London Symphony by Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn is usually referred to as the father of the Symphony as he made a lot of important contributions in this genre. Haydn was a musician who in his early life sang for the wealthy Hungarian aristocratic family. Importantly, he made contributions to symphony throughout his twelve symphonies. In doing his music, Haydn used wind instruments in his first London Symphony (No. 93) and last London Symphony (No. 104). One of the distinguishing factors of the Haydn's music was the development of large structures from very simple and short music designs which are frequently derived from typical occupying figures. On this basis, most of his music was more often than not formally concentrated while unfolding the essential musical events of movements. Basically, Haydn developed the sonata form of composition where he used the monothematic exposition where the music composed is more or less identical to the theme portrayed. Additionally, another distinguishing factor of his music is humor. In this case, most of his compositions are characterized by humor unlike the works of other musicians like Mozart (Woodstra et al 2005, 988).

Importantly, from the tone of his music the aspects of fundamentally healthy and well balanced personality are portrayed. On this basis, his first movements tend to be metrically propulsive where greater sense of energy is imparted especially when finalizing the composition. In this relation, some of these characteristics can be found in his London symphony No. 104. As can be seen from his early works, the slow movements are notably not too slow in tempo. Additionally, the emotional effect of these movements increases gradually as he continued to compose music. This can be seen from the way he turned some of his minuets into scherzi which were faster at one beat of the bar.  Certainly, Haydn's composition and compositional style came at the time when the high Baroque had been considered out dated. In this case, because he was more explorer than Bach (the composer of Baroque), his compositions were able to compete with others.  Basically, in a period of 45 years Haydn had written one hundred symphonies with many of them bearing names not actually given by the composer (Hodgson 1976, 78).

Roles of wind instruments in Haydn's London Symphony No. 93 and No.104

Importantly, Haydn used wind instruments in most of his compositions in order to come up with a desirable music. Basically, the wind instruments played a very crucial role in his music. Certainly, the introduction of wind instruments into his compositions was done in the year 1770. He was very responsible for the use of these instruments and very diligent in this regard. In this case, he had his instruments repaired at the lowest cost possible. The wind instruments were introduced in the slow movements of his symphonies. In this case, the major role played by the wind instruments was to keep pace with the rhythm of the music. On this basis, the wind instruments helped in making sure that the music was not so slow but has a relaxed and reflective character. This helped in gaining fame in his music (McVeigh 2006, 122).

A point worth noting is that, the wind instruments used by Haydn indicated that there was a very clear combination of theme and music. In this case, the themes used in the slow music were well connected rhythmically the use of wind instruments. It should be noted that, Haydn showed more interests in wind instruments because he wanted his themes to be correctly dealt with in his music. Most important, the wind instruments used by Haydn in his music were; horns, flute, and bassoons. Basically, the main theme of allegro was well understood when bassoons and horns were used in the music. On this basis, the effect produced by Haydn when he systematically entrusted the violins with the melody and accompanying them with lower octave by bassoons was extremely interesting to the listeners.

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