Symphony No. 1

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN wrote the Symphony No.1 in D major in 1759 in Dolní Lukavice, where he was court musician to the Czech Count Karl Josef Franz Morzin before beginning his thirty-year service as Kapellmeister at the palace of the Counts of Esterhazy from 1761. Although listed by the composer himself as his first symphonic work, scholars are uncertain whether it was indeed the first of Haydn's 104 known symphonies, or the first published. It is possible that the next two symphonies, according to the common numbering, were composed before it, in 1757 or 1758. The service with Count Morzin was Haydn's first permanent job after many years of uncertain life. His independent living began at the age of six, when he was sent from his native village of Rorau to study harpsichord and violin in Heinburg, where he also took part in the church boys' choir, then spent nine years as choirmaster at St. Stefan in Vienna. Dismissed in 1749 because of his growth and inability to sing the boys' parts, he worked for a time as a music teacher, playing in the streets of Vienna, copying music, but also composing. Gradually he became famous, sought after both as a performer and teacher, and won the patronage of Countess Thun, who invited him to be her singing and harpsichord teacher. It was she who recommended him to Baron Karl Joseph Fürnburg, who took him into his palace as a violinist in the quartet evenings he organised, and for whom Haydn composed his first quartets. Baron Fürnburg in turn recommended him to Count Morzin, with whom he received a good salary and comfortable lodgings, which gave him the opportunity to get married. As Kapellmeister at the palace, Haydn had a small orchestra for which he wrote his first symphonies. In them, in the words of his researcher Philip Downs, are "the seeds of the future, his works already showing a rich abundance of musical material and a disciplined but varied expression". Like most of Haydn's early symphonies and those of his contemporaries, the Symphony No. 1 is still in three movements; later the 'father of the symphony', as he is widely popularly called, would shape the classic slender four-movement form with the introduction of the Menuet before the finale. The very opening Presto is full of typical Haydn dynamic energy, it begins with a rapid movement from pianissimo to fortissimo within just nine bars - a device called the "Mannheim crescendo", often used by artists of the Mannheim School. The artful subsequent unfolding of thematic material with inventive juxtaposition of major and minor keys create the notion of the play of light and shadow in the music. The slow movement in the small second movement recalls the dignity of a gallant-style dance, this Andante being the contrasting middle in the three-movement cycle. The final buoyant Presto reintroduces inventive surprises with sudden changes of dynamics and texture in the swift musical flow.