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Music scholar and University of Mary Washington orchestra member Steven Fisher discovered a previously unknown symphony by Joseph Haydn while researching the 18th-century composer's work at the Library of Congress.
Members of the UMW-Community Symphony Orchestra practice a previously unknown symphony by composer Joseph Haydn in preparation for Friday's concert.
Fisher determined that a scribe |
By JENNIFER STROBEL
Mistakes happen--and sometimes that can be a good thing.
That was the case for Steven Fisher, a Fredericksburg violist and a world-renowned scholar of the 18th-century classical composer Joseph Haydn.
Known as the "Father of the Symphony," Haydn composed music for the court of Nikolaus Esterhazy, prince of the Austrian Empire. He was also popular with the aristocracy of Spain and sent pieces there, as well.
Music-appreciation texts have long attributed 104 symphonies to Haydn (which is pronounced like hidin').
Turns out, another work was "hidin'" all these years--a previously unknown symphony that Fisher discovered by accident more than three decades ago.
This Friday, the University of Mary Washington-Community Symphony Orchestra will perform the unpublished work, which has been silenced for centuries.
"To have a discovery like this in the world of music, and then to unveil it in Fredericksburg, a town that loves history--this is, without any embellishment, one of the most important music events that I can ever think of happening here," said Kevin Bartram, UMW music professor and orchestra director.
"One of my colleague professors said it is like uncovering a new Michelangelo in Fredericksburg, or a new Faberge egg in Fredericksburg."
As Martha Fickett, UMW music professor, said, "It's every music historian or musicologist's dream to go up in their attic and find something like this. Of course, this wasn't in Steve Fisher's attic, it was in the Library of Congress."
FINDING HISTORY
Fisher remembers the date of his serendipitous discovery in 1976. It was Feb. 17--his grandmother's birthday.
Then a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, he had celebrated with her in North Carolina, then headed north again, stopping off at the Library of Congress to do a bit of research.
The library had bought a large Spanish collection that included Haydn's works in 1909, the centennial of his death.
Fisher wanted to study a symphony in D and asked a library staffer to retrieve it. Once he had the manuscript, he recognized the first two movements--Haydn had first written them as an opera overture--but the discrepancies from his initial request soon became apparent.
For one thing, the piece he held was written in a different key altogether (C). It was written in four movements, as expected, but he'd never seen the last two.
Haydn expert that he was, Fisher realized quickly that he was holding a lost symphony. Other scholars had suspected there was such a work, but had never seen it.
There he was, looking right at the handwritten manuscript.
What does a researcher in the world's largest library do when he finds something so spectacularly outstanding, something that would command interest of musicians around the world, something that would add one more piece of the longstanding work of scholars to fully catalog all of Haydn's works?
If the library is about to close, as it was that day, he returns the symphony only he knows about to the library staff. And he quietly thinks to himself: "Wow. I have to figure out what's going on here."
Fisher returned to the library many times, and spent countless hours on the painstaking work of "authenticating" the find.
He traced it to Spain, where a scribe copied this manuscript from the original. He traced the durable paper itself as coming from a mill near Barcelona. He found related material in the palace archive in Madrid.
The manuscript may have been stashed away in a trunk passed down through the generations before ending up in Washington, but its actual whereabouts through all those years is another mystery, Fisher wrote in an e-mail.
The original, penned by Haydn himself, is nowhere to be found. It is possible that Haydn--busy working for Prince Esterhazy--put together some pieces he'd previously written, added the last two movements, then sent them on to customers in Spain.
The first two movements were written in 1773, and the last two around that time.
Haydn might have performed the piece himself, or might just have given it a run-through without ever hearing the whole symphony in performance, Fisher said.
Fisher has heard it only once before, when he played it with the University of Pennsylvania Chamber Orchestra in 1987.
MAKING HISTORY
Since earning his doctorate in music history and theory, Fisher has become one of the world's top Haydn scholars, and shares his passion for Haydn and other classical composers as a lecturer, writer and editor.
He now lives in southern Stafford County, where he can be close to family and friends in Virginia, as well as to the cities of Washington and Richmond. He is working on editing a new edition of Haydn works, including the symphony he found.
Fisher joined the UMW orchestra about a year ago.
UMW Orchestra members will perform from copies of the score Fisher found.
"This piece never gets old, we rehearse it and rehearse it, and each time I find myself enjoying it the more we play it. I'm really excited," said John Stryker, a UMW junior who plays trumpet with the orchestra.
A fellow orchestra member, John Ehlers, a junior timpanist, said, "You don't usually get to play a piece 50 million people haven't heard before. It's like we're part of history."
Or making history in the year 2009, 100 years after the Haydn symphony ended up at the Library of Congress, 200 years after Haydn's death.
Jennifer Strobel: 540/374-5000,
Email: jstrobel@freelancestar.com
WHAT: UMW-Community Orchestra opening concert WHEN: Friday, 7:30 p.m. WHERE: Dodd Auditorium ADMISSION: Free BONUS: Orchestra member Steven Fisher, a world-renowned Joseph Haydn scholar, will give a lecture on his discovery of a previously unknown Haydn symphony at 7 p.m. |
