Symphony No. 70 (Haydn)

The Symphony No. 70 in D major (Hoboken 1/70) was written by Joseph Haydn in 1779 to mark the start of construction of a new opera house on the Eszterháza estate.

The work is in standard four-movement form and is scored for flute, two oboes, bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings. The first draft had neither trumpet and timpani parts; Haydn added those later.

1. Vivace con brio
2. Specie d'un canone in contrapunto doppio Andante
3. Allegretto
4. Allegro con brio

The first movement is a sonata form allegro in 3/4 time, dominated by a motif established in the opening bars and consisting of two descending pairs of notes, firmly establishing the home key by using only notes in the D major triad.

The exposition is marked for repeat, as are the development and recapitulation. The development begins with unison C-naturals for the woodwinds and strings, and the rest of the development consists mainly of sustained notes for the woodwinds and descending pairs of notes for the strings. The recapitulation is a fairly literal copy of the exposition, but with the appropriate transpositions for the second subject group.

The second movement is a double variation canon in the form ABA₁B₁A₂, beginning and ending in the minor.

The third movement returns to the major key in a minuet with trio.

As somewhat of a surprise, fairly unique in Haydn's symphonic minuets, "a coda which is immensely affirmative" is added for the da capo repeat of the minuet.

The final movement, in D minor, begins hesitantly with a five note motif of repeated Ds, initially pianissimo, but quickly erupting into a "triple [two-part] fugue of real power."

The fugue winds down, and the initial hesitations are repeated (with slight modifications) before the movement ends with a coda in D major.

Since all of the movements have the same tonic, the work is homotonal.

Editions

The Cianchettini & Sperati edition of 1807 bears a dedication to HRH the Prince of Wales however. It omits the trumpet and timpani parts, and presents the bassoon part for three of the movements as an appendix. The edition looks like a handwritten score rather than an engraved score, but the Minuet is presented as an appendix (with bassoon part) with an engraved look contrasting with the rest of the score. Stems for half notes face the opposite of the usual direction and the dots for dotted notes are placed farther away than is customarily normal, except for dotted half notes crossing the barline which are presented as is now customary.

A more modern edition of the score comes from the Haydn-Mozart Presse in Salzburg, edited by H. C. Robbins Landon. An engraved score, it is more modern in its notation but it employs the archaic shortcut for dotted notes across barlines in which instead of a tie to a quarter note only a dot appears. More confusingly, the coda of the minuet has the annotation "Fine II" under its final barline, while the ending of the first go-round at the minuet is labelled "Fine I" even though it is also supposed to be played in the da capo. No metronome markings are provided but the duration of the work is given as "ca. 22 Min."

Discography

Though not recorded as often as Haydn's nicknamed symphonies, there are a number of recordings of this symphony. Béla Drahos with the Nicolaus Esterhazy Sinfonia on Naxos Records chooses somewhat slow tempos compared to Thomas Fey with the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra on Hänssler Classic. Fey pairs this Symphony with No.s 73 and 75 (both in D major) while Drahos rounds out his disc with No.s 71 and 73. Fey's recording is much faster than Drahos's.

The symphony is also available in an arrangement for wind octet (pairs of oboes, clarinets, horns & bassoons) in a Divox CD by Kammersolisten Zug, in which they also play a parthia by Hummel and Beethoven's sextet.

References

• Orchestra Seattle, Symphony No. 70 in D major Accessed 12 February 2006.