Symphony No. 1 (Haydn)

This article is about the symphony by Joseph Haydn. For the symphony by Michael Haydn, see Symphony No. 1 (Michael Haydn).

Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 1 in D major, Hoboken I/1, was written in 1759 in Unter-Lukawitz, while in the service of Count Morzin. While it is reliably known that No. 1 was written in 1759, H. C. Robbins Landon cannot rule out that No. 2, No. 4, or both could have been composed in 1757 or 1758, which would make the this Haydn's third symphony, rather than his first.

Symphony No. 1 is scored for two oboes (or possibly flute), bassoon, two horns, strings, and continuo. Like most of the early symphonies by Haydn and his contemporaries, it is in three movements:

  1. Presto, 4
    4
  2. Andante in G major, 2
    4
  3. Presto, 3
    8

The first movement opens with a Mannheim crescendo which is in contrast to the rest of the symphony, which is more Austrian in character.

The first movement has "frequent passages", where the violas are "used with some ingenuity and quite separately from the bass line."


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.