Small Fanfare for H. C. Robbins Landon

‘Io la Musica Son’

For a moment there I thought

I was pounding my chest,

I thought I was sounding brass.

Time rounded out, time after time,

in Haydn's number ninety-nine.

Earth, sun, stars, moon

deep in the belly of the tune.

For a moment there I thought

the planets stayed in their courses.

WILLIAM SCAMMELL

To Haydn

Who is the mighty master that can trace

Th’eternal lineaments of Nature's face?

Mid endless dissonance, what mortal ear

Could e’er her peal of perfect concord hear?

Answer, oh, Haydn! strike the magic chord!

And, as thou strik’st, reply and proof afford.

Whene’er thy genius, flashing native fire,

Bids the soul tremble with the trembling lyre,

The hunter's clatt’ring hoof, the peasant-shout,

The warrior-onset, or the battle's rout,

Din, clamour, uproar, murder's midnight knell,

Hyena shrieks, the war-whoop, scream and yell –

All sounds, however mingled, strange, uncouth,

Resolve to fitness, system, sense and truth!

To others, noise and jangling; but to thee

’Tis one grand solemn swell of endless harmony.

When dark and unknown terrors intervene,

And men aghast survey the horrid scene;

Then, when rejoicing fiends flit, gleam and scowl,

And bid the huge tormented tempest howl;

When fire-fraught thunders roll, and whirlwinds rise,

And earthquakes bellow to the frantic skies,

Till the distracted ear, in racking gloom,

Suspects the wreck of worlds, and gen’ral doom:

Then Haydn stands, collecting Nature's tears,

And consonance sublime amid confusion hears.

THOMAS HOLCROFT

A fiat for Joseph Haydn

When the Count says I have four friends, amateur

players; write something for them to perform

next time they come over to Weinzierl,

suppose these the thoughts of Herr Haydn,

eighteen years old, shabbily-dressed, hungry.

Imagine a man as a man's life,

and the events of a man's life as notes

on a stave that is also the fingerboard

of the magical instrument of his life,

tuned, toned, Stradivarius resonant;

then add to that voice another with which

it engages in parody, echo,

partition, the thrust and parry of discourse

only through which imagining mind comes

to apprehend implication.