THE VIRTUAL. Haydn. Paradox of a Twenty-First-Century. Keyboardist TOM BEGHIN. The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

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2 The Virtual Haydn

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4 Paradox of a Twenty-First-Century THE VIRTUAL Haydn Keyboardist TOM BEGHIN The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

5 Tom Beghin is associate professor at McGill University in Montreal and an internationally active performer on historical keyboards. He is coeditor of Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric, also published by the University of Chicago Press. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London 2015 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published Printed in the United States of America ISBN-13: ISBN-13: (cloth) (e-book) DOI: /chicago/ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beghin, Tom, 1967 author. The virtual Haydn : paradox of a twenty-first-century keyboardist / Tom Beghin. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN (cloth : alkaline paper) ISBN (e-book) 1. Haydn, Joseph, Keyboard music. 2. Performance practice (Music) History 18th century. 3. Keyboard instrument music Analysis, appreciation. 4. Keyboard instruments Performance. I. Title. ML410.H4B dc This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z (Permanence of Paper).

6 to Robert J. Litz ( ) friend and partner in crime

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8 CONTENTS List of Illustrations ix The Virtual Haydn: A Recording Project Companion Website xv Acknowledgments xvii Abbreviations, Scores, and Translations Prologue xxiii xiii xxi 1 A Composer, His Dedicatee, Her Instrument, and I 1 2 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! 43 3 Short Octaves müssen sein! 77 4 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant An Opus for the Insightful World A Contract with Posterity 219 Epilogue 255 vii

9 viii Contents Appendix A: Physiognomic Analyses of Plate 5 à la Lavater 257 Appendix B: Biographical Outlines of Theresa Jansen and Magdalena von Kurzböck 261 Notes 273 Works Cited 305 Index of Names 321 Index of Musical Works 327

10 ILLUSTRATIONS Figures Fig. 1.1 Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52 (London: Longman, Clementi, 1799), title page 8 Fig. 1.2 Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52 (Vienna: Artaria, 1798), title page 9 Fig. 1.3 Replica of a 1788 Ignaz Kober Tafelklavier by Chris Maene (Ruiselede, Belgium, 2007) 37 Fig. 1.4 Stoss action (below) and prell action (above), interchangeable in the same replica of a ca Anton Walter grand fortepiano by Chris Maene (Ruiselede, Belgium, 2005) 38 Fig. 2.1 Sonata in E major, Hob. XVI:49, autograph, first page turn, facsimile by Schott/Universal Edition (Vienna, 1964) 57 Fig. 2.2 An actor in doubt. Engraving from Engel ( ), vol. 1, between pp. 88 and Fig. 3.1 Title page of Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, autograph. From a copy in the Gisella Selden-Goth Collection: Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 80 Fig. 3.2 Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm , Henle score (ed. Sonja Gerlach), with author s annotations 91 Fig. 3.3 Castration of a sow in Burgenland 96 ix

11 x Illustrations Fig. 4.1 Two families joined by marriage 130 Fig. 4.2 Nicolaus Esterházy Sonatas, Hob. XVI:21 26 (Vienna: Kurzböck, 1774), title page 135 Fig. 4.3 Auenbrugger Sonatas, Hob. XVI:35 39, 20 (Vienna: Artaria, 1780), title page 135 Fig. 4.4 Marie Esterházy Sonatas, Hob. XVI:40 42 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), title page 137 Fig. 5.1 Katharina Freifrau Zois Edelstein, née von Auenbrugger. Miniature by Suwis, Fig. 5.2 Marianna von Auenbrugger, Sonata in E Major, with ode by Antonio Salieri (Vienna: Artaria, ca. 1783), title page 184 Fig. 5.3 Daniel Niklaus Chodowiecki, Sixteen Heads in Profile, from Lavater (1776), vol. 2, supplement 193 Fig. 5.4 Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, A Willful Buffoon (after 1770 [No. 5]) and A Buffoon (after 1770 [No. 13]) 197 Fig. 5.5 Sonata in C Minor, Hob. XVI:36 (Vienna: Artaria, 1780), Menuet (No. 6a) and Trio (No. 6b) 202 Fig. 5.6 Physiognomy and pathognomy of an opus 207 Fig. 6.1 Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52, autograph, second page (recto) 232 Fig. 6.2 Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52 (London: Longman, Clementi, 1799), first movement, mm Fig. 6.3 Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52 (Vienna: Artaria, 1798), first movement, mm Musical Examples Ex. 1.1 Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:50, first movement, mm. 1 8 and Ex. 1.2 Sonata in F Major, Hob. XVI:23, second movement, mm Ex. 1.3 Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:39, second movement, mm Ex. 1.4 (a) Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:21, first movement, mm. 1 6 (transcribed from first edition); (b) Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:49, first movement, mm (transcribed from manuscript) 23 Ex. 1.5 (a) Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:14, first movement, mm. 1 8; (b) Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:48, first movement, mm Ex. 1.6 Sonata in E Minor, Hob. XVI:47, mm Ex. 2.1 Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40: (a) transition between first and second movements; (b) first movement, mm. 73 end, with repeat: written-out performance Ex. 2.2 Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:42, transition between first and second movements 51 Ex. 2.3 Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI:26, Menuet al rovescio 54 Ex. 2.4 Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:49, first movement: (a) mm ; (b) mm (transcribed from manuscript) 55 56

12 Illustrations xi Ex. 2.5 Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:22, first movement: (a) opening theme; (b) development and recapitulation Ex. 3.1 (a) Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Divertimento Op. 2 No. 2 (WV 53), third movement, mm. 35 end; (b) Wagenseil, Divertimento Op. 2 No. 6 (WV 33), first movement, mm. 89 end; (c) Wagenseil, Divertimento Op. 2 No. 6 (WV 33), third movement, mm. 13 end; (d) Johann Joseph Fux, Suite ( Parthie ) in G Minor (E 117), first movement, mm Ex. 3.2 (a) Sonata in E Minor, Hob. XVI:47, first movement (Adagio), mm. 1 12; (b) Variations in A Major, Hob. XVII:2: Var. VI, mm ; Var. IX, mm ; Var. X, mm ; Var. XI, mm ; Var. XX, mm ; (c) Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI:12, first movement, mm ; (d) Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI:46, third movement, mm Ex. 3.3 Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, outline 102 Ex. 3.4 Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Ex. 3.5 Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Ex. 3.6 Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Ex. 3.7 Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Ex. 3.8 Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Ex. 3.9 Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Ex (a) Divertimento in F Major, Hob. XVIIa:1, first movement: theme, mm. 1 10; Var. III, mm ; Var. V, mm ; Var. VI, mm ; (b) Baryton Trio in A Major, Hob. XI:38, theme, mm Ex. 4.1 Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), first movement, mm Ex. 4.2 Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), from first movement, m. 80, to second movement, m Ex. 4.3 Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40, from end of first movement to beginning of second movement, rewritten without transition 157 Ex. 4.4 Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), second movement, mm Ex. 4.5 Sonata in B Major, Hob. XVI:41 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784): (a) first movement, mm. 1 8; (b) second movement, mm Ex. 4.6 (a) Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), second movement, mm. 1 10; (b) Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:42 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), second movement, mm

13 xii Illustrations Ex. 5.1 One idea, different executions: (a) Sonata in C Minor, Hob. XVI:36, second movement, opening; (b) Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:39, first movement, opening 170 Ex. 5.2 Opus tonality of the six Auenbrugger Sonatas, Hob. XVI: 35 39, Ex. 5.3 Incipits of the eighteen Auenbrugger pieces Ex. 5.4 (a) Nun ich meinen Wurstel habe, from Die Feuersbrunst, Hob. XXIXb:A, opening line; (b) No. 6b transposed from C major to D major 200 Ex. 5.5 Baryton Trio in A Major, Hob. XI:35, Trio, mm Ex. 5.6 Physiognomy of an opus 204 Ex. 5.7 Comparison of Numbers 3, 5, and 13, opening measures 205 Ex. 5.8 Comparison of Numbers 2 and 14, selected measures 205 Ex. 5.9 Pathognomy of an Opus in C Minor 210 Ex Sonata 6, third movement (No. 18), mm. 102 end 213 Ex Sonata 4, first movement (No. 10), development and part of recapitulation (mm ) 216 Ex. 6.1 Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52 (London: Longman, Clementi, 1799), first movement, mm Ex. 6.2 Jan Ladislav Dussek, Sonata in G Minor, Op. 13 No. 3, first movement, mm Ex. 6.3 Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonata in B Major, Op. 22, fourth movement, mm Ex. 6.4 Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52 (Vienna: Artaria, 1798), first movement, mm Ex. 6.5 Theresa Bartolozzi-Jansen, Grand Sonata in A Major, three movements, incipits 246 Plates (following p. 130) Plate 1 Viennese short octave : close-up and diagram Plate 2 Lungau Sauschneider, anonymous gouache (late eighteenth century), and Hanswurst, detail from Kinderspiele, colored etching by Johann Martin Will (1780s) Plate 3 Letter of Princess Marie Esterházy to Empress Maria Ludovica Beatrix, March 20, 1812, first and third (final) page Plate 4 Letter of Haydn to Marianne von Genzinger, February 9, 1790, first and fourth (final) page Plate 5 Physiognomic snapshots of author s performance Plate 6 Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Character Heads, selected from Krapf (2002), passim Plate 7 Lobkowitz Festsaal and ca prell-action Anton Walter fortepiano (replica by Chris Maene, 2005) Plate 8 Holywell Music Room and 1798 Longman, Clementi, & Company piano (replica by Chris Maene, 2004) Plate 9 Karl Anton Hickel, William Pitt Addressing the House of Commons,

14 THE VIRTUAL HAYDN: A RECORDING PROJECT The Virtual Haydn: Complete Works for Solo Keyboard by Joseph Haydn, performed by Tom Beghin, is available from Naxos either as a boxed set of four Blu-ray discs (Naxos NBD , released in 2009) or twelve CDs and one DVD (Naxos , released in 2011). Showcasing the new technology of virtual acoustics, the recordings were produced at the laboratories of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) and the Schulich School of Music of McGill University. Martha de Francisco was the producer; Wieslaw Woszczyk the virtual acoustics engineer/architect. Many of the concepts espoused in this book have found their sonic counterpart or, conversely, their inspiration in the eighteen hours worth of recorded material. Fifteen hours are pure audio (in the Blu-ray package presented as both 5.0 surround DTS-HD and high-resolution stereo PCM); three hours are HD video, including a feature-length making of documentary, entitled Playing the Room, directed by Robert J. Litz and Jeremy Tusz. Listeners experience Haydn s solo keyboard works in nine virtual rooms replications of actual rooms where Haydn or contemporary players of his keyboard music would have performed. These have been acoustically xiii

15 xiv The Virtual Haydn sampled, electronically mapped, and virtually reconstructed in the recording studio. Featured rooms range from private to public, from Haydn s own study in his Eisenstadt home to the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, England. Enhancing the experience are the seven historical keyboards on which the music is performed. All seven instruments, from a 1760s clavichord to a 1798 English grand piano, were especially built for this project, some for the very first time since the eighteenth century. As a special bonus, the user may navigate from one virtual room to the next or from one instrument to another mixing, matching, and comparing the performance of a short piece for musical clock, for a total of sixtythree (seven times nine) possible combinations.

16 COMPANION WEBSITE All examples printed in this book may be listened to or viewed at the designated website thevirtualhaydn.com/book. Especially for chapters 3 and 5 (where it is absolutely necessary to also see ) and chapter 6 (where part of the argument concerns the acoustics of rooms), we recommend that the reader consult the website in tandem with the book. But the website also serves this book s broader performance-oriented message: that image and sound take over where score or prose must stop. To allow for easy cross-navigation, captions and numbers have been kept identical between book and website. Sound and video excerpts are mostly taken from the author s own commercially available recordings, by permission of Naxos. In addition, the website features newly recorded video material, notably, for chapter 3, the non-haydn short-octave examples and Haydn s four-hand Divertimento Il maestro e lo scolare, Hob. XVIIa:1 (with Gili Loftus); for chapter 5, Marianna von Auenbrugger s E Major Sonata (by Gili Loftus) and Antonio Salieri s Ode Deh si piacevoli (with April Babey); and, for chapter 6, Theresa Jansen s Grand Sonata in A Major. Especially noteworthy too are the evocative readings in their original language of Marie Esterházy s and Haydn s letters (for chapter 4), by Geneviève Soly and Tom Pohl. xv

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18 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I now smile at the ambition of a budding performer-scholar, but for the blessing of two giants in the worlds of historical performance and musicology I will be forever grateful. Seated at that special kitchen table in Ithaca, New York, when I unveiled my plan to study the complete Haydn, were Malcolm Bilson and James Webster. Their support has blossomed into warm collegiality and friendship a privilege that I ve never ceased to cherish. Various granting agencies have sponsored my research over the years. I wish particularly to thank the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, where I was William J. Bouwsma Fellow in ; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), which supported both the recording project (2003 8) and the present book ( ); and the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC), which supplied crucial funds during my first years at McGill University. The Joseph Haydn-Institut in Cologne houses the world s most significant collection of Haydn-related primary and secondary sources, and it became one of my favorite destinations, especially during my sabbatical year in I thank the director, Armin Raab, and his remarkable team of xvii

19 xviii Acknowledgments researchers for their warm welcome. The institute has furthermore helped me develop friendships with scholars I greatly admire, such as László Somfai (whose wisdom and inimitable pragmatism in Haydn-related matters I ve always taken to heart) and Elaine Sisman (whose originality and excellence have continued to inspire me). On the home front in Montreal, I must salute the hardworking and delightfully supportive team of librarians at the Marvin Duchow Music Library under the directorship of Cynthia Leive. Both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, at the University of California, Los Angeles ( ) and at McGill University (2003 present), I have submitted many students to my developing ideas on eighteenth- century performance and Haydn. It has been particularly fulfilling to see some of them explore uncharted territories on their own I think of Erin Helyard s work on Muzio Clementi and Katelyn Clark s on Theresa Jansen. Over the years my historical-piano studio has grown into a true laboratory, where knowledge and insight have emerged collectively. The accomplished musicians I ve had the privilege of working with include, among others, Katharina Brand, Erin Helyard, Alejandro Ochoa, Katelyn Clark, Pascale Roy, Gili Loftus, Meagan Milatz, Ruxandra Oancea, Andrea Botticelli, Ethan Liang, Mélisande McNabney, and Michael Pecak. One crucial element in our laboratory has been the actual musical instrument itself. I thank Alfons Huber, curator of the instrument collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, for his groundbreaking research into eighteenth-century keyboards, and for his example of always putting evidence over assumption. My admiration for the skill and genius of Chris Maene has only increased since he built my first fortepiano back in I have since had the good fortune to collaborate with other extraordinary builders or restorers, all of whom have become dear friends: Yves Beaupré, Rob Loomis (who sadly passed away in 2013), Joris Potvlieghe, and Martin Pühringer. It was in Montreal and at the newly established Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) that sound technology added a new dimension to my work. I owe the virtual in the title of this book and much more to my colleague Wieslaw Woszczyk, an expert in the domain of virtual acoustics. Together with Tonmeister Martha de Francisco we formed what felt like a dream team, our collaborations culminating in a special boxed set of recordings. With its catalog number of NBD0001 (as Naxos s first Blu-ray release), I like to think we wrote a bit of history. I thank Klaus Heymann for his trust and vision. But the recording couldn t say it all. After Haydn and the Performance of

20 Acknowledgments xix Rhetoric, coedited with the classicist Sander Goldberg (itself an immensely inspiring partnership), I was thrilled to receive renewed confidence from the University of Chicago Press. Editor Kathleen Hansell encouraged me to submit my first draft; her successor, Marta Tonegutti, along with her assistant, Sophie Wereley, expertly guided me through the production process; the professionalism of copy editor Barbara Norton and manuscript editor Erik Carlson helped make the last stage remarkably stress-free. I thank the two reviewers for their astute and helpful comments. One of them formally disclosed her identity, allowing me to thank Elisabeth Le Guin for her inspiring artistry and scholarship, for her friendship, and for the opportunity to make music together, mostly in partnership with Elizabeth Blumenstock. I long for more Trio Galatea moments and sometimes wish that shifting institutional affiliations hadn t sent us in opposite geographic directions. Kathleen Hansell and Marta Tonegutti went beyond the call of duty to help me with Italian translations, as did Thomas Pohl, an Austria-based German actor featured on the website, with some challenging eighteenthcentury German. The multitalented Erin Helyard took precious time away from his own academic duties to typeset the complex musical examples, and Robert Giglio lent meticulous assistance in matters of copyright and permissions and prepared the two indexes. Jonathan Hong, Jeremy Tusz, and Ryan Frizell were instrumental in constructing the accompanying website. For their support over the years, especially in matters relating to Haydn, I thank Koen Uvin, producer of Klara (Belgian Public Radio), and Geert Robberechts, who has helped me with much more than just the business side of being a musician. Three chapters are expanded versions of previously published work. Chapter 1 is based on an essay with the same title originally published in The Cambridge Companion to Haydn, edited by Caryl Clark (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Chapter 2 was revised from Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric, edited by the present author and Sander Goldberg (University of Chicago Press, 2007). A much shorter version of chapter 4, in German, was first printed in Haydn Studien 9 (2006) as Votre très humble & très obéissant serviteur : Männliche und weibliche Rhetorik in Haydns Sonate Hob. XVI:40. Finally, I thank my wife, Griet Vankeerberghen, for her critical yet encouraging eye every time I showed her what I thought was going to be that next killer draft, and for her love and support. My sons, sixteen-year-old Oscar and eleven-year-old August, are two remarkable individuals who continue to teach me a lot beyond historical keyboards (even as their knowledge

21 xx Acknowledgments of them must be far above average). Robert J. Litz was a family friend and my creative soul mate. His extended stays at our house while working on a theatrical play, a movie documentary, or a movie script were invigorating beyond words. More than a year after his passing, I dedicate this book to him. Tom Beghin Montreal, March 4, 2014

22 ABBREVIATIONS, SCORES, AND TRANSLATIONS AmZ = Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung JHW = Joseph Haydn Werke WUE = Wiener Urtext Edition Unless indicated otherwise, all musical examples are transcribed from JHW, with special permission of G. Henle Verlag (Munich). In accordance with JHW s editorial practice, material derived from important secondary sources appears in parentheses. Additions and clarifications not found in any authoritative source but deemed essential by the editor appear in square brackets. All translations, unless otherwise specified, are my own. The original foreign-language quotes (often with slightly more context) may be found as an electronic document posted on the website, organized chapter by chapter. Capitals C, D, E, and so on are used to indicate musical notes. Context makes clear whether A refers to the single note A or the tonality of A major. When more clarity about an actual pitch is required, the following Helmholtz-like notation has been adopted: FF (for the lowest key of a traditional five-octave keyboard), F, f, f 1, f 2, and f 3 (for the highest key). Our modern-day middle C is thus c 1. xxi

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24 PROLOGUE September , 1:00 p.m. I board the one o clock ferry in Calais, bound for Dover. Fragments of a letter from Haydn to his dear friend Marianne von Genzinger keep invading my thoughts: After attending Holy Mass, I boarded the ship, at 7:30 a.m. [on New Year s Day 1791], and at 5 p.m., God be thanked!, I arrived safe and sound in Dover.... During the entire passage I stayed on deck, so as to gaze my fill at that mighty animal, the sea. As long as there was no wind, I wasn t afraid, but as the wind grew stronger and stronger, and I saw those frighteningly high waves slamming into the ship, a little fear took hold of me, along with a little nausea. But I survived it all without... you know, and arrived safely to shore. (January 8, 1791) 1 Like Haydn, I too stayed on deck for the entire voyage. Unlike Haydn s, my stomach was fine. But then, there were no frighteningly high waves and my crossing took ninety minutes, against Haydn s nine-and-a-half fraught hours. The purpose of my trip was to bring a newly built replica of a 1798 Longman, Clementi, & Company piano from its present home in Belgium back to xxiii

25 xxiv Prologue England, specifically to Oxford s Holywell Music Room, which my team and I had chosen as the venue for the recording of Haydn s English Concert Sonatas Hob. XVI: 50 and 52. We had deemed it a viable substitute for the London Hanover Square Rooms, which are no longer extant. Built in 1748 and dubbed the oldest music room in Europe by John Henry Mee in 1911, the Holywell Music Room was, from the start, a public venture, that is, funded by public subscription and conceived as a public music venue. Music for the chamber was performed there: sonatas, quartets, trios, concertos, symphonies, and Handel oratorios. Our task was to sample the room to take many acoustical digital snapshots of the space and make a reference recording of the instrument, positioned in recital style, on the stage, lid up. I would be playing Haydn s Grand Sonata in E, No. 52, a piece that Haydn wrote for the London-based, professionally trained pianist Theresa Jansen, pupil of the father of the pianoforte, Muzio Clementi. To create for myself a sense of what it would be like to present a concert in this famous room mimicking Ms. Jansen I invited a few British guests to fill Holywell s built-in benches. In its simplest terms, an acoustical map of a room is a digital record of its distinctive first and subsequent reverberation responses: how sound waves from a certain source bounce from the walls, windows, niches, floor, ceiling, and seats of a particular room. Sampling a room such as Holywell involved placing sensitive microphones at different elevations and multiple locations within the room. What was recorded was not my piano. The purpose of my playing the Longman & Clementi piano was to determine the position of where I would ideally wish to be seated in other words, where in the room I would deem the instrument to sound best. (In this particular case, this choice turned out also the most obvious: we selected the modest-size stage, erected around the organ at the front of the room.) The actual recording of Haydn s sonata would take place a few months and many thousands of miles away. Still, a recorded document of the real interaction of room and instrument would be very useful as a reference later on. Once we felt satisfied with our real results, we replaced the instrument with a large array of speakers, of various shapes and characteristics, assembled to imitate the complex acoustic behavior of a keyboard instrument, radiating sounds in all possible directions. Recorded in eight channels was an eighty-second sound sweep, as emitted by the various speakers, beginning with subaudible frequencies and gradually rising in pitch to frequencies that only dogs and hummingbirds could hear. Some five hundred such snapshots were taken, from all possible listening positions: low and high,

26 Prologue xxv close and far. During the actual sampling, every member of the crew wore protective ear guards, visually monitoring the recording of this sweep on their computer screens. I was told to wait outside. With the digital data from the room scans logged on our hard drives and vivid memories of playing in the actual room, the team flew back to our home base in Montreal, Canada. There, in the Immersive Laboratory on the top floor of the New Music Building of McGill University, we replicated everything. Thus, sitting at a 2004 replica of the same Longman, Clementi, & Company grand, in a three-dimensional dome of twenty-four loudspeakers, I play as if I were in the Holywell Music Room, ever so conscious of the acoustical spaciousness that surrounds me. As microphones pick up the sounds of the piano, the computer makes the fastest of calculations, sending reverberation responses identical to those in Oxford back through the loudspeakers. (This process of calculating and transmitting takes less than ten milliseconds.) With the confidence expected of a recitalist, I project those grand opening chords of Sonata No. 52 into a virtual hall. Then, as I play those repetitions in the higher register, dropping silences in between, I actively engage with the acoustical feedback, which complements those lazily dampened, resonant though somewhat muffled English tones amazingly well. Through those moments of staged hesitation, I assert my authority as a professional performer, at the English instrument, in a virtual concert space, with an imaginary audience. (Corresponding video of these contrasted of scenes actual vs. virtual may be found on the website.) 2 This, by way of example, is the story of a collaborative project conducted at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). Over the course of four months in 2007, we recorded the complete Haydn for solo keyboard (Hob. XVI, the sonatas, and Hob. XVII, the so-called Klavierstücke) divided over ten programs: 1. Courting Nobility, ca , on a Viennese harpsichord in the salon of a noble household; 2. Quality Time, ca , on a German clavichord in the music room of an upper middle class household; 3. The Music Lesson, ca , on a Viennese harpsichord in a private room of a noble household; 4. Haydn s Workshop, ca , on a German clavichord in Haydn s study; 5. Your Most Serene Highness! ( Nicolaus Esterházy Sonatas, published 1774), on a French harpsichord in the Eszterháza Ceremonial Room;

27 xxvi Prologue 6. The Score ( Anno 776 Sonatas, 1776), on a Viennese square piano, faraway location; 7. Equal to the Finest Masters ( Auenbrugger Sonatas, published 1780), on a Viennese fortepiano with Stossmechanik in a formal salon; 8. Musical Letters to a Princess ( Marie Esterházy Sonatas, published 1784), on a Viennese square piano in a private salon; 9. Viennese Culture, , on a Viennese fortepiano with Prellmechanik in a formal music salon; 10. The London Scene, , on an English grand piano in an English concert hall. 3 I had long been a historical keyboardist or keyboardist for short, in the C. P. E. Bach sense of Clavierist, or someone who has made it a point to be adept on a variety of keyboard instruments. Making space an essential ingredient of my recorded performances attracted me immensely. But, as this opportunity for a remarkable technological experiment presented itself, the trap of historical reconstruction also felt wide open. Instruments, rooms what would be next: clothes, to empathize with the restricted movements of an eighteenth-century keyboard-playing lady? Candles, to experience what it is like to sight-read from typeset or engraved scores in an environment lacking electricity? Non-controlled humidity, to appreciate the labor of tuning, especially in those simple-key sonatas that typically open a set of six, enjoying the freshness of a well-tempered tuning while it lasts? Though each of these realities in fact raises intriguing issues for modern-day interpretation and performance, I feared that recording in historical rooms or in carefully created digital clones of those rooms would make me an easy target for such fierce authenticity critics as Richard Taruskin or Peter Kivy. 4 (This kind of conceptual fear has undoubtedly been conditioned by my formative years as a graduate student in the early 1990s, the heydays of such debates between proponents and critics of what was then still called a historical performance movement. ) But I did accept the invitation of my McGill sound recording colleagues, and the presence of yet another reconstructive component in my performances, rather than complicating my approach to Haydn, ended up providing a reassuringly real context for it. Virtuality provided me with choices I didn t know I d need or have, inviting me to accept the virtual almost as more real than reality itself embracing, perhaps, what the cultural philosopher Slavoj Žižek has called the reality of the virtual. 5 I no longer felt on the receiving end of things, but had to make decisions as concrete as Haydn s

28 Prologue xxvii when embarking on another sonata-writing project. For Haydn, these may not have been decisions per se, but concrete elements or circumstances nonetheless that he would have taken into account, even if he did not actively use or exploit them. Virtual acoustics forced me to be articulate but also allowed my musicological sensitivities to sociocultural context to come to the fore, resulting not just in some interesting liner notes for my listeners, but in clearly assembled and enacted storyboards that informed my performative choices in the most direct of ways. In good rhetorical tradition, ten programs stands for many : undoubtedly, there are more stories of a virtual Haydn to be told, but the crucial point is that they are stories, involving real instruments, rooms, people the three aspects combining and conspiring to take the singular out of repertoire, or (with the ethnomusicologist Christopher Small) to put the verb back in musicking. 6 But none of this happens in spite of me and the quotation marks become all the more essential as we now move from recording project to academic monograph. I am a professional twenty-first-century keyboardist, well versed in historical performance practices, but burdened like most of us in the classical music world with the post-1800 custom of learning, interpreting, and performing only masterworks of the past. The fact that, in the case of Haydn s keyboard music, these works of a master (the reversal to bring us closer to a pre-1800 way of thinking about them) were mostly intended for the female amateur leaves us with a paradox one that will permeate many pages of this book. (The example given at the outset, of Ms. Jansen playing a concert sonata, is a major exception for Haydn.) Like Diderot s actor performing a script by Molière or Shakespeare, how can I imbue my professional renditions of a Haydn sonata with skill, with conviction, with sincerity? 7 The answer cannot be simple. Maybe the anachronism of me now versus her then makes the question itself fallacious. Nonetheless, I (and many like me) do exist, and we create careers out of performing repertoires like Haydn s. So the question seems worth exploring. Since the pioneering work of David Schroeder, Mark Evan Bonds, Elaine Sisman, James Webster, and others, scholars and musicians have started piecing together an ever more rewarding understanding of Haydn, the rhetorical man. 8 Some of these named authors teamed up with colleagues from other fields of the humanities and contributed to the volume Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric, coedited by the classics scholar Sander Goldberg and me (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). The primary aim of that publication was to make performance front and center again

29 xxviii Prologue of modern-day music-rhetorical discourse that is, not to think of performance as some finishing stage in a longer process of creative invention and execution, but to appreciate performance as the culminating arena that once defined the very rules and structures of the discipline for classical rhetoric and eighteenth-century music alike. This performance-anchored paradigm of Haydn, the rhetorical man, to be understood as both a broader and a more flexible version of Haydn, the orator, continues to elicit many of the questions explored in this present book. 9 When performing the rhetoric of Haydn s solo keyboard music, one important preliminary question concerns the issue of performing and/or listening personae. We now commonly separate the two activities, but the division could not be taken for granted for a genre that revolved around private musicking. Sometimes it is more useful whether transforming or reflecting a real-life social interaction to think of the player of a Haydn sonata as the pupil of a real-time musical lesson, the interlocutor of some musical conversation, or the addressee of some musical letter. After some practicing but not too much, because there s always the next piece to play this letter may be shared, yes, performed for someone else than your music teacher or governess. It may even evolve into an actual declamation or oration, entirely worthy of third-party listening. But as this process unfolds, initial interactions spontaneous and surprising yield something more rehearsed and predictable. This after, however, is not necessarily more interesting than the before. Often, it s not. How, then, do I hang on to those initial meanings and incorporate them in my polished renditions of a sonata or piece? This is one challenge I would like to explore in this book. It goes to the heart of the oratorical paradox of ars versus natura. Internalizing this paradox for the keyboardist, then (as Diderot did for the actor), I found myself interested more in playing Haydn her way than in playing him his way. 10 My quest my obsession, even to learn as much as possible about the personalities of my female counterparts has led to some serious perusal of primary documents, a number of which make it into modern-day print here for the first time. Honoring the factual value of these new documents (which deserve to become a part of Haydn scholarship in their own right) while remaining true to my artistic mission as a performer (where fact and fiction almost must merge) was not an easy balance to strike. I can imagine that for some readers I did not go far enough, while others might find my at times deliberate gray zones unnecessarily speculative. However strongly I identify with various female dedicatees, the driving presence throughout the book remains my own as a longtime performer of

30 Prologue xxix Haydn Haydn here implying more than the usual metonymy of person for work. About her relationship with Boccherini, the cellist Elisabeth Le Guin has evoked a virtual presence of her subject-composer, to the extent of her becoming him, that is, not just his hands, but his binding agent, the continuity, the consciousness. 11 As I perform or write about Haydn, I too like to imagine him as a living presence not necessarily in or not even next to me, but still as a real-life person, someone whose rhetorical outlook on art and life I ought to try and understand. This book has six chapters, the first two of which contemplate the kind of existential questions initiated here. Chapter 1 sketches a conceptual triangle of a composer, his dedicatee, and her instrument, and asks where I might belong. Chapter 2 shows me eager to sidestep her, wishing instead to form a team with Haydn as a single musical orator. Chapter 3, then, examines the implications of the Viennese short octave for Haydn s Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1 ( Acht Sauschneider müssen sein ), remarkable for its slapstick humor. Chapter 4 has a fifteen-year-old princess as its star, whose persona must have inspired Haydn to write three of his finest ladies sonatas (Hob. XVI:40 42). In chapter 5 we invite ourselves to a distinguished Viennese salon where the topic of the day is physiognomy, enlivened (and provoked) by a performance of Haydn s six Auenbrugger Sonatas, Hob. XVI:35 39 and 20. Chapter 6, finally, addresses the double dedication for Haydn s last piano sonata, Hob. XVI:52, asking whether Haydn was simply transferring the triangle of composer, dedicatee, and instrument from England to the Continent, or whether more is at stake. With a complete edition of his keyboard works by Breitkopf & Härtel just around the corner, was Haydn endorsing the inevitable separation of work from life? I invite the reader to visit the designated website thevirtualhaydn.com (for its contents, see p. xv), where all musical examples reproduced in this book may be listened to and/or looked at. This visual aspect is crucial especially for chapters 3 and 5. The website also offers original recordings of complete works, such as Haydn s four-hand Divertimento Il maestro e lo scolare, Hob. XVIIa:1, and three works written by or associated with the Haydn dedicatees Marianna von Auenbrugger and Theresa Jansen. Finally, though by no means essential for an appreciation of this book, my own recordings of the complete solo Haydn may be gauged from the various Naxos releases (see p. xiii). Let us now enter Haydn s virtual world. I m especially eager to meet her, my playmate in a repertoire that so resists behaving like one.

31

32 Rhetorical man [homo rhetoricus] must have felt an overpowering self-consciousness about language.... Whatever sins [he] might enregister, stylistic naivete would not be one.... His sense of identity, his self, depends on the re assurance of daily histrionic reenactment. He is thus centered in time and concrete local event. The lowest common denominator of his life is a social situation. RICHARD A. LANHAM (1976), 3 4 CHAPTER 1 A Composer, His Dedicatee, Her Instrument, and I Imagine that we ve just opened a copy of the score of Joseph Haydn s Grand Sonata for the Piano Forte in C Major, Hob. XVI:50, which he composed during his second trip to London in Our edition is the authoritative hardcover from Joseph Haydn Werke, by far the best and cleanest Urtext on the market. As an experiment, let us try to describe its opening measures (ex. 1.1) from three different perspectives those of a musical analyst, of the composer, and of a performer. Each comes with a different response or inner narrative: Inner Narrative 1 A naked triad, in the simplest of keys, is spelled out as a matter of fact, without any trace of hurry. But gradually, as if adding spice to a bland dish, Haydn throws in a few dissonances. 1 First, a passing tone, D, between E and C. Then, on the downbeat of m. 3, an upper neighbor, F, which resolves to E by the middle of the measure. (This relationship is marked as y.) But this upper neighbor (or appoggiatura, that quintessential eighteenth-century ornament) was itself preceded by a lower one (marked x). To understand this double tension is as essential as it is puzzling. On the one hand, a slur 1

33 2 Chapter 1 (which, according to mid to late eighteenth-century German sources, turns the first tone into the more expressive one) conveys the message that E is an embellishing tone to F. 2 But here the usual interval of a second (two adjacent tones imitating the inflection of a sigh) has been inverted to a seventh. Does this inversion allow F to emancipate itself, as a dissonance itself, from the preceding E? And, if so, does F challenge the dissonance status of E, which should actually be understood as a consonance? In other words: which should be believed, x or y? With delightful delay m. 6 provides an answer: not only is the interval of the second restored to a dissonance-consonance pair, but the effect of a slur, with its strong/long first note and its soft/short resolution, is materialized by three of the strongest performance directives: sforzando, fermata, and diminuendo. Curious whether this struggle between x and y will be the driving force throughout the movement, we skip a few pages. Our eyes now fall on mm. 120ff, which harmonize this passage. Y or x no longer matters: E and F have both become part of a descending chain of suspensions, adjusting to the laws of voice leading and counterpoint, fluidly moving in and out of dissonance or consonance status. Now imagine putting ourselves in the role of the composer, alone in a private study, sitting down for the first time at an unfamiliar instrument, the musical ideas that will soon become the Grand Sonata already percolating but not yet inked on the page: Inner Narrative 2 I sit down at the keyboard (an English one by Broadwood or Longman & Broderip) and think how different the whole instrument is to what I am used to (a Viennese fortepiano by Walter or Schanz). 3 Let s try something simple: a C major triad, just one note at the time. I expect to be able to play clean, short notes. But how efficient are these dampers? (My Viennese piano has wedge-shaped dampers, which nestle themselves perfectly between the strings, stopping their sound almost instantaneously after the key is released. But here I see dampers that look like tiny feather dusters, hardly able, I would think, to dampen the vibrations of those thick strings much thicker than those back home.) Let s start softly: c 2, g 1, e 1. This is different! So much after-ring, no matter how soft and short I play! It s almost impossible to create silences! But what potential! Listen to those moments after the attack, the delightful memory of these single tones! Let s try some dissonances. Back home I ve always been able to lean into them, to give dis-

34 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 3 tinct attacks on dissonances and connect subsequent consonances all the more softly and crisply. But here I can t. (English hammerheads are thicker than Viennese and are covered with softer leather.) This is interesting... but confusing. How am I to differentiate between dissonance and consonance? I try again. An experiment. Gain some momentum first, perhaps. Throw in a few slurs and upbeats. Now aim for the high appoggiatura and really go for it: sforzando! Amazing. How long I can hold this note before it even starts to decay! (Viennese pianos, because of their more articulate hammers, thinner soundboard, and overall lighter construction, produce a much faster decay in sound.) I decide to really explore what this piano can do. Since I ve already heard the owner of this piano play, I imitate some of the things he s done: full chords, lots of resonance, orchestral sounds. 4 Now I m getting the hang of it! Finally, imagine that we re in a concert hall for a public performance. Listeners have just returned to their seats after intermission. The hum of conversation, punctuated by the electronic tinkle of cell phones being silenced, fades as the house lights fall. With sympathetic applause, they welcome the pianist back to the stage, eagerly awaiting the next piece. Putting ourselves in the role of the pianist as she starts to play, we hear her thoughts: Inner Narrative 3 No need to grab them the way I did at the beginning of the concert. 5 I have their attention. So let me open not with the grandest of chords but with the simplest of triads, which I play ever so softly. In anticipation of my first sounds, I cant my neck slightly toward my left shoulder, and, as I play the first two measures, I gradually lean my right ear further toward the strings (which I aim to brush rather than to hit). 6 With these subtle bodily gestures, which my listeners won t fail to notice, I invite them into my piano, into a space defined by the soundboard and the lid. I add dissonances, accelerate my pace, and increase my sound to a long sforzato. I show them that I m fully aware of the larger acoustical space that envelops every single person in the room. As I force everyone s ears to follow the decay of the sound all the way to that final moment of release, evaporating almost instantaneously into silence, we momentarily absorb ourselves in no other sound than that of the room itself. It is at this carefully created moment of collective awareness that I surprise my audience and play those thick, grand chords after all, 7 my open lid projecting them fully into the hall. (A few years ago, following the example of an excellent colleague, I made it a habit of mine

35 4 Chapter 1 to turn my piano sideways during public concerts and to use a prop to keep the lid open.) 8 My opening statement may have appeared timid, too slight for a grand sonata. But, as a skillful musical orator, I will stick with my choice until the very end. 9 I can t wait for m. 120, the point when the recapitulation will have to remain in the home key (instead of wander off to the dominant, as in the prior exposition). At this important juncture my audience will expect big, loud, celebratory music, since I will have set up this very expectation by playing a grand version of the theme in the dominant key of the exposition, in m. 21. But I m convinced that my listeners will be enchanted when I revisit that intimate space from the opening. They ll hear me mix those soft tones of the opening statement with new ones, pianissimo, legatissimo, in the highest register and with raised dampers (or open Pedal, as the English call it), in evocation, as it were, of an etherealsounding dulcimer. I played some Dussek and Clementi before intermission and spoke to the audience about a late eighteenth-century English Piano School. By now they should be able to recognize some of the idiomatic effects, this evocation of a dulcimer or pantalon being one of them. To witness all of these reappear, in a masterfully staged way, will utterly impress them. Thank you, Haydn, for writing me such a fine concert piece! Each of these inner narratives describes an encounter with the same piece of music, yet each differs dramatically in tone, perspective, and circumstance. Each narrative presumes some knowledge of the historical facts surrounding the sonata s genesis: The Austrian composer Haydn travels to London. While there he develops a keen interest in English pianos and pianists. He befriends Theresa Jansen, a rising star on the London scene, and then compose[s] expressly for her a grand concert sonata, 10 a subgenre of piano sonata that Haydn had never attempted before, at least not explicitly and certainly not in comparable sociological circumstances. But none of these three inner narratives is exclusive in time or person. They deliberately mix facts from the past with experiences of the present, and the imagined I of narratives 2 and 3, although inspired by Haydn or Theresa Jansen, is not restricted to either of those personages: that I is the modern performer of Haydn sonatas, adopting the various personas of analyst, composer, and performer, with the special concerns of each persona coloring her engagement with the score, piano, and audience. The framework for each of the narratives is assertively rhetorical. They correspond with three key stages in the so-called rhetorical process, a fivestage process rationalized by the classical rhetoricians to teach the writing of

36 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 5 Ex Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:50, first movement, mm. 1 8 and an oration that, ever since the rediscovery of Quintilian s Institutio oratoria in 1492, has been keenly applied to many other forms of artistic creation: (1) inventio, or the finding and developing of ideas (res); (2) dispositio, or the ordering of them in an overall structure; (3) elocutio, or the expression of invented ideas through appropriate words (verba); (4) memoria, or the memorization of the words; and (5) pronuntiatio or actio, the delivery of the oration in full awareness of one s body and gestures. Thus, narrative 1 describes and appraises the finished score (the most advanced state of elocutio); narrative 2 goes back to the brainstorming phase (intellectio, or the first moments of inventio); and narrative 3 places us on the pulpit, properly dressed and prepared (actio). If we include, from narrative 3, the hint of a larger structure (dispositio), and if we assume that I played from memory (memoria), then all five rhetorical stages are represented here, from the initial creation of the sonata to its eventual performance. Each stage feeds the next, and by completing them the orator/musician produces a work. But what is the relation between the invented and the performed work? And who does the speaking? Is it I, Haydn, his dedicatee, the piano, or some idealized combination? Can persona be separated from work? Does

37 6 Chapter 1 the one define the other? Is there even such a thing as the work? These questions have informed my performances, both live and on recording, and they permeate the various essays presented in this book. This chapter offers some preliminary answers as well as follow-up questions under the headings of the weight of an ideology, the keyboardist as orator, dedicatees, and keyboards. We end with a brief introduction of two historical keyboard types that both complicate and enrich our understanding of Haydn at the keyboard. The Weight of an Ideology Arguably no other classical repertoire has suffered more under the modern ideology of musical works than Haydn s works for solo keyboard. Despite the genuine efforts of scholars and individual performers, these fifty-plus works have largely remained in the shadow of those by Haydn s younger colleagues Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. 11 Why? Nowadays, when we speak of a sonata by Haydn, we think first and foremost of a musical score that we gain access to through performing, listening, or, if one feels up to it, simply looking at it. (As Richard Taruskin likes to remind us, Johannes Brahms declined an invitation to an opera, saying that if he sat at home with the score he d hear a better performance. ) 12 But none of these activities is considered an unfiltered, direct conduit to the true identity of the work, whose perfect proportions dazzle us for reasons that keep warranting more study and interpretation. It is from this imaginary museum of musical works that musicians borrow scores reflections of the work to be shared with their audiences. 13 A recent reviewer of a piano recital, which included two Haydn sonatas, describes the pianist as turning to the audience with a smile after the final chord, as if to say, Quite a masterpiece, don t you agree? 14 (Incidentally, the piece in question was not a Haydn sonata, but one by Mozart.) All too often the communication between performer and listener begins and ends with this tacit agreement. Consider again the particulars of our opening example of Sonata No. 50 and the theme of Haydn in London. At first glance we find ourselves relating to Theresa Jansen s gratitude upon receiving a score from Haydn (that great composer from Vienna, that bastion of Classical Music), her eagerness to learn the piece (then and now, the only way to get to either the Hanover Square Rooms or Carnegie Hall is through practice), and her ambition to

38 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 7 deliver it onstage (every note exactly as written). But as we look more closely, we begin to realize that, having traveled from Vienna to London and now working for a new and unfamiliar market, Haydn may have needed Jansen more than she needed him. When Haydn met Theresa, both Jan Ladislav Dussek and Muzio Clementi, two major figures on the London scene, had already dedicated sonatas to her. Who better than la celebre Signora Terese de Janson (as Haydn calls her in his manuscript) to advise the famous outof-town guest on the possibilities of the English instruments (which were fundamentally different from the Viennese ones) and to school him in the demands of a professional concert sonata (a design totally new to Haydn)? In his second and final attempt, the Sonata No. 52 in E Major, arguably more than in the C Major Sonata (which included a precomposed Adagio brought along from Vienna), we find Haydn enjoying the English realities of instrument, style, and venue. But after composing the sonata in 1794, again expressly for Mrs. Bartolozzi (Theresa had married the painter and engraver s son Gaetano Bartolozzi, an event to which Haydn was official witness), Haydn apparently succumbed to the temptation of making the score available to the Continental public, offering it to Artaria, his Viennese publisher, in Jansen quickly took steps to release her own edition in 1799 through Longman, Clementi, & Company in London (fig. 1.1), emphasizing that the sonata is new ( New Grand Sonata ) and was expressly composed for her. But Haydn also rededicated the Viennese edition to Magdalena von Kurzböck (fig. 1.2). On May 15, 1799, the German reviewer of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung wrote that it speaks well for the lady named on the title page that the honorable Haydn, who surely has no inclination nor the time to give empty compliments, dedicated such a sonata to her, of all people. 15 Who, then, is the true dedicatee: Mademoiselle Kurzbek or Mrs. Bartolozzi? The two women had strikingly similar profiles both were in their mid to late twenties, both were accomplished players, and both had studied or were about to study with Maestro Clementi. For Haydn the two personas simply may have been interchangeable. Having returned from London a celebrity and having just written the Austrian Kaiserhymne ( Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser ), Haydn may no longer have felt any constraints of social decorum when it came to his business as a composer. Never mind Theresa or Madeleine it s his sonata. With the Vienna print Haydn seems to have endorsed, for the first time, a conceptual separation of context and work. From a larger historical perspective, it seems no coincidence that this double edition occurred at a time when from various sides publishers,

39 8 Chapter 1 Fig Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52 (London: Longman, Clementi, 1799), title page. Reproduced by permission of the British Library Board. Music Collections, g.75.xx. biographers, secretaries he was being encouraged to start thinking about his legacy. The Keyboardist as Orator I vividly remember a crisis. I was two-thirds of the way through an extended cycle of concerts featuring the complete Haydn. Nearing the end, I supposedly should have felt energized, happy to finally reach my goal of grasping

40 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 9 Fig Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52 (Vienna: Artaria, 1798), title page. Reproduced by permission of the British Library Board. Music Collections, Hirsch IV a repertoire. Instead I felt regret and dissatisfaction. The typical two-part process for a performer of today preparation in the practice room, consummation in the concert hall clearly did not apply. This frustration led to the following confession in the form of a program note: When I embarked on this cycle of concerts, my goal was to grasp a complete and well-defined repertoire: Haydn s Keyboard Sonatas, or shorter, Hoboken XVI. The further I advance in the project, however, the more I find myself not caring so much about surveying the repertoire as a whole. Instead, I become more and more intrigued by the actual forces that created it. Whenever I learn a new sonata, I find myself trying to enter Haydn s mind: why am I playing this particular statement, what does it mean, what do I want to achieve with the sonata as a whole, how can I do so best? This is exactly what eighteenth-century sources tell me to do: the ideal of composer and performer as one persona is strongly present in most treatises on performance known to me, particularly in those on playing the keyboard (where it is most easily assumed by the listener that the player

41 10 Chapter 1 also is the composer). And even if one played pieces by someone else, one still was expected to perform them as if one had composed them oneself. In fact, a recital such as tonight s would have been altogether embarrassing for someone like myself, who claims to be a professional. It wouldn t be long before I heard someone in the first row grumble: Why doesn t he play anything of his own? 16 One of the pieces on the program was the Sonata in F Major, Hob. XVI:23, with a slow movement in F minor (ex. 1.2). This heartrending Adagio draws its melancholic character more from its harmonies, strung together by continuous Alberti-style pulsations in the left hand, than from melodic elaboration in the right, which, in spite of the promise of a siciliano-type cantilena at the outset, never commits to much beyond triadic meanderings, long trills (no fewer than two ascending ones the longest possible in mm. 30 and 31), sketches of melodic shapes that are repeated as if the composer/performer were in reverie, doubt, or pain. Toward the end (m. 34) the keyboardist breaks out of this interiorized mode: with a strong octave in the bass she proactively, even aggressively plays a diminished-seventh secondary dominant, announcing an equally assertive six-four dominant chord. The insistence on the latter (it is not hard to imagine a fermata here), the chromatically sequential melodic figurations in mm (more active and urgent than before), and the harmonic progressions (circling around but targeting a structural, root-position dominant) are those of a cadenza, a quite dramatic one, bringing the movement to a dark close in mm The analyst in me is thrilled by this topical recognition of Haydn s own improvisation, which has transformed itself into becoming part of the composition and the score. The performer in me is also thankful because, in contrast to comparable slow movements of earlier sonatas (such as Hob. XVI:6 in G Major, XVI:19 in D Major, or XVI:46 in A Major), where Haydn had used a customary fermata sign to call upon my improvisational skills, I am now presented with material that can be put to direct use and that bears Haydn s authoritative stamp. This observation is useful in itself. It allows me to loosen up and play Haydn s notated bars in a free, quasi-improvising manner. But gratitude turns to frustration as I anticipate the delivery of the piece on stage as a musical orator. At the outset of his comments on musical delivery (Vortrag), Johann Joachim Quantz states quite bluntly that it can be compared to the delivery [Vortrag] of an orator. Of cadenzas, he writes that their purpose is none other than to surprise the unsuspected listener

42 Ex Sonata in F Major, Hob. XVI:23, second movement, mm

43 12 Chapter 1 once more at the end, and to leave a special mark in their mind. Therefore, and according to this purpose, one cadenza should suffice in one piece (emphasis mine). 17 To put the problem plainly: in this Adagio movement, should I play the cadenzalike passage twice, since Haydn (as is to be expected in a binary movement) prescribes a repeat sign? Would this not counter the very purpose of a cadenza and eventually undermine my credibility (or ethos) as a musician? Why did I so enthusiastically absorb the teachings of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and others (as the young Haydn once did himself), only to now find myself unable to apply them? 18 In my own renditions of this movement, I have decided to uphold the rhetorical axiom that ornaments should be applied only after a simple version has been heard and play the B section first without Haydn s cadenza, 19 which I save for the repeat. The advantage of such an intervention is significant: the keyboardist-orator remains longer in her melancholic shell, further imprinting this emotion on her listener, thereby dramatically enhancing the effect of the cadenza, which heralds the end of the movement. The contrast with the following contradanse movement (which is entertaining rather than emotive) gains in effectiveness as well. The interest, thus, is both local (within a movement) and global (for the sonata as a whole). My own reluctance inability, even to offer my performed version here in print helps explain what I perceive as a crucial turning point in Haydn s keyboard sonata output. 20 In 1774 he prepared for publication a set of six sonatas, appropriately dedicating them to his employer, Prince Nicolaus Esterházy. Our example, Hob. XVI:23, was one of them. It was not just Haydn s first set of keyboard sonatas to be published, but altogether the very first work to appear in an edition authorized by Haydn. 21 This special event, carried out in collaboration with Joseph Edler von Kurzböck, imperial printer in Vienna (not just of music) and father of Magdalena, who grew up to become our Viennese dedicatee of Sonata No. 52, must have carried substantial psychological weight. 22 Haydn meticulously prepared the scores from which the plates were to be produced, paying careful attention to the notation of ornaments, both essential (marked by shorthand notation) and arbitrary (to be added by the performer). 23 This focus led him to combine his own performative skills with his compositional goals, which more critically than ever before were made to cohabit in a single space that of the printed page. With wider and more prestigious distribution in sight (previous sonatas had been distributed in handwritten copies through less strictly controlled channels) and preparing a whole opus of sonatas (instead of single ones that someone else may have collated in a larger manuscript), Haydn s

44 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 13 reputation was at stake as an all-round musical orator. Not only inventio, dispositio, and elocutio had to coexist those being the three phases involved in the making of a text but actio (delivery) now claimed room for itself as well. And so, studying the resulting score as modern-day musicians with the advantage of knowing the repertoire as a whole, we find many instances that impress us as striking fingerprints of a familiar master, such as the varied repeats and transitions in the minuet-finale of the Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:22, the attaca to the finale of the Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:24, and our cadenza. 24 But how novel were these features? Is it possible that similar versions less polished but far more fanciful would have been improvised in the absence of a printed script, especially at the moment of a repeat, when any master deliverer would be inspired to engage his listener more and differently? Are Haydn s scores descriptive rather than prescriptive of actual performance? It has been suggested that Empress Maria Theresa s visit to Eszterháza in September 1773 prompted the idea of an Opus 1 of keyboard sonatas. 25 It has also been suggested that the keyboardist who is documented to have performed for her during this visit must have been Haydn himself. 26 Did Haydn play earlier versions of these published pieces in which the alternation between text and improvisation was more fluid? Finally, when preparing the best of himself for print (customary repeat signs creating a Procrustean mold for his ever-developing ideas), did Haydn mix simple and embellished run-throughs of the same material into one, surpassing both? Answers to these questions aside, in no other group of Haydn sonatas do we see such a learned keyboardist-orator so at ease with a formal style of delivery. 27 Haydn, the maestro di capella, performs for His Excellency not in the magnificent Eszterháza music room, but on typeset plates, the published scores serving as a virtual and public platform for Haydn s private performance. In the Anno 776 and Auenbrugger sonata sets (of 1776 and 1780, respectively) Haydn gradually reconnected with a context of live performance no longer featuring himself or select students (such as Marianna Martines or the Countesses Thun and Morzin), but more and more the generic keyboard player, almost exclusively female and dilettante, in Vienna and elsewhere in Europe. (Haydn s renegotiated contract with the Esterházy court of 1779 officially cleared the way for out-of-court publishing.) 28 Slowly he resolved problems such as the one we have examined. Thus, in the slow movement of the Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:39, of 1780 (ex. 1.3), we find Haydn prescribing a fermata the first of its kind before 1774 to indicate the need for a cadenza. Instead of pushing himself to the fore, obliterating the distinction

45 14 Chapter 1 Ex Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:39, second movement, mm between text and performance, he now hands the performer a realized cadenza, to be interpolated into her own performance. 29 There s no mistaking: the boundaries of the cadenza, to be played (in Türk s words) as if invented on the spur of the moment, 30 are drawn clearly by the fermata and the sixfour chord on the one end (m. 47) and a double trill on the other (m. 59), the resolution of which, in the high register, is left to be imagined. But what is the player to do in the repeat? In his first collaboration with Artaria, a new and promising firm in Vienna, whose specialized music publishing targeted

46 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 15 a growing market of players, Haydn resolves the dilemma before it ever becomes one: he simply removes the repeat sign. 31 Here is the big picture. In the single prepublication sonatas the distinction between text and performance, or between elocutio and actio, is relatively clear. But in the 1774 Esterházy Sonatas Haydn presents himself as a keyboardist-orator, using typeset plates as his distinguished venue. From the late 1770s, then, he begins directing a continued series of publications to a growing pool of (female) amateur players: the medium (the notated text) adjusts its conventions and expectations to a more consumer-friendly coexistence of elocutio and actio. To someone trying to perform all of these works, these three phases present a curious paradox. A modern-day professional pianist, trained in eighteenth-century musical-oratorical practices and principles, actually receives most satisfaction from performing the early pieces, including those that Joseph Haydn Werke labels as small (neun kleine frühe Sonaten), where one can apply one s skills in embellishment and variation to great effect, improvise a transition here or there, be swayed by the affect of the moment to apply a fermata, find a spot (whether explicitly invited or not) for a cadenza. 32 (My own favorite example for the latter is the small and charming Andante of the Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:1.) The later pieces, of the 1770s and 1780s, although seemingly more tailored to the performer s needs, come with a greater sense of wonder into the why or why now of certain ideas or statements, inspiring the investigative interpreter into questioning and actively shaping a narrative that may or may not end up deviating from the written text. Finally, the two English Grand Sonatas (Hob. XVI:50 and 52), written for a fellow professional pianist, also sit best with our society s two most conventional modes of performances, those of the public recital and the compact disc. Catering to professional need and pride, these sonatas nonetheless lend themselves to an almost word-for-word execution: their script is well calculated for public performance. Dedicatees Two dedicatees have left their mark thus far: Prince Nicolaus Esterházy and Theresa Jansen. Despite the differences in their profiles (he was a serious connoisseur of music; she was a professional pianist) and context of performance (the Nicolaus Esterházy Sonatas, Hob. XVI:21 26, were staged as an exclusive event at court; the two English Grand Sonatas, Hob. XVI:50 and 52, were designed for performance on a public stage), the oratorical stance in both groups of pieces is remarkably similar: that of one keyboardist-orator

47 16 Chapter 1 formally addressing an audience. Whether in concert or on a recording, this is the persona that I like to adopt. Interestingly, in the case of the English sonatas, this persona is also the dedicatee. But the dedicatee of the Esterházy Sonatas, as I have suggested, was himself the primary audience. Why is it that I have no hesitation whatsoever in identifying myself with the dedicatee of the grand sonatas whereas in the earlier pieces I feel I must claim my rights to be composer as well, unsatisfied with the role of mere recipient? In his last grand sonatas Haydn appears to have separated composer from performer to a degree nonexistent in his earlier work. With Hob. XVI:52, particularly, he wrote a full script that works perfectly in concert performance, omitting second repeat signs in the first and last movements, making the oratorical gestures grand and fantastic, anticipating every detail of live performance. Miss Jansen represents a type of pianist that I know: one who is proud to publicly perform a piece not of her own creation. 33 She is proud, furthermore, to have studied with a famous master, Muzio Clementi, the father of the piano, who almost singlehandedly set the terms of piano, pianism, piano repertoire, and piano pedagogy, from the performer s point of view, for the next two centuries. 34 Thus it is no surprise that, for Haydn, the divorce of performer and composer inevitable from a larger historical perspective occurred in London, since it was this metropolis that had inspired him to write his first real concert sonatas. The Esterházy Sonatas, in contrast, had been idiomatically Haydn s own, his performances, indistinguishable from his compositions, to be admired by the outside world. In the spectrum of the relationship between composer and performer, the Nicolaus Esterházy Sonatas and Sonata No. 52 might be said to represent the two extremes: the unity of performer and composer in one person is strongest in the former; separation of composer and performer sharpest in the latter. Not surprisingly, the former provokes me, as a performer, to re arrange passages to match my own skills and needs, whereas the latter allows me to join effortlessly in the creative process at an advanced stage. In both cases, however, my identification with the performing persona is one to one: first I identify with Haydn, then with Jansen. The search for the singular performing persona becomes much more complex when approaching the sonatas written and published in Vienna between 1780 and These sonatas particularly, and much more urgently than those for Theresa Jansen (who was a woman but also a generic professional pianist ), raise important questions about the role of the ded-

48 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 17 TABLE 1.1. Known dedicatees of Haydn s solo keyboard works Prince Nicolaus Esterházy: Hob. XVI:21 26 (pub by Kurzböck) dedicated to by Haydn Katharina and Marianna von Auenbrugger: Hob. XVI: 35 39, 20 (pub by Artaria) dedicated to by Artaria but, in a letter to Artaria, Haydn regretted not having had the honor Maria Hermenegild Esterházy, née Princess Liechtenstein: Hob. XVI:40 42 (pub by Bossler) composed for and dedicated to by Haydn Marianne von Genzinger: Hob. XVI:49 (comp , pub by Artaria) composed for but, as per manuscript copy, dedicated to Maria Anna Gerlischek by Haydn; published without Haydn s knowledge and without dedication Antonia von Ployer, née von Spaun: Hob. XVII:6 (comp. 1793) composed for, as written in Haydn s hand on early copy of manuscript? Josepha (Josephine) von Braun: Hob. XVII:6 (comp. 1793, pub by Artaria) composed for and dedicated to by Haydn Maria Hester Park: Hob. XVI:51 (comp , pub. ca by Breitkopf & Härtel) composed for and dedicated to by Haydn? published without dedication Theresa Jansen: 1. Hob. XVI: 50 (comp , pub by J. and H. Caulfield) composed expressly for and dedicated to by Haydn 2. Hob. XVI: 52 (comp. 1794; pub by Longman, Clementi, & Co.) composed expressly for by Haydn Magdalena von Kurzböck: Hob. XVI: 52 (comp. 1794; pub by Artaria) composed for and dedicated to by Haydn Note: Underscored passages are as they appear on the published title page. icatee and, particularly, her gender. Table 1.1 shows all known dedicatees of Haydn s keyboard works; we will acquaint ourselves with almost all of them throughout this book. 35 How does dedicatee, that is, the type she represents rather than her actual person, position itself in relation to our keyboardist- orator? Is she listener or orator? If the former, is Haydn addressing his listener on his own terms, or is he adjusting his rhetoric to his female addressee? If the latter, what kind of oratory does he expect her to demonstrate in her own performances of his own pieces or, for that matter,

49 18 Chapter 1 of any piece? Finally, and more pressingly, what about me? Do I remain simply an observer of these interactions, or can I actively take part in them, perhaps even transform them into something that neither Haydn nor his dedicatees would have predicted? It might be useful, at this point, to compare two pieces of prose by Haydn two letters. The first is directed to his prince, his only male dedicatee, and the second to his close friend Marianne von Genzinger, recipient (though not official dedicatee) of the Genzinger Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI: Both were written on the occasion of a name day, in Catholic Austrian tradition considered more important than one s actual birthday. On December 5, 1766, one day before St. Nicolas s Day, Haydn wrote to his prince (and the following transcription, including the occasional empty space in the middle of a line, reflects Haydn s careful layout): Most Serene Highness and High Born Prince of the Empire! Most Gracious and Dread Lord Lord! The most joyous Name Feast (which, Your Highness, with the grace of God, may spend in most complete fortune and felicity) obliged me most duly not only to deliver to Him, in all humbleness, 6 new divertimenti but also (because, a few days ago, we were most strongly consoled by those new winter clothes) to kiss Your Highness robe most obediently, [in thanks] for this special [act of] grace, [not without] adding that we, in spite of Your Highness absence, much regretted by us, nevertheless venture to appear with these new clothes for the first time at Your Higness high Name Day during the celebratory Solemn Mass. Furthermore, I received the high order to have the divertimenti composed by me (twelve pieces in all) bound. but since Your Highness had returned to me some of them to be changed and I did not annotate those changes into my score, I ask you most obediently to let come to me the first 12 pieces only for the duration of three days, thereafter also the others, one by one, so that everything, including the changes, could be copied well and correctly, and bound. in this respect, I would like to inquire most respectfully in which way to have them bound? which to Your Highness liking would be? Incidentally, the two oboe players report to me (and also I myself must agree with them) that their 2 oboes are disintegrating with age, and no lon-

50 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 19 ger possess the proper pitch, wherefore I make the most humble suggestion that there is a Master Rockobauer in Vienna who in my opinion is the most skilful in such things. Because, however, this master is constantly occupied with this kind of work, but also invests a lot of precious time to build a pair of good and durable oboes with an extra joint to each set (whereby all the necessary tones can be played), as a result of which, however, the lowest price is 8 ducats. therefore, I must await Your Highness high consent whether the mentioned 2 most necessary oboes may be acquired at the aforementioned price. To whom I commend myself for [your] high favor and grace, Your Princely Highness Most obedient Joseph Haydn. 37 This letter strikes us as formal, written in elevated style, respectful of the prince, yet clear in its requests. Haydn s congratulatory wishes (cast in parentheses) are in fact part of a larger securing of goodwill (captatio benevolentiae), along with the enclosed gift of 6 new divertimenti (baryton trios, to be performed by the prince) and the expression of thanks for new winter clothes. The real purpose of the letter reveals itself in two requests (petitiones): return of a set of divertimenti for copying and permission for Haydn to order two new oboes. The latter request, involving money, is clearly the trickier one. Haydn wisely keeps it for last, devoting a separate paragraph to it. He first presents a sketch of the present miserable situation, drops the name of an instrument maker in Vienna, justifies his choice, and only then proceeds to mention a price, the lowest possible. After this narratio he formulates the actual petitio, the permission to place an order, and signs the letter. The traditional five parts of a letter salutatio, captatio benevolentiae, narratio, petitio, and conclusio are represented here, practically in textbook fashion. 38 Haydn s style, furthermore, is appropriately grave in a letter directed to a superior: I is avoided at the beginning of sentences, or altogether; impersonal, passive language is favored; subordinate constructions result in complex periodic structures, held together by a multitude of conjunctions; punctuation marks, especially periods, are used for syntactical clarity; and carefully chosen capitals at the beginning of sentences ( The, Furthermore, Incidentally, Because, To whom ) reveal a remarkably logical grouping of thought somewhere between the levels of period and paragraph. By contrast, the letter that Haydn wrote to Marianne von Genzinger on

51 20 Chapter 1 July 23, 1790, resists such grouping. Clearly, Haydn designed it to read in one flow toward his signature: High and Well born Most Esteemed Frau v. Genzinger! Already last week would it have been my obligation to reply to Your Grace s received writing, only, because this present day had already long before lain close to my heart, I, however, in anticipation, constantly made every imaginable effort [as to] how, in which way, and what exactly I should wish for Your Grace, thus those 8 days fled away, and now that my wish should express itself, my short wits come to a standstill, and know (all embarrassed) nothing at all to say: why? because? because I have not been able to fulfill those musical hopes, which Your Grace at this day would have a right to have! o if only you would know, if only you could catch a glimpse, dearest, gracious Patroness, into my depressed heart, you would certainly feel sympathy and have forbearance with me: ever since your order, this poor, promised symphony has been floating in my fantasy, but some (unfortunately) until now pressingly urgent matters have not let this symphony come into the world! however, the hope of gracious forbearance of this delay and the eventual arrival of a better time for its fulfillment will turn into reality this wish, which for Your Grace was perhaps only one among those of today and the so many hundreds of yesterday, perhaps I say, because it would be bold of me to think that Your Grace should not wish herself anything better: you see thus, dearest Madam, that I cannot wish you anything for your Name Day because my wishes are too weak for you, and therefore do not bear fruit! I, I must wish myself, and in particular [wish myself] gracious forbearance and maintenance of your continued friendship, which is so dear to me, and your affection; this is my warmest wish! if, however, there is still room in you for one wish from me, then this wish of mine should change itself into yours, then I will be assured that nothing more remains save to wish myself privileged to eternally call myself Your Grace s most sincere friend and servant Josephus Haydn mppria My faithful respect to Mr. Husband and the whole family

52 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 21 after tomorrow I expect an answer about the forte piano. then Your Grace will receive the alteration in the Adagio. 39 The suggested date for this letter of July 23, 1790 (offered here in rectification of previous scholarship) makes us recognize a congratulatory letter that is both highly sensitive and exquisitely clever. Haydn speaks of wishes today and those of yesterday, which must refer to the name days of Maria (St. Mary, on July 23) and Anne (St. Anne, on July 22), together Maria Anna or Marianne. 40 (Haydn s wife was also a Marianne. All too gladly, one can speculate, would Haydn have transferred this consciousness of back-toback name days from his longtime spouse to a new female friend.) Only two capitals are used: once at the very beginning ( Already last week ) and then at the very end, introducing the postscript ( My faithful respect ). The full letter instead reads as a long series of shorter phrases, loosely strung together by commas, the continuous stream of words and phrases slowed down (but not interrupted) by moments of hesitation ( why? because? ) and a rhetorical pause ( I, I must wish ), or intensified by exclamations ( this is my warmest wish! ) or self-citation and elaboration ( perhaps I say, because [etc.] ). When reading the letter, aloud or silently, one is struck by its fine rhythm and the intense focus of composition from beginning to end, abandoned only in the postscript, which, interestingly enough, is the only informative part of the letter, picking up as it does on two requests from Her Grace s previous letter (dated July 11, 1790; see below). Unlike the letter to the prince, it is the congratulatory message that dominates here, not couched in a captatio benevolentiae, but as the bread and butter of the letter itself. With extraordinary skill Haydn is able to transform his embarrassment over not yet having provided his friend with the symphony she has long asked for into the finest wish of all, to call myself your friend forever, itself a standard concluding formula that is ingeniously incorporated into the contents and structure of the letter. Throughout this process of transformation, Haydn draws and exploits fine distinctions between wish, promise, hope, and gift; between your wish and mine ; between the act of wishing ( o if only you would know ) and the object that is wished for ( symphony or friendship ). Haydn uses the actual word (verbum) wish twelve times, but the idea (res) of wish is represented at least seventeen times. But to compare Haydn s letters to his prince and a female friend and claim that the one is more rhetorical than the other would be to miss the point. Rather, their respective rhetorics (if such a plural may be indulged) differ in kind. The one is formal, more public, adopts a learned and writ-

53 22 Chapter 1 ten style, is clear in its logic, and favors rehearsed structure. The other is informal, more private, adopts a conversational style, deliberately tests the limits of logic, and invents its own structure. All eighteenth-century commentators would have agreed: Haydn s princely letter is more oratorical in spirit and outcome, but the private letter to his friend is ultimately a better letter. Indeed, as the same male commentators would have pointed out, women were particularly good at this free, conversational style of writing, precisely because of their unlearnedness. 41 But Haydn clearly had a knack for it too, and, in this particular case, his version of a congratulatory letter on the name day of a female friend outclassed by far the following model provided in the letter-writing manual that he owned: Most precious friend [Freundin]! Tomorrow is your name day, if I can trust my calendar. Now, I wish you well from the bottom of my heart. May you continue to experience [this day] many more years in the best prosperity, with lasting health, in uninterrupted enjoyment, in sweetest contentment. With all this good luck, however, never forget Your earnest friend. 42 If Madame von Genzinger, as a woman, drew a certain type of rhetoric from Haydn as a letter writer, could the same have been true for his music? Is there anything like a male-inspired versus a female-inspired musical rhetoric? Chapter 4 will explore just this question, but ex. 1.4 puts to the test two opening statements of two sonatas, the Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:21, for Prince Nicolaus Esterházy (de facto, our only male point of reference), and the single Genzinger Sonata, Hob. XVI:49, in E Major, since ever destined for Your Grace alone (bloß auf ewig für Ihro gnaden bestimmt). 43 Wearing his newest clothes, Haydn sits down at the most impressive harpsichord at court a French double, conforming to the prince s taste. 44 Haydn opens the score of his newly published sonatas (which the prince has just handed back to him) and makes his musical entrée (see ex. 1.4a, transcribed from the first edition). Both manuals are coupled to engage the fullest possible voice of the instrument. Dotted rhythms, C major, an ascending arpeggio Haydn anticipated a festive moment. The ascending sixth from e 2 to c 3 (m. 1, marked exclamatio) allows him to bend right wrist, hand, and arm sideways and forward, an elegant hand gesture acknowledging his spe-

54 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 23 Ex (a) Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:21, first movement, mm. 1 6 (transcribed from first edition); (b) Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:49, first movement, mm (transcribed from manuscript) cial listener, whom we imagine to be seated a respectful ten feet away, within the radius of the instrument s curve. The lid has been removed, and, for this special occasion, the harpsichord has been positioned in the center of the palace s Ceremonial Room, where its luscious acoustics may be enjoyed at its optimum. The room s generous reverberation time (two to three seconds) conforms almost exactly to how long it takes for each of the two main ideas, x and y, to unfold. The room itself has the dimensions of an almost exact cube (thirteen by eleven by nine meters). The combination of reflective materials (mirrors, plastered walls, painted ceiling) with sound-absorbing carpets, chairs, and garments result in a peculiar boom in the middle and lower registers. 45 Using single notes (since in this alto register they are sufficiently full by themselves), Haydn has the left hand walk along with the right. The three first notes (an octave of tonic C,

55 24 Chapter 1 followed by its overtone-enhancing third) superbly fill up the tonal spectrum that the right hand has started to construct. In any well-tempered historical tuning, the major third C E would be either pure or very close to pure. Purity, authority, and respect these are qualities associated with the key of C major, but also those that Haydn chooses to extol in his dedication to His Most Serene Highness, printed by Kurzböck in 1774 in lofty Italian: A l t e z z a S e r e n i s s i m a! [Most Serene Highness!] Among the unique attributes, and much noted qualities, which adorn Your Most Serene Highness, is also found the complete command of all music, not only of the violin, and of the baryton, which you play exquisitely and equal to any expert teacher. This knowledge [cognizione] and the goodness [bontà] with which Your Most Serene Highness has never hesitated to look upon my faithful service, as well as to bestow upon my compositions, makes me eager to dedicate to the superabundance of your merits this small portion of my talent. May Your Most Serene Highness deign to receive with your customary Magnanimity [Magnanimità], as always encouraging and honoring with your high patronage him who humbly commends himself with the same offering [and] who bows in deepest respect, of Your Most Serene Highness the most humble, devoted, respectful servant Giuseppe Haydn. The opening statement (and, by extension, the whole opening sonata) is a celebration of C major on a magnificent instrument, in a room known for its superb acoustics, under a splendid ceiling. 46 Activity and release are balanced to perfection within a six-bar phrase. Three arsis/thesis ideas follow one another, the reverb decay of the former always mingling with the direct sound of the latter, arsis characterized by notes inégales and thesis by 4 3 suspensions. The two main dissonances of a C major key the seventh of a dominant seventh (m. 2, the resolution of the first suspension) and the leading tone (m. 3, resolution of the second suspension) together resolve into 3 (m. 4, resolution of the third suspension). In a descent from c 3 to e 2, every scale degree is systematically highlighted (8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 ). At the cadence (PAC), the two dissonances B and F reappear in one single chord (the dominant seventh in m. 5, 2 ), announcing a clear punctuation mark (1 ).

56 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 25 While the overall balance and pace of this courtly statement is designed to impress, the twelve-bar opening theme of the Genzinger Sonata alerts the performer s mind to fine detail. (See ex. 1.4b, here transcribed from the manuscript to sidestep editorial prejudice.) 47 Consider the melodic shape of the various arsis figures in the first four-bar phrase a: up (x), down (but still x), then up again (now triadic, hence y), then down (without slur and diatonic, hence z). We land on a diminished-fifth melodic figure, on a weak dominant harmony (vii o6, m. 4), the now thesis idea y familiar from its arsis version before, but with a more complex articulation (dotted, and a 1 as a single note separated from the slur). 48 In the following phrase (which we understand to be a response of some sort), the resumed x motives begin to reflect more self-consciousness too: Haydn starts adding shape to them (those small slurs in mm. 4 and 5). Are these emerging thirds significant for our understanding of musical intent or subject? The two slurs for the second x (m. 5) seem to suggest so, its pitches d 1 and f 1 creating a link with the identical left-hand third two bars further, indicated by the arrow in the example. But before we can fully contemplate the connection, we re back to y in m. 8, which we play with more urgency than its dominant counterpart in m. 4 however, not on a conclusive tonic harmony (yet), but one in first inversion. Does the snapped turn on the downbeat of m. 8 convey frustration at not finishing a period (which technically already consisted of an antecedent with consequent), or does it show a determination to keep accumulating energy? 49 We embark on a third continuation phrase c, with material of x, z, and, only at the very end, y again, but now in opposite direction. Through this continued activity of x, y, and z, appearing in front of our eyes in ever changing shape and direction (as we play from the score), each of the four-bar phrases introduces a moment of repose: we get a suspension (a descending 7 6) in the third measures of phrases a and b on non-rootposition chords; then an ascending 2 3 suspension in phrase c, in its second measure, on a root-position chord. (Also the Prince Esterházy excerpt, we should remember, had regularly recurring 4 3 suspensions, but those were all firmly grounded, their succession conveying a solemn stride.) If the effect of the two earlier moments is still one of lightness (a temporary focusing as we busily tiptoe along), the third has the effect of a surprisingly forceful halt like a deceptive cadence, except that it isn t: we re in the middle of a stretched-out perfect cadence, starting with I 6 in m. 9 and ending with I in m. 12, or the complete phrase c. But somehow the rather pompous A major sound sticks and (so an attentive listener might predict) will have to be reckoned with later on (see chapter 2).

57 26 Chapter 1 The sophistication involved in transforming simple ideas, already related to one another, into ever new manifestations is impressive a procedure that is strikingly similar, in fact, to the clever distinctions (distinctiones) of wish at the levels of idea (res) and word (verbum) that Haydn used in his congratulatory letter to Frau von Genzinger. The incorporation of wish in the closing formula of the letter the mechanics of letter writing itself becoming subject matter also finds its musical parallel. Of the two opening measures of E material, in which the left hand introduces a basic pulse, y is the first motive to distinguish itself in m. 3 with its own articulation mark of a slur. Haydn s first slur demands special attention from the performer: on the one hand, it tells her to play diminuendo; on the other, each note is higher than the one before, requiring an ever more intense delivery an exquisite paradox, if attended to properly. 50 Phrase a ends with y, a diminished interval on a dominant harmony, inviting a response of some sort as in an antecedent phrase. The response does come, leading us back to a tonic version of y, but does not quite deliver closure, thus failing as a consequent. Throughout the continuation phrase c Haydn sustains a focus on the surface elements x and z. When the performer finally plays three consecutive sigh figures (m. 11), her efforts go into shaping each of them individually respectively as a seventh, an octave, and a diminished fifth all three gestures reminiscent of the earlier expressive appoggiaturas. But as we catch the third sigh figure with our left hand anchoring it with a root-position dominant harmony we make a mental connection back to y from m. 4 and its promise of resolution, which at this point does indeed materialize but, because the promise itself had faded away, happens rather abruptly and in the form of what in different circumstances would be a structurally inessential stock formula: a descending arpeggio after the moment of tonic resolution. (The ascending arpeggio in our Nicolaus Esterházy Sonata is exactly such an example: the left hand s figure beyond resolution 1 is clarifying, but not essential.) By way of summary, ex. 1.4b adds squares around these four key moments. First, imagine playing or hearing them in isolation, the one after the other. You will hear a tonic harmony sink to an unstable dominant one; then the reverse, but now closing in a stable fashion. Now, read the full theme as written. The final arpeggio, starting on a weak part of the beat in m. 12 and descending rather than ascending, somehow fails to have the impact of an ending. In my own performance, I always feel the need to up-play this final arpeggio, turning it into a properly resolving version of y. I do so by stretching the lower notes in time making their corresponding strings on

58 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 27 the piano sound longer and more important. But my professional efforts may be ill-informed. Perhaps I am inappropriately prioritizing structure over style, projecting dispositio (here the end of an opening statement) into focus where Haydn had intended it to be eclipsed by elocutio. When nearing the end of Haydn s congratulatory letter to Genzinger, as Haydn develops his last wish, it takes a moment to recognize that we re actually reading the closing formula. But, of course, we do recognize it by the layout of the closing lines, and when we come to the word servant, we suddenly pause, as if making up for out-of-phase delivery, before reading the writer s signature: Josephus Haydn, the stylistic cleverness leaving us in a tone of amusement as we process the contents of the full letter. This jolt of confusion and recognition a closing formula also providing the key for what came before may be exactly what Haydn intended to stir in his addressee, both in his sonata and his letter. But these are highly private moments, to be shared by two friends, either from a distance (in the case of both letter and sonata) or elucidated and elaborated upon together, at the next occasion (in the case of the sonata). My own delivery of the sonata, by contrast, is designed to survive and serve me well at my one and only shot to get it right before an audience or microphone. But by fine-tuning my onetime delivery of the sonata, am I distancing myself from Haydn, his dedicatee, their piece? Have I imposed an inappropriate authority and finality to what is, arguably, playful and as open-ended as a conversation or an ongoing correspondence? Keyboards In his study of the Viennese School ( ), Daniel Heartz asserts about Haydn s keyboard music: Works for solo keyboard played a subordinate role in Haydn s oeuvre. In this book they will not receive the more extensive treatment accorded [to] his quartets and symphonies. Hiller in 1768 went so far as to say that the clavier does not suit Haydn as well as the other instruments, which he uses in the most fiery and galant symphonies. It is true that Haydn was not a keyboard virtuoso, as were Wagenseil and Steffan, with whom Hiller placed Haydn. The keyboard music of all three, being mainly for amateur performers on the harpsichord, is stylistically very similar. Amateurs evidently appreciated Haydn. Keyboard works under his name began to circulate widely in the 1760s; Breitkopf offered one as early as

59 28 Chapter 1 Several assumptions are implicit here: Haydn is not a keyboard virtuoso; Haydn, as composer, is poorly served by keyboard instruments; nevertheless, his works, intended for amateurs, were evidently appreciated by them, more so than those of Joseph Anton Steffan or Georg Christoph Wagenseil, perhaps precisely because Haydn himself was the nonvirtuoso of the three. A. Peter Brown (cited by Heartz himself for a counterargument ) would have protested loudly: in his book Brown seeks to revise that hard-to-kill notion that Haydn was not much interested in the keyboard. Numerous primary documents make clear, on the contrary, that the keyboard played a consistently central role throughout Haydn s life, not only for improvisation or composition, but also for performance proper and everyday logistics. He even had to tune his harpsichord in the orchestra. 52 Haydn was genuinely interested in the keyboard and its various forms (organs, clavichords, harpsichords, pianos) as well as the developments these underwent during his lifetime, and he was an active and praised performer on the instrument. 53 Table 1.2, based on the information collected and summarized from Brown (1986), Horst Walter (1970), and others, shows Haydn s lifelong contacts with various keyboard types. Unlike Brown, however, I do not feel compelled to refute the basic premise that Haydn was not a keyboard virtuoso. I would argue, on the contrary, that it is precisely because he was not a virtuoso that his keyboard compositions are so uniquely instrumental. That is, they register often more clearly than those of C. P. E. Bach or Mozart his own creative responses to instrumental realities, which often become such a part of the compositional narrative itself. The clearest examples, because so convincingly based on organological parameters, are Haydn s English sonatas, both solo and accompanied. Imagine the following scientific paradigm. Hypothesis: There exist two distinct schools in piano building, playing, and writing all three interconnected. Experiment: Take a Viennese composer, transfer him to an English environment, and observe him: will he change his style? The answer is a resounding yes, remarkably so for a sixty-two-year-old master, who had nothing to prove; on the contrary, he had been invited to London on the strength of his existing reputation. Haydn had made such adjustments before. In a 1790 letter to Marianne von Genzinger, he explains that I know I ought to have arranged this sonata in accordance with your kind of keyboard [while Haydn calls it a Clavier, it is clear from a few sentences before that he is referring to a harpsichord], but I found this impossible because I am no longer accustomed to it [weil ich es ganz aus aller gewohnheit habe]. 54 It is interesting that Haydn formulates

60 TABLE 1.2. Haydn s lifelong contacts with various keyboards Choirboy in Vienna Very competent teachers on different instruments (Griesinger 1810/1954, 10) 1750s Freelance When I was at my old Klavier, eaten up by the worms, I did not envy any king his luck. (Griesinger 1810/1954, 11) Clavichord Harpsichord Organ Clavichord Teaching students Employed by hospital of the Barmherzigen Brüder (Leopoldstadt) and at chapel of Count Harrach (Vienna) Haydn had to give Miss Martinez lessons in singing and Klavierspielen. (Griesinger 1810/1954, 11) Every day you will give me harpsichord and singing lessons. (Countess Thun; Framery 1810, 11) Harpsichord/clavichord Harpsichord Organ ca and on Working for Nicola Porpora Vocal accompaniment Harpsichord ca Kapellmeister for Count Morzin teaching the countess Harpsichord 1761 Vice Kapellmeister for Esterházy To coach the singers ; because of his experience on different instruments, to make himself useful (contract, 8th clause; Bartha 1965, 43) I sit at the keyboard [Klavier] and begin to search. (to J. A. P. Schulz, 1770, reported by Reichardt, AmZ- Leipzig III/11, 1800, 176) Harpsichord Clavichord? Werner; becomes Kapellmeister Now also liturgical works Organ (continued)

61 TABLE 1.2. (continued ) 1776 New opera house Playing continuo during opera rehearsals and productions Harpsichord Winter months At Esterházy Palais in the Walnerstrasse, Vienna, and guest at other Viennese houses Acquaintance with fortepiano 1778 Artaria expands publishing activities to music 1779 New contract Exclusivity clause is dropped: composing for outside clients now is allowed 1780 Publication of Auenbrugger Sonatas by Artaria 1781 Performs in Vienna Wait until I have performed these songs in the best houses of Vienna (letter to Artaria, July 20; Bartha 1965, 101) 1787 Visit by Gaetano Bartolozzi A miserable apartment in the barracks, in which are his bed and an old spinet, or clavichord (Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Feb. 2, 1787) 1788 Buys Schanz piano I was forced to buy a new Forte-piano [from Wenzel Schanz] (letter to Artaria, Oct. 26; Bartha 1965, 195) 1790 Genzinger Sonata I should like Your Grace to try one by Herr Schanz (letter to Genzinger, July 4; Bartha 1965, 244) Fortepiano Fortepiano Old spinet or clavichord New fortepiano (square) Fortepiano (grand?) 1790 Prince Nicolaus dies, Haydn moves to Vienna, J. P. Salomon takes him to London

62 Jan. 1, 1791 In London Presiding at the pianoforte Giving lessons to high personages Accompanying cantata Arianna a Naxos [After 2 symphonies:] [I]ch Accompagnirte [Madame Mara] ganz allein mit dem piano forte eine sehr difficult English Aria von Purcell. (First London Note Book, June 1, 1792; Bartha 1965, 491) Sings and plays at pianoforte for King George III Plays Andante mit dem Paukenschlag for A. Gyrowetz on his square piano (auf seinem viereckigen Fortepiano) (Einstein 1915, 75) Visits Charles Clagget to check out his invention Receives studio at Broadwood s; uses Dussek s grand piano? English piano English piano (grand and square) English harpsichord? English piano English piano (grand) English piano (square) Teliochord Broadwood piano Has keen interest in pianists His Performance on the Piano Forte... was indisputably neat and distinct. (S. Wesley 1836, on premiere of Symphony Hob. I:98) Second visit to London Production of sonatas, trios, songs, vocal duets for Theresa Jansen, Maria Hester Park, Rebecca Schroeter English (grand) piano English piano (grand and square) (continued)

63 TABLE 1.2. (continued ) Visits William Stodart Brings home a Longman & Broderip grand 1797 Own house in Gumpendorf 1 trio, obbligato piano parts in vocal compositions (part songs, Scottish arrangements) Bookcase piano Longman & Broderip piano Fortepiano 6 masses Organ Composes on Bohak 1801 Receives a mahogany Érard with bronze ornamentation as a gift Listens to his fortepiano played by others, but the noise is stressful Clavichord Érard grand piano English, French, Viennese? Every morning He let himself be brought to the room in the back, to only play his Lied Gott, erhalte Franz den Kaiser! on the fortepiano (Griesinger 1810/1954, 50) English, French, Viennese? 1802 Has to buy a extremely light Klavier for composing because playing on his old Fortepiano becomes too strenuous (Griesinger 1810/1954, 42) 1806 Das kleine Klavier removed from his living room (Griesinger 1810/1954, 48) 1809 Today April 1st I sold my beautiful Fortepiano for 200 ducats. Clavichord (Unidentified) Viennese grand? Clavichord? (Unidentified) Viennese grand? May 26, 1809, 12:30 p.m. Plays the hymn (his prayer ) for the last time, three times in a row Clavichord? Note: Dates in italics indicate turning points in Haydn s life.

64 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 33 this statement as an excuse: the etiquette of writing a piece for someone obviously included taking into account the type of instrument this person owned. Equally interesting are his expressions, throughout the course of the correspondence, of a desire to personally perform the piece for her ( Oh! how I wish that I could only play this sonata to you a few times! ), only partly satisfied by a report that he performed the new sonata at our Mademoiselle Nanette s [von Gerlischek] in the presence of my gracious prince. But it was not the prince s approbation that Haydn now sought (though his presence, of course, would have been meaningful), but rather Mademoiselle Nanette s, who had, after all, commissioned the work. And when he tells Her Grace that the Mademoiselle had expressed her approval, symbolized by the gift of a golden tobacco box, Haydn is clearly relieved: At first I rather doubted, because of [the sonata s] difficulty [Schwürigkeit], whether I would receive any applause. Here s a discrepancy. Haydn writes a piece for his friend, whose musicianship and instrument are known to him, yet he arranges it for his own instrument and takes pride in his own successful performance in her absence. Haydn s solution: to convince his friend to buy a piano herself, preferably one identical or similar to his. (He had purchased a new Forte-piano from Wenzel Schanz in October 1788, almost certainly a square.) 55 So it is that, in his first letter of June 20, 1790, after describing the contents of the piece and famously saying about the Adagio that it contains many things which I shall analyze for Your Grace when the time comes; it is rather difficult but full of feeling, he broaches the subject of instrument: It is a pity that Your Grace has not one of Schanz s fortepianos, for Your Grace could then produce twice the effect. 56 This troubling thought continues to weigh on Haydn. Still affected by his recent successful performance of the piece (either playing Mademoiselle Nanette s piano or moving his own to her apartment for the occasion), 57 Haydn, on June 27, picks up his old thought and elaborates: It s only a pity that Your Grace doesn t own a Schantz fortepiano, on which everything is better expressed. I thought that Your Grace might turn over your still tolerable harpsichord to Fräulein Peperl [her daughter Josepha], and buy a new fortepiano for yourself. Your beautiful hands and their acquired velocity deserve this and much more. I know I ought to have arranged this sonata in accordance with your kind of keyboard, but I found this impossible because I am no longer accustomed to it. 58 If there is any feeling of guilt, then Haydn more than makes up for it. Subsequent letters show that he convinced the prince himself to buy a piano for Frau von Genzinger (whose husband, Peter, was physician-in-ordinary at the Esterházy court). In his let-

65 34 Chapter 1 ter of July 4, Haydn details why she should buy a Schanz rather than a Walter, again in service of the sonata: Therefore I should like Your Grace to try one made by Herr Schanz, his fortepianos are particularly light in touch and the mechanism very agreeable. A good fortepiano is absolutely necessary for Your Grace, and my Sonata will gain double its effect by it. In her reply (a draft dated July 11, 1790), von Genzinger expresses that it is quite all right with me [es ist mir auch recht] to buy one from Schanz, her rather neutral choice of words perhaps revealing a social pressure among the higher Viennese circles to buy a Walter, who, after all, enjoyed a de facto endorsement from the imperial court, which owned no fewer than four of his instruments. 59 Although noticeably less engaged than Haydn, she also goes on to mention the sonata (which pleases her well ) and requests one change: that Haydn alter the passage in the slow movement (mm. 57ff) where the hands cross each other, invoking the same excuse that Haydn had used for not writing the sonata for her instrument: because I am not used to it (weilen ich solches nicht gewöhnet bin). That she singles out these rather than the seemingly much harder crossovers in the first movement (mm. 42ff) need not necessarily surprise us: crossing left over right (rather than right over left) requires a contortion of arms and body that any well-postured, right-handed noblewoman would have resisted. In the same letter she makes sure the sonata does not replace Haydn s old promise of a symphony. Haydn s response is the July 23 congratulatory letter analyzed above. Over the course of this fascinating correspondence, we are offered glimpses into a complex network of connections among composer, dedicatee, composition, and instrument, all stemming from Haydn s confession that he is no longer used to writing for harpsichord. From a larger perspective (which Frau von Genzinger would have lacked) it is clear what he means. A good test of his statement would be to play the opening of Hob. XVI:14 (in D major, from the early 1760s) and Hob. XVI:48 (in C major, from 1789, his first solo sonata after purchasing his piano) on the wrong instrument (the former on fortepiano, the latter on harpsichord). We can begin to empathize with Haydn s frustration. In Sonata No. 14 (ex. 1.5a), a simple but beautifully shaped two-voice texture sounds fresh and vibrant on the harpsichord but loses its liveliness once the pianistic instinct to do things with slurs and decays of sound takes over. But Haydn exploits these very possibilities in Sonata No. 48 (ex. 1.5b). With painstaking accuracy he defines the loudness of each note within the larger gestures of a bar, two bars, three bars all the way to the end of a long ten-bar phrase, the resolution of which he plays not with a single note or three notes or five notes (all of which would have been

66 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 35 Ex (a) Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:14, first movement, mm. 1 8; (b) Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:48, first movement, mm quite sufficient), but with eight notes, four in each hand, as if to say, see what I can do, playing all these notes, my fingers barely touching the keys, pianissimo? This is one of Haydn s most wonderful examples of emphasis or understatement ( less meaning more ). Texture and dynamics, so closely synced before, are here deliberately unsynced: a new trick, which we enjoy with almost childlike enchantment. (This is one special moment that I would not vary at the repeat: on the contrary, I can hardly wait to do it again, exactly the same.) This clear example of two pieces almost thirty years apart should not set us on a quest to try and pin down the exact turning point in Haydn s writing style, such as establishing when he abandoned the harpsichord in favor of the piano a favorite topic among scholars in the 1970s and 1980s, when the revived but still unfamiliar fortepiano became a new historical point of

67 36 Chapter 1 reference. 60 To do so would be to deny a whole group of pieces from 1776 to 1780 their capacity to embody a synthesis of instrumental styles, of old and new together. Even speaking in terms of old and new may be a mistake: the clavichord, with its touch sensitivity and other expressive powers, to this day remains seriously undervalued in our reception of Haydn s keyboard music. Recent organological research on Viennese harpsichords and pianos, furthermore, has given the modern performer of Haydn much to discover. We end this chapter with two such discoveries. Viennese Stosszungenmechanik When in 1997 Michael Latcham published his study of eighteen extant Anton Walter fortepianos, he lobbed a bombshell. The fortepiano long referred to as Mozart s piano a true icon of the classical fortepiano had in fact been substantially altered, almost certainly by Walter himself as the original builder. 61 The piano would originally not have had the Prellmechanik or flipping action it presently has. (This type of action is known as the Viennese action. ) Knee levers were added, superseding the original damper-raising hand stops. What action did it first have? Almost certainly a Stossmechanik (or pushing action ), with a built-in escapement and hammer directed toward the player, exactly as in several extant pianos from Walter s colleagues. 62 Stoss actions, as scholarship has since confirmed, remained not the exception but the norm in fortepiano building in southern Germany and Austria until long after That this realization conforms, furthermore, to a reality in Viennese square pianos, not just those from the 1780s but those built until well after 1800, adds yet another layer of continuity and insight. 64 With his own 1788 square piano from Schanz, then, Haydn quickly accustomed himself to playing a Viennese stoss action (not a contradiction in terms!) while having available two hand stops, one to engage the moderator (sliding a piece of felt between the tiny hammers and the strings), the other to lift the dampers (until the hand stop is pushed back in again). Leading up to my Virtual Haydn recordings, Chris Maene (Ruiselede, Belgium) made two stoss-action Viennese pianos: a circa 1782 Anton Walter grand and an Ignaz Kober square of 1788 (see fig. 1.3), the year Haydn bought his Schanz. 65 The Walter replica was designed as a response to the spectacular findings about Mozart s piano. If Walter succeeded in updating the instrument s technology, then it should be possible to go the other way. Within the existing structural design of Mozart s Walter, Maene reverse-

68 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 37 Fig Replica of a 1788 Ignaz Kober Tafelklavier by Chris Maene (Ruiselede, Belgium, 2007). Photo by Jeremy Tusz. engineered a stoss action while restoring an independent use of the original hand stops. But he also built the modernized prell action to slide into the same case and provided an independently operating set of knee levers as well. Pull one action out, replace it with the other, and you get a before and after. 66 Regardless of Mozart, however, this two-in-one instrument also reveals two ways of building pianos in the 1780s that coexisted for at least a decade before prell took over from stoss and became the defining factor of what we now call a Viennese fortepiano however, and here is the catch, for grands more than (or even to the exclusion) of squares. Fig. 1.4 shows the alternative actions from the Walter grand. In the stoss version (bottom), a hopper or Stosszunge pushes the hammer toward the string, catapulting it into free flight. The hammer hangs in its own rail over the key. (This hammer rail is not shown in the picture.) At a certain point, the hopper escapes its ascent, which allows the hammer to fall back. There s no back-check to catch the falling hammer. Though the action is light in principle, a minimum of finger pressure is required for the hammers to hit the strings at all. Hammers are covered with only one layer of leather. The result-

69 38 Chapter 1 Fig Stoss action (below) and prell action (above), interchangeable in the same replica of a ca Anton Walter grand fortepiano by Chris Maene (Ruiselede, Belgium, 2005). Photo courtesy of Chris Maene. ing tones are either crisp and harpsichordlike or disarmingly warm and tender, with surprisingly little in between. For the player, the choice is between hitting the string with wood (the actual hammer) or gently caressing it with leather (the hammer s cap). In the prell action (top), the hammer hangs in a brass Kapsel, which is attached to the key. When the keyboardist s finger goes down, the hammer is pulled up at the back by the escapement, the ascending hammer perfectly paralleling the descending motion of the finger. A back-check (not shown in the photo) catches the hammer as it falls down. There s no dependence on free flight : the keyboardist perfectly controls the movement of the hammer, either slow or fast. The hammer reaches the string in a slightly curving fashion (rather than the direct straight line on the stoss), resulting in a significantly larger contact surface between leather and string. This invites a

70 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 39 focus more on leather (the quality of the sound) than on wood (the instigator of the sound). For the builder, the invitation is to experiment with more layers and different kinds of leather; for the player, it is to exploit this cushion of leather in order to give more depth and color to one s tone, as well as to look for ever more dynamic shades between loud ( forte) and soft (piano). This significant gain in expressivity, however, comes with a loss in percussive bite and overall intimacy. The new action turns the instrument into one that is more expansive, more bel canto, more capable of projecting in a larger room which in my experience is especially important when playing a concerto. Mostly, however, the action is potentially heavier and potentially must be stressed here, since it is the player s and/or builder s choice to increase the mass of the hammers, resulting in more weight for the finger to press, or for the escapement to pull. If Walter so enthusiastically championed the progressive prell action that he modernized several of his earlier instruments (and not just Mozart s), 67 then Wenzel Schanz (of whom no instruments are known to survive) may well have continued to favor the directness and lightness of a Viennese stoss action and/or build his version of a prell action in the spirit of its famous inventor, Johann Andreas Stein, in Augsburg as an ingenious new system that did not quite challenge any older aesthetic virtues. 68 We can rephrase this in socioeconomic terms: if Walter put his money on players with more professional ambition, 69 then Schanz may have continued to cater to the delicate hands of the affluent female amateur, who, like Frau von Genzinger, would have had her first lessons on the harpsichord and would have been used to the feel of jacks and quills, behaving in as a direct manner as hoppers and thinly clad hammers. 70 Almost inevitably (whether responding to Frau von Genzinger s dropping his name in a previous communication, as in, Herr von Nickl raves about his Walter, or anticipating her skepticism, as in, Why not one by Walter? ), Haydn came to talk about the star artisan in his letter of July 4, It is quite true, he wrote, that my friend Herr Walther is very celebrated, and that every year I receive the greatest civility from that gentleman, but between ourselves, and speaking frankly, sometimes there is not more than one instrument in ten which you could really describe as good, and apart from that they are very expensive. I know H: von Nickl s fortepiano: it s excellent, but too heavy for Your Grace s hand, and one can t play everything on it with the necessary delicacy. 71 Herr von Nickl may well be Carl Nickl von Nickelsberg (ca ), treasury official and later dedi-

71 40 Chapter 1 catee of Beethoven s Second Piano Concerto, Op. 19. Two of his children, as reported in Johann Ferdinand von Schönfeld s 1796 Yearbook on Music in Vienna and Prague, became dedicated musicians son Heinrich Nickl on the piano (Fortepiano) and on the cello; daughter Magdalena, a pupil of the virtuoso Steffan, on the piano. 72 With this level of pianistic activity in the house, involving at least one male member of the family, the von Nickls almost certainly owned a Walter grand fortepiano, which by 1790 without any doubt had an original prell action. By association (why else even bring up von Nickl s instrument?), Haydn may have assumed that Frau von Genzinger needed a grand as well. Back in his Eszterháza apartment, Haydn did not have the social incentive, the desire, nor the space to order one himself; but she may have, living in the center of vibrant Vienna and mingling with musicians as prominent as Haydn. That Haydn even suggests that she keep her old Flügel for one of her daughters implies, furthermore, that space was not an issue for the von Genzingers. 73 But with a Schanz, she can have the best of both worlds: a grand with the same sparkling touch and sound of Haydn s square two inextricable perceptions that would go a long way toward playing the opening of her sonata in a conversational manner, articulate, yes, but not overly enunciated. (Frau von Genzinger may be serious about her keyboard playing, but she does not have the ambition to go out performing in some grand salon or other formal venue in Vienna.) Judging by her misgivings about the hand crossings in the Adagio, she would almost certainly have preferred the physical comfort and decorum of a damper-raising hand stop, to be employed to great effect in exactly that minore middle section of the Adagio that features those uncomfortable hand crossings. 74 After tomorrow I expect an answer about the forte piano, Haydn wrote to her after the decision about Schanz had been taken (see the letter reproduced above). The postscript continues, Then Your Grace will receive the alteration in the Adagio. There s a simple enough solution: from m. 57 to m. 66 one may interchange rather than cross one s hands. The left hand can take over the accompaniment from the right as the latter shifts to the top. But to do so unobtrusively, you d better leave the dampers raised throughout. No need to keep your thigh pressed against the knee lever for the entire time or worse! have to keep adjusting it with every new harmony (a technique we nowadays take for granted: we call it pedaling ). Just enjoy the pantalon effect, Haydn may have told her when they met next exactly as he would have done when fantasizing these exquisitely dramatic moments on his little square.

72 Composer, Dedicatee, Instrument 41 The Eighteenth-Century Austrian Harpsichord Prell-action fortepianos with knee levers by Stein and Walter have been the single two most popular models for modern-day builders of Viennese fortepianos. While their technology is close enough for us to appreciate the sonatas Haydn wrote beginning around 1780, a true missing link for the performance of early Haydn has long been the eighteenth-century Austrian harpsichord. I commissioned one from Martin Pühringer (Haslach, Austria), a replica of a 1755 one-manual, double strung harpsichord by court organ builder Johann Leydecker. 75 This model more Italian than German, yet idiomatically Austrian resolutely takes the early out of circa Haydn, showing him instead as a young and progressive exponent of a preclassical school of keyboardists in Vienna (including his teacher Johann Georg Reutter, Gottlieb Muffat, and Wagenseil). The instrument s most striking feature undoubtedly is its multiple-broken short octave, a picture and diagram of which are reproduced as plate 1 and which will be the focus of chapter 3. One tantalizing example may suffice here. The low D in m. 11 of ex. 1.6 is not playable on a fully chromatic keyboard ( with a French octave, as it was called in Vienna at the time). 76 But what matters, when playing this excerpt on a contemporary Austrian harpsichord, is not so much that but how you can play the D major chord. In keyboardtechnical terms, D would be the equivalent of an F. The tenth from D to f, then, may be grasped with a hand span equivalent to an octave. Your second finger, in the mean time, firmly locks the middle d as part of the chord. The low key dip of the Austrian harpsichord allows for a smooth slide between mm. 11 and 12, or between one felt octave (a firm, sustained grip, delightfully deep in sound) and a real other one (relaxed, light, and rejoining a siciliano pulse). There s no impression of a brusque new attack. What we instead feel, hear, and see is a ravishing resolution, that essential feature of a Viennese keyboard style. Ex Sonata in E Minor, Hob. XVI:47, mm. 8 12

73 42 Chapter 1 Marianne Edle von Kayser (to remind us of Frau von Genzinger s maiden name) would have been around fifteen when Haydn wrote this Sonata in E Minor, Hob. XVI:47 (ca. 1765). 77 She might well have learned it on her old Flügel, which would have yielded exactly the kind of sophistication that Haydn calls for in this delicate Adagio. Neither Haydn nor she may have realized this in 1790, but her harpsichord (if built by a local Meister) and the new fortepiano she was about to receive were not so different after all. Above all, and in the grander scheme of things, they were both inherently Viennese. The transition from old to new in Viennese keyboard construction, from 1765 to 1790, was fluid, yet complex. It involved quills, tangents, stoss hoppers, prell escapements, hand stops, and knee levers: Haydn tried them all.

74 Neque enim tam refert, qualia sint, quae intra nosmet ipsos composuimus, quam quo modo efferantur; nam ita quisque, ut audit, movetur. For whatever we have composed in ourselves [i.e., in our minds] is not as important as the manner in which it is executed; because that s how whoever hears it is moved. QUINTILIAN, Institutio oratoria, XI, iii, 2 CHAPTER 2 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! When asked to identify the single most important aspect of oratory, the Greek orator Demosthenes replied: Delivery. When asked to identify the second most important aspect, Demosthenes replied: Delivery. When asked for the third, he once more replied: Delivery. Cicero too considered actio paramount. Quintilian, for his part, did not hesitate to acknowledge that a mediocre speech delivered with great skill would be more impressive than a brilliant speech delivered poorly. 1 It is hard to believe, however, that either Cicero or Demosthenes, whose preserved speeches have been read, analyzed, and memorized by generations of schoolboys and have come to embody the summum of classical Greek and Latin speechwriting, meant to downplay in any way the importance of developing and composing a logically argued and ordered, stylistically elegant oration. Indeed, as Quintilian observes: Since words in themselves count for much and the voice adds force of its own to the matter of which it speaks, while gesture and motion are full of significance, we may be sure of finding something like perfection when all these qualities are combined. 2 This sentence, from the penultimate book of Quintilian s Institutio oratoria, coming to the end of the complete training of an orator, unites all categories of oratory: matter (res), words (verba), voice 43

75 44 Chapter 2 (vox), gesture (gestus), and motion (motus). These categories are not only complementary but also interdependent: no ideas without words to express them, no words without a voice to speak them, and so on. Good delivery, then, is nothing more or less than a proper fulfillment of previous stages: good inventio (inventing ideas), good dispositio (ordering them), good elocutio (clothing them in proper words), good memoria (memorization). On this continuum, the text is neither a goal nor a point of departure: it is an intermediate stage between invention and delivery. Delivery is of the ideas rather than the words; conversely, the purpose of inventing ideas is not to have them reflected in elegant prose, but for them to be orally effective; in judicial oratory, being effective means winning one s case. 3 In the specific context of a trial, being effective might sometimes mean not adhering to one s well-prepared text, which and this was no contradiction the Roman orator held in his left hand, rolled up into a scroll, keeping his right arm free for gestures. 4 What to do, for instance, Quintilian asks, when one must reply to one s opponent? For often the arguments we expected and against which we prepared our written text fail to appear, and the whole cause is suddenly changed. 5 The following famous anecdote, recalled by Cicero in his defense of Cluentius, illustrates how a too cleverly prepared text may be derailed in actual delivery, with disastrous results. (Caepasius in this extract is the defender; Fabricius is his client.) [Caepasius] thought he was pleading very cleverly, and produced from the secrets of his stock-in-trade these weighty words: Look back, gentlemen, upon the lot of mortal man; look back upon its changes and chances; look back upon the old age of Fabricius! After frequent repetitions of the phrase Look back, by way of ornamenting his speech [using the figure anaphora, i.e., starting consecutive phrases with the same word], he finally looked back himself: and lo! Fabricius had left his seat with hanging head. Thereupon the court burst out laughing; counsel lost his temper, in annoyance that his case was slipping through his fingers, and that he could not complete his stock passage beginning Look back : and he was as near as possible to pursuing his client and dragging him back to his seat by the scruff of his neck, so that he could conclude his peroration. 6 The ability to improvise in such circumstances is essential, and the man who fails to acquire that knack had better abandon advocacy and devote his powers of writing to other branches of literature. 7

76 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! 45 Repeating a Transition... An Oratorical Catastrophe? Imagine a performance of Haydn s Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (ex. 2.1), by a pianist-orator not in an ancient courtroom but in a modern concert hall. After an extended fermata over a dominant seventh chord, which indicates the end of a movement a series of alternating variations, in major and minor keys the keyboardist presents the opening theme one final time, first in its original, unadorned version. But soon he (or she) parses the statement: grotesque, arpeggiated chords (using the rhetorical figure of hyperbole, or exaggeration); 8 then two individual questioning figures (the rhetorical figure would be dubitatio, or the casting of doubt, asking two short questions: What do I say? Where am I? ); 9 finally a suspensio, a holding in suspense of a certain outcome, which in this case, to the listener s delight, happens to be exactly what she had expected, but surprise! is thrown right in her face, a truly Haydnesque twist of events. 10 The whole passage functions as a transitio between the two movements. 11 And the tonic chord at the very end, in one sweeping gesture, sets a totally new tone, a delightful attacca into the presto finale: a transition, indeed, often involves aversio, a turning away from the matter at hand. 12 Ex. 2.1a. Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40, transition between first and second movements

77 Ex. 2.1b. Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40, first movement, mm. 73 end, with repeat: writtenout performance

78 Ex. 2.1b (continued)

79 48 Chapter 2 But what to do, in performance, with the repeat? Haydn clearly intended one by indicating the upbeat (for the repeat) and the fermata (as the conclusion of the movement) in the last bar. How can one recognize Haydn s oratorical skills in producing such an effective transition, which hinges on perfect timing, and yet abolish the very effect that one has so carefully achieved by retracing one s steps and preparing the transition all over again? This would be like a magician who explains his trick to the audience before performing it, or like the orator, mocked by Cicero, who is so out of touch with his external surroundings that he becomes a victim of his own cleverness. Haydn as orator is the paradigm I wish to explore in this chapter. In classical times, an orator would of course be male, would have enjoyed long and thorough schooling, and would be in a position to practice his acquired knowledge and skill either in court or politics. If we substitute the concert hall for the courtroom or assembly, those same characteristics would apply to the modern-day professional pianist as well. There is, admittedly, a flaw in this historical analogy. A master of music (to use a more historical term) would not have performed Haydn s sonatas; he (masculine by overwhelming majority) might have been curious about them and studied them (at least those available to him, as they circulated through Europe at a rate of three to six every half decade or so, but his own merits as a professional would have been judged in the composition and performance of his own sonatas, or more prestigiously still, his concertos. Mozart, Steffan, or Kozeluch come to mind as obvious examples. Haydn s clientele, by contrast, as we have seen in the previous chapter, was overwhelmingly female, socially well established, financially independent, and with the abundant free time of a dilettante (the latter term applied here not pejoratively but rather in the context of the general cultural and artistic development of a lady, demonstrated especially in her ability to play the keyboard). Nonetheless, I here propose to explore the oratorical model as far as possible, if only for the simple reason that the genre of the solo keyboard sonata invites the analogy. First, there is the one-to-one relationship of keyboardist as one orator to his audience, whether in actual performance (in a concert space, small or large) or in anticipation thereof (in the practice room). Second, because the performer acts alone, there is ample room for initiative and flexibility, and specifically to take part in the eighteenthcentury practice of varied reprise, that is, of improvising variants during the repeated section of an existing score. 13 Toward the end of the eighteenth century these two elements a clear

80 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! 49 oratorical stance and the musical convention of repeat were increasingly seen as opposing one another. In his Mémoires, ou Essais sur la musique (1797), André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry famously wrote that a sonata is an oration. What would we think of a man who, cutting his discourse in half, were to repeat each half? I was at your house this morning; yes, I was at your house this morning to talk to you about something; to talk with you about something. 14 I contend that oratorical stance and the convention of the repeat, for a very long time, had been understood as not being in conflict, but rather that, on the contrary, a skillful performer, someone we would now call a professional, would have understood how to combine the energies of each to create an effective performance. The essential question, then, is: how do I, a modern performer trained in eighteenth-century music practices, judged by professional standards, perform a Haydn sonata? This question arises especially from those moments of crisis described in the previous chapter. Some of the answers might bring us closer to understanding and defining the oratorical qualities of this music, which remain palpable and real. But then there is the matter of my historical (female) counterparts and what influence their self-awareness of oratorical posture and the convention of repeat had on their performance and how that awareness (if it exists) might have to shape my own. They and I with Haydn hovering somewhere in the middle create an interesting field of tensions, in which the issue of repeat will prove to be as essential as it is enigmatic. 15 Taking on the Problem: A Performer s Approach If Haydn held dearly to the idea of a transition between the movements, a typical twentieth-century response, shaped by the ideology of urtext, would be: Why then did he not take better care in avoiding the absurdity of the repeat in Sonata No. 40; why did he not convey his intentions on paper? I propose to adopt a more positive approach and argue that, precisely because Haydn was so taken by his own transition, which surely originated in his own fantasizing, he made it part of the written text, while adhering to conventional repeat signs. 16 The worst that could happen from Haydn s point of view is that the anonymous performer would play the same passage twice. A better scenario, however, would be that she would recognize Haydn s own improvised variant as the repeat and venture to reconstruct a regular, nontransitional version of the theme first (itself part of the final variation). The significance of notational convention in the perception of what

81 50 Chapter 2 I felt to be a problem is not to be underestimated. My ex. 2.1a restores the final bar (m. 99) from the original 1784 edition, with a fermata over the final rest. Modern editions, including JHW, routinely specify primo and secundo endings of the final bar, with and without the upbeat to the repeated section. While producing a more correct look (eliminating an upbeat left hanging from the first run-through), the modern print makes the score also look more final than its historical counterpart. 17 Circumstantial proof for this hypothesis that Haydn s transition conceptually belongs to the repeat alone may be found in the continuation of the set of sonatas. As László Somfai has pointed out, Haydn tended to be occupied with certain compositional or notational challenges during the course of writing an opus of pieces. 18 This particular G major sonata is Haydn s first attempt at a two-movement sonata with a first variation movement and a fast, capricious finale. He repeated the experiment in the third and final sonata of the set, No. 42 in D major. There Haydn did what it seems, in retrospect, he could have done in No. 40, namely write out the repeats of the final variation. This solution, furthermore, seems to have propelled Haydn toward an idea altogether novel: the writing of a separate transition (m. 102 to the end) between the two movements (see ex. 2.2). In several ways this transition reminds us of the G major transition: both have similar melodic fragmentation; both look backward as well as forward (as any transition should); and both come at a similarly crucial moment in their sonatas trajectories, at the turning point between their sentimental opening variations and their delightful, witty finales. But the D major transition enjoys a structural clarity that the one in G major lacks. Whereas the D major transition, clearly situated between the end and beginning of two movements, has the same identity both on the page and in performance, the G major transition, incorporated within the structural boundaries of the first movement itself, emanates from its position in the printed text and adopts its structural identity only in the realm of performance (actio). Guided by Haydn s own example of No. 42 and enjoying a sufficient stock of melodic-harmonic material bearing his signature in No. 40, I present in ex. 2.1b what a fully written out final variation might have looked like. In this ABA I embellish the A section in the manner of A, not modulating to V but rounding off with an authentic cadence. I furthermore save the printed version of mm , an extended half cadence on V, for last. Not only is this version much more forceful than the previous ones (which remained wonderfully understated, with piano dropping to pianissimo, before a final forte on the last dominant seventh chord, never an outright fortissimo), the

82 Ex Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:42, transition between first and second movements

83 52 Chapter 2 two modes of the previous variations (G major and G minor) are now aptly combined in mm , one last pathetic-dramatic gesture before the conclusion of the movement, which is now, in the true sense, a transition to the next as well. Haydn the Performer Haydn s texts are merely one stage in a rhetorical process. Like Cicero s texts, they reflect performance but are not the whole performance. 19 That Haydn s primary interest, as a composer, was the performance of his texts may be corroborated by many statements about his desire to create certain effects and to provoke certain reactions from his audience. In a letter to Frau von Genzinger, from London, he explains why he cannot send her quite yet the symphony (Hob. I:93 in D major) that he is dedicating to her: First, because I intend to change and make its last movement [das letzte Stück] more beautiful, since it is too weak in comparison with the preceding movements [in rücksicht der Ersteren Stücke]; I became convinced of this on my own and also by the audience [von dem Publico] when I produced [producirte] the symphony for the first time last Friday. 20 In his well-known Applausus letter, accompanying the score of a cantata commissioned by the abbey of Zwettl in Lower Austria, Haydn complained that his ignorance of performers and place of performance made his work on the cantata sour. 21 And in a letter to his publisher, he asked Artaria to hold off publishing a collection of lieder before he himself had the chance to perform them that is, singing and playing at the same time in the critical houses [critischen Häusern] of Vienna, explaining that a master [ein Meister] must see to his rights by his presence and by true performance [wahrer Vortrag]. 22 Vortrag happens to be the German term used for rhetorical delivery as well. The Swedish diplomat Fredrik Samuel Silverstolpe remembered Haydn standing in front of the orchestra at the official premiere of The Creation (on April 30, 1798) and, as Light was about to be Created, having the expression of someone who is thinking of biting his tongue, either to hide his embarrassment or to conceal a secret. 23 No one, not even Baron von Swieten had seen this particular page of the score. Haydn s oratorical confidence, both in anticipation and at the moment itself when Light broke... one would have said that lightrays darted from the composer s blazing eyes rivals that of Cicero, who, just before his third oration against Catiline, had a newly completed statue of Jupiter erected so that it was prominently visible from the Forum, audaciously planning to exploit the shame that his listeners would feel under the

84 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! 53 stern eyes of the god, pointing to it as that statue which you now see. 24 Cicero, by then the most prominent politician of Rome, and Haydn, returning to Vienna from London an international celebrity, had both become masters at controlling the emotional responses of their listeners. But who is in control of what in the keyboard sonatas? As we saw in chapter 1, during the 1770s Haydn started to react to two new realities in Vienna the expansion of music publishing, and a new and growing market of amateur players, almost exclusively women. He stopped producing manuscript copies of sonatas written for specific students or for his own use and began writing for the generic, amateur keyboard player in Vienna. As if to compensate for the loss of control over the performance of his compositions, Haydn s notation became more explicit. To guide the buyers of his scores, Haydn started to incorporate ornamentation, slightly varied repeats of the Hauptsätze (main statements), cadenzas, Eingänge (lead-ins), and so on. In his Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI:26 (ex. 2.3), he clearly enjoyed his new role of invisible master setting his imaginary pupil an unusual assignment: she must play the minuet and trio backward (al rovescio). To reconstruct this private moment a master chuckling as his poor pupil works her way backward through the prescribed tones is hard if not impossible to do in a modern-day concert performance. Modern editions (including JHW ) consistently provide the solution in print, not even inviting the performer to ponder this peculiarity. Its spontaneity lost forever, the modern performer can only recreate the effect theatrically: he literally scratches his head, tells his audience what Haydn asks him to do, and sets forth on his task, as if prima vista, with appropriate hesitation and mistakes. Puzzled surprise, however, gives way to admiring recognition, as performer and listener gradually make sense of this seeming nonsense, and at every new occurrence (four in total for the minuet, two for the trio) appreciation builds for the contrapuntal skill involved in composing such a palindrome. 25 There s a possible third level, in which the performer adds ornaments or variants, then plays those backward too, claiming his share of the listeners admiration. This rich example of relationships among listener, performer, and composer, who reposition themselves even as the performance develops, should not make us forget the simple reality of Haydn performing his own sonatas. He not only dedicated his first published set of sonatas to his Prince Nicolaus Esterházy but must surely have played them for him as well, possibly in the presence of distinguished guests. 26 We know from a note in a certain Father Rettensteiner s score of the Marie Esterházy Sonatas, Nos , that Haydn performed these particular pieces for him. 27 And, as we saw in

85 54 Chapter 2 Ex Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI:26, Menuet al rovescio chapter 1, when Haydn sent off his newest sonata (No. 49) to Frau von Genzinger, he expressed a desire to perform the piece for her ( Oh! how I wish that I could only play this sonata to you a few times! ). This is puzzling from a social point of view: it might have been more proper to express a wish to hear her perform the piece after all, Haydn had destined [the sonata] for Your Grace already since last year. But this spontaneous exclamation, part of a postscriptum in a private letter, demonstrates the composer s urge to be his own performer. 28 The autograph of the same Genzinger Sonata presents remarkable testimony to Haydn s integrated approach, from conceived idea, through rhetorical figure, to declamatory gesture (see ex. 2.4a and fig. 2.1). Toward the second page of the first movement, after confirming the dominant key of B, Haydn appears to be heading toward closure in that key, rounding off the exposition. Nothing can stop him from doing so. In the context of this

86 Ex. 2.4a. Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:49, first movement, mm (transcribed from manuscript)

87 56 Chapter 2 Ex. 2.4b. Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:49, first movement, mm expectation Haydn plays out the rhetorical figure of dubitatio, or the feigned expression of doubt. Although at first he does seem to confirm B, he suddenly finds himself stumbling over a harmonic progression that threatens to run wild. As if struck by panic, he brings himself to a halt with a deceptive cadence in C minor (m. 52). A painful silence follows. It is exactly here that Haydn leaves blank almost half a staff of what must have been expensive manuscript paper. 29 He turns the page, as if visually performing the dubitatio. (One can only speculate what his facial expression would have been.) What now? The first thing that springs to mind is: gaining time! He repeats the A chord in a rhythmic form vaguely familiar from before, from the motive that in chapter 1 we called y (m. 2: see ex. 1.4b), and clinging to the harmony that had made such a forceful entry in the third opening phrase (phrase c, m. 10). Only at the fourth attempt toward an outcome any outcome does he succeed in bending back the modulation to B, pulling off a chromatic tour de force: a German sixth followed by a dominant. The technical ease with which the orator is able to free himself from an apparent dead end is astonishing. The eventual confirmation of the dominant key and the end of the exposition sound the more convincing for it. And this is exactly the purpose of a dubitatio. Quintilian writes: Dubitatio offers a particular faith in truth, when we pretend to be searching where to begin, where to end, what preferably needs to be said or whether something needs to be said at all (IX, ii, 19; my translation). Pretend is the key word here: if the doubt were genuine, it would not be a rhetorical figure. 30 It is hard, if not impossible, to repeat a certain figure of thought such as dubitatio with similar, let alone stronger

88 Fig Sonata in E major, Hob. XVI:49, autograph, first page turn, facsimile by Schott/Universal Edition (Vienna, 1964)

89 58 Chapter 2 Fig An actor in doubt. Engraving from Engel ( ), vol. 1, between pp. 88 and 89. effect. In mm of the recapitulation, Haydn, indeed, playfully adds appoggiaturas (see ex. 2.4b). It is as if he invites his listener to partake in his own delight: Remember the time I tricked you before? In Johann Jacob Engel s Ideen zur Mimik ( ) we find an engraved picture of an actor in doubt (reproduced here as fig. 2.2): arms folded, head bent down, eyes staring at the ground. The image is fitting also for the keyboardist, who, at the most intense moment of doubt, stares into the emptiness of the music desk and, for lack of a better idea, turns the page. Engel s prose too, which carefully describes the hand movements of the actor in preparation of this moment hands at first interacting easily and smoothly with one another, their movements increasingly becoming irregular, arms indecisively folded and unfolded again, then suddenly coming to a halt resonates strikingly well with Haydn s choreography of the keyboardist s hands in mm The crossings and uncrossings of mm unusual for Haydn offer an especially intriguing analogy to the folding and unfolding of the actor s arms. Table 2.1 juxtaposes Engel s prose with my description of the keyboardist s movements. 31 But to propose Engel as a model (although chronologically it would be conceivable; and Engel s book quickly

90 TABLE 2.1. An actor in doubt compared to a keyboardist in doubt The actor in doubt a The movement of the hands... is easy, unhindered, free, when the overall development of ideas is going well and one [idea] follows from another without difficulty; [the movement] becomes nervous, irregular, the hands reach here and there, make this, then that movement, toward one s breast, toward one s head; the arms are folded, then unfolded again, when one s thinking is obstructed in its free flow and deflected to various foreign shores: when all of a sudden one indecision, one difficulty arises, the whole play [of the hands] comes to a standstill; the outstretched hand is contracted and pulled towards one s breast, or the arms are folded in a position of inactivity. The eye, which, when thinking was going well, moved along with the whole head just lightly and smoothly; or which, when the soul was knocked from the one idea to the next, wandered nervously from this to that corner, now only stares straight in front of itself, and the head reclines or hangs forward, until after the first astonishment of the doubt, if I can call it so, the obstructed activity resumes itself. The keyboardist in doubt b [mm :] Left and right hands are well coordinated. They counter one another s movements in an easygoing, playful way. A variety of ideas is expressed. The left hand s Alberti figurations provide secure support for smooth, wavelike movements up and down in the right. [mm :] An unexpected harmonic shift in the left hand gives way, first, to a fragmented cantilena in the right. Then (m. 37), the left hand stops its previous activity and falls out of its accompanying role altogether, at one point engaging nervously with its right counterpart (m. 39). [mm :] The left hand resumes its Alberti activity, but repeats itself over and over, without clear purpose. The right hand, in the mean time, crosses deep down on the keyboard, then high up. As a result, arms twist (fold) and untwist (unfold) several times in a row. [m. 52:] A deceptive cadence catches the keyboardist off guard; everything comes to a complete stop. [mm. 53ff:] One hand turns the page what else is there to do? The other just waits. The silence is painful. The pianist stares down to the keyboard, his head bent in disbelief. Cautiously, one hand takes the initiative, followed, equally cautiously, by the other. Momentum is slowly regained. On a striking harmony, both hands regain their old confidence and, in forceful coordination, bring the section to a close. a Engel (1785), b Author s commentary on mm of Haydn s Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:49 ( ).

91 60 Chapter 2 became a must-read in musical circles) 32 misses the more important point that Haydn s interest (like Engel s) was first and foremost in executing a wellknown and recognizable oratorical pose, to be seen as well as to be heard. The Eighteenth-Century Keyboardist-Orator One need not, however, invoke Haydn himself as the ideal orator. The ideal of the composer-performer is ubiquitous in almost all eighteenth-century treatises on performance, especially those on playing the keyboard, where the listener may be easily led to assume that the player also is the composer. For C. P. E. Bach, the fact that a performer may be playing someone else s pieces is ultimately irrelevant. In 1753 he wrote that the obligation [for the performer to be able to transport himself in all affects] especially holds in those pieces that are meant to be expressive, they may originate from himself or from someone else [sie mögen von ihm selbst oder von jemanden anders herrühren]; in the latter case he must perceive in himself the same passions that the author [Urheber] of the foreign composition [des fremden Stücks] experienced at its creation [Verfertigung]. 33 (Emphasis mine.) In other words, the performer must recapture the very invention of the piece, and in order to do so, she must understand both the emotions and thoughts (Empfindungen and Gedanken), as well as the figures (Figuren), that express those thoughts and emotions. For instance, Bach warns against an exaggerated violent attack when portraying rage (Raserey) or anger (Zorn), explaining that the expression of these violent emotions should be rather through [the proper selection of] harmonic and melodic figures. 34 It is interesting to observe the subtle change in the composer-performer relationship by the time Daniel Gottlob Türk wrote his treatise, in 1789, one generation after Bach. Türk s concept, it seems, sees composer and performer as more of a team, in which each partner divides up tasks and knowledge: there are certain technical things that a performer no longer needs to know. 35 While Bach s treatise can be read as a Gradus ad Parnassum toward fantasieren, the professional ability to improvise a free fantasy (eine freye Fantasie), Türk s approach to improvisation is more pragmatic. Türk implores his reader, for instance, to carefully prepare and write out a cadenza but then perform as if it were merely invented on the spur of the moment a subtle but important distinction that foreshadows the eventual separation between professional

92 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! 61 composers (who may also be performers) and professional performers in the centuries to come. 36 Throughout the eighteenth century, the act of performance was described and, one may assume, conceived of in rhetorical terms. Striking parallels can be drawn between the terms and phrases used by Bach, Agricola, Quantz, and Türk, and those of Gottsched, Quintilian, or any other author on classical rhetoric. In fact, Agricola specifically refers his aspiring singers, who, like orators, should be able to match declamation to affect and rhetorical figure, to Johann Christoph Gottsched s Ausführliche Redekunst, first published in Drawing up a list of all these parallels is an almost impossible task, and perhaps an unnecessary one, since it would simply belabor the obvious: that rhetoric provided the all-embracing conceptual framework. I will give just a few examples, somewhat more subtle than Quantz s rather blunt opening statement that musical performance [Vortrag] can be compared to the delivery [Vortrag] of an orator. 38 In his first paragraph on Vortrag, C. P. E. Bach speaks of the ideal performer as an intelligible, pleasing, moving keyboardist (ein deutlicher, ein gefälliger, ein rührender Clavieriste), a clear reference to the three duties of an orator: to teach, to please, and to move (docere, delectare, movere). It is true, however, that the requirement to move in German music aesthetics outshone the other two, becoming the very goal of performance, on a par almost with rhetoric s overall objective of persuasion (persuadere). 39 In his famous paragraph 13 (with the opening line A musician cannot move others unless he is moved himself, a direct recollection of Horace s famous si vis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi [If you wish me to weep, first you yourself must grieve]), Bach draws the picture of a performer growing weak and sad in weak and sad passages: One sees and hears it from him, he writes. Man sieht und hört es ihm an. The translation of William Mitchell, which combines seeing and hearing into one neutral perceiving, 40 unfortunately diminishes the visual importance of appropriate facial expressions and gestures for orators and musicians alike: inappropriate grimaces or harmful bad gestures are contrasted with appropriate facial expressions (i.e., those that match the expression of the words or music) and good gestures (i.e., those that, as Bach writes, help bring our intentions across to the listeners ). 41 Quintilian, addressing the same point, tells the story of Demosthenes practicing his delivery in front of a large mirror. 42 Bach s own inspired look while fantasizing at the clavichord His eyes were fixed, his under lip fell, and drops of effervescence distilled from his countenance has been famously described by Charles Burney. 43

93 62 Chapter 2 In most of the treatises, the topos that a mediocre speech [or piece] supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power 44 is repeated and applied to music composition and performance. 45 In this respect, Türk pities those composers who have to submit their pieces to the mercies of unworthy performers: Other artists are more assured of their earned acclaim, because they perform their works mostly themselves (emphasis mine). 46 A composer who would be a mediocre performer of his own works, interestingly, is not yet considered an option. The concept of composer-performer as a single persona, more specifically as a single orator, provides a context for understanding C. P. E. Bach s 1760 experiment of publishing Six Sonatas with Varied Reprises, Wq. 50 (VI. Sonates pour le clavecin avec des reprises variées), in which there are plenty of repeats but no repeat signs, or in which the execution of all repeats has been spelled out, almost doubling the amount of printed pages. Bach did not intend to widen the gap between the amateur performer and professional composer. On the contrary, he wished to provide the amateur with the opportunity to sound like a professional musical orator. He wrote as much in his preface, itself demonstrative of flowery, self-varying language: With the composition of these sonatas, I primarily had those beginners and amateurs in mind [ces Commençans & ces Amateurs], who, because of their age or their occupation, do not have the time nor patience to engage in exercises of a certain difficulty. I wanted to provide [procurer] them with the easy means to provide [procurer] themselves the satisfaction of adding some alterations [changemens] to the pieces [Pieces] they perform, without having to resort to either inventing them themselves or getting someone else to prescribe things that they would learn only with extreme effort [recourir à d autres qui leur prescrivent des choses qu ils n apprendroient qu avec une extrème peine]. Thus, I expressed in the most formal way [de la manière la plus formelle] everything that might convey the merit [débit] of these pieces most advantageously, so that they may play them with complete liberty, also when they are not too well disposed [lors même qu ils ne sont pas trop bien disposés]. 47 C. P. E. Bach may have had the well-being of the ladies in mind ( how happy I will be if this publication puts in evidence my eagerness to be of service! ), but it is ultimately his pride as a composer that shines through. His explicit

94 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! 63 intent is not to demonstrate them how to make good alterations, but to remind us that these alterations should be designed to underscore the merit of his own pieces. It is remarkable, indeed, that for two-thirds of the preface, he abhors the practice of adding alterations that are most disagreeable to the composers by ridiculing those who, already at the first time around, do not have the patience to play the notes exactly as written, because it is unbearable for them to wait for the Bravo, only to then take pride in being the first, as far as I know to upgrade this very practice to a formal genre (genre). 48 As a genre, however, the sonata with varied reprise never took off not in Emanuel Bach s proposed format, anyway. To be sure, Bach does not argue against performance-inspired alterations, since the good ones always keep their value ; but his publication seems designed to sternly remind the amateur to know her place and be content with it rather than to extend an invitation to the amateur player to enter his own world as a musical orator. In the most formal way that is, through printed notation he takes full control, as if sitting by her side, not just during lessons but during formal performance as well. 49 Orating Haydn s Keyboard Sonatas Regarding the question of altered repeats, Haydn s sonatas present some challenging problems for a performer like me, who claims to be a professional. The rules for varying are clear: one s material should be presented from simple to complex; any alteration must be an improvement on the written text; 50 and it is best to present something unadorned first, so that the listener will recognize one s alterations at the repeat of a passage. But how should one reconcile these licenses, duties even, of the performer with the following piece of advice by Quantz directed to composers: It is much more advantageous for a composer to keep something of his knowledge [Wissenschaft] always in reserve so that he can surprise his listener more than once; than already to throw away all he knows [seine ganze Wissenschaft] the first time around, [in which case] one has heard everything already at once. 51 How can a composer respect the performer s right to improvise, vary, or alter passages and still remain in control of his own agenda, or the overall intended effect of the piece? For a composer like Haydn, who thrives on surprising his audience, this must have been an especially hard balance to strike: how could he incorporate these surprises without giving them away in their first occurrence on the written page? I would argue that we

95 64 Chapter 2 can recapture Haydn s true performance (wahren Vortrag) only if we recognize, understand, and internalize his rhetorical approach to the invention, disposition, and elocution of his pieces. This approach, I further argue, applies to the piece as a whole, 52 not just single movements; in other words, the rhetorical strategy of a whole piece will determine the performance of events within the individual movements. Johann Nikolaus Forkel provided a model for such an approach in a 1783 essay on C. P. E. Bach s Keyboard Sonata in F Minor, Wq. 57/6. 53 More than merely an analysis of one particular piece, the essay purports to be a theory of the sonata überhaupt, and it was embraced as such by his contemporaries (such as Johann Abraham Peter Schulz and Johann Georg Sulzer or Carl Friedrich Cramer). 54 Treating the sonata as a cycle of several movements with one overall rhetorical message, Forkel proclaims three possible ways of ordering it: The first order is the one in which a pleasant main emotion [eine angenehme Hauptempfindung] dominates and is maintained during an entire piece through all possible appropriate and supporting, pleasant side emotions. The second is the one in which an unpleasant main emotion [eine unangenehme Hauptempfindung] is suppressed, soothed, and little by little turned into a pleasant one. The third is the one in which a pleasant main emotion is not sustained and pursued but is, by the interposition of at first weak, then stronger unpleasant emotions, eradicated and finally turned into an unpleasant emotion altogether. 55 Forkel s schema, in shorthand, is: 1. from pleasant to pleasant; 2. from unpleasant to pleasant; 3. from pleasant to unpleasant. In keeping with aesthetic theories of his time, Forkel expresses moral reservations about the third ordering: it can be an exercise in expression [ein Werk zur Uebung im Ausdruck] only, but by no means a useful and usable work of art [brauchbares und anwendbares Kunstwerk]. 56 In effect, Forkel dismisses the third option, leaving only two possible ways of ordering: from pleasant to pleasant, and from unpleasant to pleasant. Forkel s way of thinking is very much rooted in the German idea of music as a language of emotions (Empfindungssprache). Restating Forkel s model in its oratorical equivalents, for from pleasant to pleasant, one would start with a correct statement (this is the orator s own), offer proofs to support it, refute the contrary (that is, the opponent s statement), and, finally, confirm one s own, original statement; for from

96 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! 65 unpleasant to pleasant, one would begin with a wrong statement, disprove it, and then replace it with one s own, correct version. With this enlarged paradigm in mind the performer-composer as orator, and the sonata as a larger rhetorical narrative, equivalent to one oration let us now consider the performance of a larger excerpt, the first movement of Haydn s Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:22 (see ex. 2.5). The sonata is the second in the opus of six dedicated to his prince in The tone of the opening statement (ex. 2.5a) is very controlled and rational. Two multivoiced chords on the harpsichord, as clear and assertive as they come divide the statement into two logical halves and help establish a calm, confident impression. Whichever questions are asked during the exposition (there are many moments of restarts, one step higher, or of standstill after a similarly rising inflection), the initial tone (which lasts for quite a long time, if one takes the repeat) is one of refined pensiveness. In contrast, after turning the page, itself a lively gesture, the development loosens, at times even loses control: questioning figures (marked y in ex. 2.5b, mm ) are heaped one atop the other, along a rising chromatic line, to the point of utter confusion, captured by the fermata in m. 36. In these moments of doubt (dubitatio), our orator pretends to be bereft of fresh ideas, stuck with the uninspired choice of confirming the key of G minor. But in one sweeping gesture (using the rhetorical figure aversio), he forcefully turns away from the muddle he has created and claims renewed attention for his original statement, again in E major. 57 Once things have normalized (and we would be more than ready to continue the movement in the home key), our orator finds it necessary to revisit and emphasize the dominant seventh chord of E major in m. 49. Topically, mm. 50ff represent an embellished, improvised fermata, leading into a renewed, structural return of the tonic. (The adagio indication in m. 54, so common in Haydn, hints at Ex. 2.5a. Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:22, first movement, opening theme

97 Ex. 2.5b. Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:22, first movement, development and recapitulation

98 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! 67 Ex. 2.5b (continued) an improvisational context, which has come to a close.) But the tonic had already returned at the beginning of the recapitulation so the fermata comes too late. It is a displaced version of what should have happened in m. 41. In some way, it makes up for those moments of doubt in mm and the suddenness of the aversion in m. 41. The effect is that of what rhetoricians call a hyperbaton, a dislocation of the regular or grammatical word order, caused by strong feelings, as in the following excerpt from Shakespeare s Othello: Yet I ll not shed her blood, / Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow. 58 The ancient treatise On the Sublime, formerly ascribed to Longinus, praises Demosthenes for his lavish use of hyperbaton. The following passage, which itself employs the figure, is also significant for our purpose because it links the use of hyperbaton to the impression of extempore speaking:

99 68 Chapter 2 Demosthenes... is never tired of the use of this figure in all its applications; the effect of vehemence which he produces by transposition is great, and also that of speaking on the call of the moment; besides all this he draws his hearers with him to face the hazards of his long Hyperbata. For he often leaves suspended the thought with which he began, and interposes, as though he struck into a train of reasoning foreign to it and dissimilar, matter which he rolls upon other matter, all drawn from some source outside, till he strikes his hearer with fear that an entire collapse of the sentence will follow, and forces him by mere vehemence to share the risk with the speaker: then, when you least expect, after a long interval, he makes good the thought which has so long been owing, and works in his own way to a happy conclusion: making the whole a great deal more impressive by the very hazard and imminence of failure which goes with his Hyperbata. (Emphasis mine.) 59 This critical description combines hyperbaton with the related figure of suspensio, the leaving of one s audience in suspense. And that is exactly what Haydn does in mm What could have been said in one measure is spread out over six, not only stirring an emotional response as the figure develops (increased by the rhythmic dislocation of both hands and the left hand s insistent octaves) but also heightening the sense of relief as the dominant seventh chord enters once again in m. 67, stronger than ever, and this time announcing the end of the movement. Haydn s tight grip on the beginning of the sonata contrasts sharply with his perceived loss of control in the development and recapitulation. Such a contrast surely has affective implications for performance. Can I pull off such a drastic shift? When playing the repeat of the second half (i.e., development and recapitulation), do I jeopardize my listener s faith in my ethos as an orator if I appear to be out of control for too long? Hearing Haydn s rhetorical figures twice in exactly the same way, listeners may better recognize them, but in performing them this way, will I be allowing the composer s craft to get in the way of the performer s effect? ( Longinus is well-known for saying that a figure is best when the fact that it is a figure is concealed. ) 60 Such questions confront any performer preparing to present a formal delivery of this sonata. In my own performance, I feel the need to make use of those four rhetorical figures dubitatio, aversio, hyperbaton, and suspensio and make them more effective by not repeating them. On the contrary, I regard them as ornamentation in their own right. Rhetorical figures, after all, are materi-

100 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! 69 alizations of the virtue ornatus (ornament), in the best sense of the word: the Latin ornamentum can mean equipment or accoutrements, a soldier s gear or weapons. 61 Following the general guideline for performers that variants should be applied only after the simple melody has been heard, otherwise the listener cannot know that they are variants, I play a relatively unadorned version first, treating Haydn s as the adorned one. 62 Now we have entered into the highly speculative realm of musical oratory. Not that he would have had many clients (for the reasons described above), but if Haydn had directed his opus of keyboard sonatas à l usage de l orateur musical, he might have included the following warning and guidelines: AVERTISSEMENT: In the first movement of the Sonata in E, especially in the development and recapitulation, I have provided you with a varied repeat that, due to its clear ornamentation, and particularly its use of strong rhetorical figures of thought, will not fail to have its impact on your listener. But I leave it in your expert hands to reconstruct, so to speak, a somewhat more reserved first run-through of this portion of my composition. The repeat (as printed) will be all the more effective for it. For the first time around, I suggest the following interventions (which, of course, you may adapt to your own judgment): 1. do not forcibly break away from A major (m. 33) to G minor (in which key you pretend to be at a loss) but, using similar melodic figures as I did, build a more conventional and secure progression toward the dominant of home key E; 2. this becomes your usual pre-recapitulatory fermata, shifting the present dominant seventh (m. 50), which (as you will have noticed) I have displaced for emphatic reasons, back to where it belongs ; improvise a transition [Eingang] to the recapitulated theme (you may wish to use the corresponding moments from Sonatas in F Major [No. 23] and A Major [No. 26] of this opus as your model); 3. adjust the transition from the first to the second group accordingly (mm ), since there s no longer any need to revisit our home-key dominant seventh: connect straight from the tonic at the end of the first group (m. 48; compare with the parallel moment in the exposition) to the beginning of the second group, also in the home key (upbeat to m. 55); improvise an Eingang if you feel this is needed;

101 70 Chapter 2 4. finally, take out the suspensio that I added in mm and connect m. 61 straight with m. 67 (if in doubt, check the exposition for reference). The rhetorical advantage of playing an unadorned version first, with Haydn s adorned version in the repeat, is twofold. Not only can I impress my audience with my skills to speak extempore (ex tempore dicendi facultas, which according to Quintilian is the fruit of lengthy practice ), 63 but I also create for myself an enormous dispositional advantage for the delivery of the sonata as a whole: after my narration, that is, the elaborate exposé of my version of the facts, my audience is not exhausted and ready for further proofs, possible refutation of contrary proofs, and my eventual conclusion in the two movements to come a pensive andante and a minuet-finale. Through carefully written out varied reprises, the final movement steadily progresses to a peroratio, the last varied reprise of the minuet, which combines emotion chromatic language reminiscent of the doubts and meanderings in the first movement (y) and reason the delivery of the final chords recapturing the orator s confident tone at the outset of his oration (x). Haydn s Sonatas as Published Examples of Declamations The practice of a repeated narration existed as part of declamatio, as a student exercise or showcase for a skilled orator delivering an extempore speech on a randomly assigned theme. Within this improvised speech, the part after the opening statement, the narratio, was sometimes presented in two versions: the first narratio observes the virtue of brevitas (brevity), while the repetita narratio celebrates the virtue of ornatus (ornament) and brings emotions into play. 64 Although this repeated narration is known in actual oratorical practice, Quintilian advises against a too obvious use of it and never in such a way as to repeat the whole sequence of events. His own declamations do demonstrate a more sophisticated use, but the under lying principle of switching from a strictly narrative style (using short, clear, affirmative sentences) to a more passionate one (with exclamations and questions engaging with the facts in a subjective manner) permeates the narrations of all of them. In his Case of the Beached Corpse, for instance, a pleading father switches from a narrating tone ( To resume, my son sailed through rough seas, past the roaring coasts, and foaming rocks ) to a much more ornamented style, as in the following apostrophe in invocation of the gods: I call on you, the immortal gods, the guardians of the heavens, etc. 65

102 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! 71 I believe that the same pendulum between brevitas and ornatus, between fact and interpretation, between a well-prepared text and an extempore departure from it, would have swung in the delivery of any eighteenth-century keyboard sonata. What then about Haydn s scores? In chapter 1 we observed a transformation from the sonatas of the 1750s, 60s, and early 70s, which circulated in handwritten copies and were primarily intended for use by students or by Haydn himself, to those published for a wider market in the 1770s and 80s. In the earlier group the written text still allowed for new or different ornaments, invited the performer (typically by way of a fermata) to improvise a cadenza, and offered inexhaustible options for varied reprises. The latter group increasingly incorporated these improvisations in the text itself actio and elocutio, previously separated, beginning to cohabit the same printed medium. In this transformation the Nicolaus Esterházy Sonatas of 1774 constitute a clear turning point. The example just given the development and recapitulation in No. 22 is one of many in this set of Haydn trying to get it right on the typeset plates, to show his mastery from invention all the way to delivery at the very first occurrence of certain ideas, repeat sign or not. The performer anonymous, and far removed from the master s physical presence is no longer entrusted with a template, to be elaborated on in performance, but is immediately shown the elaboration of the template, performed by the master who, in his eagerness to please and impress, skips a crucial stage in delivery, that of brevitas. Wilfried Stroh has argued that Cicero s published speeches should be seen as exempla, model pieces of rhetoric, not so much intended for the general public as more specifically for the studying youth, in other words: for rhetorical education. 66 Similarly, I propose to view Haydn s published sonatas as models of music-oratorical declamation, aimed specifically at the growing market of female amateur players in Vienna and abroad. Like Cicero, who edited his orations after their actual delivery to incorporate extempore responses to unexpected twists and turns in the cases at hand, along the way polishing his style or making individual arguments stronger (turning, in Stroh s words, an oration actually delivered into one that could have been delivered ), Haydn, from 1774 onward, strove to offer his target users a complete package, including those aspects that characterize the delivery by a master such as himself, upgrading real circumstances to ideal ones. In this light, we should reassess the yearning that Haydn expressed to Frau von Genzinger that he deeply wished he could play the sonata to her a

103 72 Chapter 2 few times (ein baarmahl [sic]). What would he have played? Looking at the score of the first movement, we are struck by two particular features : an elaborate Eingang before the recapitulation and an unusual coda at the end. The presence itself of the former, a rather standard extempore moment in delivery, is not exceptional, but its meticulous notation is: Haydn s improvisation must have become the less random for it. The latter, an extended coda within the boundaries of a repeat in a first movement sonata form, is unique in Haydn s keyboard sonatas. Assuming that Haydn would have played the whole sonata twice (the minimum suggested by a few times ), would he have played these features literally the same way all four times, two consecutive times for each run-through? In my own performance I deliberately do not play the same Eingang twice and omit the coda the first time around, leaving it for the real end at the repeat. Haydn, I believe, would have endorsed these decisions. But imagine him performing the music for the first time for Frau von Genzinger as she looked over his shoulder. Haydn s own words suggest, if only casually, that the sooner Genzinger became familiar with his new sonata, the better. Why not familiarize her with the one, ideal version, as Haydn wrote it? Why, as she turns back his pages, would he even make her aware of the oratorical pitfall of repeating a transition, a conclusion, an especially strong figure of thought? Surely she will perform the piece herself again and again, and, one would have hoped, more than just a few times. Haydn s Genzinger Sonata, then, is not designed for one special performance in place and time, like a concerto, a mass, or the Applausus Cantata; it is an oration written not how it was delivered nor how it could have been delivered, but to be delivered, enjoyed, and admired over and over again, twice, four times, six times. Here our analogy with Cicero relaxes. The aspiring orator s Carnegie Hall was not a fantasy; it was tough reality. Studying a model and delivering it as if it were written by himself was part of his well-rounded education, which revolved around the three pillars of theory (ars), imitation (imitatio), and practice (exercitatio). 67 Imitation showed theory at work, and through the practice of both, the student became an orator, himself ready for a career at one of the Roman courts or in politics. But for the female performer of Haydn s sonatas there was no theory to study or to practice. There was only imitation. The latter could be practiced, but only to perfect the imitation itself. Some notable exceptions aside (such as Marianne Martines or Charlotte von Greiner), 68 eighteenth-century women remained excluded from the serious study of music theory and composition in the same way that they were discouraged from learning Latin and rhetoric. The role of education was to

104 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! 73 maintain the social order that rested upon it. 69 Why teach oratory if there is no opportunity for public speaking? Nonetheless, teaching oratory appears to be exactly what Haydn does in his published keyboard sonatas. Here, more than in any other genre, he demonstrates to his female student what it takes to address an audience, how to exploit listeners expectations of form (along the way instilling in them what those expectations are), how to apply rhetorical figures effectively, and how to improvise a transition between movements. Playing a concerto in the theater may have been far beyond her imagining, but to practice a Haydn sonata at home and possibly even perform it in the more public context of a salon gathering must have empowered her not only because the exercise would render her more knowledgeable, making her a better listener of others, but also because she herself is offered the opportunity to present herself as a professional musical orator. Unlike the rhetorician s male pupil, however, who, under the watchful eye of his teacher, made the case that Agamemnon should sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia or defended the blind son against his stepmother s accusation of parricide, 70 her training is not geared toward inventing thoughts or words, only in reproducing them. She may be offered a glimpse into the world of the male professional musical orator, on occasion even acting like one, but she will never become one herself. She is a character the only one in the long prosopopoeia that Haydn has cast her in, and it is his thoughts, words, voice, and gestures that she adopts. His profile embossed on the printed page, Haydn remains the undisputed master, imitable at best, but unattainable. In a subtle way, one of Haydn s letters to his business partner, Artaria, reveals the unbridgeable gap between him and his female performers. Agreeing to dedicate the opus (Hob. XVI:35 39, 20 [1780]) to the sisters Katharina and Marianna von Auenbrugger, he proclaimed, in what amounts to his strongest written endorsement of any female performer, their manner of performance [spielarth] and genuine insight in composition [Tonkunst] equal to those of the greatest masters (emphasis mine). 71 The daughters of the respected scholar and physician Leopold von Auenbrugger had studied counterpoint with no less an authority than Salieri; Marianna s own keyboard sonata was published by Artaria a few years later (in ). Yet Haydn stopped conspicuously short of calling them masters in their own right. Surely it was not merely their youth Katharina was twenty-five and Marianna, twenty-one that kept him from doing so. Both deserve to be known in all of Europe through the press (durch offentliche [sic] Blätter), he continued in his letter, significantly addressed to a fellow male professional contact. Their reputation was

105 74 Chapter 2 linked to his, and not the other way around. Self-fashioning a motive considered increasingly relevant in Cicero scholarship 72 was clearly also on Haydn s mind. He may have paid lip service to the sisters ( the approval of the Demoiselles von Auenbrugger is the most important to me ), but his real concern was with the critics the male and professional ones. He spent twothirds of the letter seeking to forestall their objections, urging his publisher to print an extraordinary avertissement, which inspired my own (admittedly slightly anachronistic) avertissement to the Esterházy Sonatas above and which will be the point of departure for chapter 5. In his letters and published scores we ve observed Haydn grow increasingly aware of his public persona as composer, a role that in its historical context wore the robes of an orator. And yet a clear image of Haydn as orator still eludes us. What exactly did he mean when he said that a master must see to his own rights? In his keyboard sonatas, Haydn s finger was clearly on the pulse of changing realities: of a growing market of performers who were not and did not wish to be composers or, given the gender bias of the times, were de facto excluded from that activity; and of performers who were becoming increasingly professional, illustrated by the two Grand Sonatas, in C Major, Hob. XVI:50, and in E Major, Hob. XVI:52, for the concert pianist Theresa Jansen in London. On the issue of repeats, scholarship has pointed to a gradual shift from a mid-eighteenth century rococo desire for symmetry (by which each of the two halves of a sonata form must be repeated for reasons of balance) to a nineteenth-century model of organicism (revealed in composers collective decision more and more often to omit the second repeat sign of a sonata). 73 It is true that, in the first movement of his last big concert sonata, No. 52, Haydn omits the second repeat sign, and that the first movement of the chamber sonata No. 51 in D major (for Mrs. Park) is through-composed altogether, without repeat signs. 74 But these trends, I suggest, reflect not so much a change in conceptual framework as a change in interaction between composer and performer, coupled with the emergence of the new medium of publishing, and, ultimately, the dying out of a rhetorical tradition. In this rhetorical tradition, delivery had always constituted the crowning stage in a continuous, multiphase process. Returning to Grétry s sneer against the conventional repeat in the conventional sonata, written in postrevolutionary Paris, one might expect him to do away with them altogether, both sonata and repeat. Surprisingly, he does not, but proposes the following solution to the composer: The first point of a sonata... can have some very characteristic traits; and after resting on the dominant, who can keep one from taking up these same traits,

106 Delivery, Delivery, Delivery! 75 carried out differently and varied in their direction, their melody and their harmony? It would be, if one may say so, like bringing in proofs for what one has done first. It would be to follow the [course of] nature. 75 In a footnote he expresses his hope that these particular comments would fall into the hands of Haydn, that man par excellence. What novelties would his inexhaustible genius still be capable of introducing to that most ungrateful of all genres of composition, if only he applies himself to it! 76 We do not know if Haydn actually read citoyen Grétry s comments. If he did, he must have dismissed such pseudo-revolutionary talk as naive. Back in Austria, Werigand Rettensteiner, a priest and good friend of Haydn s brother Michael, wrote in his score of Sonatas Nos : The following 3 sonatas were given to me as a present by Herr Joseph Haydn at Esterhasz on June 3rd 1785 during an entertaining, hour-long visit, and they were performed by him. 77 This note, in contrast to Grétry s verbose missive, is rather factual and dry. Still, we are left to wonder: which was the greater gift, the score itself or Haydn s performance of it?

107

108 Bernardon hatte als burlesker Schauspieler in der That unterscheidende Fähigkeit, und alle seine Nachahmer sind noch zu kurz gefallen. As a burlesque actor, Bernardon indeed had superior skill, and all his imitators have come up short. JOSEPH VON SONNENFELS ( /1884), 316 CHAPTER 3 Short Octaves müssen sein! The Viennese Hanswurst and His Comical Travel Reports from Salzburg to Different Countries is the title of the tongue-in-cheek autobiography of Joseph Stranitzky, the creator of the first Hanswurst ( Jack Sausage ), who was to embody the good-for-nothing stock character of the underdog on the Viennese comical stage for more than half a century. In 1712 the real Stranitzky, while working as a registered dentist on the side, exchanged his life as a wandering comic actor for a permanent home in Vienna, obtaining a lease of the Stadttheater am Kärntnertor for exclusive use by his company. He was succeeded by Gottfried Prehauser, who also inherited the copyright over the autobiography, which Prehauser reissued under his own name in the 1760s, at a time when Haydn could have known it. 1 The book opens with Hanswurst s vacation-petitioning speech to his Salzburg farmer-employer Riepel. Self-pity combines with hyperbole as Hanswurst strings together a long line of petty arguments: Shall I say it? / I may just as well sadly tell you: / In our Salzburg land I do not have / a fortunate hand for Kraut- and Sauschneiden / however I lay down or turn the animal / everything just croaks under my hands / besides it always rains here / water just keeps pouring in my shoes / and there are plenty of Krautschnei- 77

109 78 Chapter 3 der / hardly ten come back home / and already forty take their place. 2 Riepel responds by recalling the honor of the guild of Krautschneider ( herb cutters ), which is widely praised for its zeal in the art throughout the whole of Germany. He then implores Hanswurst to be aware of the dangers of presenting himself as a Sauschneider ( pig cutter ) at the door of a foreign household, since, according to the Annals of the Guild, chapter 17, on the Killing of Pigs (Kunst-Buch am 17. Capitl von Sau-tödten), Jews and Turks don t eat pork. But, Riepel asks, my dear Wurstl, if you still want to leave, which country would you go to? And Hanswurst replies: My journey takes me on distant roads / O Riepel, you ll be hard-pressed to understand / because, first, I take the shortest road from Salzburg to Moscow / then straight on to Tyrol / from Tyrol to Sweden / from Sweden to Styria / from Styria to Swabia / after I ve arrived in Swabia / I have Croatia within hand s reach / then I take a left / and have Holland pretty close by / from Holland I go to Westphalen / from Westphalen it s always flat toward Italy / from there I reach Bohemia and Turkey / finally I ll make it to Vienna in Austria / all this shouldn t take longer than one day. 3 The mapping of his route all this shouldn t take more than one day anticipates the loose episodic structure of the novel, which, after the introduction, consists of twelve unnumbered sections narrated in the first person by Hanswurst, with each section given a descriptive title such as Hanns Wurst recounts his departure from Salzburg, as well as a ridiculous assault on a voyager, so as to arrive in Moscow all the more comfortably, or Hanns Wurst arrives in Tyrol from Moscow and recounts the adventures that he encounters over there. Finally, after summarizing what has happened to him in the ten countries along the way, Hanns Wurst arrives in Vienna, stumbles upon the comedy theater, seeks service, is accepted by the troupe as a peasant, and concludes his journey. Clearly, this is absurdist humor, a fact I should have appreciated before declaiming an extended excerpt from one of the chapters ( Yet again Hanswurst embarks on a hopeless journey in Swabia, and what happens to him, is explained in detail ) for an unsuspecting audience of academics. 4 Losing my composure, I had to scramble to make it to the end. The subject matter (snails to be picked and pricked out of their little houses, crawling alive out of one s stomach; the unlikely hero a jack-of-all-trades and his angry employer) and the style (a continuous series of punch lines, inviting frequent laughter) are the ingredients of slapstick comedy, with no sense whatsoever,

110 Short Octaves müssen sein! 79 or, more to the point, with only the appearance of sense. One would like to believe it: the telling sounds so real, provided, of course, the teller manages it with a straight face. Try it yourself, or follow along with a narration in Austrian-dialect rhyme on the website: After I thus decided, I proceeded / and met a farmer at the market place / he took me to his house / and asked me about everything / and I told him everything / that I go by the Salzburg Wurstl / and that I m famous on water and land for my almighty travels / my Wurstl / the farmer spoke / here you ll find only bad things / you won t like it with me / because there s nothing but misery in our country / everywhere children and so little bread / I just lost (I must sadly complain to you) a lawsuit / that has discharged forty snails / in this manner it is impossible to earn one s living. / After he finished saying this / he led me into a large room / which was filled in all corners with snails / snails in the front and snails in the back / there was almost no end to them / there I was to sit / and pick all the time / this work annoyed me so much / that I would have preferred to shoot sable in Moscow / because there at least I was in open air / but here I sat in a dark vault. / One time my farmer wasn t home / and the noble sun shone brightly with its piercing rays / so around noon I took those snails out to our garden / which was well enclosed all around / and I spent my time picking those Swabian oysters / but unfortunately I fell asleep during this work / and didn t wake for two hours / when I finally did, I noticed my true misery / the snails I had picked out in a week / had holed up again because of the sun / trees and branches were full of these slimy guests / everywhere the fence became alive with snails / what effort did I then not put / into tapping the snails right on their horns / until they slid back in their little houses / I do not want to talk about the rest / how my farmer beat me up / six weeks without bread / not in the evening nor in the morning / that s too much / I thought / and still more beating / so I stole several dozens of snails / had them cooked down by the maid / pretty sloppily / and I ate them in heaps with great hurry / as if I were driving a postal carriage while urging on those fast horses / to be honest / I never tasted anything better before / but I overloaded myself / because a hundred snails can quickly harm one s stomach / so I became righteously ill / and lay down on the oven bench / hardly did I begin to doze off / than those snails crawled out of my mouth again / on the bench and on the staircase / they stuck everywhere / into this spectacle came my master the farmer / well, fella! he says / now I ve caught you / from what barrel did you fish these snails away from me? /

111 80 Chapter 3 I ll get you, you rascal / [to make up] for this snail-picking / you ll bind brooms for me / there I had to sit and sweat again / binding 25,000 brooms in a day / that was unbearable torture / those thick twigs totally cut my hands / no way, no Sir! / with time I would have left Swabia with no hands at all / so I left Oberland altogether / embarked on new roads / and moved slowly and quietly toward the chicken trade in Croatia. From 1765 Haydn left us a capriccio for solo keyboard entitled Acht Sauschneider müssen seyn, or It takes eight pig cutters. Fig. 3.1 shows the title page of Haydn s manuscript with both the date and the designation marked in his hand. This extraordinary piece has captured the attention of all modern-day authors on Haydn s keyboard music, who invariably stress its forward-looking features. Ulrich Leisinger writes that with 368 bars, the capriccio shatters anything that previously existed in Haydn s keyboard oeuvre and adds that the compositional achievement gains all the more significance if one realizes that this extensive work sprang forth from a single folk Fig Title page of Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, autograph. From a copy in the Gisella Selden-Goth Collection: Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

112 Short Octaves müssen sein! 81 tune-like theme. 5 A. Peter Brown calls the capriccio a watershed, no less, in the history of keyboard music, not only for its forward-looking harmonic language but also for its effective use of sonorities. 6 László Somfai similarly considers it a turning point in Haydn s composition of keyboard music, pointing to a way forward that was partly illuminated by the writings of C. P. E. Bach. Brown and Somfai share this explicit association with Emanuel Bach, the former proposing a connection with his teachings on free fantasy, the latter with his rondo form. 7 The turning point that Somfai observes is away from the early divertimento and partita sonatas to a period of inner workshop experimentation, paving the way to his mature piano music and true contribution to the Classical style in this genre. Had Haydn continued in the previous style, no doubt he could have composed a number of very pleasant and fluent works that would have surpassed those composed by Wagenseil in Vienna. 8 But Haydn had different ambitions. Departing from the typical historiography of a repertoire in which discoveries of turning points and new directions are declared and elaborated upon, I suggest taking a more conservative, though hopefully no less exciting approach. The Capriccio, rather than looking forward, reconnects with Haydn s erstwhile activities in the 1750s as a theatrical collaborator with the comic genius Johann Joseph Kurz some ten years earlier. Stranitzky s godchild, Kurz was too young to be chosen as the successor-hanswurst (Stranitzky died in 1726, when Kurz was barely twelve), but, adopting the stage name of Bernardon, he nonetheless grew up to become a formidable competitor for the official Hanswurst, Gottfried Prehauser, with whom Bernardon eventually shared the stage. 9 The roots of the piece, I suggest, are thus quintessential Viennese or Austrian. Although Haydn may have acknowledged that whoever knows me well will find that I have Emanuel Bach much to thank for, 10 he had no need to look north for any guidance in the Capriccio s fantastic style and execution. Furthermore, while keyboard-inspired effects are very much at its core, the true context of the Capriccio is not the salon or the harpsichord lesson, but the comic stage or the rehearsal room. The Capriccio is an exercise in musical pantomime, and the qualifier musical is just that: the emphasis remains on pantomime. The keyboardist himself is also the actor: Haydn and Bernardon are melded in one keyboard-playing persona. Nor is the Capriccio unique in Haydn s keyboard output. During a well-humored hour in 1789, perhaps nostalgic for the old days, Haydn composed the C Major Fantasy, Hob. XVII:4, which provides an intriguing postscript to our story. As in chapter 2, improvisation is a keyword here not, however, be-

113 82 Chapter 3 cause of the improvisational challenges that a finished script poses to the performer, but in a pre-score or scoreless context a context that has traditionally been stressed more for Mozart and his phenomenal ability to improvise variations on any given theme than for Haydn. 11 But to evoke comic theater and the world of Bernardon or Hanswurst is to evoke extempore performance, or, to use the contemporary Austrian term, acting or playing aus dem Stegreif: Off-the-cuff allusions to recent events, the use of vulgar gestures and sexual innuendo to spice up routines, bantering back and forth with the audience such improvisation was standard at the Kärtnertor. 12 The Capriccio is a reflection of what Haydn might have improvised, a rambunctious Bernardon real or imagined urging him on. This is improvisation at its purest or rawest. It is no surprise that, in reaction to Bernardon s theatrical productions, the Habsburg Empire issued a series of decrees aimed at censoring the vulgarity of improvised comedy. 13 In the politics of music publishing, I will contend that the 1788 print of Haydn s Sauschneider Capriccio carried with it a degree of censorship as well. To draw such a conclusion, we must look at the eighteenth-century Viennese harpsichord, with its characteristic short octave ; the text of the Sauschneider song, not just as a tune, but also as a narrative that needs to be performed or pantomimed; Hanswurst, the comic figure par excellence, with his signature costume of a Salzburg Sauschneider; and, finally, Haydn s contacts with Bernardon, recounted with great fondness by the elder composer to his biographers Griesinger and Dies. None of these factors is unknown in the literature, 14 but it is the eye-opening feature of the Viennese short octave that unlocks and draws them together. The Viennese Short Octave Ever since Horst Walter s pair of essays (1970 and 1972) on Haydn s keyboards, scholars have been aware that three of Haydn s solo keyboard pieces can be played only on a keyboard with a short octave of some sort: the E Minor Sonata, Hob. XVI:47, the A Major Variations, Hob. XVII:2, and our Sauschneider Capriccio, Hob. XVII:1. This keyboard has generally been assumed to be a harpsichord. Sonja Gerlach, in her 2006 JHW edition of the Klavierstücke, has expanded our awareness to include Haydn s only four-hand keyboard work, the Divertimento Il maestro e lo scolare, Hob. XVIIa:1. Each work calls for stretches in the left hand that are otherwise unplayable. The sense that these four works form a unique group has been so strong

114 Short Octaves müssen sein! 83 that the only certain date, that of 1765 for Hob. XVII:1 (as marked on the autograph), has become a terminus ad quem for the other three. Together they have been considered testimonials of Haydn s access to a very specific or rare instrument such as one finds occasionally in a museum as a curiosity. 15 And, so the reasoning continues, if the instrument was indeed specific, then Haydn s writing for it would have been isolated in time too. Ironically, it has taken the efforts of a curator at a museum, Alfons Huber, to put the eighteenth-century Austrian harpsichord, with its idiomatic Viennese multiple-broken octave, back on the map, most significantly through a 1997 symposium and the subsequent publication in 2001 of a lavish volume of essays and photographs. 16 Huber lists nine extant instruments one spinet, seven harpsichords, and one clavichord with the short octave, all of them dated between the late seventeenth century and Richard Maunder, who selected a photo of the last, a 1755 Johann Leydecker harpsichord, for the cover of his influential 1998 book, describes seven extant harpsichords by Austrian or Bohemian makers, all but one of which have the short octave (to revert to the more colloquial term). The exception is a Mathias Blum of 1778, which has a full chromatic five-octave keyboard. There are no extant fortepianos with the short octave, for the simple reason that none predate 1780 or so, when short octaves would have become old-fashioned and rare. Yet, as late as 1793, an advertisement was printed in Vienna for a clavichord with French and one with broken keyboard (ein Clavier mit französischen, und eines mit gebrochenen Manuale), 17 so the memory of them would still have been alive. Significantly, the ad contrasts French (for chromatic, originally the exotic kind) with broken. In earlier Viennese advertisements, the normal keyboard, that is, one not specified as French, would have been the one with the broken octave. All in all, according to the current scholarly consensus, the multiple broken octave was the norm in Austria and Bohemia from before 1700 all the way to 1770 and beyond. 18 For a proper musician s perspective, it may be worth recalling a comment made by Mozart in a portion of his famous letter of October 17, 1777, from the German town of Augsburg to his father in Austrian Salzburg. This is the letter that is so often quoted for Mozart s comments on the fortepianos by Johann Andreas Stein. 19 But toward the end of the letter, in a less familiar part, Wolfgang relates his visit to a church to check out one of Stein s organs. It had taken some convincing on Mozart s part, given Stein s skepticism: What? A man like yourself, such a great keyboardist [Clavierist] wants to play on an instrument where there s no douceur, no expression, no piano, nor forte, but which is always the same? Nonetheless, they did go to the

115 84 Chapter 3 church, and Mozart confides to his father that once seated at the instrument, something threw him off: At first the pedal seemed a bit strange to me because it wasn t broken. It started with C, then D, E, in one row. With us, though, D and E are above, as E and F here. But I soon got the hang of it. 20 Mozart had to get used to what we consider normal. Moreover, the broken features that he describes with D and E as sharp keys match the basic constellation of the Viennese short octave. 21 Examining the Viennese short octave in closer detail (plate 1), we see two views: an overhead drawing as well as an actual photograph that captures a player s perspective. Available keys for the lowest octave from F to FF in fact span the distance of a fourth. Represented are the more important diatonic bass notes C, GG, and AA as well as both BB and BB (the latter as the third part of a lower rather than upper key). The remaining diatonic D and E have been moved up, higher than the upper-demarcation F, and share the shorter part of an upper key with F and G, respectively. There is no E, AA, D, or GG (in decreasing order within the circle of fifths). To develop a topographical feel for the keys, imagine playing F and G as octaves with their higher counterparts. Though you would have to approach them deep in the keyboard, they can still be played with the regular fingering of 1 5 (in descending order). For most other octaves, however, the physical feeling becomes that of a sixth. Most comfortable are e E and d D, with an obvious fingering of 1 4. Less comfortable is B BB, with a preferred fingering (though less obvious) of 2 5. By far most comfortable is c C, where a mental reconceptualizing of the octave as a physical sixth seems least necessary, the span of natural keys under the left hand instead feeling like a miniature octave, regularly fingerable by 1 5. (Imagine a short cut from C to F, then continuing on over G, A, and B to c.) Tricky again are B BB and A AA which in reality are fifths, to be fingered either by 2 5 or 1 5. AA requires more precision than BB, since it is the middle part of a triple-broken key. The twist in the lower part of one s hand confuses the sensation of a fifth, adding a deep dimension to one s perception of space: do we feel a straight-line fifth or some strangely outward-curving sixth to accommodate the presence of a BB, somewhere between AA and C? Contrastingly anchored and firmly down-to-earth are G GG and F FF, unambiguously to be played by 2 5. Feeling like fourths, they project the power of an octave, while keeping the thumb available for a possible tenth. This impulse to view the Viennese short octave top down, that is, from the familiar topography of the higher than F register down to those extra notes down below, is accompanied, not coincidentally, by a focus on oc-

116 Short Octaves müssen sein! 85 taves. Regardless of the idiomatic Viennese version, the historical origins of a short octave must have been a builder s solution to a practical problem: how to allow more strings to be plucked within the confines of an existing construction or case. 22 A musician s desire to have more bass would naturally show itself in increased double bass support through exactly those octaves that we have been describing. Perusal of the early to mid-eighteenth-century Viennese repertoire by Johann Joseph Fux and his two famous pupils Gottlieb Muffat and Georg Christoph Wagenseil (to name three non-haydn composers that I have actually played and felt ) reveals well-chosen moments that feature broken keys. In ex. 3.1a, at the end of a Wagenseil minuet, bass joins tenor to mark a final cadence. (In this and the following examples, the extraordinary notes, i.e., those that require special short-octave treatment, have been put in little squares.) These low octaves fingered most comfortably as 1 4 (for the D octave) and 2 5 (for the lowest G octave) lend appropriate gravity to the final chords of the piece. For the most part and my observation is based on his two sets of Six Harpsichord Divertimentos, op. 1 (1753) and op. 2 (1755) Wagenseil s venturing into the short octave revolves around these kinds of octaves at particularly significant moments, either gestural or structural. This is true also for ex. 3.1b, where a single tonic E is arrived at from its mediant above, which on a short octave corresponds to the peculiar step backward from the long and deep key of G to its short front neighbor E. There s a discrepancy here between the notes physical position on the keyboard (or visual space ) and the conditioned perception in Western music theory of E being lower than G ( aural space ). Heightened by the right hand s regular trajectory of the same pitches, this moment of self-consciousness (which, I suspect, is never quite lost, even after many years of experience on the instrument) is delightfully appropriate just before this final note of a complete movement, deserving of a deliberate isolation in time. (Imagine a short delay before an all the more deliberately timed final note: not too short, not too long but exactly right.) Thus, the cut key especially when played with one and the same finger (I would suggest 3, coming from 1 on the fifth above) does not just inspire but literally forces the keyboardist into accurate timing and articulation. Now compare this with ex. 3.1c. In the closing bar of an andantino section from the same sonata, we see the same shift on the same broken key B acting as a pivot between G and E. We are firmly grounded in E, which we have been playing for almost two bars as the lower note of alternating octaves. Earlier we locked into the trochaic pulse of a siciliano (long quarter

117 86 Chapter 3 Ex (a) Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Divertimento Op. 2 No. 2 (WV 53), third movement, mm. 35 end; (b) Wagenseil, Divertimento Op. 2 No. 6 (WV 33), first movement, mm. 89 end; (c) Wagenseil, Divertimento Op. 2 No. 6 (WV 33), third movement, mm ; (d) Johann Joseph Fux, Suite ( Parthie ) in G Minor (E 117), first movement, mm short eighth). Now, loosely alternating fourth finger with thumb, we enjoy this postcadential moment of relaxation, simplicity, and rest. Then comes m. 16. On a French (or chromatic) keyboard, you would have played the lefthand arpeggio as one overall gesture toward the root, E, fingered by 5. On a Viennese (or short-octave) keyboard, however, your fourth finger temporarily points forward from E to G, then immediately moves back to E, this back-and-forth movement exactly mirroring the siciliano pulse of a quarter note followed by an eighth, into which you are now again as you prepare to resume the theme either in the tonic (the repeat of the A section) or dominant (the continuation to the B section). Gently but firmly, the short octave leads the way to a continued siciliano.

118 Short Octaves müssen sein! 87 More subtle still, but similarly exquisite, is m. 4 of Haydn s E Minor Sonata, Hob. XVI:47 (see ex. 3.2a, which provides the broader context for ex. 1.6, discussed in chapter 1). Right and left hands play in unison. But where the right hand closes off the opening phrase downward toward the low repeated E s (the deepest notes so far), the left hand starts tiptoeing from a regular G (for which I use a thumb, to establish a secure anchor point or good note on the downbeat) first to the longer part of a broken key just a half step below for the F (although from the player s perspective, the sensation of physical direction is to the front rather than to the left ), then one step up again (that is, to the right and retreating backward ) to a shorter key part for E. This complex choreography yields an elegant result. Though playing the same pitches, the left hand s movement, as if in counterpoint with the right, adds lightness and springiness to what would otherwise be a straight downward inflection. Thus, the left hand (as in the previous Wagenseil example) anticipates the reiteration of the theme, again in siciliano rhythm, in the high register: it provides the physical impetus ( up again ) to the Eingang that the right delivers (the embellished upbeat to the theme), both covering the space from the lowest E to the high b 2. (I invite the reader to actively rehearse the described choreography, using plate 1 as a mute keyboard.) The prize for short octave choreography, however, would have to go to Variation VI from Haydn s A Major Variations, Hob. XVII:2 (ex. 3.2b). As the left hand enjoys the um-pa-pa of a waltz, it alternates between tonic and dominant, the former locked in one basic position, the latter at its turn alternating between its inversion and its root position. But the movement from A on a short-octave keyboard is twice by single step only: up for G and down for E. The third and fourth fingers thus literally become the two feet (right and left respectively) in a swirling four-measure waltz pattern, to physical delight of the player. (All these described choreographies, it should be reminded, may be appreciated as video on the website.) In fact, this whole set of twenty variations Haydn s longest takes on a fascinating new dimension when played on a short-octave keyboard. In Variation X, for example, the unisons on E in m. 164 at first sight do not make sense, hence an editorial ossia version with full octaves in the JHW score (not reproduced here). But it is exactly the contrast between three clumsy octaves on G in m. 162 and the ease of playing two single Es two bars later that creates rhetorical interest. A downward-pointing index is not just easy: it conveys authority. 23 This boost of confidence results in a full exploration of octaves over the half-cadential point of the two-phrase

119 88 Chapter 3 period in the following Variation XI, chromatically descending thirds in the upper hand providing fitting commentary: this is difficult, risky handtwisting and -turning. On the other side of the spectrum, consider m. 23 from Haydn s A Major Sonata, Hob. XVI:12 (see ex. 3.2c). 24 Imagine playing the low AA with your fifth finger on the middle part of the second-lowest key. You connect with your second finger on the A one octave higher, leaving comfortable room to grab c with the first. The overall span of your hand is now more or less an octave, almost exactly the same distance of your next hand position (starting on the second eighth note of m. 23) for e a c 1 e 1. Finger pedaling for each of the hand positions is not only possible: it is to be savored. On a chromatic keyboard, m. 23 would have required at least three different hand positions, and it would not have been immediately clear exactly which positions. On a short-octave keyboard, not only are the two positions instantly recognizable by the player, but they also fit comfortably under the hand. Technically speaking, these examples do not require the option of a Viennese short octave. They may be played on a regular keyboard, but and this is the point not just as well. Traditional literature on Haydn, but also more recent literature on the Viennese harpsichord and its repertoire, 25 has tended to focus attention on extraordinary moments those spectacularly wide spans that are otherwise impossible to play. 26 (Ex. 3.1d, from a Fux suite, is such a case; Haydn s Variations IX and XX in ex. 3.2b are two more.) 27 Such a focus on the extraordinary, however, risks clouding the more typical moments such as the ones we have selected which reflect a mere handful among countless others where the relevance of the short octave, from a tactile-performative point of view, may be subtle but real. Sometimes the line between rhetorical purpose and mere reality is very fine indeed. Compare Variation XI (ex. 3.2b) and ex. 3.2d, from the finale of the Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI:46. Playing those various octaves in Variation XI complements in a physical sense the intellectual difficulty of the chromaticisms in the right hand. On the other hand, what is the meaning of the strange jump of the E octave in m. 75 of ex. 3.2d? The result may look difficult, but the reason must be pragmatic: there simply was no low E on Haydn s harpsichord. Acht Sauschneider müssen sein! In anticipation of my 2007 recordings, I commissioned Martin Pühringer, a gifted Austrian instrument maker, to construct a replica of the 1755 Johann

120 Ex (a) Sonata in E Minor, Hob. XVI:47, first movement (Adagio), mm. 1 12; (b) Variations in A Major, Hob. XVII:2: Var. VI, mm ; Var. IX, mm ; Var. X, mm ; Var. XI, mm ; Var. XX, mm ; (c) Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI:12, first movement, mm ; (d) Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI:46, third movement, mm

121 90 Chapter 3 Ex. 3.2 (continued) Leydecker harpsichord, presently in Graz. No similar construction project had been executed before: this was to be the first modern-day replica of an eighteenth-century Austrian harpsichord with a multiple broken octave keyboard. In August 2005 I was about to see it in almost-finished condition for the first time; a few days later I was to play its inaugural concert in the Music Room of Eszterháza (Fertöd, Hungary). In my excitement I had programmed not just one of the traditional short octave pieces, but two: Haydn s A-Major Variations, Hob. XVII:2, and his Sauschneider Capriccio pieces that, until then, I had never been able to really play without the instrument for which they were written. But while practicing in Pühringer s workshop, as he was still hammering and sawing away at the instrument, I panicked. 28 Fig. 3.2 shows why. We know about octaves actually being sixths, fifths, or fourths. This is no problem for the occasional octave or chord as

122 Short Octaves müssen sein! 91 Fig Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm , Henle score (ed. Sonja Gerlach), with author s annotations. in the examples typical of the repertoire discussed above but it poses a major challenge if, as here, one has to jump down with one s left hand every two bars, then even every single bar, toward elusive physical shapes somewhere down below twenty consecutive times. Annotations in the facsimile of my score reflect my panic in those early moments: fingerings, squares (for

123 92 Chapter 3 TABLE 3.1. Twenty consecutive octaves Short-octave ( Viennese ) keyboard Chromatic ( French ) keyboard Fingering Interval Shape Fingering Interval Shape m. 247, F 5 2 fourth low low 5 1 octave low low m. 249, F 5 1 eighth up/back up 5 1 octave up up m. 251, G 5 2 fourth low/front low 5 1 octave low low m. 252, E 4 1 sixth up/front low 5 1 octave low low m. 253, F 5 2 fourth low low/front 5 1 octave low low m. 254, D 4 1 sixth up/front low 5 1 octave low low m. 255, B 4 1 fifth low/back low 5 1 octave low low m. 256, C 5 1 fifth low/front low 5 1 octave low low m. 257, A 5 2 fifth low/middle low 5 1 octave low low m. 258, B 4 1 fifth low/back low 5 1 octave low low m. 259, E 4 1 sixth up/front low 5 1 octave low low m. 260, A 5 2 fifth low/middle low 5 1 octave low low m. 261, D 4 1 sixth up/front low 5 1 octave low low m. 262, G 5 2 fourth low/front low 5 1 octave low low m. 263, E 4 1 sixth up/front low 5 1 octave low low m. 263, A 5 2 fifth low/middle low 5 1 octave low low m. 264, D 4 1 sixth up/front low 5 1 octave low low m. 264, C 5 1 fifth low/front low 5 1 octave low low m. 265, B 4 1 fifth low/back low 5 1 octave low low m. 265, G 5 2 fourth low/front low 5 1 octave low low any broken-key part) and arrow marks (to the back or to the front the key) intending to compensate for utter confusion. Table 3.1 lists the octaves and their fingerings, interval spans, and shapes ( low and up for diatonic and chromatic, or white and black keys; front, middle, and back referring to the specific location on the key). Finding regularity seemed impossible. To emphasize this point, the table includes a comparison with a chromatic or French keyboard where the only slightly inconsistent moment is the

124 Short Octaves müssen sein! 93 F octave, played on upper keys, but with the same fingering and exactly the same hand shape. On the short-octave or Viennese keyboard, in contrast, we are hard pressed to find any regularity at all. From a physical-technical point of view, apart perhaps from octaves E and D intriguingly, three times in this order, and twice with A in between unpredictability seems the name of the game. (Octaves D and E are printed in bold in table 3.1. A videoperformance of me stumbling my way through the passage, as I did back then, may be found on the website.) I almost canceled my performance. But then I started to wonder if these difficulties were, in fact, part of the game. What if Haydn was taking a kind of perverse delight in presenting the player with a built-in handicap? (The obvious analogy here is the al rovescio example from chapter 2.) The actor Johann Bergopzoomer, from the school of Bernardon and a very popular tragedian at the Burgtheater, was known to keep a piece of soap in his mouth so as to visibly foam from anger and to have put chickpeas in his shoes in order to limp convincingly onstage as Richard III. 29 Perhaps these elusive parts of keys were my chickpeas, and hitting them correctly was meant to be difficult. Resigning myself to being the butt of Haydn s prank, I stopped fretting over the sounds of wrong notes and started looking at the broken parts as physical targets: to hit any of them would be a victory. To bring the audience in on the challenge and no doubt elicit some sympathy I disclosed the full story during my pre-concert remarks. In 1932 the ethnologist Karl Klier recorded sixteen versions of the Sauschneider song from different regions in Austria and in different dialects. Table 3.2 lists their translations. Surprisingly, given Haydn s title, not one of these versions begin with the actual line It takes eight Sauschneider. In fact, only in No. 14 is the word Sauschneider mentioned at all, first as part of an opening question, almost certainly sung by a single reciter ( How many Sauschneider does it take to cut a bull? ), then as a confirmation at the end of the answer by the larger group: Two in the back, two in the front; two to hold the ears; one puts in the knife: yes, seven Sauschneider it takes! A Sauschneider or castrator porcorum, also known as Schweinschneider or Viehschneider, was skilled in the art of castration, cutting or castrating not only swine but also cattle and horses, both male and female. 30 Setting out to the country (ins Land) from Lungau (the southeast region of Salzburg Land), a downy white eagle s feather proudly attached to his hat, a master (Meister) Sauschneider would travel on foot with one, two, or three servants (Knechte) to locations all around the Austrian-Hungarian Habsburg Empire, reaching Carinthia, Tyrol, Styria, Austria, Bayern, Saxony, Bohemia, Mo-

125 TABLE 3.2. Sixteen versions of the Sauschneider song, as recorded by Karl Klier (1932) 1. But it takes nine, / To castrate a boar, / Two in front and two in the back, / Two cut and two bind, / And one cashes in [streicht ein], / But nine it does take. 2. It takes eight of them, / To castrate a boar. / Two in front, two in the back, / Two to cut, two to bind. / Yes, eight of them it does take. 3. It takes nine of them, / To castrate a boar. / Two in front, two in the back, / Two to hold, two to bind, / And one makes the cut, / Yes, nine of them it does take. 4. Eight of them it takes, / To castrate a boar. / Two in front, two in the back. / Two to cut, two to bind; / Eight of them it takes. 5. Nine of them it takes, / To castrate a boar: / One makes the cut, / Nine of them it does take. [fine] / Two in front, two in the back, / Two hold, two bind, and [da capo] 6. Yes, four it takes, / To castrate a boar; / Two in front and two in the back, / Two to cut and two to bind; / Yes, four it does take. 7. Eight of them it takes, / To castrate a boar. / Two in front, two in the back. / Two to cut and two to bind. / Eight of them it takes. 8. Nine of them it takes, / To castrate a boar: / Two in front and two in the back, / Two to hold, two to bind/ And one makes the cut; / Nine of them it takes, / To castrate a boar. 9. To castrate a boar, / It takes nine of them: / Three in the back and three in front, / One below, one above, / And one makes the cut. 10. Nine of them it takes, / To castrate a boar; / Two to lift and two to bind, / Two in front and two in the back, / And one makes the cut, / Yes nine of them it does take, / To castrate a boar. 11. Nine of them it takes, / To castrate a boar; / Two in front and two in the back, / Two hold, two bind, / And one makes the cut. / Yes, nine of them it takes. 12. Nine of them, he says, / It takes, he says, / To castrate, he says, / A boar, he says: / Two in front, he says, / And two in the back, he says, / Two hold him, he says, / And two bind him, he says, / And there s one, he says, / Who makes the cut, he says, / Nine of them, he says, / It does take! 13. Nine of them it takes, / To castrate a boar, / Two in front and two in the back, / Two lift and two bind, / And one makes the cut, / Nine of them it takes. 14. How many Sauschneider does it take / to castrate a bull? / Two in the back, two in front, / Two hold him by the ears, / One puts in the knife, / Seven Sauschneider it takes. 15. Nine of them it takes, / To castrate a boar. / Two in front and two in the back, / Two to hold and two to bind, / And one makes the cut, / Nine of them it does take! // Eight of them it takes, / To castrate a boar. / Two in front and two in the back, / Two to hold, one to bind, /

126 Short Octaves müssen sein! 95 And one makes the cut: / Eight of them it does take! // Seven of them it takes, / To castrate a boar. / Two in front and two in the back, / One to hold and one to bind, / And one makes the cut: / Seven of them it does take! // Six of them it takes, / To castrate a boar. / Two in front and one in the back, / One to hold, one to bind, / And one makes the cut: / Six of them it does take! // Five of them it takes, / To castrate a boar. / One in front and one in the back, / One to hold, one to bind, / And one makes the cut: / Five of them it does take! // Four of them it takes, / To castrate a boar. / One in front and one in the back, / One to hold and bind, / And one makes the cut: / Four of them it does take! // Three of them it takes, / To castrate a boar. / One in front and back, / One to hold and bind, / And one makes the cut: / Three of them it does take! // Two of them it takes, / To castrate a boar. / One in front and back, / He holds and binds, / And one makes the cut: / Two of them it does take! // It really just takes one, / To castrate a boar. / He s in front and in the back, / He does the holding and binding, / And then he makes the cut: / Yes, one it does take! 16. Twelve of them it takes, / To castrate a little bull [das Stierl]; / The first in front, the second in the back, / The third holds it, the fourth binds. / Yes, twelve of them it takes, / To castrate a little bull. // Twelve of them it takes, / To castrate a little bull; / The fifth cuts it, / The sixth flays it, / The seventh pierces it, / The eighth brings it. / Yes, twelve it takes, / To castrate a little bull. // Twelve of them it takes, / To castrate a little bull; / The ninth nitwits [fritzt], / The tenth makes a loop, / The eleventh sh[its], / The twelfth stinks. / Yes, twelve of them it takes, / To castrate a little bull. ravia, and Hungary, and all the way to the Turkish border. 31 They were known not to travel by customary road but took impressive shortcuts which they don t easily miss through meadows and fields, covering up to forty kilometers a day on foot. 32 Once the master castrator and his servants arrived at their assigned district (Gau or Gai), they went from house to house, announcing their presence by shouting Sau-Sau-Sauschneider san da! (durchschreien), or by posting themselves next to the local church (kirchensteh n) on an important holiday to take appointments from the farmers. From contemporary reports we know that these Lungauer men (in the 1760s, some four hundred of them) were highly respected for their skill, efficiency, and knowledge. Castrating a hundred or more animals a day for a variety of reasons (increased meat, decreased odor, calmer behavior), they offered additional veterinary advice and care. 33 But the signature skill of the Sauschneider was the cut or the actual act of either separating ovary from oviduct (for the females) or removing testicles from scrotum (for the males). Bloodless but more painful methods included crushing the spermatic cord or strangulating the scrotum. 34 In the sixteen versions of the song, the number of Sauschneider it takes to do the job ranges from a realistic four to a wildly exaggerated twelve. But

127 96 Chapter 3 in the large majority of versions the actual cut is made by only one, presumably the Meister Sauschneider. Exceptions are found in versions 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7, where the cutting is merely one activity among several rather than the climax. 35 Though these activities would surely have happened more or less simultaneously, the comedy of the overall scene lies in the contrast between how many it takes to immobilize the struggling animal (two in the front, two in the back, two to hold, two to bind: cf. versions 3, 8, 10, 12, 13, and 15) and the one who makes the cut, or in the flurry of activity surrounding what is, in the end, a simple and swift operation. All but two versions feature a boar (Saubär). Removing testicles obviously stirs one s imagination more than separating ovaries. (The two exceptions feature a bull.) The team s activities preventing escape, holding the animal still, binding its legs, making the cut are generally consistent over all the versions. But the prize for Hanswurstian silliness goes to version 16, in which, following the eleventh Sauschneider, the list of useful activities degenerates into shitting and stinking. (Or would comedy also here be closer to reality than decorum admits?) Fig. 3.3 is an early twentieth-century photograph of a castration, albeit of a sow. Set in Haydn s Burgenland, at the Fig Castration of a sow in Burgenland. Photo reproduced from Wirnsperger and Gappmayer (1989), 84, by permission of the Lungauer Landschaftsmuseum.

128 Short Octaves müssen sein! 97 moment suprême, we see the master with hat and feather swinging his right hand to his pocket, about to grab his knife, while his assistant, wearing identical clothing but no hat, 36 holds the animal s tightly bound legs in the back and two helpers, presumably workers from the local farm, hold the animal still in the front. Before considering which version Haydn might have worked from, we should address where and how the song would have existed around 1765 or before, if, indeed it did at all. It has been generally assumed that Haydn worked from an existing folk tune and that this Sauschneiderlied was a wellknown Ständelied or profession s song (profession here closely linked to social rank). 37 That the young Mozart used the same tune just one year later for his Gallimathias musicum, K. 32, has reinforced this assumption. By logic of association, like the song that represents them, Sauschneider have been presumed to be funny people (lustige Leute), in some endearing, selfreferential kind of way. 38 Two historical documents, however, give these widely held assumptions an altogether different spin. In his 1811 Most Recent Journey through Austria, Franz Gartori analyzes the character (Volkscharakter) of the Lungauer: On the whole, someone from Lungau is very strong, well-built, and hard- working, but at the same time obstinate, stubborn, brutish, and rude, without any of the well-headedness, cheerfulness of spirit, and natural mother wit that so favorably characterize the other inhabitants of Salzburg. In this respect Schweinschneider and returning soldiers often make an exception, because they bring home their better education from abroad [aus dem Auslande]. 39 Sauschneider were technically foreigners, not cheerful by nature, but bringing better education from abroad, that is, from the rest of Austria. Coming from the independent ecclesiastical princedom of Salzburg, they had to carry imperial passports indicating their precise travel destination, both on their way out (ins Lande) and on their way back (vom Lande). Nowadays we would call them seasonal migrant workers. But their well-appreciated and well-paid expertise might actually have been an irritant to many Habsburg Austrians. An often cited but typically misunderstood second document, the 1775 imperial Privilege on the Distribution and Remuneration of Animal Castration (Patent... die Verbreitung und Belohnung der Viehschneidkunst betref[f]end), was not intended to confirm the traditional rights of the Lungau Sauschneider; on the contrary, by this decree Empress Maria Theresa encouraged her own devoted subjects and in particular every common landowner to possess or learn the skill of castrating his cattle himself. 40 Various premiums are promised to masters for accept-

129 98 Chapter 3 ing pupils, and to pupils as an incentive to graduate. But the trade should not be learned from the experienced Lungau Sauschneider who are maligned in the document as those foreign Viehschneider who extract a considerable sum of money from our state every year but from Viehschneider in our archduchy Styria, whose multiyear experience is made to sound attractive to the local prospective pupil and whose complete names are listed a meager fourteen of them as opposed to the some four hundred discredited specialist-masters from Lungau. 41 But economic retribution the document speaks in rather unsophisticated terms of money drainage (Geldausschleppung) apparently required some serious cultural reeducating on the part of Her Majesty s Austrian subjects too. Rather stunningly, the fourth clause reads: We proclaim, fourthly, that Viehschneiden shall in no respect be considered dishonorable but instead looked upon as a praiseworthy profession useful to one s fellow citizen as well as to the whole fatherland; that anyone who undertakes to disdain or insult his fellow subject for the execution of his skill in the cutting [Viehschnitt] of any kind of domestic animal, apart from a personal apology, will be fined an additional 3 Reichsthaler or according to circumstances will be condemned to a more severe fine or to corporal punishment. 42 This imperial decree did not stop a continued tradition of Lungau Sauschneider well into the twentieth century nor, as Klier s study demonstrates, the continued singing of the Sauschneider song. In Haydn s hands around 1765, if it existed as a folk song already, it would have embodied a whole array of connotations, from disdain and self-irony to plain old silliness and ridicule. Considering Klier s many versions of the song, it is noteworthy that Haydn s corresponds with none in particular. The advantage of starting with many nine in version 15 or twelve in 16 is to create a version in which, over the course of subsequent verses, the number of Sauschneider either increases or decreases. Typically sung in a group, the constantly adjusting text keeps singers on their toes, inevitable mishaps adding fresh opportunities for hilarity. 43 Goebels (1982), A. P. Brown (1986, 13 14), and Wirnsperger and Gappmayer (1989, 75) consider Haydn s use of eight Sauschneider in the context of just such a Gesellschaftslied (communal song). For their version of the song, Wirnsperger and Gappmayer even draw on the authority of a [living] Viehschneider originally from Oberweißburg bei St. Michael/Lungau, the very cradle of Sauschneiderkunst:

130 Short Octaves müssen sein! 99 Yes, how many, he says, does it take / to castrate a boar? / Well, eight, he says, it takes / to castrate a boar. / Two in front, two in the back, / two to cut, two to bind, / Indeed, eight, he says, it takes / to castrate a boar. // Well, seven, he says, it takes / to castrate a boar. / Two in front, two in the back, / one holds, one binds, / and one does some cutting at the back. // Well, six, he says, it takes / to castrate a boar. / Two in front, two in the back, / one holds, one binds, / and one does some cutting at the back. // Well, five, he says, it takes / to castrate a boar. / One in front, one in the back, / One holds, one binds, / and one does some cutting at the back. // Well, four, he says, it takes / to castrate a boar. / One in front, one in the back, / one holds and binds, / and one does some cutting at the back. // Well, three, he says, it takes / to castrate a boar. / One holds, one binds, / and one does some cutting at the back. // Well, two, he says, it takes / to castrate a boar. / One captures, holds, and binds, / and one does some cutting at the back. // Today I m just alone / but must still do the job, / must capture and bind, / have to really push myself. / Today I m just alone / but must still do the job. 44 I reproduce this eight-sauschneider version here only reluctantly, since it appears to combine Klier s Nos. 7 (consisting of a single verse with eight) and 15 (nine, decreasing verse by verse to one). In version 15 (see table 3.2) consider how seamlessly the number decreases from nine all the way down to one: Two in front, two in the back, two to hold, two to bind, and one makes the cut (for a total of nine) becomes Two in front, two in the back, two to hold, one to bind, and one makes the cut (for a total of eight); then, gradually, each of the twos decreases to one. When four are remaining (i.e., one number less than the five activities), it is the activities that are gradually combined ( one to hold and bind ) until only one person ends up doing everything. In the decreasing-eight version, however, the number of activities (four plus one) is conspicuously out of sync with the number of men (eight), which results right from the start in a serious undermining of the rhetorical climax of and one makes the cut ideally a delightful reward after making correct numeric changes from verse to verse. 45 These discrepancies suggest a different scenario. The idea of an existing folk song (Volkslied) with eight participants may have entered the cultural consciousness only after 1932, or the date of Klier s investigation, which had in turn been a response to a reappreciation of Haydn s manuscript of the Capriccio and its title, made available through a photograph by the Stiftung Anthony van Hoboken only from 1927 onward. 46 Brown s and Goebels s text proposals may then be explained from a Haydn-invested reflex to identify

131 100 Chapter 3 and along the way reconstruct a folk version of the song in which Haydn s numbers do indeed add up. 47 But Haydn s source may not have been a folk song at all. It is entirely possible that he knew the song from comic theater as a popular Gassenhauer. As such, the tune might have been more composed and tailored to a specific theatrical purpose than we have hitherto assumed. 48 Haydn s Capriccio, then, may be a further elaboration on a staged scene that he and his listeners would have been familiar with and the sheer memory of which would have made them burst out in laughter again. Stranitsky s Hanswurst Folk culture and popular theater meet in Stranitzky s Hanswurst, who in his autobiography proclaims himself a failed Lungau Sauschneider: However I lay down or turn the animal / everything just croaks under my hands. 49 The farmerlike jester may be a universal stock stage character; in Otto Rommel s words, It is fitting that in all cultures the Volksnarr has the traits of a farmer, since his comedy stems from the depths of earthbound vitality. 50 The prototype of a Sauschneider seems particularly well-suited to Viennese audiences: he s a foreigner, speaking the dialect and sociolect of a Lungauer (offering a double layer of comic potential for those who do know the difference and those who don t care), 51 and his special skill, whether he is adept or bumbling, has an irresistible comic air given its titillating sexual connotations. (In one of Stranitzky s plays, Hanswurst exclaims: We d have to cut his worm [Wurm]... I ll quickly run to fetch a Sauschneider: maybe that will bring him back to his senses. ) 52 This Hanswurst is the perfect embodiment of both the komische Gestalt (comical figure or stupidus), that is, the dumb, the crippled, the stutterer, the coward, the greedy, and the like, whose behavior the actor would exaggerate for comic effect, and the Lustigmacher (jester or derisor) who positions himself outside the onstage action, colluding with the audience at the expense of the other characters. 53 He s both an insider and outsider. He s to be laughed at as well as to be laughed with. He likes to play dumb, yet he has hidden skill and talent. Despite the self-satirizing, tongue-in-cheek tone of Stranitzky s The Viennese Hanswurst and His Comical Travel Reports, Stranitzky very likely drew upon his own life experiences in creating his celebrated version of the stock character. During his pre-vienna years he was a freelance actor, wandering from town to town (no doubt well aware of shortcuts), constantly interacting with strangers, seeking new employment, offering dental services on the side, working as part of a team, trying to enhance his popular-

132 Short Octaves müssen sein! 101 ity abroad. He even dresses like the perfect Sauschneider, honoris causa. 54 Plate 2 juxtaposes contemporary color reproductions of A Sauschneider as he sets forth abroad and a Hanswurst dancing to the music of transverse flute and drums, wooden club in hand (here to illustrate a child s game). Each wears a hat (flat in one, pointed in the other), a jacket made of thick cloth (brown and falling straight past the knees in one, red and pompously wide around the hips in the other), thick loden pants (falling below the knees in one, longer but distinctly stopping above the ankles in the other), a belt with suspenders, leather shoes, and blue stockings or a blue jester s collar (Narrenkröse). In his respective dress or costume, each is unambiguously recognizable whether standing next to a church or leaping onto a stage. 55 The Keyboardist as Hanswurst Commentators on Haydn s Sauschneider Capriccio have noted its rondolike structure, marked by refrains or reiterations of the theme, either less or more complete and always in a different key. 56 There are thirteen such iterations: see ex But, as we shall see, an assumed ritornello in C major (m. 114) is in fact the start of a chromatic sequence leading back to the home key of G; and there are other reasons not to call it a separate section. Defined by key, therefore, the Capriccio has twelve sections. Furthermore, if the home key of G is not used to introduce new events but is reserved for the announcements, interjections, summaries, or commentaries of a narrator adopting the same quasi-objective, self-ironizing tone of the Hanswurst excerpts that we read above, the structure of the Capriccio is that of a narrator telling a story in eight episodes (in the literary, non-music-analytical sense), numbered in ex. 3.3 from 8 to 1, matching the ever-fewer Sauschneider verse by verse. 57 Assume, for a moment, that you ve been asked to improvise a capriccio on how many Sauschneider it takes to castrate a boar. You re sitting at a short-octave keyboard. You re asked to make it as visually evocative as possible. Which key (in the sense of the physical entity on a keyboard) would you choose to represent a testicle to be cut? Look again at the photograph of the short octave (plate 1). Two candidates jump out: either D or E. Together, they are the smallest of all keys, both in length and in width. They may be cut from their longer key mates F and G. Consider also the color of their bone tops: in low-light circumstances (which applied almost certainly to Haydn) the skin-bright color of white tends to bleed through from one key part to the other, requiring sharp visual focus to make the cut. (Compare

133 Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, outline

134 Short Octaves müssen sein! 103 the white D/F and E/G keys with their black counterparts C/BB or GG/AA/ BB, where separations are more clearly discernible.) Ex displays what is undoubtedly the moment suprême of Haydn s Capriccio. After 348 bars of what has grown into a perpetuum mobile, the keyboardist assertively calls a halt on a diminished seventh (m. 349). The audience holds its collective breath as the keyboardist seems to hang on to the dissonant E as if for dear life. (Embellishing this fermata would be unthinkable.) Then, with the skill of a master Sauschneider, the keyboardist/ castrator reaches for his knife and after a few swift movements makes the cut, clean and clear (in my case, with a fourth finger, its lowest joint sharply pointed to target). A dubious trophy, the single testicle key D as the lowest and last note of m. 350, lies on the ground. Awe and admiration quickly give way to jubilant celebration (mm. 352 end), with unabashed dancing to that enthusiastic four-note rhythmical figure so typical of such a concluding variation or a climax, in full enjoyment of the physical pleasure of a short octave (playing a sixth instead of an octave). 58 That this celebratory dance is carried by the smallest key of the keyboard (eighteen consecutive times, mm ) only adds to the silliness. To put all this in perspective: until the dance, we ve played this particular key (which, after all, represents a crucial dominant bass note) only twenty times before throughout the entire piece (including the cut) and almost always in the parts reserved for the narrator. Two exceptions are the first verse (where the eight Sauschneider are still full of confidence: used eight times) and the chickpea octave passage (mm , where it s all about not being capable of hitting those cut keys: used three times). This is pure slapstick: Haydn as Mr. Bean. Working with legendary Bernardon in 1750s Vienna, the young Haydn once had to overcome his own inhibitions. He told Carpani that, desperate and out of wit after several unsuccessful attempts to depict a tempest, he turns his hands upside down and clenches his fingers. He makes [the back of] them sweep the keys like two brooms rapidly in opposite direction, like someone doing volate [i.e., glissando]. Bernardon, full of marvel and exceedingly pleased, shouts, Bravissimo! and springs upon the dear maestro s neck, squeezing and kissing him, and exclaiming: That s it, that s it! And so it will be, Haydn replies, but you re strangling me; let me get on with writing it. 59 In another anecdote, Griesinger describes Haydn paying Kurz a visit: The maid was ready to turn him away, because her master, as she said, was studying. How amazed was Haydn when, through the window at the front door, he saw Bernardon, who was standing in front of a large mirror, make

135 104 Chapter 3 all kinds of faces and contort his hands and feet in the most ridiculous positions. These were the studies of Mr. Bernardon. 60 In the Sauschneider Capriccio, I suggest that we are the ones observing Haydn exercise in front of his mirror, polishing his old chops as a comic theater scorer while practicing a few new moves. With unsuspected clarity, our newly constructed short-octave Viennese harpsichord allows us to empathize with Haydn s contortions. Adding to the mix his own suggestive title, including the sociocultural connotations explored in the preceding pages of this chapter, we are now ready to propose a detailed script of a pantomime, starring the keyboardist as sole narrator-actor. The script develops in twelve episodes, conveying the same kind of structural looseness present also in Stranitzky/Hanswurst s autobiographical narrations. We present it here in two manifestations: first, as a concise storyboard, imagining how someone with theatrical interests like Bernardon might have passed along his concepts for each of the episodes to Haydn; then, as an analysis of Haydn s actual settings, music-technical language combining with theatrical imagery, illustrated by analytical reductions of the score (each episode taking up the span of one score example). Our proposed narrative may be best appreciated, finally, through an actual videotaped performance on the website, which features the on and off functions of a spoken commentary. Haydn or the Musical Jester of Court Esterházy and His Take on How Many Sauschneider It Takes To Castrate a Boar Narrator (G major, mm. 1 23) (Hanswurst singing and whistling:) Acht Sauschneider müssen sein, Wenn s an Saubärn woll n schnei n. [fine] Zwo vorn und zwo hint n, Zwo holt n, zwo bint n. [da capo al fine] It takes eight Sauschneider To castrate a boar. [fine] Two in the front and two in the back, Two to hold, two to bind. [da capo al fine]

136 Short Octaves müssen sein! 105 Imagine the courtyard of a farm. Many people are up and about. The Sauschneider are coming! Everyone s excited and wondering: will they be able to cut the 300 pound boar? We know him to be a fierce, easily excitable and irritable animal. Let s sit back and watch. 61 In this Gassenhauer version of the Sauschneider tune, tonic and dominant harmonies alternate in a downbeat-heavy triple meter. The identical outer phrases, labeled a, end with perfect authentic cadences (4, 3, 2, 1 ). In the middle phrase, b, we count and differentiate: two in front, two in the back; two to hold, two to bind 62 four times the same melodic fragment on a dominant seventh, with the left hand poking at the pitch D down below and up high, fingered respectively with 4 (for the cut key below) and the index finger (for the single note in the tenor), with the thumb acting as pivot. Something seems up with D (see ex. 3.4). Verse 1: Eight it takes (D major, mm ) Eight men present themselves for the job. They re strong. They re fast. They unpack and don their gear. The master sharpens his knife. Off to work. It s time to grab the animal. They try to hold it: tighter and tighter, arms around its neck and its back. But just at the moment it seems they ve succeeded in keeping it still, they let go: the animal is just too strong. They re back where they started. Worse: they ve lost one man. We transfer the tune to the bass and sing a in a full four-voice texture, two to a part, for a total of eight. ( Look at us: eight strong men! ) The short octave enables us to play long, heavy upbeat octaves (note the fingering in ex. 3.5) and to grasp wide tenths with little effort in mm and ( If you play an octave, we play a tenth! ) In the b phrase, we demonstrate speed, firing off a few tiratas (fast ascending scales), described by Mattheson as a shot or spear throw. 63 Here, imagine the whipping of ropes, needed later for binding. Mm are preparatory: we test our scalar runs, both in the dominant key of D and back again (somewhat surprisingly, since we barely started) in the home key of G. Not much is at stake melodically, just some parallel tenths and sixths. We take ample time to invert each of the twomeasure-long units: mm become and mm become The two resulting crosses could represent the sharpening of the knife. Then, in m. 49, a sudden shift of gears. ( Let s go! ) Swiftly, shooting off tiratas along the way, pairs of secondary dominants with their respective

137 106 Chapter 3 Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm tonics quickly succeed one another (mm ). They make it up to c 3 in m. 53, mother of dissonances in G major both as 7 (of the dominant seventh) and 4 (suspension over the tonic). At the resolution, b 2 (m. 54), the left hand, as if in need of regaining its grip, sets in motion yet a new sequence of tiratas and secondary dominants. Overtaken by a downward spiral almost literally falling backward from where we came we pass over dominant D and sink all the way to A minor. We re back to square one. Worse: we ve lost one man. Verse 2: Seven it takes (A minor, mm ) Now realizing that the job is more difficult than they d thought it would be, the seven Sauschneider brace themselves. But the squealing of the struggling

138 Short Octaves müssen sein! 107 Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm animal proves a major distraction. The more force the Sauschneider use, the stronger the animal resists. In 1765 quarter-comma mean-tone tuning was far from extinct. 64 We deliberately used it in our recording of the Capriccio and found confirmation for its effectiveness in mm (ex. 3.6), where Haydn rubs G against D (sounding as an E ), which together form the typical wolf s fifth. Here, the substitution of one metaphorical animal for another is as silly as it is obvious: we re dealing not with the howling of a wolf, but with the squealing of a pig. Less methodical than before they re in the middle of it now the Sauschneider do not wait for the end of the repeated a phrase nor a proper resolution of a dominant harmony (cf. m. 73, where V 6 of A minor moves straight to V 4 2 of its subdominant) to continue with what they re doing. Dotted rhythms in mm reflect new determination ( let s add some punch ),

139 108 Chapter 3 Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm but they only seem to bring out even stronger resistance of the subsequent 4 3 suspensions, which by now have become a counterforce to be reckoned with. They are longer than in the previous verse (mm ), and the only hint of them in the opening theme had been the playful appoggiaturas in mm. 4 and 13. Retardation starts affecting the other voices too (see the middle voice in mm ). Verse 3: Six it takes (E minor, mm ) The Sauschneider keep trying. Reduced to six, they decide to split up in two groups of three. The master Sauschneider shouts commands, but to no avail. The tighter they try to hold the boar, the more it struggles and screams. If we look for an indication of numbers in the score from seven to six we find it in the b phrase of both this and the previous section. Compare mm with mm (see exx. 3.6 and 3.7). Excluding the opening theme (mm. 6 9) and a later interjection by the narrator (mm ), verse 2 (with the seven Sauschneider) is the only one of the eight verses to feature in its b phrase a root-position dominant seventh. Verses 2 and 3 are linked, furthermore (in m. 84), by a tightly held dominant seventh. 65 Verse 3, in its turn, initiates the beginning of a b phrase (top notes following the proper contour) on a mere triadic chord. Here, it s all about six and three, or the group divided into two, with sixths playing on top and thirds at

140 Short Octaves müssen sein! 109 Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm the bottom, in contrary motion. Version No. 9 of the Sauschneider tune (table 3.2) incidentally speaks of three in front and three behind. 66 Narrator (mm , C major G major) However hard they try by now, all six of them: three behind and three in front they keep ending up back where they started. (Laughing:) Look at them! (Sarcastically:) What a spectacle! But for the team, the challenge remains. First, they must somehow manage to keep the boar still. More easily said than done. As we ve moved along the circle of fifths from D to A to E (see ex. 3.3) we ve also felt increasing resistance: minor keys (after D major, we ve had A minor and E minor), squealing (more and more foreign tones to deal with), and slipping (secondary dominants not always following the intended path, sometimes sending us right back) all of this resulting in more and longer holding (more and longer suspensions and retardations in more voices). In a most neutral C major, using just the first few notes of the theme to call attention, the narrator gives a summary of what has happened so far: However hard they tried (those chromatically ascending secondary dominants), they always ended right back where they started (from B back to E, A, and D, or exactly the trajectory we ve followed, major replacing minor to lend appropriate sarcasm). Identifying mm (ex. 3.8) as a separate section in C major (as

141 110 Chapter 3 Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm other commentators have done; see above) seems unwarranted for several reasons. First, the refrain recalls only the opening notes of the a phrase. (All other sections start with a full run of a, including its cadence.) Second, attention is immediately diverted to a chromatic sequence in the bass (g, g, a, a, b), which, in turn, triggers a chain of dominants back to G major. Thus, C major hardly stands on its own. On the other hand, though, its pre-dominant function (as IV in G) is appropriately or, indeed, sarcastically extended in reference to the Sauschneider, who simply don t get the job done. Our third and final reason is rhetorical: these measures do not offer anything

142 Short Octaves müssen sein! 111 new; they should be interpreted as a summary of what came before, as well as a transition to the restatement of the theme in G major (mm ). Look at them, we hear the narrator/keyboardist say, laughing as he playfully traverses his keyboard with well-known, home-key material, throwing in some tiratas of his own but safely avoiding the cut keys down below. All examples draw little rectangles around moments at which the mother dissonance, with its stock (diabolic) diminished fifth or augmented fourth, resolves to the tonic. We see two prominent examples, inversions of one another, in m. 144 and m. 145, repeating mm (ex. 3.4). They are reminders of what the story is about: the Sauschneider must hold the animal still before making the cut, and they must do so in the home key. The first manifestation contains a retardation (the holding ); the second, with the unornamented dissonance in the lower voice (which I finger with a strong index), is the more forceful one, to be associated with control or skill (see the reductions in ex. 3.4). Both manifestations weave ornamental slurred figures through their top voice: the binding, the necessary penultimate step before the cut. But before holding, one must grab. The plentiful resolving sequences of diminished fifths followed by thirds secondary dominants landing an erratic variety of tonics have followed the example of what I call the action motive. Remarkable so far is that, without exception, every section has made an attempt to close the deal (each has had one or more rectangles), but they ve all ended up off target, that is, in keys other than the home key. But let s find where the story takes us next: a transition in mm Verse 4: Five it takes (B minor, mm ) There they try again, now with only five. (Count em: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.) Lining up close to one another, they give it their all. But they re dealing with a fierce pig. The devil s in it, it seems. The Sauschneider keep pushing, now into B minor, a fifth further away from where verse 3 (in E minor) had left them. The pinnacle of holding, this section features an extraordinary harmonic sequence, known as the Teufelsmühle or devil s mill. 67 The objective for the bass is to move by half steps, while other voices hang on to their pitches as fiercely as possible, resulting in a nonkey-specific sequence of diminished seventh, dominant seventh, and minor six-four chords. Haydn s rendition consists of no fewer than twenty-four such chords (or twenty-two, if one excludes the first, proceeding by whole step, and last, a C major triadic time-out). The unusually intense one might even say desperate clutching at any dissonance, presumably in an attempt to force a

143 112 Chapter 3 standstill, began in the b phrase (mm. 162ff) with the added appoggiatura G (the ninth of the dominant). Only once does the bass break out of its chromatically descending line: in m. 183, a D major triad (in our analysis another rectangular moment ) that fails to continue with the desired control progression (see the asterisk in ex. 3.9 to show what might have been ), but rather surrenders to an enharmonic B. C major calls for a badly needed time-out. By this point of the story, the squirming, squealing, frenzied boar seems possessed, reminding us of the devil s mill and its biblical source: And He said unto them, Go. And when [the devils] were come out, they went into the herd of swine (Matthew 8:32). 68 The five remaining Sauschneider line up as closely as possible to fight the devil in the pig. Count the notes under the long slur in the right hand: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, for twenty-four consecutive positions actual fingerings remarkably coinciding with the repeated act of counting from thumb to pinky (see ex. 3.9). Verse 5: Four it takes (C major, mm ) The team has now lost exactly half of its men. Clearly, their approach isn t working. They tried force. They tried more force. Time to try something different. Time for something more clever. What if, instead of grabbing the whole animal, they aim for something smaller, more holdable? What about its back legs, right above the knees? That should immobilize it. As they recover their breaths, they discuss a new plan. They re down to four but can still spread out: two plus two. Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm

144 Short Octaves müssen sein! 113 Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Of the eight Sauschneider refrain entries, without any doubt, this is the most gratifying. First, the appearance of an Alberti-type accompaniment in triplets (see ex. 3.10) lends a fresh perspective on the theme and sets in motion what appears to be a fresh start. Second, the tonality of C major offers major relief after the previous increasingly distant keys and the hair-raising devil s mill. Listener, keyboardist, protagonists, instrument we all appreciate a time-out. Harsh dissonances are laid to rest; fear of erratic contrapuntal sequences is put on hold; Sauschneider regroup and explore new options; key, range (from the tenor up), and texture (triplets in bass) give the Viennese harpsichord back its natural beauty. (The whole passage is very similar to the first movement of Haydn s early sonata Hob. XVI:3, also in C major making the instrument bloom.) It s not just about simplification. There s also sophistication. So far those embryonic versions of the action motive in the b phrase (here mm ) have come across as either comical, stern, or pedantic. Now, supported by the Alberti accompaniment and adorned with the Haydn ornament (which I play as a mordent, but a crisp turn would also work), they show unsuspected potential for songful melody. No longer intimidated by suspensions and re-

145 114 Chapter 3 tardations, we revel in a variety of ornaments: appoggiaturas (the invariably short ones from the beginning), a dissonant passing tone (m. 210, one of my favorite moments), a long appoggiatura (same bar), two retardations at the same time (the one in the middle voice gracefully integrated into the Alberti bass) and a long trill on mother dissonance C (m. 211). Having now reconnected with G major, we restate our task not once but twice (see the action motive in mm and mm ). Each statement has thus expanded into two elegant four-bar phrases, an allusion, perhaps, to the four Sauschneider. The binding (the weaving of the circling figure in m. 213 and m. 217) is now contemplated not as a serious task (the two earlier slurs), but playfully, with dotted rhythm. The player s regained self- confidence, finally, expresses itself in the long trill, with suffix and starting on the main note, in m. 215 and m After all the earlier grabbing and holding, this kind of ornament, which requires the most relaxed of muscles, testifies to mental and physical rejuvenation. The keyboardist plays it no fewer than six times, as he modulates from C to F (mm ). Thus, from the larger-scale tonal perspective as well, we are witnessing a shift in strategy. By pure force, the Sauschneider had climbed the circle of fifths, from D (itself dominant of G) toward the minor dominants A, E, and B, but slipped back. This time they decide to go with the flow. If tonalities wish to fall backward from dominant to tonic, here from C to F, then so be it. Verse 6: Three it takes (F major, mm ) The three remaining Sauschneider are ready. Blow the horn! And bring on... the pig. The decisive battle starts. As two Sauschneider distract the animal in the front, the third, with some well-slung arm movements, aims for the legs in the back. Go for speed, rather than force. And never leave your arms within the animal s reach for any longer than a split second: you don t want to get hurt. After a lot of lively back and forth, bingo! They grab the animal s legs and finally succeed in holding him down tight. How many men does it take? It takes three: triplets jump from the lower to the upper voice and the two-voice texture shifts to three (ex. 3.11). The spotlight is now on the left hand, the middle voice adding excitement: Blow the horn! (see those open fifths). It s time for the decisive battle with the cut keys (mm , also discussed above). We wield our left arm and hand in twenty consecutive, always different octave-positions. Two notes, two keys, two legs. When we finally seize upon the action motive (last beat of m. 264, indicated by a rectangle), we are determined not to let go. Firmly, we

146 Short Octaves müssen sein! 115 Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm hang on to octaves, with strong fingering, all the way down to the lowest G, root of the home key tonic. Consider, once again, the physical impact of the Viennese short octave: the five last octaves (A, D, C, B, and G, all instrumental in preparing, executing and prolonging the action motive) may be played quasi-legato, in one single, grand and impressive gesture (see the close-up in the video-performance). The impact of this immensely satisfying physical experience cannot be overestimated: we may have missed a few octaves in the lead-up to this moment (which is exactly the point: see above), but we come out on top. Narrator (G major, mm ) And so they gain self-confidence and get back their enthusiasm, energy and power.

147 116 Chapter 3 Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm There s not much time for commentary, except to quickly empathize with the protagonists: open fifths in the right hand, an energetic counterline in the left; continued triplet motion again in the right, good old tiratas in the left (see ex. 3.12). They re on a roll. Verse 7: Two it takes (G minor, mm ) The two of them still have a tight hold on the pig. With superb coordination, one holds while the other binds a rope around the ankles. Easy with those octaves... The keyboardist suddenly shifts to minore on what could have been a repeated phrase a but turns out to be a fresh start in G minor (see ex. 3.13). Still, it s too soon for the narrator to declare victory: it s back to work. From three voices, we re down to two again, and quite strikingly so: the second voice enters with its own upbeat exactly one bar after the first. It (or he, if we personalize the lower voice as the assistant Sauschneider) proves instrumental in keeping the overall pace, now down from triplets to a more cautiously alternating eighth-note pulse. Caution is the key word also in what follows. Cut-key octaves are carefully avoided as the men execute two important tasks: binding (mm ; see the asterisk) and holding (mm ; see the smooth series of suspensions in a descending seventh- chord sequence). During all this, the animal has stopped resisting. Verse 8: One it does take (B major, mm ) Things are looking good. The master Sauschneider checks to see if the ropes are tight enough. The immobilized pig sputters. They re the cries of an animal that s been subdued. Everything s under control.

148 Short Octaves müssen sein! 117 Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm Attention shifts to the one and only master Sauschneider, who receives a purple-patch B major or III of the home key, G. He was the mastermind behind the successful plan of verse 5 in C major. Now he rides on a similarly harmonious wave of Alberti triplets, again for a full aba run of the theme. Two rope-tightening slides (Schleifer) in m. 311 and m. 314 are accompanied by some sputtering dissonances (particularly noticeable in our mean-tone temperament; see the circles in ex. 3.14), before we easily make it to the dominant of home key G. Narrator (mm. 317 end) Now for the grand finale. There s one remaining Sauschneider. He s in the front and in the back. He holds and binds. And then (expertly feeling his way under the skin)... he makes the cut! Bravo! There were the hardships. There was the victory. Hey, hey, hey!

149 118 Chapter 3 Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm A long main-note trill in m. 316 reminds us of similar ones from verse 5. Firmly incorporated in our action motive and prolonging the home key s leading tone (see also the double asterisk in ex. 3.3), it restores full faith in the one and only master castrator porcorum. From now to the end, he can demonstrate his mastery without the threat of any out-of-tune notes that would challenge his mental concentration or any confusing cut-key moments that might take him off course. Instead, he chooses his cut-key octaves himself, impressively treading from the one to the other (mm ; see the squares in ex. 3.15). There is not one but many control moments (rectangles), and a series of razor-sharp suspensions (circles; mm ) expertly confirms the home key of G. In less specific circumstances, these two pages would have made a perfect toccata for a confident harpsichordist or organist. 69

150 Ex Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm

151 120 Chapter 3 Ex (continued) Then comes m. 349, a final dissonance, an extraordinary standstill on a diminished seventh chord. The only silence before, one that also involved a fermata, occurred way back in m. 33, when eight Sauschneider still basked in testosterone-rich confidence. The irony is palpable: it has taken 316 bars, with many obstacles along the way, for the team to be finally ready for the ultimate deed. Now that this moment suprême has arrived, the Sauschneider/ keyboardist grabs his knife and acts without hesitation. We have commented on both the physical pleasure and the topos of celebration of the left-hand figures in the coda (mm. 352 end). Possibly more satisfying still are the three final chords (mm ), left hand mirroring right as it plays the chord GG G B within the identical span of a sixth, fingered Hey, hey, hey! Just before this final reward of pure physical pleasure, the narrator gives the briefest of summaries: There were the hardships (cf. single asterisk, the exact same secondary dominant to IV or C major with which our adventures started back in mm ); There was the victory (the control motive). All s well that ends well.

152 Short Octaves müssen sein! 121 From Sauschneider to Bernardon When I first worked my way through the Capriccio on the new Leydecker harpsichord, I felt both silly and frustrated. The first verse, with the wide tenths in the bass, still gave me lots of confidence and pride, especially since I had never tasted this kind of power on the keyboard before. But as I pressed on into the subsequent verses I began to feel increasingly inadequate, painfully so. The frustration culminated in the passage where my left hand is forced down over and over toward ever more elusive octaves. I felt as if I d become one of those poor non-master Sauschneider, or an unsuspecting bystander suddenly caught up in some off-the-wall performance act on a Vienna street corner. As I continued to analyze and practice my own bodily contortions over the following days, months, and years, I realized that I was turning the short octave handicap into an asset, in a sense, rehearsing my way into becoming a stageworthy Hanswurst myself. More often than not, Haydn s keyboard music, while involving one performing persona, allows for multiple roles or identities, which may develop either in the course of a single performance or from one performance to the next. In the Sauschneider Capriccio, as we have seen, the keyboardist is both assistant and master, or both fool and joker. This ambiguity applies to the Hanswurst character as well, whose actions elicit laughter both with and at him. In my eventual recorded performance, I take on the persona of Haydn and imagine myself climbing the stage of a Volkstheater to perform the highly virtuosic role of Hanswurst. Haydn s four-hand Divertimento Il maestro e lo scolare, Hob. XVIIa:1, poses a more complex challenge insofar as, with this piece, there are two persons in paired roles sitting side by side. As in the Sauschneider Capriccio, the master (of a different kind), who sits at the left, makes full use of the short octave to play those familiar major tenths, albeit in an Alberti variant (see ex. 3.16, mm ). As the pupil imitates her master, she simplifies the span of the figure from a tenth to a sixth. This could be the end of the story: a charming depiction of a music lesson, male master leading the way for his female pupil. Haydn s version, however, has a twist, which arrives in the normal - looking passages (i.e., those playable on chromatic keyboards), just as in the Capriccio. In m. 101 (one bar earlier in the same example) the succession of cut-key E and regular-key G creates a peculiar tongue-twister, surely also for those who would have been brought up within a short-octave tradition. This

153 Ex. 3.16a. Divertimento in F Major, Hob. XVIIa:1, first movement, theme: mm. 1 10; Var. III, mm ; Var. V, mm ; Var. VI, mm

154 Short Octaves müssen sein! 123 Ex. 3.16b. Baryton Trio in A Major, Hob. XI:38, theme, mm. 1 8 particular instance seems comparable only a contrario to Wagenseil s ending in ex. 3.1c. While Wagenseil counted on a moment of self- consciousness on the part of the player to help her place that final note E just perfectly, Haydn anticipates the unavoidable stumble, adding insult to injury by prescribing a finger-legato slur for what should be a smooth Alberti bass. Consider two more excerpts, from Variations V (mm ) and VI (mm ). The latter features no fewer than three cut keys together, the interval of a third reversed into a chromatic second and the right hand crossing the left to play lowest note, C. This goes beyond physical contortion: especially in a sight-reading context (but also, as I can attest, after some serious practicing), Haydn s prescriptions are nothing short of mental torture. The irony, of course, is that the pupil s part is entirely sight-readable, making it likely that she would perform at least as well as the master. In Haydn s depiction of a music lesson, the roles have been reversed: the master faces embarrassment while his pupil is allowed to shine. One interpretation is that Haydn is mocking the presumably common practice of mediocre teachers overcharging their eager students. But there s an alternative interpretation. What if the master is much too good for a well-paying but mediocre pupil? Anthony van Hoboken pointed out a striking resemblance of the divertimento s theme with that of the Baryton Trio Hob. XI:38, also of a variation movement (reproduced as example 3.16b). 70 (After eliminating the second round of repetitions in mm. 6 and 8 of the pupil s part, both themes become identical even in length.) In the four-hand keyboard version, Haydn might be reflecting on his baryton trio sessions with the prince in which the music master Haydn would have diplomatically coached his patron through not-so-difficult music while playing the exact same melody at the alto desk. Absorbed in her own part, the pupil may well be oblivious to the extra difficulties that her master has deliberately thrown in for himself, either simply to amuse himself in an attempt to fight the boredom of yet another tedious

155 124 Chapter 3 lesson, or, with subtle calculation, to create a situation in which he can, with greater effect and credibility, turn to his noble pupil as she copies him with her more easily executed fingering and exclaim, Bravo! Censorship In 1788, twenty-three years after the date on the manuscript, Haydn finally published the Capriccio with Artaria. The title page, however, makes no reference to Acht Sauschneider müssen sein ; the Caprice is generically designated a piece for harpsichord or fortepiano. 71 As we open the score, we notice some crucial changes. All short-octave moments have been normalized for a regular, chromatic keyboard. Similarly, when H. A. F. von Eschstruth reviewed a printed copy of the Maestro e scolare Divertimento in 1785, he was looking at an adjusted version, which, given the score he was reviewing, he could only describe as a melodic chain of the most select passages, of which one hears each member twice... necessarily arousing as much disgust as a collection of the best and wittiest remarks if they were to be spoken first by a master in a bass voice and then by a pupil in a high one. 72 What started as a silly enactment of an inherently comical situation, to be shared with like-minded friends or colleagues just for laughs, had become, in print, a nightmare of pointless boredom. His gestures at the short-octave instrument no longer seen or felt, Haydn s ideas and words fell flat as well. In the case of the Sauschneider Capriccio, we must wonder, furthermore, whether in 1788 Haydn would have felt compelled to explain anything about its origins to an aristocratic lady such as Frau von Genzinger. 73 But revisiting his old Capriccio, a mere four years after Bernardon s death in 1784, may have made Haydn nostalgic for those good old silly and hands-on moments. In the same year, 1788, Haydn bought his first fortepiano (most probably a square), and not long afterward, during what he describes a well-humored hour (bey launigster stunde), he composed another capriccio, the famous Fantasy in C Major, Hob. XVII:4, which he offered to Artaria for print in March of We may be surprised by the notion of an hour. (Stunde, to be fair, may be more broadly translated as session, but we would still be talking no more than two to three hours.) Did Haydn really compose this marvel (he uses the verb verfassen) in such a short time? Regardless of the actual speed of composition, as for his earlier one, the generating impulse for this capriccio seems to have been direct physical contact with an instrument all the more fun because it s brand new (ein neues Forte-piano). Haydn tries out the hand stop to raise the dampers; amuses

156 Short Octaves müssen sein! 125 himself with the effect of a chromatic scale; plays a glissando on those light hammer-operating keys; and listens to sounds that completely die out. Intriguingly, this capriccio is also on a song about a farmer, his wife, her cat, and a mouse, all doing something with one another a fact that has remained hidden from most Haydn scholars, but perhaps from the musicbuying public in Haydn s time as well. 75 The title of the song, in any case, is not acknowledged in the Artaria print, which also changes Haydn s designation of Capriccio to a more generic, more serious, and, presumably, more marketable Fantesia. In his letter to Artaria, Haydn stresses his own pleasure in creating a piece for his new fortepiano but hastens to add that it will find approbation among connoisseurs and non-connoisseurs alike because of its taste, uniqueness, and particular execution. 76 By 1788 the pressure of dissemination or, financial remuneration, which for Haydn, through Artaria, boils down to the same thing was clearly on. Back in the 1750s it was Bernardon who had challenged Haydn to be deliberately tasteless, to draw on every thinkable cliché, and not to worry about structure or form. Twice, as Carpani concludes his anecdote of Haydn and Bernardon s working session, quoted above, Haydn was in England, at an older age, and each time, when crossing the Strait of Calais in rough waters, he said that he had to laugh instead of vomit, thinking back on the tempest of Bernardon. But, as Carpani also pointed out, in their collaborative days, Neither of the two had ever seen either sea or storm. How to represent what one does not know? 77 I, for one, and, I assume, few fans of Haydn s keyboard works, have ever actually witnessed the castration of a boar. And yet, despite the implied barnyard realism of a dangerous animal, its ear-piercing cries, the spattering blood, or, most disturbing of all (for men at least), the very purpose of the event, I doubt that anyone who has heard and seen Haydn s Sauschneider Capriccio, performed by a keyboardist dressed in proper costume and using the proper gear, will fail to appreciate the comedy. Haydn s Capriccio is, in the end, a witty piece of comic theater, its musical sophistication and technical complexity hidden by the apparent simplicity of a raucous folk tale delivered with the energy of a drinking song. The joy of Haydn s version of Acht Sauschneider müssen seyn is that the musically sophisticated, like urbane Viennese theater patrons, are invited to laugh both with and at Hanswurst, the performing persona of a highly entertaining musical pantomime.

157

158 Un esprit délicat, avec solidité, Une ame sensible & tendre, Sont des présens de la Divinité: Mais il faut un ami qui puisse nous entendre! ALEXANDRE TOURNON de la Chapelle (1784), 17 CHAPTER 4 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant Chapters 2 and 3 each tackled a problem : the problem of a transition that would have been ineffective, if it had not been for my intervention as a performer; or the problem of cut keys that at first were a major handicap but which turned out to be as essential for the success of my performing act as the chick peas in the shoes of a great actor. Twice I saved my day and pride. Along the way, to better understand my actions and obligations as performer, I historicized my solutions : first, I aligned myself with Haydn the Orator, then with Haydn the Hanswurst. Through this search for solutions, we did not lose sight of Haydn s dedicatees. Despite the emphasis on my personal experiences, they have remained the rightful owners of Haydn s scores. We claimed, for instance, that Frau von Genzinger would have been grateful when Haydn presented her with a model of declamation worthy of a master orator, which she would have rehearsed in the privacy of her own home and perhaps even orated during one of her musical soirées to an actual audience. At times, we hinted at a before or after in our learning process of Haydn s works, as in the al rovescio minuet (from Hob. XVI:26) or the Sauschneider Capriccio (Hob. XVII:1). But the implications have been clear. The identification of Haydn s prints 127

159 128 Chapter 4 as declamatory examples gave me the right to treat them as precisely that: examples that could be even must be adjusted to suit my own needs in the recording studio or on the concert stage. Similarly, whenever I acknowledged the before, my mind was invariably fixed on the after : I simply refused to be relegated to the level of pupil or victim. In other words (and we must acknowledge it), thus far we have only paid lip service to some of the questions raised in chapter 1 about Haydn s dedicatees. Let us rephrase them here. Did Haydn ever intend there to be a before and after? What if the now were the essence of Haydn s musicking, as captured (not necessarily exclusively, but certainly by way of example) in the interactions between composer and dedicatee? By focusing on the oratorical qualities of Haydn s sonatas or Klavierstücke, determined to make them work no matter what (for my own purposes, including self-promotion), have I avoided the broader and ultimately more important paradigm of Haydn the rhetorical man, who interacted with people, social structures, and technologies on his own terms? Haydn the orator, indeed, suggests an audience. But perhaps there s no need for a listener. Or perhaps the listener is simultaneously the player. Or perhaps the composer himself is alternately player and listener. Haydn s correspondence with Frau von Genzinger, as we saw in chapter 1, allows for all of these possibilities. In fact, the very idea of a Genzinger Sonata may have grown from their intimate times together at the keyboard. On May 30, 1790, three weeks before his announcement of the new sonata for Her Grace, Haydn wrote: The time will come again when I will have the precious pleasure to sit next to Your Grace at the keyboard [am Clavier] and listen to [you] play Mozart s masterpieces [Mozarts Meister stücke spiellen zu hören]. 1 Haydn does not specify whom he envisions doing the playing, though context strongly suggests that it would have been Frau von Genzinger. But when he expresses his desire to play his own sonata a few times, one can readily imagine them sitting side by side in a session that is neither concert nor lesson, but just musicking between friends. Also, intriguingly, in the same letter, the prospect of sitting next to his friend, while reading if not playing off the same score, immediately triggers in Haydn the very pleasant association of just talking to her: I d have so much to tell to Your Grace, and so much to confess, of which nobody except Your Grace alone can absolve me. 2 Musicking is essentially conversational, and Haydn s Sonata ex E is first and foremost a communication between two people. Of course, the conversation may be extended to those who buy a copy of the sonata (or

160 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 129 turn the score into an oration), but even in that light the Genzinger correspondence offers peculiar testimony: Marianne von Genzinger was irritated when her sonata appeared in print with Artaria less than two years later. Writing from London on March 2, 1792, Haydn also expressed outrage upon hearing the news and promptly, as a token of their friendship, promised her a new sonata. 3 As is often the case between friends, the emphasis lay in the promise: there s no evidence of such a new sonata, and in any case Frau von Genzinger died not long afterward at the age of forty-two in January of Her premature death may actually have compelled Haydn to write a sonata in her memory, his F Minor Andante with Variations, Hob. XVII:6, which he entitled Sonata on the manuscript. In emotional inspiration and impact, this most intense cry of despair on the Viennese fortepiano is comparable only to his earlier C Minor Sonata, Hob. XVI:20, for clavichord (see chapter 5). 4 In the case of Sonata No. 49 we are fortunate to have this evocative and firsthand inside information. But it should not tempt us to think that this case is isolated or unique. On the contrary, in this chapter, I propose to make Haydn s documented interactions with Frau von Genzinger a model for studying similar interactions between composer and dedicatee in the three Marie Esterházy Sonatas, Hob. XVI: Maria Josepha Hermenegilde Esterházy née Liechtenstein (April 13, 1768 August 8, 1845) was the eighth and youngest child of Prince (Fürst) Franz Joseph Liechtenstein ( ) and Princess (Fürstin) (formerly Countess [Gräfin]) Maria Leopoldine Liechtenstein née von Sternberg ( ). 5 In September 1783, at the tender (but by no means unusual) age of fifteen, she wed Prince Nicolaus Esterházy von Galantha, himself barely seventeen years of age, son of Anton and grandson of the reigning Prince Nicolaus I. (See fig 4.1 for a family tree.) On July 1, 1784, nine and a half months after this most prestigious wedding, the earliest known announcement of Sonatas Nos appeared. 6 The eventual publication, advertised in the Frankfurt Staats-Ristretto on August 31, 1784, was said to be composed and dedicated à Son Altesse Madame La Princesse Marie Esterhazy née Princesse de Lichtenstein. 7 Faced with so much splendor and royalty, I respectfully bow to a new young lady at the Eszterházy court, voluntarily taking a back seat in my involvement with Haydn s Marie Esterházy Sonatas. It is not about Joseph and me, not even Joseph, Marie, and me. In this chapter it is exclusively, and in this order, about Marie and Joseph.

161 Nicolaus I Esterházy von Galántha b: 1714 d: 1790 Franz Joseph von/zu Liechtenstein b: 1726 d: 1781 Maria Leopoldine née von Sternberg b: 1733 d: 1800 Maria ( Marie ) Josepha Hermenegilde née von Liechtenstein b: 13 Apr 1768 d: 08 Aug 1845 Fig Two families joined by marriage Marie Elisabeth née von Weissenwolff b: 1718 d: 1790 Anton I Esterházy von Galántha b: 1738 d: 1794 Maria Theresia née Erd dy b: 1745 d: 1782 Nicolaus II Esterházy von Galántha b: 12 Dec 1765 d: 15 Sep 1833 Maria Anna née von Hohenfeld b: 1767 d: 1848

162 Plate 1. Viennese short octave : close-up and diagram. Photo by the author.

163 Plate 2. Lungau Sauschneider, anonymous gouache (late eighteenth century) (above), and Hanswurst, detail from Kinderspiele, colored etching by Johann Martin Will (1780s) (right). Reproduced by permission of the Salzburg Museum, Salzburg. InvNr. 218/24 and 1310/2009.

164 Plate 3. Letter of Princess Marie Esterházy to Empress Maria Ludovica Beatrix, March 20, 1812, first and third (final) page. Reproduced by permission of the National Archives of Hungary, Budapest. P tétel. fol. 5. R sz. 1. cs.

165 Plate 4. Letter of Haydn to Marianne von Genzinger, February 9, 1790, first and fourth (final) page. Reproduced by permission of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. Cod , fols. 14r and 15v.

166 Plate 4. (continued)

167

168 Plate 5. Physiognomic snapshots of author s performance. Photos by Jeremy Tusz.

169

170 Plate 6. Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Character Heads, selected from Krapf (2002), passim 1. The Artist as He Imagined Himself Laughing (Der Künstler, so wie er sich lachend vorgestellt hat) 2. The Serious Demeanor of the Artist (Des Künstlers ernste Bildung) 3. The Satirical One (Der Satirikus) 4. A Strong Man (Ein kraftvoller Mann) 5. A Willful Buffoon (Ein absichtlicher Schalksnarr) 6a. Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer 6b. Tender, Sweet Sleep (Der sanfte ruhige Schlaf) 7. The Bockhead (Der Schaafkopf) 8. The Yawner (Der Gähner) 9. A Lustful Careworn Fop (Ein wollüstig abgehärmter Geck) 10. The Melancholy One (Der Melancholikus) 11. A Scholar, Poet (Ein Gelehrter, Dichter) 12a. The General (Der Feldherr) 12b. The Trustworthy One (Der Zuverlässige) 13. A Buffoon (Ein Schalksnarr) 14. Variant of The Noble One (Variante zu Der Edelmüthige ) 15. An Impertinent Shrewd Mocker (Ein nasenweiser spitzfindiger Spötter) 16. The Worrier (Der Bekümmerte) 17. The Noble One (Der Edelmüthige) 18a. The Ill-Humored One (Der Missmuthige) 18b. Inwardly Locked-up Grief (Innerlich verschlossener Gram)

171 Plate 7. Lobkowitz Festsaal and ca prell-action Anton Walter fortepiano (replica by Chris Maene, 2005). Photos by Jeremy Tusz.

172 Plate 8. Holywell Music Room and 1798 Longman, Clementi, & Company piano (replica by Chris Maene, 2004). Photos by Jeremy Tusz.

173 Plate 9. Karl Anton Hickel, William Pitt Addressing the House of Commons, Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

174 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 131 A Problem Revisited In my previous assessment of two transitions, one latent and brought to the fore only in formal performance (Sonata No. 40; ex. 2.1), the other crystal clear and ready for use in formal performance (Sonata No. 42; ex. 2.2), I was keen on using the latter as a model for the former. In the spirit of Bach s Sonatas with Varied Reprises (the first movement of Haydn s own No. 42 containing distinctive traits of the genre), I took the additional step of providing a version in which I wrote out my performance of the first movement s last variation, making the transition much more effective. But this raises the question of my right to impose my expectations of oratorical effectiveness on a sonata destined for a young woman of fifteen, in a movement, furthermore, labeled innocent (Allegretto e innocente). By recognizing those distinctly oratorical moments at the end of the movement as ornamental even giving them the names of hyperbole, dubitatio, and suspensio and saving them for what I considered the right moment, was I not hijacking the princess s own piece and performance? Why project my keenness to appear clever more clever, perhaps, than Haydn on her? In the third sonata, No. 42, Haydn does exactly what I proposed to do in the first. In my realization of Sonata No. 40, then, was I anticipating Haydn? Am I denying him, as the dedicating composer, the privilege of demonstration? It is striking, indeed, that an overall oratorical stance, rather than the isolated strand in the first sonata (No. 40), pervades the third sonata s (No. 42) entire first movement (Andante con espressione), with its far more serious and calculated use of topics and figures, and its scherzo-finale (Vivace assai), with its puzzling, even mind-boggling turns and twists. Sonata No. 42 is, in other words, what Sonata No. 40 might have been, in the hands of a skilled musical orator like Haydn, at a level of performance that is simultaneously more advanced and more formal. Once we accept this kind of evolution as inherent in the Marie Esterházy Sonatas as an opus of three, we arrive at an interestingly fluid narrative, in which composer and dedicatee position themselves differently with respect to one another as the opus progresses. The narrative I propose reads as follows: With the first sonata, in G major, Haydn is writing a dedicatory letter to his future reigning princess, a token of respect by her humble servant, who adjusts his language to hers. In the second sonata, in B major, Haydn, as a loving mentor, gently gives her a lesson, showing her how diligently practiced solfège exercises may be put to use in a well-constructed sonata, with the effect of a well- executed aria. Finally, in the concluding D Major Sonata, as master

175 132 Chapter 4 orator and performer, he provides her with a model of music-oratorical declamation. The biographical equivalent of the narrative that I propose here is one of initiation: the initiation of a fifteen-year-old girl into the world of adulthood, the world of a married princess, who is about to adopt the public persona of an accomplished and self-assured lady. László Somfai finds in these particular sonatas the prototype for what he calls a ladies sonata, a term inspired by C. P. E. Bach s Six sonates à l usage des dames, Wq. 54 (1770). Haydn s version has two movements, the first most often in variation form, delicate and sensitive, and a short, fast, capricious second movement. (Somfai includes the later sonatas Hob. XVI:48 in C Major and Hob. XVI:51 in D Major in his list of ladies sonatas. He considers the Genzinger Sonata Hob. XVI:49 a hybrid between a ladies and a concert sonata.) 8 But these stylistic criteria, as A. Peter Brown has pointed out, conflict with the historical reality that, with the possible exception of the two Grand Sonatas written in London, all the sonatas were in the best sense dilettante and Damen sonatas, as evidenced by the nearly unanimous dedications to women, in contrast to the solely male dedications for the string quartets. 9 Despite Brown s caveat, Somfai s term remains apt, in both a musical and a biographical sense, particularly if we reconnect it to real and complex interactions between two persons: the established court composer, who employs his experience in etiquette and his intimate knowledge of women to address a new member of the Esterházy family; and the newlywed princess, whose gender, status, and personality must have inspired Haydn to strike a tone appropriate to a lady. 10 Unlike Brown, who observes a discrepancy between work and life, feeling compelled to explain the brevity of Haydn s opus ( instead of [the usual] six works there are just three ) by invoking Haydn s busy schedule as Esterházy opera conductor as an excuse but continuing to imply that in spite of these hindrances Haydn nevertheless achieved something of perfection, I prefer to situate these works in the context of a fully integrated social and professional life. 11 In addressing a lady, Haydn abandons the learned rhetoric of a threemovement sonata, the prototype for Johann Nikolaus Forkel s 1784 essay on the theory of the sonata, in favor of the smaller-scale two-movement sonata, sometimes with but mostly lacking sonata form. This shift invites us to reevaluate Forkel s model of an oration in favor of the more private model of a letter. Letter writing is a genre in which women were actively engaged, and one at which women, because of their unlearnedness, were said by male commentators to be naturally adept. 12 Letter writing also offered women a forum in which to exercise their literary talent, prompting La Bruyère to

176 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 133 assert: If women were always correct, I dare say that the letters of some of them may well be the best writing we have in our language (Si les femmes étaient toujours correctes, j oserais dire que les lettres de quelques-unes d entre elles seraient peut-être ce que nous avons dans notre langue de mieux écrit). 13 It is no coincidence that one letter writer consistently referred to in the contemporary literature as a model was a woman, though unlike her male colleagues such as Rousseau or Voltaire, Madame de Sévigné would never have expected, let alone intended, her letters to be published. The irony is, of course, that they were indeed published, though posthumously, and reprinted numerous times. 14 This ambiguity of the genre private, yet, if well done, eminently publishable is exactly what makes the letter a compelling model for the Marie Esterházy sonatas. The genre provides Haydn with the flexibility to meet his dedicatee on territory familiar to her, yet not to feel restricted by it, and then, as his relationship with Marie develops, to take her along and lead her into his own world, the world of a composer experienced in addressing groups of listeners, the world of an orator. Marie Esterházy exemplifies a specific type: the young female of noble upbringing who is already sophisticated in many ways. Haydn teaches her theory by demonstrating her practice, careful not to overwhelm her. Instead of the traditional opus of six three-movement sonatas, often ordered as a gradus ad Parnassum (as his earlier Anno 776 and Auenbrugger sets), Haydn now publishes three smaller two-movement sonatas, less divergent in individual difficulty, written in textures and forms that are easier to grasp. Each piece lends itself comfortably to a single practice session or lesson, leaving ample time for explanation or elaboration. 15 The underlying pedagogy of the Marie Esterházy sonatas, then, is similar to post-rousseauian efforts in late eighteenth-century France to teach elite women to spell and write. The challenge was to do so without endangering their femininity. 16 The solution was not to teach them rigid syntax (which, it was believed, could not be done without teaching them Latin), but to teach by example, application, and gentle guidance carefully preventing the pupil (or the pupil s father, who was most likely paying for the lessons) from using the prejudice that women shouldn t know these things anyway as an excuse for giving up. In 1784, the same year of Haydn s opus, Alexandre Tournon de la Chapelle published the first part of his Promenades de Clarisse et du Marquis de Valzé, ou Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre les principes de la langue et de l Ortographe françaises à l usage des Dames (Promenades of Clarissa and the Marquis de Valzé, or a New Method to Learn the Principles of French Language and Spelling, to the Use of the Ladies), a title deliberately more evocative of a

177 134 Chapter 4 novel than of a textbook. Just as with Haydn s sonatas, the method is written in short, easily digestible installments. And as in Haydn s sonatas, the novelistic textbook s two main characters are male and female, experienced and young, master and pupil. The question on everyone s minds, of course, is: will they also become lovers? Dedications Before exploring how the relationship between Joseph and Marie evolves through the purported musical narrative, we must bolster our basic assumption that there is a dedication that can in any way be read biographically. Figs. 4.2 and 4.3 show two title pages from the years before We observe a progression. Haydn s very first official publication, six harpsichord sonatas printed by the academic book publisher (Universitätsbuchdrucker) Joseph Lorenz Kurzböck in Vienna, is appropriately dedicated to sua altezza serenissima del sacro romano impero principe ( His Most Serene Highness, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire ), the prince s name, again appropriately, printed in much larger capitals than the author s, whose connection to the prince is specified: maestro di capella della pref.[ata] a.[ltezza] s.[ua] ser.[enissima] ( Maestro di Capella of the Aforementioned His Most Serene Highness ). The different sizes of a solemn font keep the spotlight on the prince while positioning the composer in a subservient role. Typographically the title reads very much like that of a book. In a separate preface its very existence reinforcing the resemblance to a book Haydn uses Italian, the international language of music, to praise the musical qualities of his prince (quoted in chapter 1). Clearly, the opus is directed at the music connoisseur, embodied prestigiously by Prince Esterházy, whose complete command of all music, not only of the violin, and of the baryton is praised, with no mention of any keyboard abilities (conspicuously so, for a set of keyboard sonatas). In the second example, Haydn s first publication with Artaria in 1780, the six sonatas are dedicated to the Auenbrugger sisters, young but established semiprofessional players in Vienna. Just as with the Esterházy sonatas, Haydn uses Italian, the language of the music connoisseur, but significantly, the order of presentation is reversed: Haydn, the celebrated composer (composte dal Celebre Sig re ), is mentioned first. The three parties Haydn, the sisters, and the cousins Carlo and Francesco Artaria are distinguished by three different styles: italic, capitals, and outline for Haydn; straight capitals for the sisters; handwriting for Artaria. Punctuation and layout unambiguously

178 Fig Nicolaus Esterházy Sonatas, Hob. XVI:21 26 (Vienna: Kurzböck, 1774), title page. Reproduced by permission of the British Library Board. Music Collections, K.7.g.21. Fig Auenbrugger Sonatas, Hob. XVI:35 39, 20 (Vienna: Artaria, 1780), title page. Reproduced by permission of the British Library Board. Music Collections, f.186.v.

179 136 Chapter 4 distinguish Haydn and his Six Sonatas (summarized almost exactly in the center of the page by Opera XXX ) from the dedication to the sisters by their most humble and most obedient servants (dalli umilis. mi ed ossequiosis. mi loro Servidori), the Artaria company. Overall graphics evoke an ellipseshaped nameplate of the kind typically found in the center of beautiful inlaid wood above the keyboard of a contemporary Viennese fortepiano. Featured on this enamel plate is not the name of some distinguished instrument maker, but a dedication to two active and celebrated keyboard performers in Vienna (see chapter 5). Aside from the appropriateness of the more sober design of his earlier Nicolaus Esterházy Sonatas, the pure graphics of the Artaria production were definitely a step up from the Kurzböck print. But something bothered Haydn, and in a letter of March 20, 1780, presumably when it was too late for change, he wrote to Artaria: Everything that you wrote to me, I find fully satisfying; I regret only one thing: that I could not enjoy the honor myself of dedicating these sonatas to the Misses v. Auenbrugger. 17 One year later Haydn seemed to have learned his lesson, because in the preparation of his next publication, a collection of German lieder, he approached Artaria with not-to-be-misunderstood terms: I rather doubt that you will take them because first, I ask 30 ducats for them; second, 6 copies; and third, on the title page the following dedication: Collection of German Songs for the Clavier dedicated with utmost Respect to Mademoiselle Clair by Herrn Joseph Haydn Capellmeister of Prince Esterházy Between ourselves: this Mademoiselle is the goddess of my Prince. You will understand what impression these things make! 18 The dedication never materialized (the two sets of songs were instead dedicated to a lady of flawless reputation, Franziska Liebe Edle von Kreutzner), 19

180 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 137 Fig Marie Esterházy Sonatas, Hob. XVI:40 42 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), title page. Reproduced by permission of the British Library Board. Music Collections, e.440.j. but the calculated intent, including an interest in the exact wording, clearly preoccupied Haydn. Fig. 4.4 reproduces the title page of the Marie Esterházy Sonatas. Announced in French, the language of European nobility in general but especially for noblewomen, the sonatas are characterized as not only dédiées ( dedicated ) but also composées ( composed ) for Son Altesse Madame emphasized as the last word of the line La Princesse Marie Esterhazy, née Princesse de Lichtenstein. The dedication ends with par Son trés humble & trés obeïssant Serviteur, Joseph Haydn, exactly as Haydn would have wanted it. The publisher is not Artaria but Heinrich Philipp Bossler in Speyer, Germany, who introduces himself merely as a facilitator: Bossler s credit rests at the bottom of the page, well outside the framed title and dedication. That elaborate graphic frame simulates the frame of a painting, an object to be enjoyed for its tasteful decorations of roses, leaves, and garlands, all evoking a distinct air of femininity. On the whole, the title page conveys a strong and conscious act of dedica-

181 138 Chapter 4 tion. But there is also iconographical evidence that Haydn prepared the publication specifically as a wedding gift, an assumption often made in Haydn scholarship but never substantiated. 20 The decorated oval at the bottom depicts a round altarpiece with a ceremonial fire, a sublimated version of the hearth. There is an old German ritual that endured well into the nineteenth century in which a bride would circle the hearth three times known as circumambulatio as she entered her new home. In some cases the groom carried the bride in his arms; in others she was led by her new mother-inlaw, who then formally passed the cooking spoon on to her daughter-in-law; in yet other cases the father-in-law or some other elder family member could do the honors of escorting the bride. The process is one of initiation, of transition: from before to after, from virgin to woman... at the hearth. 21 Just because Haydn dedicated the sonatas to the princess in celebration of a special occasion does not necessarily mean that he also composed them specifically for her. If he did, we would expect to find elements of tone, style, or structure that convey characteristics associated with the dedicatee. Examining the opening G Major Sonata, we find that: 1. The first movement is a variation movement, allegretto e innocente, in 6/8. Each characteristic is in and of itself unusual. Only two earlier Haydn solo sonatas display an opening variation movement: Hob. XVII:D1 (D Major) and No. 39 (G Major). But here we find the first use of opening variations in a two-movement sonata. (Two more will follow: No. 42, in D major, of the same set and No. 48, in C major, of 1789.) Haydn had used innocente twice before (in No. 34, in E minor, and No. 38, in D major), but both times for the third and last movement, the position endorsed by Forkel as appropriate for pleasant, ravishing, worriless music; music that neither teaches (docet) nor moves (movet), but merely entertains (delectat). To start a piece innocently, not grabbing one s attention intellectually or emotionally, is special. But to combine all three features an opening variation movement, innocente, and 6/8 is unique. 2. These are alternating variations, in major and minor keys. While these double variations are not at all unusual for Haydn, the transitions here between major and minor are less stylized than in comparable instances (such as the variations of No. 39, also in G major and also as an opening movement, or its sister movement in No. 36, from the same Auenbrugger set; see chapter 5), but more sincere or heartfelt. If the major variation is about innocence, then the minor variation abruptly

182 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 139 switches to the pathetic, which reveals itself in the abandonment of a regular three-voice texture, the use of augmented melodic intervals, two hands that start interrupting each other, emphatic accents on weak parts of the beat, and repeated sigh figures to be shouted aloud rather than merely whispered. 3. The first variation (starting in m. 37) is already surprisingly chromatic. Typically, chromatic filling-up would be reserved for the final variation, where it would serve an overall embracing, climactic purpose (as in the two aforementioned reference movements). Here, chromaticism seems thoroughly embedded in the theme itself. 4. As previously discussed, the transition to the second movement is surprising and, in terms of performance, outright problematic. 5. The second movement, exposing an utterly different, giggling, ecstatic, emotional side, is unusually, ridiculously fast, and short. The first movement takes me 8 27 ; the second This ratio the second movement representing barely more than one-third of the whole piece is much different from the ratio in Haydn s two earlier two-movement sonatas from the early 1770s, Nos. 18 (in B major) and 44 (in G minor), whose concluding movements are much more in balance with the opening ones, both in time and in style. Marie Esterházy, née Liechtenstein (April 13, 1768 August 8, 1845) It has become a commonplace in Haydn biographical studies to switch to the conditional when contemplating his 1784 keyboard set and the person of Marie Esterházy. Carl Ferdinand Pohl, the author of the first seminal, comprehensive Haydn biography ( ), here states that, later in his life, Haydn would appreciate in the young princess a Patroness very well disposed toward him. 22 Another typical anticipation is to the six late masses that Haydn would compose for the princess s name day, commissioned by his fourth prince every year except one between 1796 and Most of what we know about Princess Marie Esterházy stems from post-1794, after she took up her official duties as the new reigning princess. Visitors to the Esterházy court such as Lady Frances Shelley (1816), Mrs. Martha Bradford-Wilmot (1820), and Lord Fitzharris (who came along with Admiral Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton in 1800) describe the princess as (once) very handsome, incessantly talking, wishing so much to please, and to be amiable, that it is impossible not to be interested and pleased by her, wearing jewels [that] are considered the finest in Germany, and far superior to those belonging to

183 140 Chapter 4 the crown, or they note her celebrated charms and great kindness. 23 In 1815, in a city thronged with noble guests attending the Congress of Vienna, Princess Esterházy would arguably experience the highlight of her career, attending or personally hosting social events aimed to deflect the tension of a high-stakes political convention. Striking a male (and less sarcastic) tone, Count de la Garde, one of the highly ranked aristocratic guests attending the Congress, remembers the now middle-aged Marie as still being full of ravishing grace, even though the time of the first youth had faded away: first and foremost, she possessed this touching goodness that gives charm even to women who ve conserved the least attractiveness. Her constantly even character, her attractive kindness made me look for occasions that would bring me closer to her. 24 In this chapter, however, we must remind ourselves that it was the fi fteen-year-old Marie, full of promise and potential, but also inexperienced and innocent, who must have made an impression on Haydn, at a time when Haydn may very well have become her regular piano teacher. 25 In any case, during the first months of her marriage, during which the bride took up residence with her in-laws at Eszterháza and Eisenstadt, he would have seen the new princess more frequently than did her own husband. While significant, this disproportionate contact says more about royal marriage than about musical pedagogy. Princess Esterházy confided to Lady Shelley that she had seen her prospective husband only once before, possibly referring to the day when she signed the marriage contract six months before the actual wedding. On their wedding day, the Prince set off on his travels with his governor, while she remained under the tutelage of her governess! This arrangement lasted for two years. 26 While the young prince embarked on his Grand Tour or Kavalierreise through Europe (Italy, France, England, and Germany), the culmination of a (rich) young nobleman s education, 27 Marie resumed her lessons in French literature, letter writing, conversational skills, needlework, and music. 28 Like Rousseau s iconic Sophie and Émile, Marie and Nicolaus would be reunited, if not live happily ever after. But Rousseau s educational ideal had presumed premarital commitment between two young adults who have consciously chosen one another; this kind of (self-)imposed separation was certainly not intended to complicate the lives of newlyweds who barely knew one another. 29 We will return to this point at the end of this chapter. On August 25, 1783, the widowed Princess (formerly Countess) Maria Leopoldine von Liechtenstein, née von Sternberg, sent out formal invitations

184 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 141 for a festive wedding on September 8, 1783, 30 also the name day (Nativity of Mary or Maria Geburt) of the princess: The realization that Eüer Liebden is inclined to partake in all that concerns my family occasions me to have the honor in my own name as mother, in the name of Herr Karl Prince at Lichtenstein as legal guardian [Vormund], and in the name of Herr Aloys Prince of Lichtentein as brother and regent [Regierer] of the House, to announce the wedding to take place on the 8th of September of this year of Princess Maria of Lichtenstein with the Most Serene, High-Born Herr Nikolaus of the Princes of the Holy Roman Empire Esterhazy von Galantha, eldest son of the Most Serene High-Born Herr Anton of the Princes of the Holy Roman Empire Esterhazy von Galantha, Duke of Forchenstein, chamberlain of His Roman Imperial Royal Apostolic Majesty, Generalfeldwachtmeister, proprietor of an infantry regiment, and commander of the Royal Hungarian Order of St. Stephen. My own pleasure with this event would be significantly increased if Eüer Liebden were to donate the new married couple at least a portion of your good disposition, which Dieselbe [Eüer Liebden] is known to award to myself, for which from my side I remain with utmost respect, [signature]. 31 The front page of the Wiener Zeitung of September 20, 1783, briefly reported the wedding, stating that it actually took place on September 15, the Monday following September 8: On the 15th of this month, the youngest-born daughter of Herr Prince v. Lichtenstein, Maria Hermenegildis, was married to Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy, the nephew [sic] of the reigning prince. The priestly blessing was given by Cardinal Archbishop von Gran and the Primate of Hungary, Prince von Batthiany, here [in Vienna] in the princely palace of Lichtenstein. 32 Entry No. 160 in the thirty-fifth wedding book (Trauungsbuch) of Vienna s Schotten parish confirms both the date of September 15, 1783, and the priestly execution of the wedding by His Eminence the Hungarian Cardinal Joseph Batthyány with the assistance of the local priest Hugo Cunz (ab Eminentissimo, ac Altissimo Principe Bathyani Regni Ungariae Primate assistente v Hugone Cunz paroch: adm[ini]stratori). The full names of sponsus (groom) and sponsa (bride) are listed along with the long names and titles of their distinguished parents and their Vienna addresses: Wallnerstraße N 165 and Minoriten Plaz N Adam Wolf s 1875 biography of Maria Leopoldine s sister-in-law Eleonore Lichtenstein, based on Eleonore s correspondence, offers a possible

185 142 Chapter 4 explanation for the change of date and why the royal couple married at home rather than in the church: In 1783 the women were occupied by family matters. The princess Marie Liechtenstein, the youngest daughter of the reigning princess Franzin [widow of Franz], married the young prince Niclas Eszterhazy on September 15. She was fifteen, he eighteen [recte: seventeen]. Because the mother was ailing, the ceremony had to be executed in her room and Cardinal Bathiany blessed the couple in such haste that one of the relatives thought he had skipped a few of the sacred formulas. 34 Marie s mother, Maria Leopoldine, one of the famous five princesses ( fünf Fürstinnen), a circle of women friends around Joseph II, was used to organizing soirées at which the guests included such luminaries as the emperor himself. 35 But the stress of arranging not just one but two weddings in the same season may have been too much even for her: on November 16, barely two months after her youngest daughter married, her eldest son, the twenty-four-year-old heir and reigning Prince Aloys also got married, to fifteen-year-old Countess Carolina von Manderscheid-Blankenheim, an event that once more made the front page of the Wiener Zeitung. 36 The Liechtenstein family did very well in these matches. As the second daughter of the family to marry, Marie proved an exception to the rule among the nobility that dowries were for eldest daughters [since] one shining match was enough in a family. 37 Marie s middle sister, twelve years her senior, had also avoided spinsterhood, becoming a canoness and later provost of an exclusive nunnery in Recklinghausen. 38 The Liechtenstein males did quite well too, considering the widely shared anxiety among aristocratic families that the support of widows might exhaust the family s capital. Of Marie s two adult brothers (apart from the eldest heir), only the younger, Philipp Joseph, remained unmarried. 39 Arranging the marriage of an eldest son was a necessity, but to do so for the youngest daughter was a luxury which the Liechtensteins apparently could afford. In any case, the match of a youngest daughter with a prominent eldest son resulted in a solid marriage contract, dated February 28, 1783, almost half a year before the actual wedding. 40 This document specified that the bride would bring a dowry of three thousand Rhenish guilders (f.), and the groom would bring forty thousand to the union. Upon his death, his widow would receive the combined dowries, to be administered as she pleased. As a wedding present the groom would give his bride three thousand ducats, which (again) she could spend as she pleased. The Esterházy estate also promised her pin money (Spennadel) in the amount of two thousand guilders per year. Should the groom die as count (Graf) and not

186 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 143 as the reigning prince (Fürst), she would receive twelve thousand guilders yearly for her upkeep, along with an apartment on the second floor of the Esterházy palace in Vienna and all necessary household effects, as well as two wagons and ten horses. The guarantee for all these promises was written against the Herrschaft Forchtenstein, in possession of the Esterházys. Signatories to the contract were, on the left, first Count Nicolaus Esterházy als Brautigam, then, from top to bottom, Prince Nicolaus Esterházy (grandfather and reigning prince), Count Anton Esterházy (father), Prince Count Palffy, and Georg G. Bánffy. On the right, Marie Hermenegilda Fürstin von Liechtenstein als Braut, followed by her mother, Leopoldina, widowed Princess von and zu Liechtenstein, née Countess von Sternberg, then Prince Karl von and zu Liechtenstein als Vormund (guardian), the reigning Prince Aloys von Liechtenstein, Prince Colloredo, Count Franz Philipp von Sternberg als Zeüg (witness), Count von Starhemberg, and G. Prince von Starhemberg. Above and beyond this fresh bounty, Marie already had her own capital of fifty thousand guilders, which she had inherited from her father two years earlier. (Her two elder sisters each received a yearly stipend of two thousand guilders, obviously in addition to whatever they had previously inherited.) 41 If equal rank was the deciding factor for the choice of a groom, prospective brides were screened much more critically for their inner qualities, such as virtue or chasteness, and their looks. 42 According to the author of Excursion à Esterhaz en Hongrie en mai 1784 (a pamphlet famous for calling Eszterháza le petit Versailles de l Hongrie), the young princess was rich in both. Naming her first among the people of distinction present during my stay, he describes her as a young lady as recommendable for her outer charms as the excellence of her character [aussi recommandable par les charmes de l exterieur que par l excellence de son caractere]: her husband is the grandson of the Prince, presently on his Grand Tour [Cours des voiages; sic]. 43 The Esterházy Archives in Budapest hold piles of largely unexplored documents in Marie Esterházy s hand poems, musings, quasi- philosophical notes, and abundant letters as well as letters addressed to her. It is clear that she prepared careful drafts of her own correspondence while treasuring letters she received from others. 44 Perhaps not surprisingly, I found no documents in her hand from around the time of her wedding. But as I browsed through her frequent and intense correspondence from 1810 to 1816 with her intimate friend Maria Ludovica Beatrix ( ), the Austrian empress and third wife of Emperor Franz, my attention was drawn to a specific period in Marie Esterházy s life. 45 In 1812 a recurring topic of conversation

187 144 Chapter 4 with her imperial friend was the arrangement of the wedding of her eldest son, Paul. Even though some thirty years separated the now forty-four-yearold mother from the fifteen-year-old bride, it would be reasonable to assume that, as Marie prepared for the marriage of her eldest son, her observations and expectations of her future daughter-in-law were shaped by memories of her own wedding. Furthermore, Marie s concerns, as expressed in these letters, offer a window on some of the pressures she must have felt back in 1783, when she herself was the prospective daughter-in-law. In our reading of the following selected extracts, it is important to remember that, even though we are addressing two successive generations and the intervening years included the upheavals of 1789, we are still in a pre-1815 world where little had changed culturally, politically, or ideologically from the 1780s, at least for a woman in Marie s position: in any case, there s little in Marie s writing that would hint of any such change. Preparations for the wedding of Marie s eldest son, the Crown Prince Paul Anton Esterházy ( ), and Maria Theresia Thurn und Taxis ( ) had already begun in 1810, when Paul was twenty-four and Therese sixteen. On August 8, 1810, shortly after the Taxis family recommended a secretary to jump-start the negotiations, Marie wrote her son: Your father is very occupied with the big project [grand projet]... Nichael [Nicolaus] tells me that those who are informed of the project concerning the little Taxis are enchanted by it, and add that it would make a great match. As the big day (le grand jour des noces) of June 18 approached, she wrote to her imperial friend: I m so excited about it, I love Paul so tenderly that a period so interesting for his future gives birth to a thousand reflections and even anxiety (letter dated June 10, 1812). But high expectations can be met with disappointment. The first impression, she wrote, with a flair for exaggeration and sarcasm, couldn t have been more unfavorable; glancing at the mother and the girl caused one of the most disagreeable sensations one can have: she a femme à la mode in every sense of the term; the little one a spring puppet [poupée à ressort] make-alike of her mother: and both of them have traits that you wouldn t want to see in your little girl, your friend, or your sister / their outfit, their countenance, everything just struck me as wrong (June 21, 1812). 46 And yet, as she continued in the same letter, she revealed that by the second day, I was happier already:... on the eve before the wedding I talked to her alone and she gave proof of a kind of sensibility [sensibilité], the desire to suit Paul and myself / during the wedding itself, she behaved very well. Marie confesses her doubts: I would be hard-pressed to express an opinion... a beautiful manner of speaking, coquettish behavior,

188 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 145 a Parisian toilette: all this is quite charming for a fantasy, but... to reassure my calm, it is not enough. The only time Marie does not question Therese s sincerity ( No look or word that responds to the heart ) is when the girl unwraps her gift: The only non-studied gesture that I sensed was the moment when she received the diamonds: the joy was that of a young person. Even as she sighs to her friend that it s hard to predict whether we ll have common points of rapprochement: I really don t like these alliances, Marie still maintains a positive facade, if only for her son s sake: I tell him nothing but the best about his wife: it s a necessary falsehood. In resignation, she writes that this will surely become a union à la mode, where each follows his own way without meeting one another. But while Paul is not at all in love and doesn t even uphold any illusion about it... the little one [la petite] loves him as a husband who gives you an establishment [établissement] and liberty: he pleases her enough, but the heart follows political calculation, and at 17 years of age, the sentiment isn t aware of this philosophy yet: I m frightened to think one can be so methodical at that age. Despite her many misgivings, we find Marie clinging to the hope that Paul may still change his dispositions, I wish it for his own happiness, proclaiming her neutrality in a clever wordplay on beau fils and belle fille ( beautiful son vs. daughter-in-law ): My own happiness is invested in neither my beau fils nor my belle fille: my wishes are impartial [désinteressés]. Marie concedes that her biological daughter, Leopoldine, six years Therese s senior, is reasonably happy with her sister-in-law [sa belle soeur], before adding, somewhat cynically, that even though they re both cold and reserved, it s a point for rapprochement. With Therese s marriage to Paul, she exchanged her childhood residence for the Esterházy palace in Eisenstadt to live with her new husband and mother-in-law. On October 31, 1812, Marie wrote: I m starting to be very satisfied with Therese... if not overly obvious, she at least shows nuances of the old [virtue of] respect for one s mother-in-law [l ancien respect qu on donnoit à sa belle Mere]; in this day and age, that s a quality: another very good one is not to have the slightest falsehood, her comportment in society pleases me infinitely, it s neither the ridiculous familiarity that s so much in vogue today nor that repulsive coldness of other young women: I am judging her without any prejudice. Over subsequent days and weeks, Marie began warming to her daughter-inlaw: The little one starts making herself be loved by me: and her originalities

189 146 Chapter 4 are pleasant: she has a finesse that s hard to pin down: her husband, all of us, each has been subjected to the most strict examination, and our good and bad sides, nothing escapes her attention. Marie also observes the change in Paul: His sadness [sa tristesse] has ebbed away, now that the regime of marriage has established itself... he s home often, and appears attached to his wife with all his heart [de tout son coeur]. Finally, Marie is forced to admit that the choice of Therese has been more successful than we had thought. Mother and daughter-in-law spent a considerable amount of time together. One letter captures the domestic scene: My dear month of November, when we sit at the fireside as Philemon and Baucis, has great merits... we make music together, then we speak reason [on fais de la musique ensemble, ensuite nous parlons raison]. With Therese to provide companionship, Marie hints that she doesn t miss her husband: I see my dear husband very little, often not for 3 or 4 days, the separation of table is starting to establish itself. Marie doesn t blame Therese ( this is not her fault ) but in fact seems to be embracing her independence: This morning I haven t seen one single living soul, but I was so happy, as long as there are quills [plumes], books [livres], scores [Musiques], and everything one needs to keep oneself busy; it s a real passion, this dear solitude: one would envy me for how well I know how to enjoy myself [combien je sais m amusés]. By November 18, 1812, Marie s relationship with her daughter-in-law appears to have developed into genuine friendship: Today Therese was ecstatically happy, she s becoming very friendly, and she amuses me, she s a good kid: she has dreamed about you [Maria Ludovica]. A few years later, during the Congress of Vienna, the Therese project became a delightful fringe event of history, when mother- and daughter-in-law joined forces to deflate political and military tension by hosting a children s ball (bal d enfants) for all aristocratic leaders and their families in town. Count de la Garde recalled that the sovereigns and the whole court appeared to partake in the joys of the children and to relax their otherwise so agitated spirits upon seeing these tableaux of innocence and happiness. Princess Therese, he adds, lent the event that gracious affability [cette affabilité gracieuse] and that exquisite taste [ce goût exquis] that distinguish her an indefinable sentiment that so many lucky elements combine to create. 47 The reader of Marie Esterházy s private correspondence might agree that one of those lucky elements was to have a personality like Marie s as your example and mentor.

190 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 147 The Rhetoric of Letter Writing Having focused thus far on Marie s relationship with Therese through the filter of Marie s private correspondence with a friend, let us now turn our attention to the act of letter writing itself. Clearly, Marie had the luxury of devoting significant parts of her days composing these beautiful handwritten letters to the empress. Just how accomplished a letter writer was she? The following is a translation of Marie Esterházy s complete letter of March 20, 1812 to Empress Maria Ludovica; a transcription of the French may be compared to actual photos of the folded folio letter on the website and as plate 3 in this book: Your Majesty I think that never the most tender billet-doux could incite such a vivid pleasure as the one that I felt the day before yesterday, it is at the theater that one handed me that letter of which the sight alone made my heart beat / I became fidgety, and could not await the end of the spectacle to enjoy my treasure in all tranquility, my waiting was still surpassed / what goodness, delicacy, sensibility: and you may say that there s exaggeration, I feel at all moments of the day how adorable she is, and that she s incomparable, and I wouldn t dare repeat this incessantly; no this is impossible: it is not friendship that blinds me, one just has to be fair, and have a soul to appreciate it: but, for her delectation, I will transform her sublime qualities into faults: to not mend one s principles to the circumstances, that s what one calls in the world, to lack prudence and tact: to feel the need to love and to be [loved], that s romanesque: to act with character, now that is qualified as stubbornness / also to not [want to] know dissimulation is a sort of crime: in sum, everything that in our language we name sentiment, frankness, loyalty has a totally different interpretation: there then is a novel examination of one s conscience, one that She can submit herself to at will; and I, her very humble and imperfect copy: also I find myself more than ready [literally: also I find my lesson very well prepared], and one does not spare me of it, the approbation of indifferent people means nothing to me / I don t need that [appearance?] of social friendship: and with disdain I look from my high throne down on those poor mortals: nevertheless, I have enough intelligence to be modest in my good fortune: you should see how peculiar it is when one speaks of you as Empress / I place myself then in the ranks of our

191 148 Chapter 4 large community and, inwardly, I tell myself, with true triumph, how far removed you are, My Ladies, from imagining how much of this splendor of Majesty disappears in the charm of sweet intimacy: all that can well rush to one s head, if one has a lively one, also my dumbfoundedness is sustained by so many circumstances, the mystery, the difficulty of seeing one another, the bliss of a moment, an attraction of sympathy, to be sure, I understand that a pure and delicate sentiment has the same expression, in friendship and in love, and sometimes I think that if my letter were read by indifferent people [by outsiders], they would believe that it s written by a passionate admirer, and not by the hand of a woman: in the meantime, why deprive ourselves of a satisfaction so sweet, so many moments are possible, so that there exists no other way to be happy anymore than by one s heart: with much regret I heard that she has been more sick these last days; it was with lightning speed that I noticed it yesterday; nevertheless, it [i.e., seeing her] has made me happy: our evening was a great success, the little pieces were played quite well, and at first directed my thoughts to regret of not being able to let you hear them: now that it s over I believe that there was some imprudence on my part: because that so-called spectacle would not have carried the approbation in the eyes of my seigneur and master: he indeed kept incognito and was always absent: and that is quite unusual for him: in the first performance [projet] there should have been just 10 to 12 people: but relatives and so-called intimates have an unparalleled talent for multiplication; it s a snowball that augments itself. / there was a dangerous rivalry in our theater and without something of false shame, Dupont would have stolen away half the audience: I was angry for having forgotten to speak about Mlle Berthier, it would have made us laugh / she s ecstatic with joy about finally having found a husband, never mind how he is. I suggested that she was sacrificing a lot for little gain: but her decision is firm: the idea of remaining an old spinster must be really terrible, if it means to commit to such a marriage: I am quite curious to meet this lovely victor: I have had Mme d Armslow ask if I could pay a visit to the archduchess; I was afraid to show but little urgency if I had waited for the day [to pass]: Mme d Armslow first had it said to me that her Royal Highness would be in prayer [i.e., in retreat] all week, and Your Majesty would come there anyway: this afternoon I have been told that I should come at 7:30 / It appears that, a few days ago already, Ruffo and Rasoumoffsky announced themselves: this is going to make my evening a bit embarrassing: and I feel that I will look a bit stupid; this double measure of observation and constraint will be very peculiar: it will look like I have staged my visit: I am a little afraid that Mme

192 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 149 the Archduchess will discover that a very tender friendship gets the better of my respect for the empress, the latter she allows me in every dimension but she wouldn t be as indulgent with my sentiment: I will close my letter[,] the satisfaction of seeing her will replace [the satisfaction] of writing her, nevertheless, the latter takes preference today: I am at her feet, in heart and soul, on this 20 th of March, 1812 Your most humble and most obedient Servant Marie Esterhazy The salutation, centered but still leaning to the left, and the beginning of the letter are graphically separated, a formal requirement especially when writing to a superior, even when, as in this case, the recipient is a close friend. Similarly, the closing formula (Vôtre trés humble et trés obeissante Servante Marie Esterhazy) is isolated, shifted to the far right of the page, creating a respectful distance, the epistolary equivalent of taking a bow while retreating from one s addressee. She addresses her friend with Your Majesty (Vôtre Majesté) and refers to her throughout the letter in the majestic third person, at times capitalized ( She, Elle). Mindful, perhaps, of Louis Philipon de la Madeleine s advice ( if you want others to remember your titles, you must forget them yourself ), 48 she signs off simply as Marie Esterházy, not Princesse Marie Esterházy. The body of the letter is striking in its syntactic informality. There is not a single paragraph, and sentences follow one another freely, the comma giving the only hint of punctuation, capitals being used but very rarely, and the start of a new line simply superseding the need for a comma. Marie s spelling, taught to her by her governess (almost certainly French), 49 shows the same tendencies for simplification: she applies just one form of accent ( ) for both the accent aigu and the accent grave; she uses one form of conjugation regardless of whether the verb is a participle, second person plural, or infinitive (using és for é, és, ez, or er); she pays scant attention to agreement of verb and gender; and so on. Clearly, Marie did not have the rigorous training in syntax that her brothers and her own sons would have had. To put it another way, Marie was never taught Latin, a fact quite hilariously demonstrated in another letter, where, in a moment of playful fatalism, she writes: tout ce qui à été, est, et sera, [everything that was, is, and will be; underlining hers] at seculo seculoram amen, 50 a very approximate rendering of in saecula saeculorum, butchering the preposition and cases of this often heard and spoken phrase from the liturgy of the Christian mass. 51

193 150 Chapter 4 If we set aside our modern obsession with correctness and consistency, however, and read the opening of the letter aloud, we may start relating with its fine conversational spirit: Je crois que jamais le plus tendre billiet doux [sic] peut faire éprouvés un plaisir aussi vif, que celui que j ai sentis avant hier, c est au theatre qu on m a remis cette lettre dont la vue seule m a fais battre le coeur / je ne tenois pas en place, et ne pouvoit attendre la fin de spectacle, pour jouir tranquillement de mon trésor, mon attente à encore été surpassés / qu elle bonté, delicatesse, sensibilité[.] Words and phrases flow naturally; there s a vitality and a sensitivity to nuance; and her command of French is actually quite impressive for an Austrian princess. In her many letters, Marie typically switches gears suddenly, usually at the halfway or two-thirds point of the letter, marking the shift from what could be described rhetorically as an extended captatio benevolentiae (since nothing needs to be petitioned, except, perhaps, the continuation of friendship) to an informative section. 52 This latter half or third of her letters to Maria Ludovica provided a summary of events that would have been of mutual interest. Much less emotionally charged, these sections take keen delight in noteworthy events that have occurred since their last encounter (in person or by letter). Events are loosely strung together, with no logical connections, neither within this new section nor with the larger preceding, emotional one. In this particular letter, the transition between the two parts is signaled by the single word nevertheless (cependant, marked in bold in the translation above), quite abruptly and quite strangely shifting from Marie s sensitive observance of her friend s physical pain (Maria Ludovica indeed suffered and eventually died from tuberculosis) to a delightful, playfully sarcastic, even gossipy account of the previous night s spectacle and party. A very similar shift occurs in Haydn s G Major Sonata. But before returning to Haydn s music, let us consider a letter in his hand directed to his close female friend Marianne von Genzinger. (Plate 9 reproduces its first and fourth pages.) Haydn had returned to Eszterháza from Vienna, where he had been the von Genzingers regular dinner guest. In the first part of the letter we hear a seemingly depressed man, too depressed at first to bother with proper punctuation: the most he can manage is dashes, and a few incomplete questions with fleeting reflections on fresh memories. After finally addressing Your Grace (here Haydn leaves a significant empty

194 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 151 space within the line, as if distancing himself from what came before) and asking her not to be surprised that I have not written a long-overdue thankyou note yet! (just having demonstrated the very reason for not doing so: a nice and effective reversal of order, since a normal letter would start by I apologize for not having written to you earlier ), he switches to a narrating tone, now managing full sentences, but still very much in a spoken style, with subjects placed mostly at the front of sentences that are loosely and asyndetically punctuated by commas. His self-pity climaxes in a long series of antitheses ( instead of precious beef... a piece of a 50-year-old cow, etc.) that vividly describe his misery. This rhetorical phantasia is followed by two personifications (prosopopoeia), first of himself and then of an imaginary servant, waiter, or host. Interestingly, Haydn finds it necessary (whether rhetorically or not) to ask for Her Grace s forgiveness for stealing your time with such stupid nonsense and wretched scrawling before assuring her that he is gradually becoming his old self again. He even practiced for the first time, and quite Haydnish (und So zimlich Haydnisch). Only after this transition marked by a separate paragraph does he shift the spotlight away from himself to his addressee, away from his own depressed feelings to a delightful evocation of her family s lives and routines. Inviting, even demanding frequent laughter, he switches, quite drastically, to an uplifting tone to conclude the letter: Well nobly born Most especially [and] highly esteemed dearest Frau von Gennzinger [sic] Well here I sit in isolation forsaken like a poor orphan almost without human interaction [gesellschaft] sad full of memories of past noble days yes past alas and who knows when these agreeable days will come again? these beautiful gatherings [gesellschaften]? where a whole circle [of people] is [of] one heart, [of] one soul all these beautiful musical evenings which can be imagined only, not described where are these [moments of] enthusiasm? gone they are and gone for long. be not surprised, Your Grace, that I have not written a long-overdue thank-you note yet! I found everything at home in confusion, during 3 days I did not know whether I was master [CapellMeister] or servant [Capelldiener], nothing could console me, my whole quarters were in disarray, my Forte piano, which I normally loved, was erratic, disobedient, it did more to unnerve than to calm me, I could sleep but little, even my dreams haunted me, when I was happily dreaming that I was listening to the opera le Nozze

195 152 Chapter 4 di Figaro, that fatal North wind woke me up and almost blew my nightcap off my head; in 3 days I lost 20 pounds, for the Wiener goodies had quickly dissolved on the journey, yeah, yeah, I thought to myself when, in my tavern [or palace s mess?], I had to eat instead of precious beef a piece of a 50-year-old cow, instead of a ragout with small dumplings an old sheep with carrots [gelben Murcken], instead of Bohemian pheasant a leathery rib steak, instead of those good and delicious Pomeranzen [bitter oranges] a dschabl or so-called grass salad, instead of pastry dry apple fritters and hazelnuts etcetera, yeah, yeah, I thought to myself, if only I had some of my leftovers from Vienna here in Estoras no one asks me: Do you fancy some ciocolate with, or without milk, would you like some coffee, black, or with cream, how can I serve you, dear Haydn, do you like ice with vanilla or with strawberry? If only I had a piece of that good Parmesan cheese, especially [now] in Lent, to make those dumplings and noodles slide down better; just today I asked our porter to arrange to send me a few pounds. Forgive me, dearest, Gracious Lady, for stealing your time with such stupid nonsense and wretched scrawling [already] in my very first letter to you, forgive a man to whom the Viennese have given too many good things, I m starting, however, to gradually get used to country life [again], yesterday I studied for the first time, and quite Haydn-like, too. Your Grace will surely have been more industrious than I. the pleasant adagio from the quartet has hopefully already attained its true expression through your beautiful fingers. My good Miss Peperl will (as I hope) be reminded of the master by singing the cantata frequently, particularly when she uses clean pronunciation and correct vocalization, for it would be a shame if such a beautiful voice remained hidden in her breast, that s why I ask you for frequent laughter, otherwise something will surely happen to me. Likewise I commend Mr. Francois [to cultivate] his musical talent, even if he sings in his nightgown, it goes very well indeed, for encouragement I will often send something new. meanwhile I again kiss your hands for all your grace bestowed on me; and am, as always, most respectfully Your Grace s most obedient and sincere servant Josephus Haydn mppria Estoras, February 9, [to the left of the signature] P.S. please my most obedient respect to your noble husband. and my compliments to

196 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 153 Mr. N. Hofmeister [tutor] of the young man. and to Miss Nanette and the whole Hacker family. 53 Haydn scholars have read this letter as the words of a depressed man, an illustration of Haydn s mounting bitterness over his isolation in Eszterháza. 54 I do not entirely contest this traditional reading of the letter. But setting aside the wording of the translation, when this document is presented, as it often is, in truncated form (typically with the long series of antitheses shortened), with its punctuation consistently restored along with initial capitals for these normalized sentences, and even its threefold paragraph format ignored, we should wonder exactly whose letter we are reading. 55 By ignoring or hiding the orthography, punctuation, syntax and I dare say the page layout of the letter as Haydn wrote it, we risk failing to notice that Haydn, through his rhetoric, is actively constructing an identity for himself: a man of considerable accomplishment acutely aware of the fact that he is addressing and confiding in a female friend. Such a woman would expect Haydn to open his heart and would have been offended if he had not. Having gone to great lengths to entertain him in Vienna, she would have been offended if Haydn had casually reported that he had happily resumed his activities at Eszterháza. Surely aware that he had written nothing inappropriate, Haydn s plea for forgiveness is an epistolary and rhetorical gesture. Haydn s letter to his friend Marianne von Genzinger resembles Marie Esterházy s letters to her friend Maria Ludovica in the ways in which he shakes off his emotional self well in time to close the letter in high spirits, ready and eager to continue their friendship. 56 Even the postcript (passing on his compliments to the noble husband and a few others close to the family) is not just some casual addition: Haydn takes advantage of an empty corner on the page to make sure Her Grace understands he would have so much more to say to her beyond the four completely filled pages. Reading Haydn s Musical Letter In the privacy of her apartment, Princess Marie places her Bossler copy of Haydn s Sonatas on the desk of her instrument (almost certainly a square piano) and with eager anticipation begins to play. Ex. 4.1 features the opening of the G Major Sonata. (In the following examples we have intentionally used scans from the original edition to add historical realism: almost certainly, it is this copy of the text that the princess would have been presented

197 154 Chapter 4 Ex Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), first movement, mm. 1 8 with; no autograph of the Marie Esterházy Sonatas has been preserved.) Add punctuation to these eight opening bars and call them a period, with its four-bar antecedent and consequent phrases, and you miss the essence of Haydn s rhetoric. Thoughts express themselves in a gentle flow on a tonic pedal, a touch of subdominant on a light part of the beat, a je ne sais quoi is it a gentle look in the eye, a warm smile, a comforting, inviting gesture of the arm? The ideas are very simple a three-voice chord opens up, then closes again, giving rise to an opening motive, x, and its opposite, y. Without waiting for a proper introduction of the two motives, a third motive, z, emerges. These three motives, interlocking, gently interacting with one another, but becoming increasingly submerged in the one motive z, create an overall lilt of loosely punctuated commata, very characteristic of oratio soluta, a loose, spoken style such as we find in conversation and in letters, 57 disarmingly innocent. The entire opening statement is, in a sense, nonrhetorical. It avoids clarity, escapes from a possible cadence in m. 4, prefers non-root-position to root-position chords, subdominant security to dominant adventure. Bar 7

198 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 155 is extraordinary. E minor, the submediant of G major, draws attention to itself before reluctantly yet graciously yielding to musical etiquette: the closure of a phrase on a half cadence, executed in a wonderfully understated way, the c 2 adding just a touch of a supportive secondary dominant. Interestingly, the modern editor like the modern transcriber of Haydn s letters is puzzled by what appears to be an orthographic mistake in Bossler s edition (which, owing to the lack of a manuscript, is the default authentic source): he adds a bass note, A, as the last eighth note of the seventh bar (see the asterisk in the example) and thus clarifies the underlying harmony as a root-position dominant seventh chord. 58 Such clarifications, however, alienate us from Haydn s female dedicatee, who in her own writing favored sensitivity over logic, suggestiveness over clarity. We further risk crossing that line from colloquial the hallmark of a good letter to stiff and formal. If Haydn had insisted on a correct rootposition cadence, he would have risked turning off his prospective pupil before the first lesson, just as much as if he had adopted a uniformly formal tone in his letter. To be sure, an accomplished and sensitive performer could pull off both versions one can also play a root A with rehearsed elegance but why do it? Why feel embarrassed by that strange jump in the bass from E straight to D, if the artistic intent might have been to be delightfully incorrect in the first place? As Lausberg explains, oratio soluta may be imitated for artistic purpose[s]... to achieve an impression of simplicity. 59 If anything, the clarification that we think we need occurs in the B part, in m. 11, where E minor (vi) and A dominant seventh (V 7 ) now stand next to one another, the directness of their root positions softened by motive z, which crisscrosses in several kinds of motion (down, up, parallel, contrary). As in the opening, the goal a half cadence, or D major just happens, and when it does, we simply go with it: five measures (one plus four) of single notes in one hand (the note happens to be the structural dominant), while the other, with similar casualness, introduces the seventh, both hands decreasing rather than increasing in sound, from piano down to pianissimo. By the time we reach the fermata in m. 14, the dominant seventh has been instilled rather than established. Unnecessary for any structural purpose, the forte invites the performer to take a fresh breath, just enough to sustain a resting point a moment of suspension, an extended upbeat before rejoining the fine rhythmic lilt of the opening period (m. 17). No surprise, no shock: everything is just smooth and effortless. If we were also playing and listening, not just looking, we might have missed Haydn s non-resolution

199 156 Chapter 4 of the leading tone and seventh, the former simply left hanging, the latter dissolved by the little improvised Eingang between the end of the B section (m. 16) and the beginning of the A (m. 17). Toward the end of the first movement, in the BA part of the last variation (ex. 4.2), Haydn abandons this rhetoric of understatement: he now hammers out (fortissimo, m. 84) the dominant seventh chord, that connective Ex Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), from first movement, m. 80, to second movement, m. 5

200 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 157 particle, if you will, between the B and A sections. Connective particles are typical for a written, periodic style, and also for a learned, oratorical style (as in Haydn s letter to his prince cited in chapter 1). Having downplayed these connective particles in a loose, spoken style, Haydn now overcompensates, taking the opportunity, furthermore, to unite major and minor modes in one broad, concluding gesture on the dominant (mm ). With the calando in mm (which has the effect of asking for forgiveness for such excessive force before), we realize that something s up: Haydn s alter ego, that of Haydn the orator, is about to reenter. As we saw in his letter to Marianne von Genzinger, Haydn simply cannot switch, with the snap of a finger, from a sentimental to a jovial mode, as Marie Esterházy clearly was able to do. (Ex. 4.3 demonstrates such a version, ending the first movement as if it were one of Marie s letters, attacking the second movement with a single nevertheless or oh well. ) Instead, he redesigns A and turns what could have been a regular closing section into a crafty transition, both confusing and propelling his player into a new character and movement. This clear oratorical procedure may very well signal Haydn s intention of setting himself apart from his female addressee to mark the beginning of a new relationship: composer and dedicatee becoming master and pupil. Why, we hear the pupil ask, do I have to learn these things? She may find her teacher s answer in the second movement, after an extended passage that stubbornly holds on to the key of E minor (mm , ex. 4.4). In Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart described E minor as a naive, womanly, innocent declaration of love.... One could compare it to a maiden, dressed in white, with a roseate ribbon around her bosom [mit einer Ex Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40, from end of first movement to beginning of second movement, rewritten without transition

201 Ex Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), second movement, mm

202 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 159 rosenrothen Schleife am Busen]. 60 As a performer of this piece, I think I understand Haydn s evocation of E minor in m. 7, the penultimate measure of the opening statement. The forte, the extended bass note, which I am forced to leave alas! makes me nostalgic for that key of innocence, not the key of this piece, but another one, imagined, one from the past, maybe even one that Haydn had just finished composing: Hob. XVI:34, with its innocentemente variation-rondo finale in E minor. 61 Here, in the second movement of No. 40, nostalgia becomes despair. In mm Haydn gives us a chance to return to the other room of G major, the key of the surrounding sections. The abrupt silence at the end of m. 34 marks a hesitation that invites us, for a few moments, to contemplate the option of returning to G major (m. 35), but leaves us clinging to E minor nonetheless (m. 36). It is not dominant seventh chords and diminished seventh intervals (mm ) that hold us in a firm grip; rather, it is we who do not wish to let go of them. There s an inexplicable attraction to E minor, even if it means to revel in its more painful, dissonant side. But as this drama reaches its zenith with a full-blown cadence in E minor (mm ), Haydn steps in, applying all his experience in life and work, both with impressive skill and tact, turning tears into smiles and gently leading us back from the privacy of our thoughts and our nostalgic memories to the public space of the ballroom. (The d 3 e 3 sigh figure in m. 44, a tear in the highest of registers, is transformed to c 3 d 3 in m. 47, one satisfying step lower, a smile ; then, in utmost calm, an extended dominant chord the proper one this time prepares the smoothest of reentries of the opening theme in G major.) Concealed in illusive simplicity, Haydn s skill calls to mind an orator who proceeds from refutatio to confirmatio, sealing his opponent s defeat with well-honed counterarguments, or a skilled composer who finds his way out of a harmonic point of furthest remove as he connects the development with the recapitulation of a sonata. 62 That Haydn demonstrates this skill in a movement other than sonata form reflects the paradoxical intent of Marie Esterházy s sonatas: to teach, but not to lecture; to demonstrate, rather than to explain; to befriend, not to paternalize. Sonatas Nos. 41 and 42 If Sonata No. 40 allowed the teacher to gain the trust of his young pupil, the next sonata, No. 41, moves on to a more intense kind of training. We recognize in this sonata a reflection of a music lesson, in which singing and playing go hand in hand singing indeed constituting the complementary

203 160 Chapter 4 activity for any keyboard-learning young lady. Consider the opening bars (see ex. 4.5a): an assertive opening chord with the tonic on top (imagine the teacher at the clavichord or square piano, giving a clear sign with his arms and upper body as to when to begin); from there a diatonic scale down, made more interesting by slurs and Haydn s version of the French tierces coulées (slurs and staccato signs indicating that it is the short rather than the long note that should be inflected, exactly as C. P. E. Bach would have wanted it), and back up again. Mm. 4 and 5 contain a keyboardistic version of the vocal messa di voce on syncopated dissonances that appear to swell as the left hand changes harmony; m. 6, finally, engages in agility -building four-note divisions before mm. 7 and 8 wrap up the opening phrase where it began on tonic b 1, but one octave lower. Through the entire movement, we may identify similar solfège types of techniques or patterns, of the kind that Haydn would have known from his formative years under Nicola Porpora back in Vienna, 63 or from his endless sessions at Eszterháza coaching sopranos like his own lovely but not overly talented Italian mistress Luigia Polzelli. 64 Such exercises include a long series of ascending trills leading into downbeat appoggiaturas (mm ) or chromatic scale patterns to be repeated no fewer than four times until she finally gets it right (mm ). Not only does their isolation allow the student to polish her performance, but also, taken together, the various patterns create for her a perfectly fine sonata-form movement; a contemporary reviewer in Carl Friedrich Cramer s Magazin der Musik called it a master piece in its own way (ein Meisterstück in ihrer Art). 65 When, toward the end, in mm , our soprano-keyboardist gets to sing a short but complete cadenza (a long scale up to the highest note of the piano followed by a whole-note trill), it is as if, for that brief moment, she is made to feel what it is really like to be a prima donna on a theatrical stage, approaching the end of a concert aria and anticipating the erupting applause. If the right hand represents the female singer, then the left embodies the male teacher-accompanist, who carefully places his supportive harmonies in clear, multivoiced chords (as in mm. 6 and 43ff) and who helps carry her melodic line with Alberti-type arpeggiations (mm. 25ff). Both hands keep their individuality in the second movement as well (see ex. 4.5b), much more than they do in the otherwise similar finale movements of the Sonatas 1 and 3 of the set. Allowing the right hand (the pupil) to shine, the left hand (the empathetic coach) nonetheless follows closely, imitating her every move and making sure to infuse whatever his pupil does with appropriate energy. At

204 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 161 Ex Sonata in B Major, Hob. XVI:41 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), (a) first movement, mm. 1 8; (b) second movement, mm. 1 8 the reprise of A (of an overall ABA structure) these roles are reversed a testimony to the growing confidence of a teacher-pupil duo. Cramer s reviewer recognized in the third Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:42, a skilled and tasteful [female] singer [eine geschickte und geschmackvolle Sängerinn]. If the variations of the Sonata in G Major are excellent, he continues, then the ones in D are possibly still better [treflicher] than the first. 66 In my interpretation of Sonata 3, I too stress the skill and taste of the performer either Haydn setting an example, or the advanced pupil emulating her master but leave behind the metaphor of a female singer with accompanist: after the interactive lesson of Sonata 2, it is now one person who takes center stage. Compare the first and third sonatas opening periods to their respective finale movements (see ex. 4.6). Surprising, witty, and exciting, the G major

205 162 Chapter 4 Ex (a) Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), second movement, mm. 1 10; (b) Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:42 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), second movement, mm. 1 8 period is also a model of clarity: a quickly pulsating pedal tonic, with the third on top, temporarily opens to a neighboring c 1 on the downbeat of the second bar, immediately closing back to b. After these moments of tonal clarity we move to the dominant, D. We do so twice, both in the antecedent and in the consequent phrase. The second time, our celebration of D conveys sheer silliness: repetitious opening and closing (from f 1 or 3 in D to g 1 and back), gratuitous sixteenth-note running figures in the right hand, hyperbolic exclamations at the end. But giggling gives way to an intellectually unsettling riddle in the third

206 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 163 sonata. From the outside, things still look innocent enough: we re inclined to assume as we play or listen that we re dealing with a cheerful opening period. But consider how, in the strangely downward winding single melody of the two opening bars, two slurs initially overlap: should we stress the upbeat or the downbeat or both? And where does that d 2 come from (as the fourth tone of the first long slur)? When in m. 3 a proper d 1 tonic makes its entry as a bass pedal after all (its rhythmic drive familiar from the G major period before), it does so with a distinctly different harmonic meaning: as a dissonance, turning what we have registered as suggestive of E minor (with G ) in m. 1 into a secondary dominant (with G ), not of D major (the key of the sonata, and by all reasonable expectation also the key of this finale movement) but of A major, or the dominant of D. If mm. 1 4 constitute an antecedent phrase, then mm. 5 8 are the consequent phrase; but both and this is the logic-defying part are in the wrong key of A major. Or, from the perspective of voice leading: if 3 opens to its neighbor, 4, instead of closing again as it should (and as it did in the G Major Sonata), it opens again, G becoming G and leading to the yet higher pitch of A. Compare the slurred upbeats of m. 8 and m. 1, both bracketed in the example: they re the same idea, in a my end is the beginning kind of way, except we re not quite sure which is which. As performer or listener we can brush the problem aside, but not for long. Haydn the orator makes sure of that, first by making us realize that something indeed went awry (see the painful deceptive cadence in m. 45, not shown in the example), and then by a step-by-step reconstruction of what should have been a proper opening antecedent in the first place (offering retrospective corrections from m. 52 onward). When we finally reach that structural D major cadence in m. 87, we celebrate the all s well that ends well with the same running figures (in the same key) that gave us so much carefree pleasure in Sonata 1. Sonata 3, as I have suggested, is a transformed version of Sonata 1: a casual letter rewritten as a full-grown and publicly declaimable musical oration. Both sonatas warrant independent close analysis. 67 But to recognize these unmistakable links between the two sonatas the first and last of an opus also raises the crucial question of why Haydn wanted to pair innocence with slyness, so strikingly symbolized by a single tonicization of E minor, whether reflecting nostalgia (as in the first sonata) or initiating a logic-defying ploy (as in the third). Then, there s the D Major Sonata by itself, which, in my opinion, constitutes the single most remarkable example

207 164 Chapter 4 of classical oratory among all of Haydn s keyboard works, if not of his entire oeuvre. Why do we find precisely this textbook-like demonstration of oratory in a set dedicated to a lady? That Haydn does not underestimate his pupil, but in fact opens up a world of male-oriented oratory in the private space of a young princess s apartment, points to the very paradox that would have applied to someone with the talents of a Marie Esterházy. The sonatas, as the contemporary critic also realized, are more difficult in their execution [in der Ausführung] than one would initially assume: they require the highest precision [die höchste Präcision] and much delicacy [viel Delicatesse] in performance [im Vortrage]. 68 To play them as if they were just innocent or casual, with a level of competence and skill that would have been nonthreatening to the male connoisseur, was, indeed, the mark of a lady. But to write them for such a lady is the hallmark of a composer who actively communicates with his dedicatee, who is a wonderful and patient mentor, and who through his music remains in touch with etiquette and life. Innocence Lost On the most intimate level, Haydn must have known that even his wellmeant guidance would necessarily fall short. Marie, this young, extroverted girl, had lost her innocence. In a letter to her dear friend Maria Ludovica, one leaflet among a pile of largely forgotten documents in the Hungarian State Archives, Marie wrote on Christmas Day 1812: Nickerl [Nicolaus] makes terrifying progress in my antipathy, I almost came back to how it was 29 years ago: when I see him enter my room, it gives me nightmares: and, yet, we have to get along, for the rest of his life [la reste de sa vie].... I am indisposed quite often / pain from stomach cramps; which torments me at all hours and which stops me from sleeping: I spoke to the doctor, who says that, in women, the entrails are the most attacked by grief, incessantly compressed: there, a new discovery that soul and heart situate themselves in the lower abdomen. How it was 29 years ago brings us back to 1783, the exact time of her wedding (since she saw Nicolaus only twice that year). Her mother, her governess, her nuns (if she ever attended boarding school), and her priest (if they had premarital counseling) must all have impressed upon her that the immediate consummation of marriage was not a choice but an obligation.

208 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 165 According to the rules of her Roman Catholic faith, failure to consummate could result in papal annulment of the vows. In a September 1816 diary entry, Lady Frances Shelley reflected on the inexperience and youth of bride and groom (see above), then added: Can one be surprised at the misery which results from such marriages? Is it surprising that he should have a hundred mistresses, and she a lover? It seems that her lover has lately put her in despair by marrying at sixty-five. The late Empress was her great friend, and she talks of her with affection, while tears spring to her eyes. 69 Marie told her life s story to anyone who would listen. Assuming that Lady Shelley accurately remembered the details, Marie s affections jumped from husband, to lover, to friend. In her need, Marie may well have been compensating for the absence of conjugal love with friendships, blurring and substituting the two. We observe a similar impulse in her communications with Maria Ludovica. For example, in the same letter, as Marie grapples with deeply tormenting feelings about the husband with whom she must live for the rest of his life, by a simple change of pronoun she reveals just how remote those distant vows of for as long as we both shall live look to her: Never did I imagine that friendship [amitié] could create this magic, it s quite peculiar at 44 to know something that in its combination of perfections has always seemed impossible to me. But four years later, in 1816, Marie loses the two great emotional anchors of her adult life when her dear friend the empress dies and her lover, Prince Andrey Razumovsky (now mostly known as the dedicatee of Beethoven s Op. 59 String Quartets), marries the thirtyone-year-old Countess Constantine Thürheim. Marie, desperate, proposed a ménage à trois, but in vain. 70 No wonder she talks incessantly or wishes so much to please, and to be amiable, Frances Shelley s tone indicating both pity and annoyance. 71 By 1816 Marie was a woman in grief, trying to move on with her life. But moving on she sadly had had to do long before. Her aunt Eleonore Lichtenstein discloses a horrific situation that nobody in good faith would wish on anyone s daughter or daughter-in-law (this is the continuation of the passage on the actual wedding quoted above): The father [of the young Prince Nicolaus], Prince Paul Anton, was a widower, 47 years old. He developed such an irresistible infatuation with his daughter-in-law that he started scheming a plot to annul the marriage and

209 166 Chapter 4 marry her himself. All this resulted in great anger within the family, and firm, united action was required from both the grandfather Prince Nicolaus Esterházy and the Princess Franzin [= Maria Leopoldine] to resist his intention. Prince Paul later married one Countess Hohenfeld and died in Marie s father-in-law s reckless infatuation and actions must have turned Esterházy-Liechtenstein family reunions into complicated affairs, to say the least. Equally bizarre is a note of May 26, 1810, from Nicolaus II to his eldest son Paul about the prospective birth of a bastard child: In haste! When Frau von Kemmitzer has her child, have it baptized in my name! Nicolaus Paulus [sic], if it s a boy; Leopoldine Henriette, if it s a girl! I will write Frau v. Kemmitzer with the next courier. The expenses are to be handsomely paid! N. E. 73 Given these additional events and situations, our hope of reconstructing Marie s fifteen-year-old persona proves either increasingly problematic or painfully naive: things just weren t that simple. If anything, rather than reflecting her own experience, her musings about her own daughter-in-law may reveal the yearnings of a forty-four-year-old woman who badly wants to be the supportive mother-in-law she never had. 74 Her widowed father-inlaw, on the other hand, had been closely present for all the wrong reasons. All the while her husband was on tour with his tutor, crowning the education of his own adolescent life and making the transition from young man to man. This leaves the fifty-one-year-old Haydn and his gift of piano sonatas in Haydn biographers have repeatedly drawn attention to the many kind gestures bestowed on him by the reigning Princess Marie Esterházy. She was the one who intervened with her husband on his behalf to raise Haydn s pension. She was the one who personally visited him at his Gumpendorf house, bringing along her own daughter, to break the news of Haydn s youngest brother s death. During the famous performance of his Creation at the Vienna Universitätssaal, Haydn s last public appearance, she was the one who, sitting next to him, noticed a draft and put her own scarf around his neck, a tender gesture imitated by several other ladies until Haydn was completely covered with scarves. 75 Back in , the princess and Haydn exerted their combined influence over a stubborn Prince Nicolaus II to convince the prince to allow his clerk, Carl Rosenbaum, to marry his true love, the famous singer Therese Gassmann. 76 These well-known facts, taken together with so many more, have contributed to a lasting image of Marie Esterházy as an

210 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant 167 angel in gentleness and goodness (eine Engel an Sanftmut und Güte). 77 But back in 1784 it had been Haydn who lent his scarf, so to speak, to Marie. Able only to understand, not to heal, the emotional wounds of her wedding season, he had presented her with a special gift: three of the finest ladies sonatas. With these sonatas he could lead her symbolically around a ceremonial fire, that symbol of the transition from prospective bride to confident hostess, from Mademoiselle to Madame, from the innocent recipient of a heartfelt letter to the skilled declaimer of a crafty oration.

211

212 He had very lively imagination and a very light hand, with which he executed [ausführte] dexterously everything that he thought [was er dachte]. FRIEDRICH NICOLAI (1785, 401), on the sculptor Messerschmidt CHAPTER 5 An Opus for the Insightful World The first edition of Haydn s Auenbrugger Sonatas (Hob. XVI:35 39, 20) came with a printed warning: In these six sonatas two pieces [due Pezzi] may be found that begin with a few measures of the same sentiment, namely the Allegro scherzando of Sonata No. II and the Allegro con brio of Sonata No. V. The author forewarns [ previene] that he did this on purpose, deliberately changing in each of these the continuation of the same sentiment [Continuazione del Sentimento]. Picking up the volume at the Artaria store on the Kohlmarkt in Vienna and opening its cover for the first time, one may feel prompted to go immediately and check those particular moments from the second movement of Sonata No. II in C Minor and the first of Sonata No. V in G Major (see ex. 5.1). Realization would come very quickly that these Hauptsätze are strikingly similar indeed, if not identical. They are themes, furthermore, for what twice looks like a variation movement. But why did Haydn wish to inform his prospective client of this? It is peculiar, indeed, that a terse avertimento would occupy the full first page of a new publication, one that marked the beginning, furthermore, of a new and prestigious partnership between Artaria & Company and Haydn. Four lines of rather impersonal prose, it is hardly the equivalent of a 169

213 Ex One idea, different executions: (a) Sonata in C Minor, Hob. XVI:36, second movement, opening; (b) Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:39, first movement, opening

214 An Opus for the Insightful World 171 multiparagraph, well-crafted, but seemingly spontaneous avertissement for a literary book, where author, translator, or editor hides behind some warning to start capturing the goodwill of the reader. Modern editions of Haydn s score do not even bother printing it: at most, they quote it in their own preface. So what it is doing there? The simple answer is that Haydn requested Artaria to include it, providing him with the verbatim text in German in order to forestall the criticism of any know-it-alls. And he elaborates, For of course I could have chosen instead of it a hundred other ideas [Ideen]; but so that the whole opus [wercke] will not be exposed to blame on account of this one intentional detail (which the critics and especially my enemies might interpret wrongly), I think that this avvertissement [sic] or something like it must be appended, otherwise the sale might be hindered thereby. The more complex answer, however, must take into account the public impact of the apology: it is one thing for Haydn to refer candidly to know-it-all critics or enemies in a private letter, but quite another altogether to prepare a statement to appear in print, referring to himself in the third person as the author. More seems to have been at stake. The two cousins Carlo and Francesco Artaria, both in their mid-thirties, had been known for their art prints and maps, but in 1778 they started to expand their operations to include music printing. 1 The forty-eight-yearold Haydn, for his part, had just succeeded, in 1779, in renegotiating his eighteen-year-old contract with the Esterházys, enabling him to embark on exactly this kind of commercial publishing project without court permission or approval. This conjunction of ambition and opportunity, as James Webster has observed, cannot be coincidental. 2 On April 12, 1780, Artaria used the pages of the Wiener Zeitung to announce the publication of 6 new sonatas for harpsichord or fortepiano by the esteemed Haydn. But it was only after breaking the news that an ongoing series of prints of noteworthy sights in the city of Vienna drawn by Carl Schütz and Johann Ziegler would henceforth be published by them that Artaria turned to Haydn and his sonatas: 3 Not only engravings of all genres [i.e., maps and art], but also musical scores, correctly and clearly engraved, printed on good paper, by the most famous masters, are the objects of our attention so that we may win the appreciation and goodwill of the Liebhaber. We believe that the 6 new sonatas for harpsichord or fortepiano, which we received from Herr Joseph Haiden s composition, deserve a prominent place in this art column [Kunstrubrick]. 4 Artaria underscored the fact that no effort had been spared in producing high-quality scores, which, the company claimed, were correctly and clearly engraved and printed on good paper the implication being that, if they

215 172 Chapter 5 were worthy of Artaria s attention and efforts, these prospective scores by the most famous masters should deserve the notice of its customers too and the readers of this regular art column. Concern for print quality and target audience permeates the business correspondence between Haydn and Misters Artaria. Table 5.1 offers a TABLE 5.1. Haydn s letters to Artaria, January 31, February 8 and 25, and March 20 and 29, 1780 Letter 1 Estoras, January 31, 1780 High and noble born, I send you the 6th keyboard sonata since it is the longest and most difficult [die längste und schwerste]: one of these days I will certainly hand in the 5th; in great hurry I remain Messieurs your dedicated servant Josephus Haydn mppria [manu propria] Letter 2 Noble well-born Gentlemen! Estoras, February 8, 1780 I here send you the 5th, as the last sonata, with the request to send all six back to me for correction; all in all, with this work [Arbeit], I hope to earn honor at least from the insightful world [bey der einsichtsvollen Welt]; criticism will come only from those who envy me [Neydern] (of whom there are many); should [these sonatas] generate decent sales, then this will convince me in the future through more work [Arbeith] to always apply myself to serving you before anyone else and to remain Messieurs Your very devoted servant Josephus Haydn Capellmeister. Letter 3 Particularly honorable Gentlemen, Estoras, February 25, 1780 I here send you back the complete corrections of the 6 sonatas with the request to take note of as many of them as possible: the numbers underlined in red are the most essential. The approval of the Misses v. Auenbrugger is of the utmost importance to me, because their manner of performance and genuine insight [einsicht] in composition equals those of the greatest masters. Both deserve to be known in all of Europe through the public press. Additionally, I consider it necessary, in order to forestall the criticism of any know-it-alls [wizlinge], to print on the other side of the title page the following, here underlined:

216 AVVERTISSEMENT. [sic] Among these 6 sonatas there are two single pieces [Stücke] in which the same idea [Idee] occurs through several bars: the author has done this intentionally, to show different methods of execution [Ausführung]. For of course I could have chosen instead of it a hundred other ideas; but so that the whole opus [wercke] will not be exposed to blame on account of this one intentional detail (which the gentleman critics [die herrn Criticker] and especially my enemies [meine feinde] might interpret wrongly), I think that this avertissement or something like it must be appended, otherwise the sales might be hindered thereby. I submit myself in this matter to the insightful opinion of both misses v. Auenbrugger, whose hands I obediently kiss. Of the 6 promised copies I would like to ask to send one of them to Mr. Zäch v. Hartenstein in the Royal Bavarian Post Office and the other five to Estoras. I hope for a fast response on the point above and have the honor to remain with special esteem Your most obedient servant Josephus Haydn mppria. Letter 4 Particularly honorable Sir, Estoras, March 20, [1780] Everything that you wrote to me, I find fully satisfying; I regret only one thing: that I could not enjoy the honor myself of dedicating these sonatas to the Misses v. Auenbrugger. I remain with due esteem Your most devoted servant Josephus Haydn mppria Letter 5 Messieurs! Estoras, March 29, 1780 Recently I received a letter from Mr. Hummel, Royal Prussian music and commerce councilor, in which I read to my astonishment that my sonatas have been sent to Berlin quite some time ago already. May I also kindly remind you not to forget about the five copies for me. I remain with much esteem Messieurs your most obedient servant Joseph Haydn mppria Source: Bartha 1965,

217 174 Chapter 5 translation of the five letters that pertain directly to the Auenbrugger Sonatas. Letter 1, dated January 31, 1780, is a brief cover letter accompanying Haydn s submission of the 6th keyboard sonata since it is the longest and most difficult. In the literature, the qualifiers long and difficult have frequently been associated with the musical qualities of the Sonata in C Minor, Hob. XVI:20. Though this may be correct by association, it seems more likely that Haydn was anticipating a particular concern of his publishers: that the sonata would be long and difficult to engrave. At twelve pages, it in fact ended up being two pages longer than the second-longest No. 1 in C and No. 5 in G, both of which were ten pages long. 5 We may assume that the four previous sonatas had been previously submitted, perhaps as a group: they may already have been engraved. By sending ahead the last, Haydn demonstrated his sensitivity to the possibility of holding up the production process. He further promised to deliver the last sonata (which is actually to be the fifth) as early as one of these days. In 1780 Artaria, because it was still new to the music-printing business, worked with independent music engravers. It served Artaria s interests to provide these engravers with a steady stream of new work in order to avoid delays in production if they took on other jobs. 6 But Haydn too felt the pressure: he signed off in great hurry. The decision to recycle an older piece as the sixth sonata a nice long one bought him welcome time to write the fifth. Reasonably keeping his promise ( a few days becoming one week ), Haydn sent off the 5th as the last sonata on February 8, 1780 (Letter 2), and asked Artaria to send all six back to me for correction. Now reviewing the proofs of all six sonatas, Haydn must have realized the need for an avertissement. From this point on, musicological theories diverge. One assumes that Haydn, while checking the sonatas one final time, had to have noticed the almost literal repeat of the idea of Sonata No. 2 in Sonata No. 5. But revision was no longer an option: the engraving had been completed. Haydn could not afford to lose the trust of a new business partner in their first collaboration. Anticipating an almost certain perception of fault (indeed sharing it himself), he quickly but cleverly decided to hide his lapse behind an apologia that evokes the well-known rhetorical distinction between res (ideas) and their materialization through verba (words). 7 A second theory refuses to acknowledge any admission of guilt. Far from being a backhanded mea culpa, Haydn s avertissement is a conscious rhetorical ploy intended to redirect attention from the individual sonatas to precisely these kinds of connections across sonatas and pieces (Stücke or pezzi). Not insignificantly, both Haydn (see Letter 3) and Artaria use the

218 An Opus for the Insightful World 175 latter terms for what we would call movements, a subtle reminder that we should think outside the box of a single sonata. 8 According to this theory, these identifiable connections across pieces are not at all accidental but fully intended. By drawing the public s attention to one such connection the most obvious one the author puts his audience on track toward finding more and admiring him for them. Of course, these theories are not mutually exclusive: in the case of a genius like Haydn, necessity and serendipity often go hand in hand. Thus, while recognizing and admiring an exceptional opus-tonality (nota bene in an essay devoted to Haydn s opus planning and innovation ), László Somfai evokes the fire of the opera house in Eszterháza in December 1779 as an incentive for compromise : abandoning his plan of composing an opus of entirely new sonatas, Haydn seizes an opportunity to recycle an older one, his C Minor Sonata, Hob. XVI:20 (1771), to serve as the last of six. In his haste to finish, he was forced to leave the fifth sonata without sonata form opening movement (G/i is a variant of c /ii), which he defended with the publication of a separate avertissement. 9 Unexplained by Somfai, however, is the question of why one movement should be the variant of another. Was Haydn so pressed for time that it was easier for him to compose a variation movement on the same theme rather than on another? In other words, if necessitated by haste, was the connection also serendipitous? Elaine Sisman, in several of her writings on the opus concept, answers in the affirmative. But she claims more: by deliberately setting two movements in an opus as variants of the same underlying idea, Haydn makes it easy for us to recognize and consequently take part in what she has termed tertiary rhetoric. The Auenbrugger Sonatas provide a prime if not touchstone example for this kind of intertextual rhetoric in which pieces converse with each other and with the performers and listeners who make those connections. 10 Tertiary rhetoric complements a distinction made by the historian and rhetorician George Kennedy between primary rhetoric, the kind that is enacted in an oral context (Cicero or William Pitt delivering a speech, whether or not carefully prepared), and secondary rhetoric, which concerns literary genres that emerge in the wake of primary rhetoric and feature an apparatus of rhetorical techniques (such as rhetorical figures in literary texts, which are not applied to persuade the reader, but to beautify or enliven the narration). 11 In tertiary rhetoric, then, it is not or not just the composer, the player, and the listener who communicate with one another; rather, the works themselves become interlocutors in a conversation on a much larger scale, nowhere as dynamically as

219 176 Chapter 5 Ex Opus tonality of the six Auenbrugger Sonatas, Hob. XVI:35 39, 20 in a single composer s opus of works: The works arise together and often require each other for the full story to be made clear. 12 In my own performances of the Auenbrugger Sonatas (a set that I have particularly enjoyed performing in extenso for an audience), I have been consistently aware of an overarching tonal sequence from C major (Sonata 1), chromatically over C minor (Sonata 2) and D major (Sonata 3) to E major (Sonata 4), then jumping ahead to G major (Sonata 5), and resolving into C minor (Sonata 6): see ex This most remarkable opus tonality takes approximately 100 minutes to unfold too long, of course, for performer or listener to consciously sustain at every step along the way. Yet it exists, and the awareness of such a thread beyond the boundaries of sonatas has given me the confidence to characterize each piece or movement individually: three pieces together forming a sonata, and six of those forming one opus, amounting to a total of eighteen pieces. As the performer of other works, I had adopted the personae of an orator of a sonata-length speech (chapter 2), of a comic actor of a capriccio (chapter 3), and of the female student in a series of lessons (chapter 4); but with these Auenbrugger Sonatas I found myself perfecting the role of a guide who leads his listeners through a gallery, as it were, of expressions, characters, or portraits. When assembling this gallery, Haydn paid careful attention to shadow and light, juxtaposing darker with brighter subjects, from movement to movement as well as within movements, as in the effective brightening up of the same subject in the first movement of the C Minor Sonata, one of Haydn s so-called monothematic sonata movements. That Haydn himself used the chiaroscuro metaphor of Schatten und Licht in a letter to Artaria of October 8, 1781, concerning his two collections of songs may be no coincidence, considering the latter s interest in the visual arts an interest that, as Thomas Tolley has emphasized, composer and publisher shared, along with presumably hundreds of Kenner und Liebhaber in Vienna. 13 But whenever I come to the fifth sonata the penultimate one, the one

220 An Opus for the Insightful World 177 with the repeated idea something happens. Jolted out of my leisurely piece-by-piece approach, I suddenly feel reminded of how the concert will end. From the outside, everything still seems to be business as usual: movements 13, 14, and 15 continue a cycle of contrasting characters. But from the larger perspective of an opus tonality I have broken with the pattern of ascending half steps (from C to E ) by jumping from E (Sonata 4) to G (Sonata 5). Thus, I have made G major the dominant that inevitably heads not to C major (the beginning of the opus), but to C minor. With its non-sonata form (hence less structurally self-conscious) first movement, its touchingly nostalgic Adagio (in C major, the key of the beginning of the opus), and its unusually ecstatic gigue finale (prestissimo, the single fastest tempo indication in Haydn s solo keyboard oeuvre), the G Major Sonata is the proverbial silence before the storm: the performer knows what s coming the listener doesn t. Sonata 6, in C minor, immerses both performer and listener in the Sturm und Drang world of a clavichord, dark (minor) dramatically eclipsing bright (major). 14 Significantly, this last sonata is also the longest. The Nicolaus Esterházy Sonatas ended with two distinctly shorter sonatas: the two-movement E Major Sonata, Hob. XVI:25, with its strictly canonic Tempo di Menuet, and the A Major Sonata, Hob. XVI:26, with its al rovescio minuet followed by a miniature scherzo. Exchanging length for contrapuntal ingenuity may have reflected a strategy on Haydn s part designed to refresh the prince s attention toward the end of a long session; but here, by placing the longest sonata of six at the end, he only makes a long session even longer. Yet the placement also makes the experience more dramatic. Not eschewing emotional conflict within sections or movements, this sonata draws attention to itself by presenting a variety of main emotions and side emotions that are, in a true Forkelian sense, either maintained, pursued, suppressed, soothed, or eradicated and turned into a different emotion altogether through a cycle of three long movements (see chapter 2). Not surprisingly, with its greater emotional complexity, it is the one sonata of the six that unleashes the orator-performer in me, again in the German tradition of a moving keyboardist (rührender Klavierist). Thus, at around two-thirds of the way (or roughly at the golden section), a gallery of pieces transforms into a single-opus drama in C minor. Haydn takes authorial responsibility for this transformation through his avertissement. This clear voice by the composer adds credence to the theory, most sharply articulated by Sisman, that Haydn was consciously aware of making connections in creating his grander, intertextually driven opus. In summary:

221 178 Chapter 5 1. A large-scale tonal structure imposes itself at the fifth sonata, shifting the focus from pieces or sonatas to opus. (This shift may very well parallel Haydn s own obligations to his publisher, the composer weighing his options after having sent out the first four sonatas for engraving.) Underlying this structure are two interweaving narratives, generated by an exploration of such dualities or dyads as shadow and light, or serious and cheerful. These narratives develop independently before merging in Sonatas 5 and As a de facto duo, the Auenbrugger sisters would have aptly enacted these dialoguing narratives in the Viennese salon. Their individual performing personalities would have complemented one another, and their performance of Haydn s sonatas two, four, or (an entirely conceivable) all six together would have elicited a lively discussion on ideas, sentiments, or characters, as well as praise of the author s mastery in expressing them through music. 4. A modern-day performance of the complete Auenbrugger Sonatas has the potential of making intertextuality what Sisman calls tertiary rhetoric part of the primary act itself. The perceived jolt from gallery to drama toward the end of such a performance is, furthermore, real and intended. Considered in isolation, these claims are relatively simple. But when put in their actual sociohistorical context, which is needed to prove the third claim in particular, the plot starts to thicken. It takes place in the critical houses of Haydn s Vienna, where individuals of seemingly wide-ranging interests doctors, poets, artists, musicians, scientists, politicians, and theologians gather to exchange opinions on art, literature, and science. Two of these subjects, in direct relevance to Haydn s Auenbrugger Sonatas (as we will suggest), would have been the immensely popular physiognomic theories of Johann Caspar Lavater and the stunning Charakterköpfe (character heads) by the sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, including gossip about the artist s mental state. These houses would have included the von Auenbrugger residence, where the ladies father, Leopold von Auenbrugger, a respected scholar and physician with a pioneering interest in psychiatry, most certainly would have had strong opinions on both Lavater and Messerschmidt; and the fashionable Greiner salon, hosted by the imperial bureaucrat Franz Sales von Greiner and his extraordinarily educated wife, Charlotte (Karoline) née Hieronymus, well-known for her correspondence with Lavater. At the center of attention, finally, would have been two talented sisters: Katharina (born

222 An Opus for the Insightful World 179 Vienna, 1755; died Vienna, June 9, 1825) and Marianna (baptized Vienna, July 7, 1759; died Vienna, August 25, 1782). 16 Equal to the Finest Masters On February 8, in high spirits, Haydn sends off the last remaining sonata to his publishers (see Letter 2). He makes a point of reminding the cousins Artaria that the sonata is actually the fifth and not the sixth in the set. In a reflex not untypical for an author at this happy stage of the publication process, he muses about the future impact of his work (Arbeit). Oblivious of the work still ahead for his addressee, he fantasizes about how the publication will be received, both critically and commercially, going as far as linking his fate to that of his publisher: Should [these sonatas] generate decent sales, then this will convince me in the future through more work always to apply myself to serving you before anyone else. This is also where Haydn mentions the insightful world (einsichtsvoller Welt), distinguishing this sophisticated community from those who envy him (Neydern) and who will criticize him no matter what. We recognize the same confident yet defensive Haydn from his so-called autobiographical letter. Back in 1776 Haydn had characterized his critics, somewhat sarcastically, as the otherwise so reasonable gentlemen of Berlin, who have no middle ground in their criticism of my music: in one weekly paper they praise me to the heavens while in the next, they dash me 60 fathoms into the ground, and all this without any credible explanation of why. 17 But these critics, as Sisman has shown, served as necessary characters in the rhetorical structure of the vita itself, introduced, as they were, at the structural confutatio, allowing Haydn to defend himself against his opponents and conclude his letter (which was intended for an Austrian rather than a German readership) with dignity and confidence. 18 Haydn clearly did not lose his sharp tongue over the intervening four years. In private letters to his new publisher he now takes to calling his critics not only Neyder, but some know-it-alls (wizlinge), the gentleman critics (die herrn Criticker) or, more bluntly, my enemies (meine feynde). Never mind the critics: true honor is to be earned from the insightful world (Letter 2). Haydn uses the same term again in connection with the demoiselles von Auenbrugger, whose insight (Einsicht) in composition equals that of the finest masters and to whose insightful opinion he deferred on the matter of the avertissement (Letter 3). In view of Haydn s comment that both deserve to be known throughout Europe in the press, it

223 180 Chapter 5 is somewhat amusing to find his name linked with one of the sisters in an important weekly German paper as early as 1766, edited by none other than the fierce Haydn critic Johann Adam Hiller. 19 In this concise who s who of Vienna, Haydn is not even listed as composer but as a violinist : Joseph Heyden, an Austrian, Capellmeister with the Prince Esterházy, in symphonies et cetera. On the next page, under women, both from the nobility [von Noblesse] and middle class [mittlern Stande], who are very capable on the keyboard and in singing and who deserve to be noted here (emphasis mine to note the same patronizing tone as Haydn s), we find Mademoiselle Auenbrugge (sic). Unless the younger Marianne was a child prodigy à la Mozart, almost certainly the reference is to the elder Katharina, who at the time was herself barely eleven years old. She joins a distinguished group of twelve women, including the twenty-two-year-old Mademoiselle Elisabeth [recte Marianna] Martinez, who also composes very well [sehr artig]. 20 In 1773, when Katharina had grown into a mature eighteen-year-old and Marianna was fourteen, Leopold Mozart told his wife that there s nobody like the daughter of H: Doctor Auenbrugger, or rather his two daughters, who both, but especially the elder, play incomparably well and who have a complete command of music (letter of August 12). The Mozarts had visited the Auenbruggers a few days before, presumably on August 4, and had dined with them. 21 Most contemporaneous with Haydn s Auenbrugger Sonatas is the following witness account by Friedrich Nicolai, another Haydn critic and actual Berliner, who heard the sisters during his 1781 visit to Vienna: Fräulein Franciska [recte: Katharina] von Auenbrugger, daughter of the prominent and famous physician [rühmlich bekannten Arztes], plays the keyboard [Klavier] in a masterly fashion [meisterhaft], and sings with pure intonation and with true affect [mit wahrem Affekte]. Her voice is a low soprano. Her lovable [liebenswürdige] sister Marian[n]e, whom I saw while she was very ill and who has died in the meantime, also played the keyboard, and composed. 22 Of the two sisters, the fortunes of good health and good looks seem to have gone to the elder, Katharina, who was a celebrated beauty, while Marianne was said to have always been prone to illness and of a somewhat crooked build. 23 Regarding their respective musical talents, the two quoted reports are consistent in keeping the younger sister in the shadow of her elder sister: Mozart explicitly praises Katharina, and Nicolai, though enchanted by Marianna s lovable character, merely acknowledges her piano playing and composing, reserving the terms masterly (see Haydn s equal to the finest

224 An Opus for the Insightful World 181 masters ) and with true affect (the ultimate German compliment for a performer) for the elder sister. It would be unfair, however, to conclude from these comments that Katha rina was the superior musician. 24 Knowing them in , when Marianna was neither very young or fatally ill, Haydn stresses both demoiselles insight in composition. That Marianna composed at all a fact worth pointing out for a lady may have made her a closer colleague of Haydn than her sister was. Artaria posthumously published Marianna s keyboard sonata, the first and last from the hand of the illustrious Damigella Marianna d Auenbrugg, along with an ode, Deh si piacevoli (Ah, so pleasantly), from the hand of an anonymous friend and admirer of her rare virtues, set to music by her counterpoint teacher Signore Antonio Salieri. (For this title page, see fig. 5.2.) The publication was reviewed in 1783 by no less an authority than Carl Friedrich Cramer, who praised Marianna s sonata for revealing the excellent musical qualities of the author [Verfasserin]. Had Cramer actually heard her perform, or did he know her only by reputation? Possibly even more touching, he continues, is the composition of Herr Salieri on the ode: it is so full of expression that every true connoisseur will not sing or listen to it without being touched. 25 Cramer does not praise Salieri s composition per se: he praises it specifically as music set on the ode. Under the circumstances, this subtle clarification makes sense: both text and music are a tribute to Marianna, and the critic is careful not to compare Salieri s compositional skills to those of la dolce Marianna, who had been stolen from the world too soon by cruel destiny (destino crudel). The text concludes: Among the blessed / joyful spirits / eternal peace / ever enjoying; / ah, do remember, / that you were ours, / that you will live always / in our hearts. Salieri turned the ode into a miniature cantata with obbligato keyboard in three parts: a tearful introduction in G minor, a lamenting recitativo in D and A minor, and a concluding aria in a cathartic F major. The vocal range (e 1 /f 2 ) is that of a mezzo-soprano. It is not hard to imagine the two sisters performing together: Katharina singing, with Marianna at the keyboard. In this posthumous performance, however, her teacher, His Majesty the Emperor s Chamber Composer, both touchingly and prestigiously, takes Marianna s place. When played on a circa 1780 five-octave Viennese grand fortepiano, Marianna s score reveals no particular weakness, either in a physical sense or compositionally. Well on the contrary. Grand in scope with a long, multisectional E major Moderato opening movement in 4/4, a Largo A major

225 182 Chapter 5 second movement in 3/4, and a festive Allegro rondo-finale in 3/8 this sonata is much more a concert or concertolike sonata than any of Haydn s own pre-london sonatas, attesting to Marianna s skills and ambitions and perhaps reflective of her contacts in with Muzio Clementi, who also dedicated one of his Op. 8 sonatas to her. 26 Marianna s sonata reveals the persona of an adventurous performer-composer. Her accomplishments extended beyond music. Katharina s grandson, Ernst von Lehmann, wrote in 1865 that Marianna had an exceptional intellect [Geist], spoke and wrote Latin and Greek, and already as a little girl played the keyboard excellently. Katharina, he continues, was full of intellect and culture [Bildung] as well [emphasis mine]. This insider s observation, so it seems, flips the now better-known assessments of those outsiders, Mozart and Nicolai; according to Lehmann, it was Marianna who set the bar for Katharina. Yet Lehmann s recollections may have been guided more by heartfelt family memory than fastidious attention to detail: he did, after all, switch the ages of his great-aunt and grandmother, incorrectly assuming that the former was the firstborn. Lehmann concludes his story of Marianna s unfulfilled promise by adding that she died as a spinster (date unknown). 27 Katharina married the widower Joseph Freiherr Zois von Edelstein on January 13, Once established in her new home, Frau von Zois continued the Auenbrugger family tradition of host[ing] musical matinées in the winter season on Sundays between 12:00 and 2:00 p.m., which were attended by select company and out-of-town musicians [Tonkünstlern], to the delight of the old grandfather [Grosspapa, i.e., Leopold von Auenbrugger]. 28 The 1796 Yearbook of Music in Vienna and Prague, edited by Johann Ferdinand von Schönfeld, confirms the Zois residence as one of the houses in Vienna where amateur academies (Dilettantenakademien) were held: On Sunday mornings, Frau Baronesse von Zois usually holds a small musical gathering [Kotterie], with lots of singing at the keyboard [bei welcher am Klavier viel gesungen wird]. One of the singers would have been Katharina herself, who had given up playing the piano by the time Schönfeld heard her: Zois, Freyinn von, born von Auenbrucker [sic], once was one of the first artists on the fortepiano, which instrument she played not only with dexterity [Fertigkeit] but also with taste [Geschmack]. For a few years, however, one has not heard her any longer, at least not in academies. Her singing is of the most agreeable kind one can hear. With a pleasant voice she connects a great many ornaments both graceful and expressive. 29 Count Karl von Zinzendorf notes in his diary on July 23, 1782 (one month before Marianna s death), that Mlle. Auenbrug-

226 An Opus for the Insightful World 183 ger sang the role of Renaud (Rinaldo) in Vincenzo Righini s opera Armida at the residence of Prince Adam Auersperg. 30 Either Count Zinzendorf forgot that Katharina had married earlier in the year, or Katharina s celebrity was such that he persisted in seeing her as mademoiselle. In an oval-framed miniature of Frau Zois, reproduced as fig. 5.1, we see a beautiful, mature, well-established woman. But the only extant image of Marianna is a modest silhouette (Schattenriss), part of the larger oval frame in Artaria s title page (fig. 5.2), the meaning of which is made explicit by a two-word Latin phrase accompanying the portrait: umbra superstes ( surviving shadow ). On this title page, from a copper engraving by the Viennese Brothers Mansfeld, 31 we see from back to front the skyline of Vienna, Fig Katharina Freifrau Zois Edelstein, née von Auenbrugger. Miniature by Suwis, Collection of Marianne von Bacho-Dezser. Reproduced from a photograph in the possession of the Joseph Haydn-Institut, Cologne.

227 184 Chapter 5 Fig Marianna von Auenbrugger, Sonata in E Major, with ode by Antonio Salieri (Vienna: Artaria, ca. 1783), title page. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Denmark. Shelfmark U24, mu dark smoke rising from a solemn tomb surrounded by pine trees, a laureldecorated urn on a collapsed column, a weeping angel leaning on Marianna s portrait, and a trumpet laid down in silence all expressions of profound mourning. But back in 1780, Katharina and Marianna were still the shining stars in the household of their father, who over the years had personally supervised their excellent education. A lifelong scholar in addition to his practice as a physician at the prestigious Vienna Spanish Military Hospital, Auenbrugger ( ) had a rich collection of books and always worked and studied very hard. 32 When Emperor Joseph II awarded him nobility status in 1783 (making him Edler), it was not solely in recognition of his introduction of diagnosis by percussion, for which he became famous in the history of medicine, but more generically in consideration of his fruitful service to the public through his expertise and noble knowledge in medical science. 33 These services listed as part of the 1782 petition for a noble title on his

228 An Opus for the Insightful World 185 behalf included: (1) his work at the hospital without salary between 1751 and 1755; (2) his percussion technique and the 1761 publication disclosing his development of it; (3) his leadership in fighting a putrid fever (Faulfieber) epidemic in 1771 among the lower class; (4) broadening the field of medical science through an essay on mania; and (5) submitting to His Majesty an essay on silent furor (über die stille Wuth) as a token of his uninterrupted pursuit. 34 It would in all likelihood have been at the house of this distinguished physician himself a serious Liebhaber of music 35 that Haydn first heard the sisters perform. There he would have kissed their hands obediently, as he asked Artaria to do again (Letter 4). In sum, he dedicated his sonatas to two extraordinarily gifted sisters, one of them extroverted, beautiful, comfortable with public praise and attention; the other perhaps more introverted, but with intellectual capacities and interests equal to her father s. The Lavater Connection In the winter of 1781 Haydn s business venture was developing as planned: he was about to publish his Six String Quartets Op. 33, his third production with Artaria. Offering exclusive prepublication handwritten copies to interested gentlemen amateurs who live abroad, he wrote the following letter to Johann Caspar Lavater in Zurich on December 3, 1781, explicitly asking him to send his reply to Vienna (rather than Eszterháza): Most learned Sir and Dear Friend! I love and like reading your works. As you may have read or heard, I am also not without skill, since my name, as it were, is highly recognized in every country. Therefore I take the liberty of asking you ever so politely for a small favor. Since I know that there are in Zurich and Winterthur many gentlemen amateurs and great connoisseurs and patrons of music, I cannot suppress the news that I am issuing, by subscription for the price of 6 ducats, a work consisting of 6 quartets for 2 violins, alto-viola and violoncello concertante, correctly copied, in a new and quite special way, for I have not composed any at all for 10 years [emphasis Haydn s]. I did not want to fail to offer these to the great patrons of music and the amateur gentlemen. Subscribers who live abroad will receive them before I publish them here. Please don t take it amiss that I bother you with this request; if I should be

229 186 Chapter 5 fortunate enough to receive an answer containing your approval, I would show myself and remain your most learned Sir s ever obliging Josephus Haydn mppria Fürst Estorhazischer Capell Meister. Vienna, December 3, Address: to be delivered to Prince Esterházy s house. In Vienna. 36 This so-called subscription letter is well-known in the literature for Haydn s self-professed claim that the quartets are of a new and special kind, a description that reflects clever salesmanship or hints at a conscious new approach or some combination of both. 37 One might ask, however, why Haydn chose to share this with the Swiss minister and physiognomist Lavater. Lavater was hardly just another potential client on Haydn s list. The letter to Lavater differs in distinct ways from the one he sent to Prince Kraft Ernst zu Öttingen-Wallerstein: Most Serene Highness, Gracious Prince and Dread Lord! As a great patron and connoisseur of music, I take the liberty of offering Your Serene Highness most humbly my brand new à quadro for 2 violins, alto, and violoncello concertante, correctly copied, at a subscription price of 6 ducats. They are written in a quite new and special way, for I have not composed any for 10 years. The noble subscribers who live abroad will receive their copies before I submit them here [to my publisher]. Expressing my high esteem for [His] Grace and hoping for [His] most gracious approval, I remain ever in most profound respect, His Serene Highness Humble and obedient Josephus Haydn, Fürst Estorhazischer Capell Meister.

230 An Opus for the Insightful World 187 Vienna, December 3, [1781]. Address: To be delivered to the princely Esterházy house à Vienne 38 The prince, a great patron and connoisseur, clearly made it to the list as a short-term business opportunity: the answer to Haydn s request is a quick yes or no. But what exactly Haydn expected from Lavater is less clear. He does not ask him directly to subscribe, but rather (and even this is left as something for Lavater to read between the lines) to spread the word of the new quartets to others, namely to those great patrons of music and the amateur gentlemen in Zürich and Winterthur. The addressing of Lavater as dear friend, the casual captatio benevolentiae ( I love and like reading your works ), and the equally casual placing of himself on a par with his addressee ( I am also not without skill, since my name... is highly recognized in every country ) reveal a desire to liaise with a man as famous as the Zwinglian minister, whose work was widely read and discussed among the Viennese aristocracy, intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals alike. 39 One such gentleman in the orb of Lavater s influence was Count von Zinzendorf, governor of Trieste. Given his onerous professional obligations, Zinzendorf had barely any time for continued reading, 40 but in his diaries he mentions Lavater repeatedly ( Bunau and Miltitz couldn t stop talking about Lavater ), adding that Torres sent me a copy of Lavater s Aussichten in die Ewigkeit. When Zinzendorf eventually succumbed to peer pressure and actually read some of Lavater s work himself, his first response was, What extravagance! He then critiqued Lavater s ideas on the development of embryos, discussing his opinion of Lavater with Sigmund Zois, Katharina s future brother-in-law. Zois showed Zinzendorf the new fourth volume of Physiognomische Fragmente, which included many portraits of our lord and the apostles, the emperor, and military men, and directed him to the work of the French-Swiss biologist Charles Bonnet, a volume of whom he promises to lend me for on my voyage. 41 These entries, dating from December 1777 to September 1778, were made at the very same time that Haydn was contemplating an expansion of his career as a published author. Either by calculation or by intuition, Haydn understood that the market for his music was the same as that for Lavater s theories; in modern terms, they shared a demographic. In a society preoccupied with proper esprit de conduite, it is not hard to see the attraction of physiognomy, which purports to recognize the true

231 188 Chapter 5 character of another person purely on the basis of the outer shape of the skull, nose, or underlip. This theory of reading the internal from the external is so contagiously practical and seductive that after even a cursory reading of Lavater s fragments and studying a handful of his illustrations, 42 most people succumbed to the lure of amateur physiognomy, applying the theory to any person or portrait encountered. Conveniently for Haydn s contemporaries, furthermore, Lavater s theory came with a theological imprimatur. The full title of the book is Physiognomic Fragments to the Advancement of Human Knowledge and Love and the motto from Genesis on the title page of the first volume So God created man to his own image applies to all four of them. In Lavater s theory, vanity and moral judgment blur. Every human face, even the most wicked, is a presentation of moral and spiritual truth. 43 Naturally, when encountering the grotesque or misshapen, you may feel better, more beauteous, nobler, than many others of thy fellow- creatures and rejoice in your physical and moral superiority, but, as Lavater cautions, you must ascribe it not to thyself, but to Him who, from the same clay, formed one vessel for honour, another for dishonour. 44 In short, you are invited to analyze, categorize, and rank people by their facial looks with the assurance that you do so in the name of love and of the glory of God. This single premise permeates Lavater s work. One does not need to read Lavater s work in any particular order to appreciate his argument, since it is not so much an argument as an easily grasped assertion. Zinzendorf, for example, started with Lavater s fourth book. Application and theory are freely mixed throughout, and Lavater s stylistic choice of presenting his theory in fragments rather than clearly ordered chapters and paragraphs reveals his impulse toward the orphic rather than the philosophical or scientific. Lavater s work is evangelical: he delivers the good news of his insight in ways that comport with his professional instincts as a Christian minister. Furthermore, he writes in a style that is conversational, narrative, and easily accessible though to the modern reader he may come across as self-indulgent and manipulative. The Greiner Salon Charlotte (Karolina) von Greiner, née Hieronymus, was one of the most literate and cultivated women in Vienna. Her particular intellectual passions were natural history and astronomy. She was also one of Lavater s biggest fans. 45 On July 31, 1781, some six months before Haydn s letter, she wrote to Lavater:

232 An Opus for the Insightful World 189 My Most Honored Sir, Never did you give away a silhouette of yourself that was received with more or even just with as much pleasure as the one that Herr Steinsky brought from you; for those who enjoy the advantage of knowing you personally it would be dispensable; for those who know you just by name it would be of no particular value. But among those who have read your writings, if anybody appreciates you as much as I do, then certainly no one appreciates you more. 46 Lavater and Frau von Greiner had not met; they knew one another through shadow portraits. Soon after receiving Greiner s first letter, Lavater requested one from her, small but drawn razor-sharp. This exchange of shadow portraits marked the beginning of a long and highbrow correspondence. Almost certainly, Haydn had not met Lavater either. But he must have met Frau von Greiner. It is quite possible that the idea of Haydn s contacting Lavater began with the lady. 47 This raises the intriguing question of what aspects of Haydn s music, heard and discussed at her salon, made her or anyone present at such a gathering think that Lavater would be especially interested in the composer s latest works. The Greiner salon with the husband and host s interests in the arts (poetry, music, and painting) and the wife and hostess s passions for the sciences (astronomy and natural history) almost certainly epitomizes the insightful world that Haydn refers to in his letters to Artaria. This is the world that, in the late 1770s and early 1780s, Haydn was eager to enter not just by the grace of his reputation as an out-of-town Kapellmeister, but as a flesh-andblood author. As he insisted in 1781 to Artaria, Haydn wanted to personally perform his newest songs in the critical houses because a master must see to his rights by his presence and by true delivery (see chapter 2). Texts for those songs had been selected by Councilor von Greiner himself, which more or less guaranteed an invitation to the Greiner salon. Although Haydn was eager to personally present his songs, nowhere in his correspondence do we detect any expressed desire to perform his Auenbrugger Sonatas in the critical houses. It is, of course, possible that he did, especially in a circle of like-minded friends as gracious and uplifting as the Greiner salon, where any established author of poetry or music was welcome to read or perform his own work. 48 Haydn s emphasis (in Letter 3) on the Auenbrugger sisters manner of performance and insight in composition as equaling that of the finest masters suggests a transferral of the

233 190 Chapter 5 rights of performance to them; possibly, in attending a performance by these accomplished players, Haydn would still have been able to see to his rights by his presence. 49 Indeed, singing and playing a not-too-complex song is one thing (in this context, Haydn himself admits that they re just songs ; emphasis mine), but playing a long series of six keyboard sonatas in public is quite another. 50 We may start to imagine the following scene. The Auenbrugger sisters have been invited by Herr von Greiner to play Haydn s newest opus, his first collaboration with the Artaria cousins, who are well-known both to the Greiner household and to the sisters. Haydn is present. Keen to observe and learn, so am I. The audience sits in a half circle around the fortepiano. The lid has been removed; the tail of the instrument extends into the audience. The two sisters will alternate: the beautiful and energetic Katharina will play the odd-numbered sonatas, the lovely but somewhat mysterious Marianna the even ones. Polite conversation fills the time before the music begins and latecomers arrive. 51 The subject turns to Lavater and his physiognomic studies. We should try to make him visit us one day, Frau von Greiner says. Dr. von Auenbrugger agrees. He d love the opportunity to discuss medical applications with him: the physiognomy of the sick is already an important factor in diagnosing a disease but can Lavater s theories also help predict illness, especially mental illness? The painter Carl Schütz points out how indebted Lavater is to the visual arts: Just look at Charles Le Brun s drawings in his Traité sur les passions, still one of the major textbooks at the French Académie, but also here for us, at the Akademie. Of course, Frau von Greiner knows, Lavater himself has always been a passionate drawer. This reminds me of your old colleague at the Academy, the distinguished sculptor Messerschmidt, Count von Zinzendorf jumps in, addressing Schütz. We spoke about him yesterday at the residence of Duke Albert s: they say that Messerschmidt, now living in Pressburg, has gone half mad. 52 Ignoring the gossip, Herr von Greiner restores the intellectual thread of the conversation: Careful, though. Both Le Brun and Lavater have studied facial expressions, and have much in common doing so, but their approaches are also essentially different. Le Brun s is concerned with pathognomy, or the study of passion or character in motion, while Lavater studies character at rest. The term character here may be better understood as a complex amalgam of passions itself. 53 The conversation swings back to Messerschmidt and his character heads. Haydn actually saw a number of them when he was in Pressburg last summer. At this point, careful not to burden the conversation with too

234 An Opus for the Insightful World 191 much theoretical hindsight, I speak up: In light of what you said, Herr von Greiner, about the difference between physiognomy and pathognomy: those character heads are a unique and interesting case. They are physiognomic, in that they each represent a certain character with amazing accuracy and with an eye for the finest or rawest detail; on the other hand, strictly speaking, they re pathognomic because their model is mostly one and the same person, namely the artist himself. 54 Messerschmidt told me, Haydn confirms (putting me at ease about the appropriateness of my contribution), that for each new bust he pinches himself at various places of his body, studying his expressions in the mirror. One may find his method of invention [Erfindung] unusual, but I ll say his execution [Ausführung] is stunning. That may well be, someone objects ever so politely, but these constructed poses: are they not artificial? Are they not distortions rather than expressions? Where s nature in all this? Lavater, I dare say, would disapprove. With the final guests having arrived and the piano tuned, it s time for music. As we listen and watch several themes of the conversation linger and stir together in our minds: physiognomy, pathognomy, character, portrait, the persona of the artist. Speaking of whom: who s the artist here? One sees and hears it from him, C. P. E. Bach wrote in reference to a keyboardist capable of conveying the emotional content of a piece or sonata through appropriate facial expressions (see chapter 2). These were part and parcel of good actio, as the last and culminating stage in the rhetorical process from composition to performance. So for Bach, it doesn t matter whether we see the composer or the performer: in the end, they re one and the same. But who are we looking at now? Well, we see Katharina. Come to think of it, the expression on her face has been rather constant through this movement, the first of the opening sonata in the easy key of C major. Granted, there were two exceptions (a developmental passage that veered off into D minor, and a moment in the recapitulation where C minor compelled Katharina to lower her eyebrows) but these seemed to serve the purpose of making the initial character shine through all the more strongly toward the end. She has had this contagious sparkle in her eyes that conveys genuine cheerfulness and optimism. Throughout her well-prepared performance she has managed to look away from her score toward her audience, revealing the confidence of a trained opera singer which, of course, she is. She has been smiling, furthermore at times even with her mouth open: we could see her beautiful teeth. But now, anticipating the beginning of the slow movement, her physiognomy changes. Gently closing her lips, her smile disappears; with her eyes cast down, her cheerfulness gives way to an induced seriousness. Now

235 192 Chapter 5 playing in a beautiful F major, she contemplates the full impact of Haydn s musical thoughts. Two physiognomies? Two different poses? By Katharina or Haydn? Or by the present author? Plate 5 presents a series of twenty-one photographs of my performing each of the eighteen movements of the opus (including three additional images to account for two trio sections of a minuet and for the long finale). These snapshots form a gallery of physiognomic poses that Haydn might well have been looking for in his own metaphorical mirror, pulling and twisting his creator s mind in various directions. Plate 6 makes the analogy with Messerschmidt explicit through a display of Charakterköpfe, selected to match or shape my interpretations of Haydn s pieces. 55 Inspiration for such a gallery comes from Lavater s so-called physiognomic and pathognomic exercises, such as the one reproduced in fig. 5.3, where sixteen heads in profile are designed to teach the budding physiognomist to observe varieties, make minute distinctions, establish signs, and invent words, to express these remarks. 56 In Appendix A I submit my homework, writing twenty-one descriptions of my own portraits in Lavaterian prose. Amateurish at best, these analytical sketches are intended to exactly echo the kind of pastime physiognomizing that might have taken place in Vienna s critical houses in Haydn s day. Ex. 5.3, finally, presents the incipits of the scores for the eighteen musical portraits or Numbers. 57 An Eccentric Model When the ever curious Nicolai visited Messerschmidt in Pressburg in 1781, he found the sculptor at work on his sixty-first character portrait. Of the sixty completed busts, the German visitor admits to liking only four, namely those simple heads that are true to nature, and distanced himself from the poor twisted spirit of the poor Messerschmidt, who held these simple ones as very common, instead dreaming of creating some hypernatural spiritual power through compressed lips and ghastly convulsions. 58 Our gallery of snapshots and reproductions includes quite a few with compressed lips and tense convulsions. This is not out of some reflex to refute the Berlin critic (he was, after all, no friend of Haydn), but to provoke an appreciation of how also Haydn flirted with exaggeration or distortion to embody his musical characters. A comparison of portraits Nos. 5 and 13 (or the two pieces highlighted in Haydn s avertissement) illustrates this point: see fig. 5.4 and ex When looking at No. 5 ( A Willful Buffoon ), one is struck by the wide-

236 An Opus for the Insightful World 193 Fig Daniel Niklaus Chodowiecki, Sixteen Heads in Profile, from Lavater (1776), vol. 2, supplement. Reproduced by permission of the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal. open eyes, which force the eyebrows up and sideways; the tensely compressed lips (as if holding back laughter); the enormous wrinkles on the bald forehead; a broad but interiorized smile; and a chin that covers most of the subject s neck. Lavater considers a larger gap between eyes and eyebrows as indicative of a sense more cheerful, more open, more light, 59 but cheerfulness seems far too tame a description for a character that has been described as malicious, treacherous, and spiteful. 60 The similarity with No. 13 ( A Buffoon ) is unmistakable: we find an almost identical malicious smile

237 Ex Incipits of the eighteen Auenbrugger pieces

238 Ex. 5.3 (continued)

239 Ex (continued) a = dotted; b = triadic; c = repeated; d = third in left hand, alto range; e = short appoggiatura (crisp); f = diatonic, at least three notes in the same direction; g = main note with neighbor, either direction; h = Alberti; i = arpeggio (thick chord); j = long appoggiatura (expressive); k = cantabile gesture (leap, slurred); l = legato (at least three notes); m = chromatic

240 An Opus for the Insightful World 197 Fig Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, A Willful Buffoon (after 1770 [No. 5]) and A Buffoon (after 1770 [No. 13]). Reproduced from Krapf (2002), 245, 249. but with less acute willfulness in the latter: no wrinkles on the forehead, chin tucked in, eyes slightly cast down. Of the eighteen pieces, No. 5 (Allegro con brio, 2/4, A major) is arguably the most awkward to play. First there s the surprise of the key, which, after a gloomy C minor first movement, imposes itself with sudden and unashamed brightness. Haydn orders scherzando the only such indication in his complete solo keyboard oeuvre. As can be seen from plate 5, I m smiling, but somehow I never quite succeed in having the good time that the con brio challenges me to have strikingly different from the C major Allegro con brio that opened the set. Consider fingering your left hand (see ex. 5.1a). You choose a 4 2 for the third, avoiding your thumb on a sharp key (the normal instinct for an early keyboardist). After the sustained upbeat in your right hand, you enjoy the pleasant, bouncy downbeat support in the left, but you must stay alert: in order to play the seventh on the second beat (5 1), you must turn your wrist quickly and rather painfully to the left. As you continue practicing, you may decide to anticipate the twist, and play 2 1 on the opening third. But by doing this, not only would you

241 198 Chapter 5 give up the physical pleasure of a downbeat, you would end up with a nagging hand position for more than twice as long. Meanwhile, the right hand has its own challenge. Haydn prescribes a variable ( long ) appoggiatura, requiring a clash of some sort with the dissonant chord underneath, but barely allows sufficient time to execute it since the left hand keeps bouncing away should it wait for the right? 61 The itching and twisting continues. Regardless which fingering you choose for the upbeat to m. 3, you have to jerk your left hand back up again, continuing with either 4 or 2 on c 1, as the start of a chromatic progression toward the half cadence. Your right hand, meanwhile, is coming down in thirds. On paper this countermotion between the two hands looks balanced, but the topography of the keyboard forces the right hand into at least one more uncoordinated twist of the wrist. Then, after a rare moment of synchronization (mm. 4 5), both hands are again thrown in erratic leaps or directions (mm. 6 7). Consider, finally, the deceptive cadence in m. 14. Often a moment of rest or contemplation, this one offers neither: after the special effort of grabbing two narrow accidental keys (f and c 1 ), the left hand is jolted into yet another awkward position (c a). And this is only the theme. In the variations there s more pinching, twisting, and convulsing. Submit yourself to an erratic sequence of ever changing four-note groups (Var. I, mm ), try phrasing these kinds of groups by incongruent slurs that crisscross over good and bad beats (Var. II, mm ), and hopefully you garner sufficient self-confidence to still manage a double-hand virtuosic scale in parallel tenths just before your assertive final cadence and your two grand final chords (coda, mm ). It took me several concert performances to stop blaming myself for missing what looks on paper like an easy run. I can t help thinking that Haydn has turned me into a Messerschmidt-like model, forcing me to be aware of and consolidate my physiognomic contortions through rehearsals and performances, all while wearing a painfully bright smile (scherzando!), mouth tensely closed. If No. 5 explores the more extreme, perhaps pathological side of cheerfulness, No. 13 feels more balanced and synchronized. Transposing everything down one tone, Haydn offers our hands a simplified topography. Thus, in m. 1 (ex. 5.1b) we deal with only natural keys, which largely eliminates any need for twisting the wrist: we can use our left hand thumb both on b and c 1, as part of what has been restored to a normal, unproblematic alternation of tonic and dominant harmonies. Where the earlier single appoggiatura in the right hand confused us, the trill is now pleasant to play and smoothly slips into a dotted-rhythm pulse that may be executed in complete synchro-

242 An Opus for the Insightful World 199 nization with the left. In fact, both hands remain well coordinated, moving in either parallel or contrary motion almost as if a contrario proving the points we made before. The new key of G major has rounded off the edges of a forced smile. Less compelled to impose our emotional presence on our listener, we cast our eyes down; the willfulness of No. 5 has ebbed away. Nos. 4, 5, and 6: A Sonata in C Minor With an actual portrait of Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer for No. 6 (the minuetfinale of Sonata 2), we invite yet another prominent local figure into our imagined salon. 62 Leopold Mozart s friendship with the man who became known as the father of hypnosis is well-known. In the same letter in which Mozart senior praised the talents of the Auenbrugger sisters, he raved about the physician s musically gifted son, who is truly talented, so much so that he should be my son, or at least be with me. 63 It had been Leopold Auenbrugger who first introduced the Mozarts and the Mesmers. Mesmer was also a close friend of Messerschmidt. Their work reveals a shared passion for bodily convulsions, whether induced by self-pinching or explained by Mesmer s theory of animal magnetism. 64 By the time Haydn composed his Auenbrugger Sonatas, Mesmer s reputation as a magnetizer had already been tarnished (notably by his controversial attempts to heal the blind Maria Theresa Paradies), but he was not yet the discredited charlatan that a 1784 French scientific commission, presided over by Benjamin Franklin, would brand him. 65 To represent respectively minuet and trio, Mesmer s portrait (No. 6a) is paired with Sweet, quiet sleep (No. 6b). The latter shows the head of someone still awake enough to stand erect: the eyelids are closed, the eyebrows have been accented, the mouth is relaxed, and nostrils are open. The man is in a state of magnetic sleep, presumably at rest after some draining moments of crisis. 66 In our performance of the Auenbrugger Sonatas, after the preceding five numbers, we too have reached a moment of emotional fatigue whether as listener or as player. In No. 4, the first movement of the second sonata, we had been forced to cloak ourselves in C minor gloom; the mediant E major (as the second group in the exposition) and the glimpse of submediant A major (notably in m. 57 of the recapitulation) only made the subsequent darkness more oppressive. No. 5 forced us to drastically change facial expressions, from deeply frowning (No. 4) to lifting our eyebrows as high on our forehead as possible. Thus, having been forced to opposing extremes, we now yearn to relax the perfect condition to allow ourselves to

243 200 Chapter 5 be mesmerized by the C minor minuet (No. 6a) and subsequently give in to the trance of the C major trio (No. 6b). For my performance of No. 6b I like to engage the device in Viennese fortepianos (operated either by hand or by knee) that slides a piece of felt in between hammers and strings to produce an ethereal or celestial cloud of sounds the exact effect that Mesmer would have achieved by playing the glass harmonica during his séances. 67 Through this haze of sound, at least one of our salon guests might have recognized Haydn s melody from Die Feuersbrunst, Hob. XXIXb:A, written a few years before. Now that I have my Wurstel, my heart feels light, Columbina sings in D major, at the opening of a blissful duet at the end of this comic singspiel. Hanswurst responds: Now that I have you, my darling, my heart feels light. 68 Ex. 5.4 shows the model, with our No. 6b transposed for easier comparison. We can see Haydn enhancing elements of pure bliss : No. 6b has no tonic support in m. 1; the canonical left hand in m. 2 suggests some dominant leading to a deceptive cadence on vi in m. 2, except that there is no leading tone on the second beat, so technically there s no deception either; we tiptoe over an incomplete first-inversion tonic in m. 3; and when we finally play a tonic root in m. 4, it comes on a weak beat, its brief appearance immediately replaced by four bars of triple-pulse dance steps around the dominant (mm. 5 8) not letting go of 5, which has been implicitly present since the opening. Time and harmony, it seems, have been suspended. Now, imagine all of this in the unlikely key of C major. The Artaria edi- Ex (a) Nun ich meinen Wurstel habe, from Die Feuersbrunst, Hob. XXIXb:A, opening line; (b) No. 6b transposed from C major to D major

244 An Opus for the Insightful World 201 tion (reproduced in fig. 5.5) replaces the usual graphics for the key signature of the circle of fifths by two straight lines, slanting either upward (for the treble) or down (for the bass). Pitches are ordered from G up to F and from F down to G, or twice the span of a dominant seventh around which the trio will oscillate. The lines composed of sharp signs leave a bizarrely out-offocus visual effect. Like a magnetizer s stretched-out finger or metal wand, they lure us, as it were, into a world where foreign tones have become the norm. Not only the trio but also the minuet features a tune, known in the literature as The Night Watchman s Song ( Der Nachtwächter ). This is one of at least seven known quotations by Haydn. 69 Another is the Baryton Trio Hob. XI:35, played in unison by the viola, cello, and baryton (see ex. 5.5). The tune, a diatonically ascending fifth in minor key followed by a formula characterized by a Lydian fourth (si do sol), has been documented to raise associations of lateness (the night watchman embarking on his first round), darkness (his lantern serving as a beacon of security), or dawn (the night watchman completing his final round). 70 In No. 6a Haydn s repeated use of the melody is strangely captivating indeed, hypnotic. Counting the da capo, we are submitted to it no fewer than eight times. In my performance, I reengage my celestial stop of the fortepiano for the last recurrence of the minuet tune, deliberately prolonging the minuet-and-trio s moments of ethereal bliss before opening up the blinds to a radiant D major sonata. 71 Cheerful versus Serious We have by now pinpointed two moments of shock: first, within a sonata, from No. 4 to No. 5, then between sonatas, from No. 6 to No. 7. With these back-to-back shocks, Haydn imposes a perception of pairs of pieces crossing through the boundaries of sonatas. Contrast chiaroscuro becomes the key word, and the generic model was provided at the outset of the opus by Nos. 1 and 2. Just as we admire the radiant teeth and eyes in Messerschmidt s The Artist as He Imagined Himself Laughing (No. 1), we may consider the opening three bars of Haydn s Allegro con brio (ex. 5.3) as sonically sculpted by the hammers of a stoss-action Viennese grand fortepiano. A dotted (a) and triadic (b) upbeat figure, staccato repeated notes (c) accompanied in the left hand by an alto-range third (d), a crisp appoggiatura on a slurred upbeat (e), and a playful three-toned voice exchange (f) are all expressions of genuine optimism. As we switch to No. 2 ( The Serious Demeanor of the Artist ), playfulness yields to seriousness. Now playing the lower regions of

245 Fig Sonata in C Minor, Hob. XVI:36 (Vienna: Artaria, 1780), Menuet (No. 6a) and Trio (No. 6b). Reproduced by permission of the British Library Board. Music Collections, f.186.v.

246 An Opus for the Insightful World 203 Ex Baryton Trio in A Major, Hob. XI:35, Trio, mm his instrument, the fortepianist explores the cantabile potential of the same hammer mechanism, taking the time to roll his opening chord (i), approaching a variable or long appoggiatura (j) by an expressive leap (k), exquisitely slurring groups of notes (l), and earnestly contemplating a chromatic passing tone (m). His mouth is closed, his nose is relaxed (allowing calm breathing), his eyes are cast down. These two distinct poses are the starting points for two respective strands throughout the opus, shown in ex We observe an intensification of cheerful (No. 1) to mischievous (No. 3) and clownlike (No. 5), an absolute peak in manic/hyperactive (No. 7), a temporary ebbing away to witty/ naive (No. 9), but then a modest curving up again to roguish (No. 13) and mocking (No. 15), before cheerfulness disappears altogether: these are the circled tones. The serious strand (starting in No. 2) includes forceful (No. 4), serene (No. 6), lethargic (No. 8), melancholy (No. 10), poetic (No. 11), determined (No. 12), noble (No. 14), anguished (No. 16), (sort of) accepting (No. 17), and tormented (No. 18): see the squares. Until No. 10, the alternation between cheerful (the odd numbers) and serious (the even numbers) is crystal-clear. (The more objective division along tempo fast vs. slow in fact yields the same result.) But Nos display a more consistently serious content. Nos restore the alternation, but only briefly: while Nos have their lighter moments, Nos are unwaveringly (and, as we shall see, self-destructively) serious. Naturally, these strands accumulate contact points along the way. The default similarity of Nos. 13 and 5 is just the tip of the iceberg. In ex. 5.7, for example, the similarities between the themes of Nos. 1, 3, 5, and 13 (presented in C major for easier comparison) are unmistakable. The suspended single downbeat of No. 3 transforms into the upbeat figure of Nos. 5 and 13. No. 13 restores a dotted-rhythm bounciness, taking its cue, so it seems, from Nos. 1 and 3. No. 3 so clearly the source for Nos. 5 and 13 is itself derived from the consequent phrase of the theme of No. 1.

247 Ex Physiognomy of an opus

248 Ex Comparison of Numbers 3, 5, and 13, opening measures Ex Comparison of Numbers 2 and 14, selected measures

249 206 Chapter 5 The serious strand has its own internal connections: slow movements that open with an arpeggio on a solemn downbeat (Nos. 2, 8, 11, and 14), themes that feature long appoggiaturas (Nos. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 16, 17, and 18), or some particularly striking harmony, such as a Neapolitan sixth, a diminished seventh, a deceptive VI, or an augmented (French) sixth (Nos. 4, 6, 8, 11, 16, and 18). In fact, like their two Allegro con brio counterparts Nos. 5 and 13, also the two Adagios Nos. 2 and 14 might have warranted a warning : ex. 5.8 isolates material from their respective first and second key areas that is almost identical, in spite of a change from duple to triple meter. From Physiognomy to Pathognomy At some point, the physiognomic dyad cheerful-serious, which reveals itself so clearly for the single pieces from No. 1 all the way to No. 10, transfers itself to the broader structure of the six sonatas. As the performance progresses, this is clearest from Sonatas 4 6, but retroactively the alternation applies to Sonatas 1 3 as well: see ex. 5.6, second system. The odd-numbered sonatas, 1, 3, and 5, all have two circled single pieces, cheerfulness thus outbalancing seriousness. Sonata 2, with its awkwardly cheerful middle movement, yields to a majority of serious. Sonata 4 has three squares: definitely serious. Sonata 6 (can there be any doubt?) is most definitely serious. Thus, whereas the serious sonatas become more and more so as the opus progresses, the cheerful ones remain consistent in their inconsistency, their outspokenly cheerful outer movements (in the same major key, with similar tempo) always enclosing a serious middle movement (in the subdominant or parallel minor key, with a slow tempo). Fig. 5.6 presents a graphic overview of the opus. Groups of twos and threes multiply to six, both on the level of single pieces (the maximum amounting to six pieces or one sonata pair) and on the level of three- movement sonatas (together amounting to the complete opus). The surface alternation of dyadic physiognomies is most clearly manifested in the first group of six pieces, with shocking No. 5 jolting performer and listener alike out of an expectation of a conventional three-movement-in-one-sonata and the minuet-trio No. 6 conveying a sense of distanced conclusion. After the consistently serious Sonata 4, which puts a halt to the physiognomic alternation on the level of pieces, No. 13, as the opening movement of Sonata 5, eases us back into a perception of a six-sonata sequence. It is here that a gallery of eighteen pieces transforms into what will eventually reveal itself as a drama of six sonatas. Remarkably, Nos. 5 and 13 or the two pieces singled out by Haydn

250 An Opus for the Insightful World 207 pathognomy physiognomy pleasant 1. cheerful F S 1. Allegro con brio 2. Adagio F 3. Finale: Allegro 2. serious S F S 4. Moderato 5. Scherzando: Allegro con brio 6. Menuet/Trio: Moderato 3. cheerful F S F 7. Allegro con brio 8. Largo e sostenuto 9. Finale: Presto ma non troppo 4. serious F S F 10. Allegro moderato 11. Adagio 12. Finale: Allegro 5. cheerful F S 13. Allegro con brio 14. Adagio F 15. Prestissimo 6. serious F S 16. Allegro moderato 17. Andante con moto unpleasant F 18. Finale: Allegro Fig Physiognomy and pathognomy of an opus are each the fifth member in their respective chain of six. At their respective level of piece and sonata, both are responsible for forcing a hemiolalike feel of twos against the threes: two pieces, two pieces, two pieces, or two sonatas, two sonatas, two sonatas. From an intellectual point of view, No. 13 heralds a new perspective: that of the pathognomist, whose interest is in character in motion rather than character at rest. Our focus shifts from the details of the single portrait to the dynamism of an opus as a whole. (It is tempting to imagine that Haydn discovered this double design after his breakthrough decision to recycle his old C Minor Sonata for the end.) Consider the facial expressions in plate 5 again. Taken separately, these various fixed poses do nothing more than expose my willingness as a performer to be coaxed into serving as the malleable clay of an experimenting composer-sculptor. But as the opus pro-

251 208 Chapter 5 gresses I am emancipated as a keyboardist-actor, whose pantomimes in sequence actually start making for a compelling story. Of the English star actor David Garrick, presumably in admiration, Denis Diderot wrote: He passes his head through two posts of a door, and through the interval of four to five seconds his face changes consecutively from excessive joy to moderate joy; from this joy to tranquility; from tranquility to surprise; from surprise to amazement; from amazement to sadness; from sadness to despondency; from despondency to dread; from dread to horror; from horror to despair, and climbs from this last degree back to where he had descended from. Similarly, C. P. E. Bach admires a performing musician who is capable of constantly changing from the one to the other emotion. 72 Since Bach is clearly concerned with musical performance that is both seen and heard, changes in the performer s facial expression would have been part of Bach s equation. Diderot s illustration, however, is used to prove that Garrick could not have possibly been sincere: in terms that Horace or Bach would have understood, Garrick cannot possibly have genuinely felt in order to move ; rather, his actions were acting and as such must be taken first and foremost as a technique. Keyboard acting is no different. In Haydn s Auenbrugger Sonatas we re confronted with yet a different paradox. Physiognomy was conceived as a science, allowing the physiognomist to distinguish between what is true (sincere) or false (pretended). This distinction explains why Haydn s contemporaries considered a stenciled silhouette more just and faithful than a painted portrait. The stenciled silhouette accurately captured the exact shadow of the subject s profile, while the painted portrait contained the subject s features and expressions necessarily interpreted through an artist s eye and hand. 73 Pathognomy, by contrast, imposed a rhetorical rather than an essentialist bias. Pathognomy studied passions or emotions in their ever changing manifestations rather than fixed and settled characters. In this respect it may be relevant that Artaria, when translating Haydn s draft, changed Haydn s idea (Idee) to sentiment : ideas may be presented by themselves, but sentiments are bound to change and Artaria accordingly slipped into using the term continuation (continuazione) instead of Haydn s execution (Ausführung). By initially focusing on physiognomic detail, then switching to pathognomy only at the meta-level of the opus, Haydn combined two competing perspectives on nature, art, and gesture into one physiopathognomic drama. Single characters are submerged in one long sequence of emotions, acted out not by two sisters (whose dual physiognomies, though initially attractive, could easily turn into a liability, as the novelty of alternation wore off) but by

252 An Opus for the Insightful World 209 a single performer, who enacts biphysiognomy before eventually revealing his own complex emotional self. The notion of enacting becomes key. If biphysiognomy exists, it takes something of an effort to switch from the one to the other. In 1797 Fredrik Samuel Silverstolpe said: I discovered in Haydn as it were two physiognomies. One was penetrating and serious, when he talked about anything sublime, and the mere word erhaben [sublime] was enough to excite his feelings to visible animation. In the next moment this air of exaltation was chased away as fast as lightning by his usual mood, and he became jovial with a force that was visible in his features and even passed into drollery. The latter was his usual physiognomy; the former had to be induced. 74 By using such terms as as it were, excite, and induced, Silverstolpe was perhaps conscious of the very contradiction he has raised: strictly speaking, there can be one physiognomy only, and Silverstolpe recognizes Haydn s jovial side as his usual physiognomy. In his Auenbrugger opus, one might argue that Haydn too eventually causes one physiognomy to supersede the other as the ultimately true kind. The Pathognomy of an Opus In the Auenbrugger drama there s no mistaking: serious wins over cheerful. When tracing the unfolding of an opus tonality (see ex. 5.9), 75 we must be struck by an all-defining presence of Sonata 4 in E, which not only imposes an alternative to any sharp-oriented keys that came before (C minor, E, A, D) but also locks into the overall pathetic tonality of C minor. If A major (No. 5, but also other sections in Nos. 4, 7, and 9) is the extreme representative for all the twisting and pulling that went on in Sonatas 1 3, then Sonata 4 allows us to relax our muscles but also to give in to our usual melancholy self. Taking into consideration the combined movements of Sonatas 4 and 6, which share a tonal realm of A major (adding the Trio No. 12b to the mix of Sonata 4), then two triads of A major and A major may be juxtaposed. The former symbolizes a painful grin our laughing muscles stretched to a maximum; the latter initially allows us to relax our lower face (especially the area around the mouth), but also reverses the direction, a gradually collapsing upper face (especially the frowning eyes) sending us toward the ultimate doom of Sonata 6. If Sonatas 2 and 3 chromatically tag on to Sonata 1 (C major, C minor, D major), Sonatas 4, 5, and 6 together spell a C minor triad (E major, G major, C minor). Physiognomically speaking, we had been forced into thinking

253 Ex Pathognomy of an Opus in C Minor

254 An Opus for the Insightful World 211 in twos, but the determining number for the pathognomic drama is three, a first group of sonatas looking backward to a pleasant C major, while a second plunges forward to unpleasant C minor. 76 Imagine there was no C Minor Sonata. Our biphysiognomic experiment could have ended with No. 14, an exceedingly beautiful Adagio in C major (see the third system of ex. 5.9). In style and spirit it harks back to our serious prototype of No. 2, but in the overall harmonic scheme of the opus it has the double function of resolving a chain of dominants that had been set in motion by the three cheerful Allegro con brios, or from the sharpest A (No. 5), over D (No. 7) and G (No. 13), and back home to C (No. 14). In No. 14 the two physiognomic strands of cheerful and serious meet and dissolve at the same time. Whenever I play that gorgeous cadenza, keeping the dampers raised throughout as if singing in one long breath (see ex. 1.3), and I come to the final trill (m. 59), it is as if Haydn intends me to be overcome by nostalgia. At the very end of this double trill, after my left hand has crossed over to play the leading tone b 2, I feel out of breath. Shifting my left hand down again, I have no choice but to leave the resolution to be imagined as in a rhetorical ellipsis. But the B lingers in our memory, so when in the concluding tutti it is replaced by a B and the harmony of subdominant F (mm ), it feels as if we are guided back to those initial moments of the opus (No. 2 in F major and No. 1 in C major), back to a time when exploring two physiognomies was still an innocent parlor game and when we were unaware still of the drama about to unfold. The Pathology of Silent Rage Around the time Haydn was composing sonatas for his daughters, Leopold von Auenbrugger was at work on a pioneering psychiatric study entitled Von der stillen Wuth oder dem Treibe zum Selbstmorde als einer wirklichen Krankheit (On Silent Rage or the Drive for Suicide as an Actual Disease). In this seventy-one-page essay, finished five weeks after the death of his daughter Marianna, 77 Auenbrugger related his experience of more than twenty years with suicidal patients some of them success stories, but most ending in tragedy. He provided well-organized empirical notes on his patients behavior and gestures. Initially, Auenbrugger writes, such a person is calm, limp, dispirited, sad, but this sadness is mixed with pensiveness and connects itself with an abnormal aversion from the social world;...

255 212 Chapter 5 midway through, a frightening melancholia [Schwermuth] reveals itself, at which point the outer senses become blunt and numb, so that any offered entertainments and distractions, or even any serious diversions are received indifferently and have been found to have no effect;... eventually there is the emergence of endless unrest, inflexibility, stubborn refusal of medicine and food, numbness, a desperate aspiration to flee violently [from the hospital room]. Among the final corporeal signs we find heavy breathing, which, as the act draws nearer, changes to continuous snorting. 78 In the Auenbrugger drama it is the C Minor Sonata that constitutes the final act (for now in a theatrical sense). In its first movement s opening theme (where I weep even before playing my first dissonance), development (featuring a hair-raising climax, during which I raise my voice to a piercing fortissimo), and ending (where senselessly repetitive five-note figures turn my right hand into a tense and angry fist), we find distinct equivalents for Auenbrugger s depictions of endless lamenting, piercing crying, and angry bodily gestures and facial expressions. 79 But a true outburst of rage occurs in the third movement, easily the angriest keyboard music Haydn ever wrote. 80 In my own performances I never fail to internalize this anger, despite my usual reserved and rational tendencies. I also flatly ignore C. P. E. Bach s advice that it is better to express power ful emotions like rage or anger by appropriate harmonic and melodic figurae rather than by exaggerated touch (see chapter 2). That said, I recognize Haydn s rhetorical intent in mm (see ex. 5.10), where the left hand jerks back and forth between stern octaves down below and pathetic sighs on top the latter expanded, for greater effect, from seconds to fifths. These melodic effects have been cast in a chain of excruciating chromatically descending seventhchord harmonies, which my right hand, with its running sixteenth notes, should ideally keep in check. But my adrenaline is pumping, and when I hit those highest notes, my right hand just rants along below. Meanwhile, literally throwing my left hand over my right, I make those high-tension short strings of the fortepiano squeak rather than speak. Given my understanding of the technology of a fortepiano s hammers, strings, and action, I know better, but it seems that this is the only possible thing to do, especially at this point in the movement, in which a minuet-style opening, latently aggressive rather than true-to-its-model elegant, has been accumulating, as A. Peter Brown puts it, an unstoppable demonic drive. 81 (Haydn knew better too: back in 1771, he must have written the sonata for his own clavichord rather

256 Ex Sonata 6, third movement (No. 18), mm. 102 end

257 214 Chapter 5 than the fortepiano that the sisters would have had in But flexing the strings rather than merely striking them, mistaking hammers for tangents, makes this particular moment undeniably dramatic.) And where does this uncontrollable outburst of rage bring us? Nowhere. After a prolonged altered pre-dominant chord in mm , I settle again on the dominant, exactly at the point where I started back in m. 84. Exhausted, I need to recover, but I never quite do. Continuing with the theme slow, hesitant, and out of breath (mm ) I accumulate negative energy yet again and revisit that submediant pitch A, which has permeated much of the melodic and harmonic content of what has come before (see the multiple brackets of A and its companion G in the example). I want to let go but can t. This obsessive appoggiatura, as it turns out, has haunted us from the very beginning of the sonata. Consider the two melodic sighs of the first movement s opening bar (see No. 16 in ex. 5.3). The first of these g 2 slurred to f 2, technically a consonance followed by a neighboring dissonance is immediately replaced by its theoretically correct version: a 2 with g 2, or a proper dissonance followed by a proper consonance. If sighing was the main topic of the sonata, even by the end of the sonata, there is nothing to diminish the urge to do so; to the contrary: wherever we look in this finale movement, there are A s. What else can I do but embrace the dissonance in an overly dramatic precadential gesture on the Neapolitan sixth (mm )? But even as my sounds ebb away on a cadence that doesn t quite cadence (mm ), I find that pesky A still staring me in the eye. With a descending sequence of sixths (mm. 150 end), I resort to action. The falling sixths feel distinctly familiar: I played them in the second bar of the sonata s first movement (see ex. 5.3; these are the only two such instances of parallel sixths in the opus, and they require unusual attention to the placement of the thumb). Did I fantasize about this moment from the beginning? Earlier, I still had the clarity of mind to call my dark fantasy to a halt (witness the half cadence), but now these falling sixths drag me down to the thickest and darkest of dissonances (m. 152). Remarkably, in this penultimate bar, A the identified cause of our pain has disappeared: D and B (or the last sixth of the falling sequence) are joined by F, together a diminished vii, however not a diminished seventh (with A ). 82 What happened? Is the A gone? I ask these questions as my hands lean on a triple appoggiatura and the octave of my soon-to-become-tonic chord combining to create a thick, dark cloud of sound. I know that I must resolve soon. But in this bar, as despair and hope collide in the most dramatic of ways, seconds feel like minutes. I ask again: is the A gone? Did I accidentally play it with my third

258 An Opus for the Insightful World 215 finger? Then why do I keep hearing it? As everything in me compels me to exhale, conditioned as I am to enjoy the release of my appoggiatura, no matter what I try, either in rehearsal or in concert, striking it either soft or hard, the unavoidably thick and pathetic C minor chord always comes out like a clumsy gasp. (The Artaria edition leaves the bass conspicuously not tied to the bar before: Haydn may have understood that those deep dissonant sounds would never lend themselves to a convincing release.) 83 With this all-too-final C minor chord, then, there may be resolution in the technical melodic-harmonic sense, but there is definitely no emotional respite. The listener is left aghast in horror. According to Auenbrugger, the single absolute sign of the onset of silent anger is that the suicidal person, whether his behavior is calm or restless, cannot look anyone around him in the eye for more than just a few moments. 84 After playing Sonata 5 (see plate 5), I no longer have the confidence to face the camera or audience: I withdraw into my own world, my eyes cast down at the keyboard, clearly much more in distress than in any other sonata cycle of images before. But if we were to remove the overt signs of distress of Sonata 6, we still get something remarkably close in Sonata 4. In Sonata 4 as well I found myself looking away and down, but my neck was still relatively straight; my forehead was also tensed into a frown, yet I did not appear consumed by pain; my mouth was closed, but my lips were not pressed together in the way they would be in Sonata 6. Would Dr. von Auenbrugger have been able to read these signs? The E major opening theme (ex. 5.3, No. 10) is sweet yet distracted, pensive yet repetitive a good candidate for what Elisabeth Le Guin has termed sensible melancholy. 85 We contemplate one idea over and over: across four bars we come up with an equal number of ways to approach the appoggiatura A or the dissonance that eventually will return to vex us. But there is as yet no sign of obsession; in fact, the short repeated patterns, little variants, and absent-minded pauses lend the movement an endearing kind of casualness. Consider now the opening bars of ex. 5.11, or the beginning of the development section. We re in C minor, but the levity of the right-hand figure (which is an exact quotation of our hyperactive No. 7, in D major) continues to stress the comic over the serious. But irrational lightness (mm ) turns to earnestness in A major (mm ), which in its turn veers off into sweet reverie (featuring Haydn s masterful three-voice texture in mm ). Then, somehow, our thoughts become entangled with the darker side of C minor doom (mm ). Where does this sudden anger come from?

259 Ex Sonata 4, first movement (No. 10), development and part of recapitulation (mm )

260 An Opus for the Insightful World 217 And why do we embrace it so feverishly (see the thirds in m. 45)? It takes sheer willpower to break out of C minor and restore E as the correct key. Describing m. 48 as a false recapitulation or the nervously brisk upbeat to m. 49 as a rhetorical correctio fails to capture the full emotional impact of these moments. This is not like Sonata 3, where, at exactly the same spot in the opening movement (mm ), we playfully worked our way out of a pretended B minor recapitulation back to D major. Here, I feel genuinely disturbed, frightened even, by my own passive-aggressive behavior. When, later on (mm ), I repeatedly hammer out the home key s dominant seventh (with A on top), I seem to insist that I must keep thinking E major while pretending that nothing has happened, before slipping back into my casual self again in m. 57. We can look for signs of melancholia even further back in the set: Dr. Auenbrugger, with his clinical eye for the physical manifestations of emotional states, especially their progressions, and his critical ear for musical expressions and their structural progressions, might have wondered about the two surprising patches of C minor that occurred all the way back in the very first sonata, in C major, along with a few moments of irrational violence, revealed in fortissimo outbursts that disappeared just as quickly as they appeared. 86 (Ex. 5.9 cautiously acknowledges these brief manifestations of the minor third E.) Having recognized silent rage, the doctor more than anyone else must have realized that sooner or later it would have to erupt. That moment arrives in the extraordinarily mournful C Minor Sonata. If melancholia [Schwermuth] is the underlying cause [of suicide], then rage [Wuthsinn], Auenbrugger hypothesizes, is the trigger. 87 And so Haydn s decision to recycle an already completed sonata leaves us with a strange aftertaste one that would certainly have baffled Forkel (who rejects any unpleasant ending as an exercise in expression that can never become a useful and usable work of art ), 88 but one that also leaves me scrambling to defend my friend in the eyes of a German critic. At first I volunteered myself as a model for an interesting biphysiognomic experiment. But as I emancipated myself as keyboardist-actor, I also found myself turning into a potentially interesting case for a physician-psychiatrist, creating a gallery in which bodily gestures betray attitudes of the soul. 89 While I am well aware that I am just acting, I must admit that the melancholy of Sonata 4 suits my temperament very well, and that I love to immerse myself in the Sturm und Drang depths of Sonata 6 as Haydn himself clearly did when fantasizing and composing the piece at an earlier point in his life. Yet, by taking that dusty sonata out of his drawer almost ten years later (when

261 218 Chapter 5 fortepianos were first making their entry in the Viennese salon), he may have found a convenient shortcut to completing his opus, but he also provided us performer, critic, listener with the formidable task of making that last sonata fit somehow with the preceding ones. A story is only as good as its ending except that here we are either still not quite sure what it is or not quite ready to accept its devastating truth. As he finished his fifth and penultimate sonata, certainly conscious of the dramatic transformation with which he had just imbued his new opus, we may well wonder whether Haydn was aware of any ethical dimension to his decision: it is one thing to end one s opus with a minor-key sonata (which was a customary procedure, after all, as illustrated by his own earlier Anno 776 Sonatas), but to seal the presence of an emerging opus tonality with this particular sonate pathétique is quite another. 90 The result is not your typical six-sonata opus. But then, the Auenbrugger sisters weren t your typical players. Nor was their father your typical listener. If Haydn felt any yearning to associate himself with Vienna s elite, then his brief avertissement, in which he apologizes for something that needs no apologia, may be one of music history s most brilliant smokescreens. Or was it a cue? The enigma lives on.

262 Back to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven but back to which Haydn: the one that s been misunderstood? And should it not actually say: forward to Haydn, since a true genius is never past alone, but also eternal future? HEINRICH SCHENKER (1922), 19 CHAPTER 6 A Contract with Posterity On August 10, 1796, Haydn had an out-of-town visitor. Mr. Hyde, partner of the London firm Longman & Broderip, had traveled to Vienna with the copy of a contract. In legalistic language, this contract stipulates that the said Joseph Haydn doth hereby covenant promise and agree to... during the time and term of Five years, if he the said Joseph Haydn shall so long live and continue in Health so as to be capable of Writing and Composing Musick Write and Compose new and Original Musick for the said Frederick Augustus Hyde. Appended to the document is a wish list of works, each coupled with an agreed-upon fee. On the top we read, Three Sonatas for the Piano Forte or Harpsichord [sic] with an accompaniment for a Violin and Violoncello 75 and Three Sonatas for the Piano Forte without accompaniment [ ]60. 1 The signing might have taken place ceremoniously in the very room where Haydn kept his English grand piano. That he had one we know from an entry in the 1809 inventory of his estate upon his death: Ditto [i.e., a pianoforte] in massive mahogany wood, same range as above [i.e., the five and a half octaves of Haydn s 1801 Erard], by Longman et Broderip in London. 2 The English organist, choirmaster, and scholar Vincent Novello, 219

263 220 Chapter 6 visiting l abbé Stadler in 1829 (who was then in the possession of Haydn s instrument and who had often heard Haydn play upon it ), specifies that Haydn had brought [his Grand Piano Forte, one of Longman & Broderip s] with him from England and had retained it till death. 3 The instrument had almost certainly been a farewell gift. What better way for the firm to foster a continued business relationship with Haydn than to see to it that the composer had their brand of piano at home in faraway Vienna? And not just as a souvenir, but as a tool, allowing him to keep his finger, quite literally, on the pulse of piano-playing England. (Longman & Broderip had indeed published two sets of Accompanied Sonatas, Hob. XV:18 20 and 24 26, in ) Were expectations fulfilled? In 1797, three Trios Hob. XV:27 29, did indeed appear from Longman & Broderip, dedicated to Theresa Jansen, but those had been written in London no later than (In his London catalogue, Haydn refers to them as 3 Sonates [sic] for Ms. Janson [sic]. ) 4 But four years into the five-year contract, in a letter to Hyde and Clementi dated April 29, 1801, Haydn still promised 3 good Clavier sonatas by the end of the summer. (Hyde and Clementi had become partners in Clementi & Company, a revamped version of Longman, Clementi, & Company, itself reborn in 1798 from the bankrupt Longman & Broderip.) 5 Good intentions aside, however, Haydn s promise remained unfulfilled. The one trio known to be finished upon his return from London Hob. XV:30 in E Major was conspicuously sent to Breitkopf & Härtel, not Longman & Broderip. 6 This leaves the Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52. A clear English production, if there has ever been one, Haydn offered it for print to Artaria in And this is not a reprint: the English edition (yes, with Longman, Clementi, & Company, in 1799) would materialize only later, presumably on a fast track in response to the Viennese edition. Because the latter came with its own dedication to Magdalena von Kurzböck and out of Haydn s home turf, however, it had all the public signs of a production in its own right. Also now, in the post-beethoven urtext era, we ought to take note, since this was, technically speaking, the sonata s first edition. But we re confused. Throughout this book we have proposed new readings of familiar scores, dwelling on detailed networks of composer, dedicatee, and instrument while steering clear of generalizations and post-1800 abstractions of them as works. In chapter 1 we in fact used the very Sonata No. 52 as a pinnacle example for Haydn s modus operandi as rhetorical man, writing an English concert sonata as brilliant as it was effective. But now, as we home in on Haydn s post-london period, we feel forced to explain why Haydn, of all people, would so blatantly ignore the sonata s En glishness and

264 A Contract with Posterity 221 simply offer it to Artaria. To be sure, many of Haydn s keyboard works had made it to London from Vienna long before Haydn ever set foot in England. 7 But this story is different, and not just because the direction from Vienna to London has been reversed. How should we conceive of the two publications, in London and in Vienna? Are we dealing with two versions of one work? If so, where s the emphasis? Version hints at Haydn s remarkable ability to adjust to external circumstances. Work implies a separation of score from context. For the first time in his career, Haydn was writing for a professionally active pianist (possibly receiving immediate feedback from Jansen), for an English piano (she may have been the one to have coached him), for solo performance that needed to have a grand effect on an audience, the grand solo sonata indeed having become a viable substitute on the London concert stage for the concerto. 8 Clementi s Sonata in C Major, Op. 33 No. 3, for His Pupil Miss Theresa Jansen, was a concerto rewritten as a sonata, and thus could be used in either form. So, if foreignness had been inextricably linked with the piece s creation, what happened when the sonata was published by Artaria for a familiar market? Was it a Viennese publication in 1798? Or, three years after leaving London, was Haydn endorsing a contextless afterlife? It is fascinating, indeed, that Haydn s last piano sonata, as we now know it, would very soon thereafter (in early 1800) reappear as the first of the first installment of the Breitkopf & Härtel Oeuvres complettes de Joseph Haydn, as if heralding a new epoch of thinking about works and repertoire. 9 In Haydn s Viennese appropriation of his London production of a grand sonata, it is tempting to stress the continuity: Kurzböck in her mid- twenties at the top of her game has a profile very similar to Jansen s. Haydn may even have sat down with her at his Longman & Broderip, demonstrating to her the characteristics of an English grand (just as Theresa had done to him back in London). In her own choices of repertoire, Kurzböck clearly took the London pianoforte school to heart: she would be praised in the local press for her public performances of a Dussek concerto or a Steibelt sonata. 10 And in 1809 Reichardt paid her the ultimate compliment by singling her out among Clementi s old pupils [ehemalige Schüler, i.e., men and women]. 11 By 1809, sharing the epithet of (old) pupil of Clementi with her English counterpart, Magdalena had become almost the perfect clone of Theresa. We need to remember, however, that Longman & Broderip became Longman, Clementi, & Company only in 1798, right around the time of the Artaria print. 12 While both Jansen and Kurzböck may be said to represent

265 222 Chapter 6 the same emerging type of pianist on either side of the Channel, Kurzböck could not have taken lessons with Clementi until 1802, when the celebrated pedagogue made it back to Vienna for the first time since (when he had faced Mozart in his famous Christmas Eve duel at the Imperial Palace). 13 Clementi would soon become a brand name for much of what was new: the virtue of actually practicing difficult pieces while following a rigid regimen of scales and exercises; a new definition of amateur as not yet professional (as in a Gradus ad Parnassum); the idea of a pedagogical canon, in which his Op. 2 constituted a milestone for new generations of students (and an increasingly more surmountable one). But these are the germs of grand, pan-european changes at the dawn of a new century. In the 1798 Artaria print, as I would like to suggest, there is no joining a revolution yet. 14 A Pragmatic Decision I would not even have contemplated the hypothesis of two versions had it not been for a decision during a production of my own. For my Virtual Haydn recordings I designed my Program Nine to feature those pieces of the late 1780s and early 90s that made it into the consciousness of musicloving Vienna through the persistent publishing efforts of Artaria. These were to include the 1789 C Major Fantasy, Hob. XVII:3 (which, in the wake of the three Trios Hob. XV:11 13, continued to celebrate Haydn s purchase of a Wenzel Schanz square piano), the Genzinger Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:49 (which made it into print in 1792 while Haydn was away in London, leaving the composer scrambling to privately express his shock to Frau von Genzinger over the unpleasant news, going as far as to blame his own copyist for this robbery ), 15 and the F Minor Andante and Variations, Hob. XVII:6, written in 1793 but making it into print only in 1799, with a public dedication to the Baroness Josephine von Braun. I would play these three pieces on a circa 1790 Viennese fortepiano (after two previous programs on a square I opted for a grand), but in which virtual room? In scouting possible locations in the inner city of Vienna, my sound-recording colleagues and I had been impressed by the Festsaal of the Lobkowitz palace, which by the late 1790s became a popular venue for participation concerts, where professional musicians and aristocratic amateurs mingled to play and listen to string quartets, piano trios, symphonies, or oratorios (see plate 7). 16 But what about solo piano music? More pressingly, what about Haydn s solo piano music? To be sure, there is no evidence that any Haydn keyboard piece

266 A Contract with Posterity 223 was ever performed at the Lobkowitzes. That does not mean, however, that performing a solo Haydn sonata at any multimusician assemblée in or around Vienna would have been frowned upon. Carl Rosenbaum reports that on October 1, 1799, during an academy at the Provost s in Eisenstadt, Pölt [a male professional, no less] played a piano sonata by Haydn. 17 In a diary entry by Count von Zinzendorf, dated April 16, 1800, we find a reference to a solo piano performance at our very Palais Lobkowitz: Steuebel [Steibelt] played the clavessin [piano?] with volubility that wasn t very interesting. 18 (Steibelt must have shown off his tremolo effects too much of a good thing in such resonant acoustics.) But these isolated pieces of evidence felt hardly sufficient. We had recorded the Auenbrugger Sonatas in a large though not enormous salon, imagining as our listeners the kind of people one might have run into at a von Greiner gathering mostly from the upper-middle and lower-noble classes, all with a genuine interest in the arts and sciences. But as we now aimed to present ourselves to the crême de la crême of the higher Viennese nobility, in the acoustics of a de facto concert space, we craved something bigger, grander, and also more difficult to play something that would stand its own amidst the various orchestral arias sung by the local divas, or at least something that the von Zinzendorfs in the audience couldn t easily dismiss as not very interesting. So here s the decision. We recorded Sonata No. 52 twice: once in its original English manifestation, as dedicated to Theresa Jansen, in the Holywell Music Room, on the 1798 Longman, Clementi, & Company replica, reading from the 1799 Longman, Clementi, & Company print (this performance became part of our Program Ten, Haydn in London ); then a second time with all-viennese parameters, reading off the 1798 Artaria print, dedicated to Magdalena von Kurzböck, using a circa 1795 Anton Walter fortepiano, which would have been the best available choice for a room with reverberant acoustics such as that at Lobkowitz (this performance, along with three named Viennese pieces, became our Program Nine, Viennese Culture ). The Lady Named on the Title Page Chances are that nobody listening to a performance of Haydn s Grand Sonata in Vienna would have been aware of the English roots of Haydn s sonata; nor, for that matter, was the German reviewer of the AmZ, who gives the following assessment of the Grande Sonate pour le Clav. ou Pianof., comp. et dediée [sic] à Madem. de Kurzbeck, par Joseph Haydn:

267 224 Chapter 6 Grand sonata [Grosse Sonate], rich and difficult too [reich und schwer dazu], both in regards to its content and its style [Manier]. It is true that the reviewer must join others here in exclaiming yet again, maybe for the one hundredth time: Haydn is inexhaustible and never gets old. Again, what an original path! No repeat of himself. Whoever can completely master this absolutely fine sonata, which is actually written for connoisseurs [Kenner] his earlier ones can hardly compare with respect to difficulty [Schwierigkeit] and can execute it with precision, without getting tripped up on anything, can always let it be said of himself that he plays. It speaks well for the lady named on the title page that the honorable Haydn, who does not have the desire nor the time to bother himself with empty compliments, dedicated such a sonata to her, of all people. 19 Grand, rich, and difficult. What more can a professional pianist ask for? Grand refers to genre and style: the sonata is designed to startle and impress. Rich refers to invention: there s a lot of it here, in terms of topics or ideas. But what about difficult? At first sight, we are inclined to jump ahead from inventio and elocutio to pronuntiatio and understand the term as difficult to play, especially since the review would have been directed to the potential purchaser of the score, who would have no other use for the score than playing from it. But this early part of the review, as it turns out, focuses on the composition of the sonata in and of itself: the sonata is grand, rich, and difficult in regard to both content [Inhalt] and style [Manier], or the quintessential res and verba. As the reviewer plays through the score at the piano a few times, occasionally pausing to reposition his fingers or hands along the way, he gradually acquaints himself with what a polished performance might sound like. The imagining of such a performance requires more than the usual effort, not just for the fingers, but also for the mind, making the sonata difficult (schwer) not in a mechanistic sense, as when Mozart famously dismissed the thirds and sixths of the ciarlatano Clementi, 20 but rather, according to the reviewer, as a logical consequence to Haydn s abundantly rich invention and his deliberate choice of grand style for a sonata. The perceived difficulty thus validates the reviewer s ensuing exclamation that Haydn is inexhaustible and never gets old. Inexhaustible (unerschöpflich), usually applied as an illustration of genius or originality, appears to have become somewhat of a cliché in German criticism by the 1790s with Haydn succeeding C. P. E. Bach as its prime recipient. 21 In fact, the critic s feigned exasperation with the composer s repetitiveness ( exclaiming yet again... maybe for the one hundredth time )

268 A Contract with Posterity 225 stands in deliberate contrast to his unique object of praise in Haydn s music: Again, what an original path! No repeat of himself. In light of Haydn s fears about the know-it-all critics back in 1780 (see chapter 5), there s irony here. Of all works, it would have been with this publication of No. 52 that Haydn would have needed an apology or explanation, since the whole sonata is a repeat. Aged sixty-seven by the time of the review, he had finished the sonata five years earlier, at sixty-two. So much for never getting old. The term difficulty pops up again as the author s attention shifts to performance, and here the reference is unambiguously to pianistic skill and mastery. But as he moves from Haydn and his sonata to the dedicatee and her performance the reviewer struggles with two related facts. First, there s the offhand remark that the sonata is actually written for Kenner, conveying surprise in light of all of Haydn s previous sonatas. (The reviewer could not have been acquainted with the still unpublished Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:50.) No longer für Kenner und Liebhaber, this new, single sonata is only for Kenner. And this raises a second issue. The sonata is dedicated to an aristocratic lady, who, all things being equal, must be a Liebhaberin: she may be a Klavierspielerin and an excellent one but definitely not a Klavierspielerin von Profession (keyboard player by profession), which would have been an absolute contradiction in terms. 22 The perceived difficulty of the sonata, thus, leads the reviewer to assume that the lady named on the title page must be really good, since Haydn has no time for empty compliments. This indirect compliment by association with Haydn confirms a gender gap similar to the one we observed in chapters 2 and 5 regarding Haydn s praise of the Auenbrugger sisters. But if the Leipzig reviewer did not yet know of Mademoiselle von Kurzböck, then it was high time, since, rather astonishingly, we find her named only a few pages later in the same issue of AmZ, where she is referred to not as the dedicatee of a famous master s printed sonata, but as one of the five pianists whose identity and artistry are revealed to the magazine s readers in a witness report on the most famous Klavierspielerinnen and Klavierspieler in Vienna. First the anonymous correspondent, who has been visiting the imperial city presumably from Germany, writes profusely about Demoiselle Auernhammer, whom he heard during her own benefit concert at the Imperial Court Theater. Every year she gives similar proofs of her existence and her zeal, he editorializes rather sarcastically. In spite (or precisely because) of her ambition to surmount almost insurmountable difficulties [Schwierigkeiten], she failed to impress him with what one in a more noble sense calls Vortrag. Then the author turns to our dedicatee:

269 226 Chapter 6 Almost diametrically opposed to the playing of the latter virtuoso [Virtuosin] is the playing of Miss von Kurzbeck [sic], whom I had the pleasure of hearing recently. She is completely invested in the expressiveness [dem Ausdrucksvollen] and pleasantness [Angenehmen] of her performance [des Vortrags], always thinks herself into the meaning [Sinn] of the composition that she performs thus I heard her play a sonata by J. Haydn, which [when played] in this manner and also because Miss K. possesses plenty of skill [Geschicklichkeit] to make all passages in both hands heard with rare precision [mit seltner Präcision], was bound to make the most glorious effect, which it did. She fully deserves her reputation as the most excellent [die treflischste] and in particular the most pleasing [female] keyboard player [die angenehmste Klavierspielerin] in Vienna. 23 Keyboard player clearly ranks higher than (just) virtuoso, though the review serves as historical testimony to a growing bifurcation between skill and meaning, or between technique and expression, which in C. P. E. Bach s books had remained under the single umbrella of Vortrag. When the report shifts to the men ( After we left priority to the ladies, as is proper, let us now turn to the gentlemen ), the reviewer shows himself in awe of Beethoven s brilliance and improvisational prowess. But he ends up preferring Wölfl, citing the same quality of precision that he had used to describe Kurzböck s playing as part of a longer list of accolades including lightness (Leichtigkeit) and clarity (Deutlichkeit), which, when combined, are said to transport the listener to utter amazement. While Kurzböck s musicianship is described as allowing Haydn s sonata to have its proper glorious effect, thanks to her capacity to think herself into the meaning [Sinn] of the composition, Wölfl s pianism is praised for his thorough musical learnedness [Gelehrsamkeit] and true worth in composition. Significantly, Wölfl s learnedness is revealed through the playing of his own works, while Kurzböck s gift clearly is her ability to interpret the works of others. Still, the reader of this report comes away with a sense of Kurzböck as the female embodiment of Wölfl. The coincidence of the back-to-back review of Haydn s new sonata and the description of Kurzböck performing a Haydn sonata is remarkable. If the subscriber to this double-folio magazine had actually registered Kurzböck s name as she read the Haydn review, all she needed to do was to turn the page to find it again, graphically at the same recto right-handcolumn spot as before. No longer in italics as part of the title of a work, she now is featured as part of a top-five list in a city known for stiff competition among pianists. 24 This double mention underscores the fact that, in

270 A Contract with Posterity 227 the opinion of the critics, she is nothing short of a star, deserving of international recognition. You may follow the first critic s syllogistic logic that Haydn dedicates a good sonata only to a good pianist, and that since this is a good sonata, Kurzböck must be good, but nothing beats the empirical evidence of an actual witness account by an independent critic. Kurzböck played a sonata by Haydn that was bound to make the most glorious effect. Change glorious by grand, rich, and difficult, and this is almost certainly the very Haydn sonata just reviewed, now performed by its dedicatee. These combined reviews praise Haydn for his wisdom in selecting Magdalena as the dedicatee of his sonata, and Magdalena for deserving that endorsement. It s a win-win for both performer and composer. Viennese Pianism From a Viennese perspective, selecting Magdalena must have been a nobrainer from the start. For his 1796 Yearbook on Music in Vienna and Prague (the year when Haydn would have been eager to reconnect with musical life in Vienna after his residencies abroad), J. F. von Schönfeld prepared an entry on her: Magd. v. Kurzbeck, one of our most excellent keyboard players [Klavierspielerinnen]. She reads well and has velocity [Geschwindigkeit], clarity [Deutlichkeit], and neatness [Nettigkeit]; additionally, she has as her own special talent the power to assimilate and memorize so that, when she hears a piece that she likes just a couple of times be it in large orchestration as, for example, a symphony, or on the piano she is capable of playing it back very accurately on the fortepiano. 25 The musicianship of the twentyfive-year-old is described in terms that perfectly match the qualities of Viennese pianos of this time: clear (thanks to the relatively hard leather used to cover the hammers, as well as the general concept of the case, soundboard, strings, etc., which Viennese builders still designed to speak rather than to sing ); quick (thanks to the very responsive prell action and the generally low key dip and light key weight); and neat (thanks to the efficient wedgeshaped, leather-covered dampers, constructed to cut the sound immediately after releasing the key). If pressed for a finer classification, Schönfeld himself would almost certainly have proclaimed Kurzböck the Streicher type of pianist he had proposed, who looks for nourishment of the soul and who prefers a clear, but also a sweet, liquefying playing. Furthermore, if indeed according to our German witness Kurzböck was more than capable of producing a glorious effect on the listener, then she would have shared with Schönfeld s competing Walter type of pianist the power and

271 228 Chapter 6 strength of nerves to play rich tones or the most difficult runs and the fastest octaves all of which are abundantly present in Haydn s sonata. But the point stressed by the reviewer is that she did so with rare precision. With precision is precisely how the English organist Samuel Wesley remembered Haydn s playing back in London, when he presided over an orchestral performance of his Symphony in B Major, Hob. I:98, from what presumably was an English grand piano: His Performance on the Piano Forte, although not such as to stamp him a first rate artist upon that Instrument, was indisputably neat and distinct. In the Finale of one of his Symphonies is a Passage of attractive Brilliancy, which he has given to the Piano Forte, and which the Writer of this Memoir remembers him to have executed with the utmost Accuracy and Precision. 26 Playing with accuracy and precision may not necessarily have been meant as a compliment in a country where pianos were built not to aspire to clarity and transparency, but were built to be vague in articulation and designed to produce an overall full but muffled and homogenous kind of sound, and where pianists were praised for their bel canto, expressive, legato grand style of playing, which involved reveling in octaves, resonant chords, exquisite effects (such as music boxes, bagpipe, or dulcimer), and almost continuous footwork on the two pedals (una corda and damper), rather than in neat three-voice textures, eloquent cadences, well-defined melodic figures, and the use of the hand stop or knee lever (moderator and damper) as a special register. With the double edition of No. 52, it becomes difficult to distinguish between what is supposed to be indigenous and what is foreign. Both versions Kurzböck s Viennese edition and Jansen s London one may be said to have elements of each. That is to say, to English ears, Haydn s sonata may still have sounded Viennese (one can imagine Haydn having to explain a thing or two that would have gone against the principles of Jansen s own teacher, Clementi), yet the sonata would have made a fine Viennese pianist such as Kurzböck sound impressively virtuosic or English. We acknowledged Jansen s input in the creation of Haydn s English concert sonatas back in But what about Kurzböck s in the transference of one of these to the Viennese salon? A Philological Tradition In preparing his authoritative 1966 JHW edition of No. 52, Georg Feder cites four major sources (see table 6.1). 27 The autograph, which he labels A, is his uncontested primary source (Hauptquelle). His secondary sources (Ne-

272 A Contract with Posterity 229 TABLE 6.1. Traditional hierarchy of sources for the Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52 A B C D Autograph Title: (general:) Sonata; (on top of score:) Sonata composta per la Celebra Signora Teresa de Janson Date: 1794 Place: London Longman, Clementi, & Co. Title: A / New Grand Sonata, / for the / Piano Forte / Composed Expressly for / Mrs Bartolozzi / by / Joseph Haydn, M.D. Date: November 1799 (announced in the Times on Oct. 29, 1799, for in a few days ; advertised in the Morning Chronicle on Dec. 27, 1799) Place: London Artaria Title: Grande Sonate / pour le Clavecin ou Piano-Forte / Composée et dediée / a Mademoiselle Madelaine / de Kurzbek / par / Joseph Haydn. Date: December 1798 (announced in the Wiener Zeitung on Dec. 5, 1798) Place: Vienna Breitkopf & Härtel Title: (general:) Oeuvres de J. Haydn / Cahier I. / contenant / VIII Sonates pour le Pianoforte. (in front of the first system of the score:) Sonata I. Date: early 1800 benquellen) are the 1799 Longman, Clementi, & Company and the 1798 Artaria editions, labeled respectively B and C. Feder additionally consulted the Leipzig Breitkopf & Härtel Oeuvres complettes only for particularly doubtful passages or to check on clear mistakes, identifying this fourth source as D. A, B, C, and D do not follow a strict chronological order: the London edition, B (released between October 29 and December 27, 1799), and the Viennese edition, C (released in December 1798), have been reversed. 28 Feder gives greater credence to A and B, since both were produced in London, and A must have served as a direct source for B. But C must have been based on a manuscript copy too, perhaps by Haydn s amanuensis Johann Elssler, who had joined his master during the London trip. In any case, the lack of such a document (which we might hypothetically label A2) caused Feder to privilege London versions (A and B) over the Viennese (C). The Leipzig Breitkopf & Härtel version (D), finally, is found to be an almost irrelevant copy of the Artaria print (C). If the autograph (A) had not surfaced in 1933 (at which point it was

273 230 Chapter 6 purchased by the Library of Congress in Washington), we might have been dealing with a much different understanding of the sources. But it did, and in his 1934 milestone essay Notes on a Haydn Autograph, Oliver Strunk combined his enthusiasm over this newly recovered nineteen-page manuscript, composta per la celebre Signora Teresa de Janson [sic], with what has remained the single most influential study on Haydn and Jansen. But this newly established English connection almost instantly led to the discrediting of the Artaria version (C). Strunk finds it an interesting thing... that the Vienna edition appears to have followed an inaccurate copy of the autograph, while the London edition was obviously engraved by someone who had Haydn s original before him. 29 Notes in pencil written in English confirm that A was used for the engraving of B. With A and B inextricably linked as autograph and first edition, C became a philological black sheep. In her 1964 Universal Edition score (later Wiener Urtext Edition), Christa Landon, though acknowledging the Artaria print as historically the first, even doubts whether this edition was made with the agreement of Haydn. She also questions the dedication, asserting that it is probably not by Haydn but by Artaria. But her final argument against the credibility of the Artaria version concerns the text itself: Artaria shows additions to the autograph and divergences from it, the authenticity of which must be questioned. They were therefore not included in our text but are mentioned in the Editor s Report. 30 Feder too invokes the magic word authenticity (which, in this context, stands for anything written in Haydn s hand or at least instigated by Haydn) and questions C s additional performance directions. Consequently, Feder does not acknowledge them in his JHW text. Miklós Dolinszky, for his 1997 Könemann Music edition, chooses not to take C into consideration at all, not just for the text but in his critical report as well. The revised 2010 Wiener Urtext edition, prepared by Ulrich Leisinger, is more nuanced: it acknowledges C in footnotes (for alternative pitches, i.e., those that are not clear mistakes) and parentheses (for additional performance directions, i.e., not the divergent ones). But the fact remains that in preparing all these urtext editions, A and B are taken as undisputed main sources with C relegated to peripheral status as a reference source. 31 If we wish to entertain the notion of a Viennese version of Sonata No. 52, we must begin by restoring the philological status of C. Granted, the Artaria version includes a handful of blatant mistakes, consisting mostly of misprinted notes (wrong pitches that rudimentary proofreading would have easily identified and corrected); however, these errors should not over-

274 A Contract with Posterity 231 shadow the other additions or changes, which do not so much diverge from the London text as reflect the conscious hand of someone trying his or her best to make the English sonata work in different that is, Viennese circumstances. Given the subtlety of these interventions, one is inclined to think that they would have carried Haydn s approval even if they had not been instigated by him personally. My argument, briefly, is that the Viennese print (C) is a worthy counterpart of the English production (B). I bolster my hypothesis with some significant examples from the first movement. Because acoustics figures so prominently in the assessment of these examples, I refer the reader to the sound excerpts posted on the website. An English versus a Viennese Production Near the end of the second page of the autograph manuscript (A) (see fig. 6.1), Haydn leaves a portion of the stave blank, carefully controlling the moment of the page turn, in the middle of what might be called a rhetorical suspensio. The act of turning the page in effect adds to the execution of the figure: a holding in suspense. This is one of four similar examples in the whole piece. Each of those moments has been honored in the Artaria print (C) (thanks mainly to its oblong format; see fig. 6.3), and differs from the layout of the Longman, Clementi, & Company edition (B) (fig. 6.2), which either presumes the assistance of a page turner (there are some awkward though not impossible page turns) or a more practiced, perhaps partially memorized, or more professional performance. By comparison, the autograph of the Genzinger Sonata Hob. XVI:49 included two such empty stave moments (one of which was discussed in chapter 2). These differences may be sociocultural: the Viennese edition, with its user-friendly page turns, catered to a sight-reading culture, while the London edition reflected a burgeoning culture of practicing, in which the player is forced to anticipate and memorize what comes ahead, her eyes gradually free to look down to her keyboard rather than to the music desk. But this explanation should not obliterate the music-rhetorical significance of Artaria s page turns: the act of physically turning pages with a keen sense of timing heightens the drama of a successful and polished performance. In m. 31 of the English edition (fig. 6.2, first system) we find in the left hand the typical English wiggly legato slur, often crossing the bar lines to indicate long stretches of connected sounds. Here the marking is limited to one long bar. The English piano s pushing action (whereby a hopper catapults the hammer toward the string, forcing the player to anticipate

275 232 Chapter 6 Fig Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52, autograph, second page (recto). Reproduced by permission of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. the sound rather than allowing her to control it as it happens), the softer hammer leather (softening the initial blow of hammer against string, thus allowing for a larger and more flexible surface of impact, both on hammer and string), the more resonant after-ring (enhanced by the English feather-duster dampers) all contribute to a sense of mystery or mistiness that the pianist hangs on to after arriving on the low dominant in m. 32, deliciously switching from minore (the d 1 in the right hand) to maggiore (d 1 ) only through the middle of the bar, before the upward sweep to an enthusiastically exclamatory version of the opening theme. Sound excerpt 6.1 features my performance of these measures on a Longman, Clementi, & Company piano, as played in the virtual Holywell Music Room. Some of the piano-technical comments may be gauged by studying the close-up photo in plate 8.

276 A Contract with Posterity 233 By contrast, in the same m. 31 of the Artaria print (fig. 6.3, fourth system), we find not a wiggly legato, but a clearly defined Viennese slur over three notes. The augmented second (from the octave A to G in the bass) is distinctly separated, turning the dominant in the next bar into a more conscious point of arrival, accompanied at that very moment by a change Fig Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52 (London: Longman, Clementi, 1799), first movement, mm Reproduced by permission of the British Library Board. Music Collections, g.75.xx.

277 234 Chapter 6 Fig Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:52 (Vienna: Artaria, 1798), first movement, mm Reproduced by permission of the British Library Board. Music Collections, Hirsch IV of minore to maggiore, a half bar sooner than in the English print, which somehow stumbled upon the dominant in the bass while still hanging on to minore in the treble. From the perspective of the Viennese piano with its harder leather (resulting in a more outspoken attack), more precise prell action (making articulation almost unavoidable), more precise dampers (removing the much-loved English after-ring), and insistence on clarity in every register (including the bass) this double change makes a lot of sense. I have tried many times, from my longer experience of playing the piece on an English instrument, to integrate that low G bass octave within one overall cloud of sound, but on a Viennese piano it is difficult to ignore the melodic effort that goes into playing the augmented interval; it is hard to play the pulsating figure in the right as some mysterious and undefined background rumble; it is hard to treat your knee lever as a more distant foot pedal; it is hard to obliterate the generally more distinct attacks and individualized striking points. 32 So, why not articulate the moment? Only an experienced Viennese pianist, someone intimately familiar, furthermore, with Haydn s