Ferdinand Hiller's Symphony in C major

[tpaloj]

I'd like to present another forgotten treasure here, the splendid C major symphony by Ferdinand Hiller – realized with Noteperformer! The dating of this work is not entirely certain: it was performed several times between 1877 and 1880 (according to dates and signatures from the musicians in the manuscript parts), but Goethe Universität gives circa 1830-31 for the actual composition year. Anyway, its premiere seems most certainly have been at the 54th Lower Rhenish Music Festival at Cologne in 1877.

The first movement alone is, in my mind, a genuine masterpiece. Note the initial 2 minutes spent exploring distant keys & the unusually syncopated treatment of the material, before settling for the first time in majestic C major... – the inner movements I'm less enthusiastic about, but the energetic Finale rounds the work up on a high note. Hiller's writing is so full of delightful details that by just typing up this one score I feel like having learnt a year's worth of lessons in orchestration.

It's long, though: manuscript full score's some 250 pages (!) I can promise you it was meticulous work. Unfortunately I had no means to study the undigitized manuscript parts, which would go a long way in proofing the score (Hiller writes messily it seems always when it's crucial of him not to be doing so). Hopefully I've been able to do Hiller even a little deserved justice with this – his voluminous legacy is, after all, still largely forgotten and unrecorded.

https://youtu.be/XY22op-F0bc


As an interesting aside, writing on some of the handwritten parts indicate this Symphony was performed at a "music festival" in Düsseldorf in 1880. However the Wikipedia listing for Lower Rhenish Music Festival tells that the 1880 festival was held at Cologne. Either the wiki info is wrong, or some other festival than LRMF was held in Düsseldorf that year....

[Gareth Vaughan]

Thank you so very much for doing this great work, so that at last we can hear Hiller's marvellous symphony in its orchestral colour and texture. We are greatly indebted to you. I have already listened to the first movement and am greatly impressed. I shall write more once I have heard the entire piece.

[Alan Howe]

I'd like to echo Gareth's words. Furthermore, if the date of composition is 1830-1, Hiller wrote the symphony at the age of only 19-20!

[Mark Thomas]

Oh, absolutely. What a wonderful and welcome surprise. Thank you so much.

[tpaloj]

Thank you everyone! This rendition was created a few pages at a time, very slowly over the course of about 4 months.

I'd like to echo Gareth's words. Furthermore, if the date of composition is 1830-1, Hiller wrote the symphony at the age of only 19-20!

I'm wondering where the information is from, too... there's just something here that doesn't match with Hiller's other early 1830s orchestral works. The complexity of the orchestral writing might be one thing, and the look of the handwriting and ordering of instruments in the manuscript has more in common with his 1840s (or later) orch. scores, from what I can tell. I have no definitive proof either way, so this is just speculation.

[eschiss1]

have his two early sketchbooks been consulted? (one of them is @ IMSLP, one of them is still only @ GUF.)

[tpaloj]

There's this comment on the IMSLP page, so, no definite answers there...

Hiller's (31-page but 150-plus Mb...) first datebook (1825-1831) may be able to offer more accurate dating. Can't seem to find it in there, however or in the 1832-1836 one, suggesting perhaps a date between the November 1831 end of the first book and May 1832 beginning of the 2nd, perhaps... though neither book is comprehensive. The February 5 1831 completion of the symphony in E minor (#2?) is lost in the silence of the first datebook between January and April 1831, for example... so...)

[eschiss1]

I think I wrote that, actually... meep.

[Alan Howe]

My sense - purely subjective, I know - is that this is certainly earlier than the Symphony in E minor Op.67, 'Es muss doch Frühling werden' of 1848, of which we can only hear the first movement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc7VMLY6xY0

A possible stylistic comparison would be with, say, Hiller's contemporary Mendelssohn's Symphony No.1, evidently completed in 1824 and given its first performance in Leipzig in 1827. Apart from the jagged opening of Hiller's Symphony which is all his own, I'd say this symphony could easily come from roughly the same period. Mendelssohn and Hiller, had been boyhood friends, of course.

[cypressdome]

The questionable date of 1830 comes from the source of the PDF (Symphonie (in C-Dur) / von Ferdinand Hiller but I don't know their source for this assertion.  The dates and signatures on the various orchestra parts listed on the symphony's page at IMSLP I took from the first volume (starting at page 417/418) of the inventory of Hiller's scores at Goethe University.  I could not find a date of 1830 within that section.  One wonders if Hiller's Erinnerungsblätter makes any mention of the symphony.

[Alan Howe]

I've done a search under 'Symphonie' in Hiller's Erinnerungsblätter ('Reminiscences'), but there's no mention of his own C major Symphony there at all.

[Ilja]

Great work, Tomas! I'm going to enjoy this.


From what I've been distilling from IMSLP the chronology of Hiller's symphonies, insofar known, looks like this:

   
• Symphony in E minor (1829)
• Symphony in C major (this one; 1830)*
• Symphony in E minor (1831)*
• Symphony in A minor (1831)
• Symphony in F minor (1832)
• Symphony in E minor, Es muss doch Frühling werden (1849)*
• Symphony in G, "Im freien" (1852)
• Symphony in C major (1877)

A few notes: The A minor and E minor of 1831 may be one and he same because of a printing error. And the notes in the opus list at IMSLP suggests the existence of four (!) more symphonies.

[tpaloj]

Thanks Ilja. The presence of two C major symphonies in your list is really suspect. It was *this* symphony in question that was premiered in 1877 in Cologne, after all.

All this confusion proves two points – one, a thorough study into Hiller's works, chronology, primary sources and everything is badly needed; and two, we really should figure out how to travel back in time to force Hiller to write some dates in his manuscripts! Sheesh!

[Alan Howe]

IMSLP's listing in a bit more detail:

- Symphony No.1 in E minor (1829 September 23, according to Hiller's datebook)
- Symphony in C major (from ca.1830) (poss. symphony no.1?)
- Symphony in E minor (concluded February 5 1831) -both scanned in at the Goethe University of Frankfurt (in
    autograph Mus Ms 87 and abschrift Mus Ms 88. Different incipit from 1829 symphony. 4 movements ending in a
    Chant des Pirates.)
- Symphony No.2 in A minor (performed 1831 December at the Paris Conservatoire, with the premiere of the Opus
    5 piano concerto -- ? could this be the E minor, mis-described in a source?)
- Symphony No.3? (possibly Symphony in F minor, ca.1832 with new finale 1833)
- Symphony No.4? 'Im Freien' in G major (British premiere 1852. Could be opus 50 or 51?)
- Symphony No.5? in C (performed at the Gewandhaus in 1877 according to Geschichte der Gewandhausconcerte
    zu Leipzig vom 25. November 1781 bis 25. November 1881)
- 4 other symphonies (according to recent research?)
- Symphony in E minor Op.67 (No.4?) - (N.B. - 'Es muss doch Frühling werden' 1848, ed. Alan Howe)

Questionable entries in red.

[Ilja]

Thanks, Alan. That's one from the Cipriani Potter Book of Messed-up Chronologies.