Haydn wrote his first Te Deum in 1765, but this, his second, comes from 1799-1800, in the midst of the final great phase of creativity which has left us the six late masses and the oratorios "The Creation" and "The Seasons". Consequently every bar of this magnificent festive work shows the hand of a master-craftsman at the summit of a long and brilliant career. Haydn sets it in the traditional festive key of C major, and decks out his orchestra with the trumpets, drums, flutes and C-horns that the 18th Century required for grand musical celebration. There are no soloists and the work's three-part structure makes it, in effect, a concerto for chorus and orchestra. More important, though, than any technical consideration is the exuberant and whole-hearted feeling that Haydn puts into this brief sacred work. "The thought of God fills me with such confidence, such joy, that I should set even a miserere to cheerful music" Haydn wrote, and in writing a Te Deum, a hymn of praise and thanks, he surpassed himself. Nowhere in all his music will we find so spontaneous and overwhelmingly cheerful an opening as in the first movement of this Te Deum, a vigorous and brilliant march which the chorus joins with the unison shout "Te Deum laudamus!". The chromatic, C minor Lento, "" Te ergo quaesumus"takes us briefly into the gloomy world of the prelude to "The Creation", but only long enough to allow the final Allegro "Aeterna fac cum sanctis Tuis", incorporating a recklessly syncopated fugue, to burst in with even more joyful splendour. The work was commissioned by the Empress Maria Theresa and was first performed at the Eszterhazy palace at Eisenstadt on the occasion of the visit of Admiral Nelson. He reputedly presented Haydn with his gold watch, asking in return only the pen with which Haydn had written the Te Deum and D minor Mass! While it is difficult to imagine a work more different in mood from Mozart's Requiem, both are late masterpieces from the two greatest composers of the classical era, and the Te Deum expresses the good-natured and optimistic genius of its composer as surely and completely as the Requiem shows us Mozart's much darker vision.

R. G. Bratby, 1994


Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
CLICK HERE for a wide and diverse selection of contemporary music and standard repertoire programme notes.