Musical Wit

Musical Wit July 21, 2014

After wonderful books on Bach, Handel, and the early Christian understanding of music, Calvin Stapert had added a volume on what he calls “music’s wittiest composer,” a composer full of surprises, Joseph Haydn (Playing Before the Lord).

The book is organized biographically, and the account of his life is interspersed Stapert’s analyses of selected works. Stapert combines enthusiastic description (the first movement of Haydn’s sixth symphony depicts a sunrise in a pastoral scene, with shepherd’s playing panpipes surrounded by scampering sheep, 45-46) with detailed and slightly technical musical analysis. Stapert is a smooth writer, and none of his book is beyond a reader with a basic understanding of music.

One sample, from Stapert’s discussion of The Creation: “Part I begins with one of Haydn’s greatest challenges – an instrumental depiction of chaos – which resulted in one of his greatest achievements. Just as the disordered elements in the dark void struggled for form before God spoke, so do the empty C octave at the beginning and disordered musical elements that follow struggle for sonata form and the ‘light’ of C major tonality. Both the cosmic and the musical struggle are futile until God speaks a creative word: ‘Let there be light.’ The blazing C major chord on ‘light’ is the greatest surprise in all of Haydn’s music, just as light devouring darkness at God’s work is the greatest surprise in the creation story” (238).

Stapert’s books are providing us non-musicians with a deeper sense of what music is all about. I hope there are many more in the pipeline.


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