4 English Canzonettas

The Mermaid’s Song (1794)

A Pastoral Song (1794)

She never told her love (1795)

Fidelity (1794)

One of Haydn’s best friends in London was the poet Anne Hunter who - recently widowed by the sudden death of her distinguished surgeon husband - collaborated with the composer on the two sets of Original Canzonettas he completed on his second visit to this country in 1794 and 1795. She wrote all six texts for the first set and compiled those of the second from various sources, selecting just one of her own in this latter case. It is a clear from the elaborate piano introduction and the quality of the melodic line of The Mermaid’s Song, the first item in the first set, that this was a serious project for Haydn. It has been suggested that the opening song was intended as a tribute to the attractions not only of the mermaid but also of Mrs Hunter but, beautifully written for the voice though it is, the setting has nothing personal about it. There is more emotional interest in A Pastoral Song which has long been a favourite among singers - including, not least, the “Swedish nightingale” Jenny Lind - for its melodic purity, its discreet harmonic pathos and the expressive opportunity offered by its several pauses.

Known in London as “the Shakespeare of music,” Haydn clearly regarded the responsibility of setting words from Twelfth Night as a challenge, even though the text amounts to no more than five lines in all. In a song of extraordinary originality he creates a miniature dramatic scena in which the changing directions of the vocal line seem to be taken on impulse while they are, in fact, carefully prepared in the eloquent (Largo assai e con espressione) piano introduction. Bold inspiration though that item from the second set is, the most progressive of them all, in that it anticipates so much of the kind of song Schubert would be writing twenty years later, is the ballad-like setting of Fidelity with its descriptive piano writing, its symbolic changes of harmony and, between the more operatic episodes, the brief but touching passages of melodic intimacy.