The Viennese Minor-Key Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Mozart.

Proksch, Bryan

The Viennese Minor-Key Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Mozart. By Matthew Riley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. [xii, 284 p. ISBN: 978-0-19-934967-8 (hardbk); $75. ISBN: 978-0-19-034968-5 (e-bk) $63.27]

It is safe to say that the first chapter of this book will change the way we think about the so-called "Sturm und Drang" style in a fundamental way, while the remainder of the text will provide scholars with a much-needed repository of analyses covering numerous little-known works. Riley begins at the end point in many ways, providing an overview of minor-mode symphonies written in and around Vienna primarily from the 1750s to the 1770s; the following chapters provide analytic evidence to support his propositions. Among the main points are: 1) While minor mode symphonies make up only 2% of symphonies from the era, they had disproportionate importance to the composers at the time, justifying the intense scrutiny that Haydn's works (at least) have received in modern analyses. 2) Composers writing these works purposely included "forceful emotional expression that demanded close attention and participation from the listener" (p. 2), meaning that they made a distinction between expression and listener expectations depending largely upon mode. 3) That part of the expressive nature of the works is "deformation" in the sense of the term as used by Hepokoski and Darcy (James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 4) There were distinct practices for minor-mode symphonies, some of which Haydn inherited and refined and some of which he created anew and which were later mimicked. 5) There were distinct practices depending upon the composer's connection (or lack thereof) to the Habsburg imperial court. 6) These works form a subgenre in their own right and have been improperly treated as influenced by the "Sturm und Drang" literary movement and notions of "Crisis" or "Reform." The last of these postulations is the most radical, of course, given that scholars, at least since 1909, have treated works such as Haydn's Symphonies Nos. 44, 45, and 49 as part of a larger "Sturm und Drang" emotional crisis. Riley shatters the notion that Haydn went through some kind of existential predicament in the 1770s--essentially debunking the "Sturm und Drang" periodization of his output--replacing it with the notion that Haydn was participating in the larger conventions of writing in minor at the time. True, the works remain highly agitated, expressive, and unusual, but it would seem that we can no longer call the 1770s a distinct period in Haydn's life except insofar as he took an interest in exploring the idiosyncrasies of Viennese symphonic practice. Interestingly enough, Riley's position makes it quite clear why Haydn's biographers have had such a difficult time finding Heiligenstadt-Testamentlike clues regarding these intensely passionate works and the short span of time in which they were written: he was not having a personal crisis, he just was taking part in a compositional trend. True, this trend was more than a passing fad, and echoes of the style can be heard in later symphonies and other compositions in both major and minor, but reading more personal-life problems into the works would seem to be unwarranted given Riley's observations. There is also the whole issue of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, which Riley sees as the final statement in the subgenre: yet another seminal classical work that the author asks us to hear in a fundamentally different way.

All of this is, admittedly, a lot to swallow given the way that Haydn's works have been treated since the early part of the twentieth century; it will be interesting to see how other scholars respond to Riley's work in future decades (and it would seem to me that this is the sort of timeframe that will be necessary to fully evaluate everything the author has proposed). This is not to say that there are no holes in his argument either. One that occurs to me is that Riley basically ignores everything outside of Vienna, as if the city's composers worked in a bubble. This is, he readily admits, the entire scope of his study, but can we really overturn the last century of scholarship without considering the fuller context? If only C. P. E. Bach's name showed up more than six times in the index! Granted, he was German and working in Berlin and did not write very many symphonies in minor either, but Haydn admitted Bach's influence upon him. What about works like Bach's Piano Sonata in F-sharp minor? Is there really no connection between that piano sonata and Haydn's Symphony No. 45, or was Bach partaking in the Viennese tradition now moved to the keyboard? I do not have these answers in the way that I thought I did before reading this book, but I wish that Riley had given me some kind of guidance. On the bright side, Riley has prompted a rethinking of our knowledge of the use of minor keys in the Classical era, and that is high praise indeed considering how much time scholars have invested in these works already.

The basis of Riley's work is the investigation of dozens of works that few have ever heard of or read about. This foundational research on composers such as Dittersdorf, Gasmann, Kozeluch, Ordonez, Vanhal, Wagenseil, and other so-called "Kleinmeistern" will undoubtedly spur others on to further work on the vast number of little-known works of the Classical era. The majority of Riley's book analyzes their practices in detail--occasionally more detail than is perhaps necessary--partly in an effort better to understand Haydn's works in context, but mostly in an effort to come to grips with the notion that we really know lamentably little about the larger context within which Haydn and Mozart lived and worked. Too bad the book did not come with a few CDs so that we could hear all of these works, but then again few of them have been recorded, and some only very recently, and not many of them are readily available in printed scores either. The fact that Riley was able to find all of these works and digest them in a meaningful way is impressive in its own right. Read Riley's first chapter; if you are still skeptical of his argument, read the rest of the book and watch as his preponderance of evidence piles upon you.

Bryan Proksch

Lamar University