Genuine and Inherent

Here we have some Haydn chamber-music played on "original" instruments. For those who don't speak record-jargon, the adjective invites misinterpretation. Are these, you well might ask, the instruments on which these works were first played? Are we being reassured that these are not the usual cheap copies made of bakelite in Hong Kong? Dare we hope that these are instruments of a kind never heard before by human ear? I checked my German dictionary to see if original (as in Originalinstrumente) had any more illumi­nating shades of meaning, and found that it means "initial; genuine, innate, inherent," which definitions don't much illuminate the problem. Those in the know, however, will recognize that this is merely record-jargon for "old" instruments--i.e. within a hundred years or so of the time when Haydn was composing the pieces played on them. Since stringed instruments played by good professionals are often old, one may also well ask what the Big Deal is.

Well, friends, I am sure that when Amadeo issued this recording, the historicity of the instruments was an important selling-point. But I may as well confess that on it, and several others, we are up against a problem. I am sure that you are aware that publishers must make their plans and commitments well in advance--a matter of many months and sometimes of years. So with MHS. Now you may recall that the New York office was abandoned in the interests of consolidation last summer. One of the things that went on in New York did not, for various reasons, want to go to New Jersey, and pursued their careers elsewhere. In the process of moving the contents of the offices, records pertaining to future releases contracted for, together with jackets, brochures and all, simply vanished. The master tapes are safely in the vaults, but we lack the kind of information I need here, and for the next few releases we may have to all grin and bear it. Suffice it to say that you will hear the "originality" of the instruments chiefly in the tinky-plunk of the fortepiano, the soft, woody sound of the German flute, and the different color of the double reeds. But of makers and dates, I can tell you nothing. Never mind. It's still a charming Haydn program--one that can be relished quite hedonistically without worrying about any profound implications. I read that the C Major Divertimento is "familiar," but the only recording that a hasty check turns up is the one made by the late Kurt List in the first months of MHS' existence (MHS 544). The piece is called "The Birthday," but whose it celebrated seems long since to have been forgotten. Perhaps it was a double one, for the slow movement is subtitled "Man and Wife." Moreover, the final movement is a series of apparently "masculine" and "feminine" variations, each giving one of the instruments a solo role, except in the last three, which feature a harmony that poor Haydn's domestic life rarely knew.