This is such attractive, pleasant music–I have to partly agree with some contemporary critics who apparently “complained” that Haydn’s late Masses (including these two) were “too cheerful to be sacred”–but I’m not complaining! Haydn always found ways to enliven and enrich these cherished if well-worn texts, loosening the more formal and traditional constraints of the church service by means of sheer musical invention and, particularly here, with orchestration that can only be the work of this mature genius.
In the “Creation Mass” (Schöpfungsmesse), so-called because of its inclusion of a thematic reference to Haydn’s famous oratorio, the composer employs devices of structure and development associated with symphonic form, while offering plenty of appealing tunes, catchy rhythms, striking manipulations of tempo and mood, and compelling choral and solo movements (including a delightful, chromatic-themed fugue in the conclusion of the Gloria movement). The scoring is rich and often powerful, with a masterful attention to color–and even the key of B-flat is consciously chosen for its particular sonorous character, aided by the use of B-flat trumpets.
The Missa brevis performed here is Haydn’s 1805 revision of a score he composed as a teenager in 1749, among the earliest of his surviving compositions. More than 50 years later he revisited this work, appreciating in it a “certain youthful fire”–and proceeded to expand its orchestration in view of offering it for sale to his publishers along with some other works. Again, it would be difficult to find a more immediately appealing setting, from any century or composer, and the performers here, proven experts in this repertoire in their authoritative, highly recommended traversal of the complete Haydn Masses for Naxos (type Q12575 in Search Reviews), give listeners a guaranteed first-rate sampling from a genre that interested and fruitfully occupied Haydn throughout his long creative career.
Conductors Owen Burdick and Jane Glover give full measure to the special character of each work, relishing every rhythmic twist, melodic turn, and point of clever illustrative detail. This is exemplary Haydn–that it happens to be church music only serves to remind us that here is a composer who could not only make sacred music cheerful, but cheerful music sacred. [3/1/2011]
