Haydn Symphony No. 46 & No. 47

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809)

I. Symphony No. 46 in B major (1772)
II. Symphony No. 47 in G major, The Palindrome (1772) (from 17:06)

Austro – Hungarian Haydn Orchestra
Adam Fischer
Recording : 1995, Haydnsaal, Esterházy Palace, Eisenstadt, Austria

Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 46 in B major, Hoboken I/46, was composed in 1772, during his Sturm und Drang period.
(From Here)

The work is scored for two oboes, bassoon, two horns and strings.^[1]

The work is written in standard four movement format.

Vivace, 4/4
Poco adagio, 6/8
Menuet: Allegretto, 3/4
Finale: Presto e scherzando, 2/2

The key of B major, which is highly unusual,^[2] sets the tone of the work, which is one of unease, restlessness and searching. The high-pitched horns add a touch of eeriness.^[3]

Joseph Haydn‘s Symphony No. 47 in G major Hob. I:47 was probably written in 1772. Haydn was often called “The father of symphony”. (from Here)

Movements

Scored for 2 oboes, bassoon, 2 horns, and strings.^[1] It is in four movements:

Allegro, 4/4
Un poco adagio cantabile, 2/4
Menuetto e Trio, 3/4
Presto assai, 2/2

The opening movement begins with a hammerstroke and a dotted-rhythm fanfare of repeated notes which serves as the first theme for the sonata-form movement. The line between the development and recapitulation is blurred by the reappearance of the dotted-rhythm in G minor (the home tonic but the wrong mode) followed by standard recapitulation of the second theme group. The first theme is finally resolved in the concluding coda.^[2]

The slow movement is a theme with four variations in invertible counterpoint. Through the third variation, each appearance of the ternary theme with winds appearing only in the middle section framed by muted strings in the outer sections. In the second outer section, the theme in two voices is inverted. Also, through each of the first three variations the surface rhythms are accelerating from eighth notes to sixteenth notes to triplet-sixteenths to thirty-seconds. The fourth variation varies from this pattern in that it is fully scored for the entire variation and serves as a recapitulation for the movement. What follows is a coda where the theme slowly dies away.^[2]

The “Minuetto al Roverso” is the reason this symphony is sometimes called “The Palindrome”: the second part of the Minuet is the same as the first but backwards, and the Trio is also written in this way.^[3]^[4]