my cards on the table (so to speak), I have encountered Il ritorno di Tobia only once, when I worked my way through all 151 CDs in the Brilliant Classics Haydn Edition. Where The Creation is concerned, on the other hand, I have been familiar with the music ever since my high school days, when I played first clarinet in a community orchestra. On the other hand, I last wrote about The Seasons when it was included in the Karl Böhm: The Operas box set released by Deutsche Grammophon, where it was the only Haydn composition in the collection. That was in April of 2018, and my memories of that occasion have pretty much faded!

To be fair, Savall’s instrumental ensemble consists entirely of period instruments. This affords far more transparency than Böhm’s account with the Vienna Symphony! Nevertheless, where one can easily follow the narrative of The Creation, The Seasons has a tendency to come across as “one thing after another!” On the basis of what I found on the Wikipedia page for this composition, I have a feeling that, were his spirit to hover over me as I write this, Haydn would sympathize, if not agree!