The piano trio in London from 1791 to 1800 (original) (raw)

A Reevaluation of Haydn's Keyboard Sonatas of 1773

Art and Design Review, 2022

This essay focuses on Haydn’s set of 6 Esterházy Piano Sonatas, composed in 1773. These deceptively original sonatas, I will argue, have not been awarded their due by musicologists or theorists. Since Charles Rosen set the beginning of the Classical style at roughly 1780, others have described Haydn’s earlier works as “stylistically unformed”. This essay thus argues against such assessment and periodization, especially in the light of the innovations heralded by the Es- terházy Sonatas, as well as other works of this period. Therefore, a case shall be made for their being eminently Classical. To argue this, specific formal, harmonic, melodic features from individual movements are analyzed and assessed; several striking characteristics, demonstrating radical innovations usually recognized in Beethoven shall be revealed. In so doing, and also by engaging broader issues of perceptions of musical style, the essay endeavors to position the Esterházy Sonatas as influential works in their own light, as they point to the formal and stylistic sprouts rooted in the efflorescent Classical tradition.

Haydn the Romantic: A Revaluation of His Place in Western Art Music

History has traditionally credited Beethoven with being the first truly Romantic composer, lauding him as being a self-made individual writing out of spiritual necessity rather than financial expediency: an artist in the modern sense of the word, rather than “merely” a craftsperson. This paper goes beyond E. T. A. Hoffmann’s assertion that Beethoven in some way “completes” the Romantic innovations of Haydn and Mozart. I assert that Haydn (whose creative period overlaps the late years of Baroque stalwarts such as Handel, Domenico Scarlatti and J. S. Bach, and continued into the early 19th century) is the true originator of many innovations historically credited to the Romantic Generation. The tonal and formal daring of Haydn’s music, especially in his experimental phases (late 1760s-early 1770s, and after ca. 1785) will be explored, using examples from his string quartets written during those years, his keyboard sonatas from the late 1760s, and his late piano trios and solo keyboard works to illustrate. These works bear witness to Haydn’s own surprisingly Romantic-sounding assertion that “art is free, and will be limited by no artisan’s fetters.” From this large, varied body of works drawn from a three-decade period, I shall posit that, far from being merely a pseudo-Romantic precursor of Beethoven, Haydn is the spiritual father of much of Beethoven’s musical thought, which subsequently resonated so deeply with many of the 19th century’s musical figures.

How Haydn's Piano Trios Achieve the Complexity and Sophistication of His Larger Works

The piano trio falls under the genre of 18th century chamber music and more specifically, the sub-genre of accompanied keyboard music. This sub-genre was born with the rise of instrumental music and of the harpsichord as a solo instrument early in the century. The violin and cello were used as accompanying instruments to smoothen the texture of the percussive harpsichord sound (Fillion, 2001). The piano trios are accompanied sonatas, with the piano as the main instrument, the cello supporting the bass and the violin offering long, sustained sounds as well as punctuated accents. Haydn’s Piano Trio in C Major, Hob. XV:27 is one of three piano trios (Hob. XV:27-29) believed to have been written during his second tour of London in 1794-1795. Though written for amateur pianists, these late piano trios are as complex as his larger quartet and symphonic works (Tilmouth and Smallman, 2001). This paper provides an analysis of the form, harmony and meter of Piano Trio Hob. XV:27 using a combination of Caplin’s formal function/ punctuation model and Hepokoski and Darcy’s Sonata Theory (Klorman, 2016), metrical theory (Klorman, 2016) and harmonic analysis methods (Caplin, 2013), and shows how Haydn raised the level of sophistication of the piano trio to that of his larger works.

Haydn as 'Minimalist': Rethinking Exoticism in the Trios of the 1760s and 1770s

A number of Haydn’s minuet movements from the 1760s and 1770s contain sparsely scored trio sections in which a single musical idea is repeated continuously, even obsessively. In these trios—of which the most distinctive are in symphonies nos. 21, 28, 29, 30, 43, 46, and 58—Haydn developed and cultivated an aesthetic of the minimal. While they conjure a range of moods, these trios share several features that mark them as a distinct type. These include circular harmonic motion, schematic melodies, and the use of certain characteristic intervals. Although modern critics consistently ascribe 'Balkan', 'Gypsy', 'Slavonic', or 'Eastern European' qualities to these trios, the evidence for these claims is scanty. The exotic quality of the trios is best viewed in light of Haydn’s minimization of particular compositional parameters, such as dynamics, scoring, as well as motivic and textural variance. At the same time, it is precisely the minimal quality of these trios that allows Haydn to explore in dramatic fashion the mechanics of contrast in the da capo form. While Haydn’s minimal style appears most consistently in trios of the 1760s and 1770s, it also informs his later trio writing.

Formal Innovation in Haydn's Mature Piano Trios (Hob. XV: 5-32)

Haydn’s piano trios, virtually ignored through all of the 19th century and most of the 20th century (with the exception of an occasional sympathetic observer, such as Donald Francis Tovey), have undergone a major rehabilitation in recent decades. The reputation of the trios began to rise with Charles Rosen’s glowing commentary in The Classical Style. Since then, H.C. Robbins Landon has discussed the trios at length in his magnum opus, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, while W. Dean Sutcliffe has explored their textural features, both in his dissertation and in two recent articles. All of these authors have made evident their admiration of these fine compositions, while at the same time, leaving many avenues for further exploration. This study seeks to focus on the mature trios’ formal variety. By the mid-1780s, Haydn’s use of the four-movement form for symphonies and string quartets left little room for experimentation. However, the intimate, more loosely structured piano trio genre, with its lower, flexible number of movements (two- and three-movement works exclusively) seemed to inspire Haydn to an unprecedented degree of formal diversity, working hand-in-hand with some of his most revolutionary tonal ideas. I will identify some basic formal models for both the two-movement and three-movement piano trios, and trace them back to certain formal designs from his middle- and late-period keyboard sonatas (Landon nos. 19-62 [Hob. XVI: 18-52], all but the last five composed between 1765 and 1784), his string trios (composed between ca. 1761 and 1767) and his baryton trios (composed between 1765 and 1778). The latter two groups are particularly interesting, since they are relatively unknown bodies of Haydn’s work that proved to be an effective musical laboratory for him. This formal variety carried over into the mature piano trios more often than it did in other genres on which Haydn lavished his attention after about 1784. Along with the “standard” fast-slow-fast three-movement model, Haydn used three additional three-movement designs and four other two-movement designs in the mature trios. This paper will explore the development of each model, and their interrelation.

Joseph Haydn’s Klavierstücke: A Detailed Examination

Joseph Haydn wrote (or arranged) around 85 compositions for solo keyboard, ranging from sonatas for harpsichord dating from the 1750s (intended for his students), to a triptych of piano sonatas, including two virtuoso works, in the mid-1790s. Though Haydn’s 62 sonatas predominate in his output, he also wrote many solo keyboard works outside the sonata genre. These works include capriccios, variation sets, a sonata-form Adagio in G major (later reworked for his piano trio, Hob. XV:22) and an assortment of shorter pieces, mostly arrangements of symphony and string quartet movements. A number of these works have been examined briefly by H. C. R. Landon (1976-1980), A. Peter Brown (1986), Lázsló Somfai (1995), and Elaine Sisman (2003) in conjunction with discussions of Haydn’s keyboard works in general. Building on the work of Landon, Brown, Somfai, and Sisman, this study provides detailed formal analyses of these works, according to the New Formenlehre of William Caplin, Janet Schmalfeldt, and James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, focusing on the two capriccios (Hob. XVII:1 and 4), the three major variation sets (Hob. XVII:2, 3, and 6), and the Adagio in G major (adapted into Hob. XV:22). In so doing, this essay aims to give these fascinating works–largely unknown apart from the F minor Variations, Hob. XVII:6–their proper due. These Klavierstücke are not merely a musical footnote in Haydn’s compositions for solo keyboard: they provide an important stylistic link between the fantasias and rondos of C. P. E. Bach and the variations and bagatelles of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Joseph Haydn and the New Formenlehre: Teaching Sonata Form with His Solo Keyboard Works

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America, 2020

Haydn’s keyboard works are endlessly fascinating, but they have seldom been the focus of any pedagogical approach to sonata form. This paper will demonstrate how these compositions, often neglected in the undergraduate curriculum, can serve as a springboard into a varied and nuanced understanding of sonata form. Using recent theories of form representative of the “New Formenlehre,” such as William Caplin’s theory of formal functions, Janet Schmalfeldt’s process of “becoming,” and James Hepokoski/Warren Darcy’s Sonata Theory, I will show how Haydn’s sonatas, if carefully selected, can provide students with a more flexible picture of how sonata form worked in the second half of the 18th century. Finally, through a close reading of a particularly challenging work (the slow movement of Haydn’s Sonata in A-flat major, Hob. XVI: 46), I will show how these new theories of form can help students formulate criteria for making sense of the composer’s often contradictory and complex musical decisions in sonata-form movements.

School, Stage, Salon: Musical Cultures in Haydn’s Vienna

The Journal of Modern History, 2004

Vienna's reputation as a musical capital dates back to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when it became synonymous with the names of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. True, with the exception of Schubert, none of these composers-canonized since the nineteenth century as the creators of "Vienna classicism"-could claim the Habsburg capital as their birthplace. Haydn was born in a Lower Austrian village near the Hungarian border. Mozart was a native of Salzburg, which, despite its reputation today as quintessentially Austrian, was the capital of a semiautonomous archbishopric that did not become a Habsburg territory until 1814. And Beethoven was a native of Bonn. Still, there is no denying the importance Vienna would acquire as a musical capital in the course of the eighteenth century. Haydn may not have been a Wiener by birth, but he did spend most of his career either in the city or within a day's drive, at the palace of his Esterhaizy patrons. Vienna was more or less Mozart's permanent home from 1781, when he was released from his service at the Salzburg court, to his death ten years later, and Beethoven resided in Vienna and its environs from 1792 until his death in 1827. In focusing on Haydn, the earliest representative of Viennese classicism, this essay addresses several broader issues related to the role of music in the culture of the Habsburg monarchy and to Haydn's place in that culture. In particular, my article explores three key moments in Haydn's career and development as a composer. These include, first, his boyhood years in the Lower Austrian town of Hainburg, where he acquired his earliest musical training in a modest parish school; second, the decade that followed his leaving the Choir School of St. Stephen's in Vienna (1748 or 1749-Haydn scholars are still uncertain about the precise date), when he began his career as a composer; and finally, his participation in Viennese salon life during the 1770s and 1780s. These moments-cultural snapshots, as it were-highlight important stages * I wish to thank Tom Beghin, Raymond Knapp, and Elizabeth Le Guin of the UCLA Departments of Music and Musicology for inviting me to present an earlier version of this essay in April 2001 at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Their conference, "Exploring Rhetoric in Haydn's Chamber Music," was cosponsored by the UCLA Center for Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Studies.

The Salons of Haydn and Schubert

2012

Elizabeth Blumenstock, violon et alto / violin and viola Olivier Brault, violin & viola Marjolaine Lambert, violon / violin Elisabeth Le Guin, violoncelle / cello Nicolas Lessard, contrebasse / double bass Sanford Sylvan, baryton / baritone Tom Beghin, pianoforte / fortepiano Wieslaw Woszczyk, architecte des acoustiques virtuelles / virtual acoustics architect Doyuen Ko, ingénieur des acoustiques virtuelles / virtual acoustics engineer P r o g r a m m e

Diplomats as Musical Agents in the Age of Haydn

This article appears in a revised and slightly expanded form as "Eighteenth-Century Diplomats as Musical Agents," in Frédéric Ramel and Cécile Prévost-Thomas, eds., International Relations, Music, and Diplomacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 43-64. Vienna’s embassies were major centers of musical activity throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Resident diplomats, in addition to being patrons and performers, often acted as musical agents, facilitating musical interactions within and between courts, among individuals and firms, and in their private salons. Through these varied activities, they played a vital role in shaping a transnational European musical culture. This essay identifies fifteen resident diplomats who made significant contributions to Vienna’s musical scene during Haydn’s lifetime. Exploring their correspondence and other contemporary sources, it highlights the ways in which diplomatic musical exchanges, interventions, and collaborations helped to shape the era’s musical culture. An examination of Charles Burney’s visit to Vienna in 1772 from the perspective of “insider” and “small-world” networks further elucidates the central role diplomats played in the city’s salon life.