Music open thread: Music in F-sharp minor

Continuing my survey of music along the circle of fifths. As we get farther away from C major, it might be easier to find undeservedly obscure music by composers unfairly ignored because of their race or gender.

However, in this installment, the main piece I’ll be focusing on is by a dead white guy. Though he was kinda woke, if you think about it…

Even in his isolation as Kapellmeister at the palatial Esterháza estate, Joseph Haydn was not completely unaware of the realities of racism and classism. Prince Esterházy wanted musical entertainment wherever he went, and in the summer of 1772, that meant that his orchestra’s musicians had to leave their wives and children behind in Eisenstadt.

That’s the story usually told these days. However, another story is that the prince was thinking of downsizing his orchestra, who knows what silly reason for. Gambling debts, maybe? Whatever the reason, Haydn felt compelled to speak up to the prince. The prince was unmoved and that’s where most other people in Haydn’s position would have left matters. Hey, I tried, but the boss said no.

Haydn, though, decided to communicate the musicians’ concern to the prince in a different medium. So Haydn wrote a Symphony in F-sharp minor. Though the opening Allegro assai treats sonata form rather freely, neither the prince nor most modern listeners would suspect there’s anything out of the ordinary with this music.

Then follows an Adagio in the relative major, with muted strings. Using muted violins was not unusual for Haydn, it’s a sonority he really loved. Next, a minuet in F-sharp major. That might have seemed more unusual to the prince than it does to modern listeners, but still no indication that this symphony might have any kind of special message in the finale.

I guess I should give a spoiler warning for the finale. If you have never seen this music in performance before, please watch the video. Then I’ll recap in words.

The finale starts out presto, which is not at all unusual for a Haydn finale. But then suddenly, the music switches to a slow tempo, and Haydn subdivides the violins into firsts, seconds, thirds and fourths instead of just firsts and seconds as usual.

Thirty-one bars later, the first oboist and the second horn player see a concluding barline in their parts. So they snuffed out their candles and left the stage. But the other musicians kept on playing. Weird, but maybe the prince didn’t notice.

Several bars later, the bassoonist leaves. A few bars later, the second oboist leaves. The bassist gets some much faster notes than the cellists, and then he leaves before the music switches to F-sharp major. The cellists get to leave a few bars after that. Then the third and fourth violins leave, while the firsts and seconds put on mutes.

The violists stay almost to the end. But at the very end, there’s just the remaining first and second violins left to outline an F-sharp major tonic chord pianissimo. The stage must have been quite dim at this point.

The next day, the prince decided to give the musicians a break and let them go home to their families. The prince apparently had come to this decision entirely on his own. Haydn stayed at Esterháza for several more years before seeking greener pastures in Paris and London.

There’s also a Symphony in F-sharp minor, Opus 26, by George Frederick Bristow. It was quite popular for a time in a Chandos recording by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi. To my knowledge, that’s the only recording of that piece.

The open thread question: What is your favorite music in F-sharp minor?