Extravagant Treatment For One of Haydn's Best

Classical Music

By FRED KIRSHNIT
September 11, 2007

A listener who knows a bit about Haydn might assume that the "Lord Nelson" Mass was written on one of the composer's sojourns in London and celebrates some heroic naval action. In actuality, however, the piece was fashioned at the Esterhazy palace and has no connection whatsoever to the admiral, though two suspect anecdotes to that effect have wormed their way into the history books. The first is that the Austrian people may have learned of one of the British victories on the same day as the premiere of this mass, and the second is that the Lord and Lady might have heard a subsequent performance of it while on a visit to Haydn's patron.

Haydn had instead christened the work "Missa in Angustiis," usually translated as "Mass in Time of Distress," although just plain "stress" might be a more appropriate modern alternative. In any case, this powerful work was given a dramatic performance on Sunday by the forces of St. Bartholomew's Church as part of the Summer Festival of Sacred Music.

The series is very informative, as it presents essentially the same text set week after week in quite different ways. Haydn possessed strong bona fides as a Catholic, but there is little doubt that he was also a creature of his Deist surroundings. As a result, his masses are less ecstatic but much more cerebral than those of his predecessors. There are many who feel that the "Lord Nelson" is the greatest of all of his many hundreds of works.

It certainly received the extravaganza treatment this day, with the full choir and quartet of soloists accompanied by an entire, albeit small, orchestra, probably not too far from the size of the original performing group.

Rather than the normal opening hymn, music director William Trafka employed the Kyrie as a processional. The sound of the choir was robust, and the soprano soloist, Jeanmarie Lally, was especially impressive in her disciplined melisma (she could teach a thing or two to some of the current headliners at the Metropolitan Opera). The Gloria establishes Haydn's wish to develop this music, the first hint that he is departing from the charismatic. What follows is not dissimilar to one of his later symphonies: intense pity and power tempered with intellectual restraint.

This well-ordered plan reaches its fruition in the Qui tollis peccata mundi, which also included the best performance of the afternoon. Bass Jeff Morrissey was resounding and resonant in his extended introductory solo. This section culminated with a rousing Cum Sancto Spiritu graced by another turn by Ms. Lally and evolving into a full-blown fugato. In musical structure, the "Lord Nelson" is the beginning of the transition to the 19th-century spiritual work that encompasses all doctrines, such as the "German Requiem" of the agnostic Brahms.

Another example of Haydn's recollection in tranquility technique is the Sanctus, not at all otherworldly as would have been the tradition, but rather pastoral, calming, conducive to cosmological thought. Think of Haydn as the Wordsworth of music. Here the St. Bart's choir was stately and polished, shepherding this lovely section into its final, ennobling Hosanna. Here was a masterpiece given a fine performance in perhaps a surprising setting for the uninitiated.

The Mass was framed by the thanatological, as organist Paolo Bordignon began the proceedings with the Cortege et Litanie of Marcel Dupre, a funerary dirge that morphs into an ascension complete with excruciatingly rising modalities, and Mr. Trafka sat at the keyboard for a closing rendition, accompanied by percussion, of Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man."