Symphony No. 49 in f minor, “La passione”

Composer: HAYDN, Joseph
  • Haydn composed this symphony in 1768. In addition to “La passione,” it has an alternate nickname: “Il quakuo di bel’humore.”1
    • The nickname “La passione” comes from just one printed source from Schwerin in 1790. Haydn scholar Elaine R. Sisman suggests that the nickname has less to do with the content of the symphony, and more to do with the fact that in Schwerin at the time, symphonies and other non-theatrical works were presented during Holy Week. This symphony was likely performed along with oratorios about the Passion narrative.2 
    • The other nickname, transmitted in a Viennese source, is “Il quakuo di bel’humore” (The good-humored Quaker). Sisman suggests that the nickname probably derives from one of the popular plays of in in 1760s Vienna, a comedy called Die Quäker.3

Sources

  1. Georg Feder and James Webster, “Haydn, (Franz) Joseph,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed December 6, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000044593.
  2. Elaine R. Sisman, “Haydn’s Theater Symphonies,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 43, no. 2 (1990), 331, https://doi.org/10.2307/831616. 
  3. Ibid., 332.

Cut IDs

40094