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Sacred vocal music.

Vocal music constitutes fully half of Haydn's output. Both his first and last completed compositions were mass settings, and he cultivated sacred vocal music extensively throughout his career except during the later 1780s, when elaborate church music was inhibited by the Josephinian reforms, and the first half of the 1790s in London.

The Missa brevis in F (hXXII:1) is apparently his earliest surviving composition; on rediscovering it in old age he pronounced himself pleased by ‘the melody and a certain youthful fire’ (Dies), which are enhanced by resourceful contrasts between the two solo sopranos and the chorus. The remaining masses fall into two groups of six each: nos.2, 4–8 (1766–82; no.3 is probably spurious) and nos.9–14 (1796–1802); except where noted they are of medium length (30 to 40 minutes). The former are notably heterogeneous. The huge and impressive Missa Cellensis in C (begun 1766) is of the solenne type (often miscalled ‘cantata mass’); each of the five main sections is subdivided into numerous complete and independent movements. These include choruses both festive and ominous, elaborate arias, ariosos, ensembles and four massive concluding fugues. The Kyrie and certain arias are traditional in style, while the remainder is distinctly modern; the fugues are powerfully expressive despite their contrapuntal fireworks, especially the overwhelming ‘Et vitam venturi’, which functions not merely as a concluding highpoint but as the through-composed goal of the entire Credo. The Missa ‘Sunt bona mixta malis’ (1768) survives only in an autograph fragment transmitting the Kyrie and the first part of the Gloria; it is not known whether Haydn completed the work, and the import of ‘mixed good and bad’ (from a classical proverb) remains obscure. It is set for chorus and organ continuo in stile antico; strict fugal expositions alternate with free counterpoint and occasional homophonic passages. The ‘Great Organ Mass’ in E (c1768–9) is more personal in tone: the dark english horns contrast with exuberant treble obbligato organ parts in the Kyrie, Benedictus and Dona nobis pacem. The Missa Sancti Nicolai (1772) is often described as ‘pastoral’, owing to its key of G major and the lilting 6/4 rhythm of the Kyrie (which returns for the Dona nobis pacem), although the Crucifixus and Agnus Dei are serious indeed. In the mid-1770s followed the ‘Little Organ Mass’ in B , a quiet, almost pietistically fervent missa brevis. The ‘Mariazellermesse’ in C (1782) resembles the Missa Cellensis in key, scoring and purpose, although it is more compact and more closely allied with sonata style.

Notwithstanding their semi-private function for the Esterházy court, Haydn's six late masses are consummate masterworks that exhibit no trace of provinciality or the ‘occasional’. He exploits the complementary functions of soloists and chorus with inexhaustible freedom and telling effect; owing to his London experience the orchestra plays a newly prominent role. Four are in B , perhaps because b '' was Haydn's usual highest pitch for choral sopranos (he employed the same key for the final choruses of Parts 2–3 of The Creation and Part 1 of The Seasons). The other two are the only ones for which he provided descriptive titles: the Missa in tempore belli (‘Mass in Time of War’, 1796) in C features the bright, trumpet-dominated sound typical of masses in this key; the Missa in angustiis (‘Mass in [times of] Distress’, later nicknamed ‘Nelson Mass’, 1798) in D minor and major is scored for a dark orchestra comprising only trumpets and timpani, strings and organ. Both invoke the travails of the Napoleonic wars. The Agnus Dei of the former includes threatening timpani motifs and harsh trumpet fanfares, while the Benedictus of the latter culminates in another harsh fanfare passage ‘out of context’; both influenced the Agnus Dei in Beethoven's Missa solemnis. On the other hand, except for the sombre Kyrie and Benedictus of the ‘Nelson Mass’, both are otherwise firmly optimistic; the ending of the latter is downright jaunty.

Although Haydn's late masses indubitably reflect the experience of the London symphonies, their symphonic character has been exaggerated. Even in the Kyrie, which usually consists of a slow introduction and a fast main movement, the latter freely combines fugato and sonata style in a distinctly unsymphonic way. The Gloria and Credo are divided into several movements, fast–slow–fast with the slow middle movement(s) in contrasting keys and featuring the soloists (e.g. the ‘Qui tollis’ of the Missa in tempore belli, a bass aria with solo cello in A major; or the ‘Et incarnatus’ of the Heiligmesse, based on Haydn's canon Gott im Herzen); they usually conclude with a fugue on a brief subject, which often enters attacca and always leads to a homophonic coda. The Sanctus often adopts the ‘majesty’ topic, admixed with mysterious passages; it leads directly into the brief ‘Pleni sunt coeli – Osanna’, which may or may not return following the Benedictus. The latter is a long movement and an emotional highpoint; it usually features the soloists and is in, or based on, sonata form. The Agnus Dei opens with an initial slow section, either threatening in the minor or serenely confident in a remote major key; it leads to a half-cadence and thence to the fast ‘Dona nobis pacem’, usually a free combination of fugato and homophony, leading (again) to a homophonic wind-up.

The other liturgical works date primarily from the first half of Haydn's career; their original destinations and purposes are almost entirely unknown. According to liturgical function they comprise offertories (hXXIIIa), Marian antiphons (hXXIIIb), hymns (hXXIIIc) and pastorellas (hXXIIId; Haydn called them ‘cantilenas’). They vary widely in style and scale, from the massive, dark, traditional Stabat mater (hXX^bis, 1767) to the tender devotion of the Lauda Sion hymn complexes; from the festive jubilation of the choral Te Deum settings with trumpets and drums in C to the stylized folk idiom of the pastorellas for solo voices and strings. Even subgenres exhibit marked contrasts: the Lauda Sion hymns from the 1750s (hXXIIIc:5) are all in C, Vivace 3/4, while those from the later 1760s (hXXIIIc:4) are in a tonally interesting set of four different keys and alternate Andante 3/4 with Largo alla breve. Similarly, the Salve regina in E (hXXIIIb:1, 1756) features ornate italianate writing for the solo soprano, whereas that in G minor (hXXIIIb:2, 1771) is expressively brooding, with no trace of vocal ornamentation. Of the three late works, the offertory Non nobis, Domine in D minor (hXXIIIa:1, ?1780s) is an a cappella work reminiscent of the Missa ‘Sunt bona mixta malis’, while the six ‘English psalms’ of 1794 (hXXIII, Nachtrag), Haydn's only Protestant church music, adumbrate the elevated but plain style of ‘The heavens are telling’ in The Creation. The late Te Deum ‘for the empress’ (hXXIIIc:2, ?1800), for chorus and very large orchestra, is an ABA construction of great power and terseness; it whirls through the very long text in little more than eight minutes, while still finding time for a double fugue and an immense climax at the end.

Haydn's oratorios comprise Il ritorno di Tobia, his revision of Friebert's arrangement of the Seven Last Words, The Creation and The Seasons. The libretto of Tobia (by a brother of Boccherini) narrates the story of the blind Tobit from the Apocrypha; Haydn fashioned a magnificent late example of Austrian-Italian vocal music, comprising chiefly long bravura arias, along with three choruses; most of the recitatives are accompagnati of emotional intensity. In 1784 he revived the oratorio, shortening many of the arias, adding two magnificent new choruses and supplementing the instrumentation. The Seven Last Words, a success during Haydn's lifetime and beyond, is less popular today, in part because it is not a full-length work, in part owing to the succession of eight consecutive adagios which, paradoxically, seem more monotonous than in the orchestral version. Its most striking movement is the bleak, newly composed introduction to the second part, scored for wind alone and set in A minor, a key Haydn hardly ever used.

The Creation is Haydn's most loved work today, as it was in his lifetime. Part 1 treats the First to Fourth Days (the creation of light, land and sea, plant life, heavenly bodies), Part 2 the Fifth and Sixth (animals, birds, fish, man and woman); each Day comprises recitative on prose from Genesis, a commentary set as an aria or ensemble, another recitative and a choral hymn of praise. Part 3 abandons the Bible; it amounts to a cantata devoted to Adam and Eve and to further praise of heaven. The optimistic tone is enhanced by the increasing brilliance and complexity of the choruses as the work proceeds; they reflect Haydn's experience of Handel in England. Also reminiscent of Handel (not that Haydn needed the stimulus) are the many word- and scene-paintings, of which the most striking include the emergence of the oceans and mountains (‘Rolling in foaming billows’), the sunrise and moonrise, the birds of ‘On mighty pens’ and the teeming low strings of ‘Be fruitful all’; though often taken as humorous, these conceits are essential to the Enlightenment optimism of the work. The famous ‘Representation Chaos’ (or ‘Idea of Chaos’: Vorstellung implies both meanings) is not literally chaotic but paradoxical: beginning in C minor mystery, it initiates a larger process which points beyond itself, and acquires meaning only with the choral climax on ‘And there was light!’ in C major. The remainder of Part 1 takes place, as it were, during the reverberation of this event; its triumphant concluding chorus ‘The heavens are telling’ is again in C. By contrast, the final sections dealing with ourselves shift to the ‘human’ key of B and its subdominant E . Although Part 3 opens in a radiant, astonishingly remote E major for the Garden of Eden, it soon reverts to F and C for the gigantic ‘Lobgesang’ and, via E for Adam's and Eve's lovemaking in earthy Singspiel style, to B for the final choral fugue.

The libretto of The Seasons presents scenes of nature and country life; the narrator-function is personified as the moralizing peasants Simon, Jane and Lucas. The scenic aspects stimulated Haydn to his best efforts: the storms of late winter, the farmer sowing his seed to the tune of the Andante of the ‘Surprise’ Symphony, a sunrise that outdoes that in The Creation, the thick C minor fogs of early winter, and the multi-movement depiction of summer heat, first languid, then oppressive, finally exploding in Haydn's greatest storm. Among the genre scenes those for the chorus are unsurpassed, notably at the end of Autumn: first the hunt, from sighting to chase to kill to celebration (the horns quote numerous actual hunting calls, and join the trombones and strings in double grace notes for the baying of the hounds), and cast in progressive tonality from D to E ; then the drinking chorus in C, with increasingly uncertain harmonizations of a prominent high note for the raising of glasses, a dance in 6/8 leading to an inebriated fugue and a breathless wind-up that may have inspired the end of Verdi's Falstaff. Other important choruses are pastoral (‘Komm, holder Lenz’) and religious: ‘Ewiger, mächtiger, gütiger Gott’ at the end of Spring, Haydn's most massive chorus (itself run on from the preceding trio, the two movements as a whole in ‘progressive tonality’); and the concluding ‘Dann bricht der grosse Morgen an’, in which we enter heaven in a blaze of C major glory, resolving the C minor of the beginning of Winter. Notwithstanding its less exalted subject, The Seasons is compositionally more virtuoso than The Creation and offers greater variety of tone: Haydn's pastoral is one of the final glories of a tradition that is more than ‘high’ enough.

In Haydn's sacred vocal music the aesthetics of through-composition is a matter not only of cyclic integration, but of doctrine and devotion. Many of these works are organized around the conceptual image of salvation, at once personal and communal, achieved at or near the end: a musical realization of the desire for a state of grace. This is especially clear in a relatively brief work such as the Salve regina in G minor, where the astonishing vocal entry on an augmented sixth chord is not really resolved until the end, when Haydn ‘hears’ the supplicants' prayer by turning to the major. Particularly in his late sacred music such concepts are wedded to the sublime: not only in the Creation of Light, which expresses that which is otherwise unthinkable – the origins of the universe and of history – but also in the choruses that conclude each part of The Creation, ‘Spring’ and ‘Winter’ in The Seasons and many movements of the late masses.

Haydn, Joseph