^Lot 743 Franz Joseph Haydn

Rare signed music score: Ariana a Naxos, Cantate a Voce Sola o Forte-Piano. First edition. London: “Printed for the Author and sold by him at No. 18, Great Pulteney Street and at J. Blands Music Warehouse, 45 Holborn,” no date [circa 1790], 14 x 10, 18 pages. Signed in ink on the cover at lower right, “Haydn.” In very good condition, with pencil notations and a bookplate affixed to inside front cover, expected toning and soiling, and some scattered edge wear and chips.

Hadyn wrote Ariana a Naxos in either 1789 or 1790, and he originally intended to orchestrate the work, but never undertook that task. Ariana a Naxos, a cantata for soprano and keyboard, is a scena, a miniature dramatic scene, drawn on the Greek myth of Ariadne. The daughter of Minos, the King of Crete, Ariadne helps Theseus escape from the Cretan Labyrinth. Theseus marries Ariadne, but later abandons her on the island of Naxos. When Hadyn composed this cantata, he was about to embark on the most prolific and successful phase of his career. With the death of his patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy, in 1790, Haydn gained new freedom from his official musical duties. In the period from 1791 to 1795, he made two extended journeys to London to conduct new symphonies, where he enjoyed spectacular success and generated some of his best-known work. Material signed by Haydn has become exceedingly difficult to obtain; his signature on a score (itself a notable scarcity) from the most fertile period of his career makes for an item of exceptional interest, and one that deserves a place of honor in any serious classical music collection.