'The Play of Daniel' and Haydn Quartets
JAMES, HIBBARD
MUSIC By Hibbard James The Play of Daniel' and Haydn Quartets One of the musical sensations of last season was the production of The Play of Daniel at the Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum in...
...The Play of Daniel apparently dates from the 12th century (the only known manuscript is from the 13th century, but various indications point to an earlier date...
...But productions like The Play of Daniel were originally written for unsophisticated, almost illiterate audiences and once one has gotten over the initial strangeness of the music, the musical development of the story is relatively simple as it outlines a fairly down-to-earth treatment of the old story...
...Greenberg conducts with a wealth of understanding and feeling that makes the most of the music...
...Although musicologists consider Haydn's writing in this genre at least equal (some even claim superior) to the quartets of Mozart and Beethoven, only about a dozen of the 84 quartets are currently available on records-and it would probably be difficult to find that many in the current repertoire...
...The Beaux-Arts doesn't have quite the mellowness or easy authority of the Budapest or the Kroll Quartets, but they go about their task with verve and enthusiasm and give an excellent account of themselves...
...The initial presentation caused so much favorable comment that it was repeated twice at the Riverside Church-both times to over-flow crowds...
...Auden's poetry rendition of the story is a piece of art in itself and, as such, has a tendency to distract from the music...
...One element of the Cloisters performance has been omitted from the recording: the special verse commentary on the play written by W. H. Auden...
...It is a pity that this quartet is not heard more frequently...
...The jacket of the recording bristles with a formidable array of notes on the origins of the play and scholarly and technical discussions of the musical concepts behind it...
...At that time, drama had little existence apart form its inclusion in the services of the Church...
...I was fortunate in being able to see the original performance, and I have been renewing my acquaintance with it in the beautiful album just released by Decca (DL 94A2...
...Present-day musical scholarship, however, has done much to find the proper way of performing the music...
...Much of the patient research was done by Noah Greenberg, director of the New York Pro Musica ensemble, who has earned much credit for ferreting out and playing early music...
...Now, Washington Records has undertaken to complete the venture...
...These will be eagerly awaited...
...9 (WR 450, 451, 452) and the first results are excellent...
...A FEW YEARS back, the Haydn Society set out with commendable determination to record the entire string-quartet literature of Haydn...
...It shows much of the range of Haydn's genius...
...During the past six years, Noah Greenberg has welded them into a perfectly balanced ensemble...
...And there is more than a hint of satire in the delightfully pompous signals which announce the various entrances of the king and his court...
...So we find the envious councellors who attempt Daniel's downfall singing a parody of a chant of repentance and comporting themselves generally more like officious medieval priests than like advisors to an ancient king...
...Washington Records has laid out an ambitious program for the Beaux-Arts Quartet, scheduling them to record 37 Haydn quartets during the coming year...
...Their standards are high throughout, but they outdid themselves in Opus No...
...But, until recently, it was almost impossible to reconstruct the music...
...While this is an early play, it obviously represents a musical tradition already well developed, and capable of a considerable variety of moods...
...The texts of various of these dramas have been extensively studied...
...The manuscripts consisted only of seemingly random notation without signatures...
...In the Middle Ages, people liked to retell old stories in contemporary terms...
...The artists of the New York Pro Musica are, as is usual, expert in their performance...
...It is reprinted, along with the notes, on the handsome jacket...
...Various difficulties prevented completion of the project...
...9, #3...
...This recording of The Play of Daniel is sure to become a collector's item...
...The production of The Play of Daniel represents the first attempt to recreate one of these musical dramas with the greatest possible fidelity to the original concept...
...But I think leaving it off the record was wise...
...MUSIC By Hibbard James The Play of Daniel' and Haydn Quartets One of the musical sensations of last season was the production of The Play of Daniel at the Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum in New York...
...The cast is uniformly excellent, but Russell Oberlin (in several parts) and Charles Bressler are outstanding...
...As performed by the singers and instrumentalists of the Pro Musica, The Play of Daniel turns out to be a surprisingly sophisticated account of the traditional story of Daniel in the lions' den...
...The wonderful slow movement foreshadows some of Beethoven's most expressive writing...
...The Beaux-Arts String Quartet has undertaken the assignment for Washington Records, beginning with the six quartets of Opus No...
Vol. 41 • November 1958 • No. 40
