3rd Haydneum Eszterháza Festival / Il Suonar Parlante

The term divertimento means an entertaining piece. As many other definitions used in 17th- and 18th-century musical practice, this one is also witty and windy at the same time: it cannot be interpreted as it communicates nothing about the work’s arrangement, format, or structure, yet it is also accurate as it clearly specifies its character and function. Divertimentos were pieces intended for entertainment; the name applies to typically multi-movement music that often resembles dances and is generally written for chamber ensembles with a clear formulation and light-hearted tone.

Of course, as always, there is a lot of overlap in this case, too. Serenades and partitas, even sonatas and symphonies, were labelled as divertimentos at that time, when society’s need for transcendent experiences had not yet seeped into the sophisticated enjoyment of musical recreation as it did later in the Romantic period. Haydn’s dozens of chamber music pieces are great examples for this, which were originally composed by the master for baryton (the somewhat unfashionable favourite of Nikolaus I, Prince Esterházy, similar to a viola da gamba), strings and a few wind instruments, and were published by the Viennese Artaria as divertimentos but a few of them were released in London as symphonies. Pieces No. 3 and 12 of the series are accompanied by a concerto by Johann Gottlieb Graun, a famous violin virtuoso and the former concertmaster of the Berlin Opera, together with a few works that present exotic objects of fascination for 18th-century Central Europe, the Romani musical culture that was thriving in the Ottoman–Habsburg border region, interpreted through learned contemporary instrumental language.