Harmonie - Music For Harmonie

Music For Harmonie

Some of Joseph Haydn's early works, called divertimenti or Feldpartien, were written for the Harmonie of his first full-time employer, Count Morzin around 1760. Haydn became Vice-Kapellmeister for the Prince Paul Anton Esterházy in 1761, which was the same year that the Prince established a six-member Harmonie; Hellyer suggests that some of Haydn's early works for Harmonie were intended for this ensemble.

Mozart also wrote for Harmonie. As a teenager traveling in Italy, he wrote the early Divertimenti K. 186 and K. 166 (1773). He wrote further divertimenti between 1775 and 1777, while working at the Salzburg court (K. 213, 240, 252, 253, 270).

Some time after his move to Vienna (1781), Mozart wrote his most extended work for Harmonie, the Serenade in B flat, K. 361. This is for an amplified wind ensemble of 13 instruments (two oboes, two clarinets, two basset horns, four (French) horns, two bassoons, and a string bass). His E flat serenade of 1781, K. 375, is written for a Harmonie consisting of clarinets, bassoons and horns, curiously mismatching what the new Emperor had arranged as his Harmonie; Hellyer suggests Mozart, who was seeking a job at court at the time, was misinformed. Mozart later revised the work to include two oboe parts.

Perhaps the weightiest of all music for Harmonie is Mozart's Serenade No. 12 for winds in C minor, K. 388, written in 1782 for Joseph II's eight-player Harmonie. Hellyer calls it "a curiously sombre and powerful work which often conveys a mood of dramatic intensity totally alien to the informal background music normally associated with the serenade type."