“Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard Music”
INTRODUCTION:
HAYDN AND THE KEYBOARD,
A REVISIONIST VIEW
There has been a tale in the air that Haydn did not have much sympathy for keyboard instruments and that his works are not well suited to them.1 This belief can be attributed to a convergence of social practice, aesthetic taste, and a remark that stems directly from the composer himself. During the eighteenth century, keyboard music was not on the elevated plane of the string quartet, a genre then reserved for men.2 Rather, it was more diversionary and required less of the performer, both technically and spiritually; the vast number of facile keyboard sonatas and pieces offered by publishers for performance by the lady of the house attests to this characterization.
Our view of Haydn as a keyboard composer has also been determined to a great extent by the legendary reputation of his erstwhile student Beethoven; the Beethovenian concept of instrumental style, particularly in keyboard music, has been the most significant generator of musical taste throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Consequently, the keyboard works of Haydn have been largely absent from the repertoire, while those of Beethoven form the core of one program after another. Those works that do make an occasional appearance—the Sonatas Hob. XVI: 20, 49, 50, 52, and the Variations XVII: 6—are the precursors of the aesthetic that Beethoven, his contemporaries, and successors so thoroughly developed.
Finally, there is Haydn’s own statement, “I was not a wizard on any instrument . . . ; I was not a poor Klavier player,”3 which has made a negative impression on subsequent generations. After all, both Mozart and Beethoven were keyboard virtuosos and composers; certainly, one would think, their works were more idiomatic for the instrument. Yet the evidence does not support this view, as the following historical survey reveals.
As early as his fifth or sixth year, while living with a relative at Hainburg, the young Haydn probably began to play a keyboard instrument. Later, at the choir school in Vienna (1740–1749), he studied the clavichord, harpsichord, and organ with very fine masters. Beginning in the early 1750s, Haydn taught both clavichord and harpsichord, composing sonatas and trios for his students. During this same decade he was organist at the hospital of the Barmherzigen Brüder in Leopoldstadt and for the chapel of Count Harrach in Vienna; in these posts he must have been required to improvise, and he certainly composed several organ concertos for his own use. Also during this decade, he apparently mastered the art of accompaniment, under the supervision of Nicola Porpora. While serving in both Vienna and Bohemia as Kapellmeister to Count Morzin (ca. 1758–1760), Haydn gave the Countess keyboard lessons.4
By the 1750s the keyboard had become more than a professional vehicle for Haydn; playing it apparently provided him with solace. As an old man he remembered his life in less-than-desirable quarters in an attic on the Michaelerplatz, and, according to Dies,
The severe loneliness of the place, the lack of anything to divert an idle spirit, and his quite needy situation led him to contemplations which were often so grave that he found it necessary to take refuge at his worm-eaten Klavier . . . to play away his melancholy.”5
With his formal appointment in 1761 as Vice-Kapellmeister to the Esterhazy court, which continued to be his full-time employer for nearly thirty years, Haydn’s responsibilities at the various residences of the Hungarian magnate can be more fully documented. Two of the provisions of his contract of 1 May 1761 were that he should be prepared to provide music in both the mornings and the afternoons and to play all the instruments familiar to him.6 Traditionally it has been assumed that works with the baryton or for full orchestra were performed; it is rarely mentioned that string quartets, trios, and, of course, keyboard music could well have satisfied these provisions. Since the Vice-Kapellmeister was a keyboardist as well as a violinist, violist, and baryton player, it seems likely that Haydn himself may have performed keyboard concertos, divertimentos, concertinos, sonatas, and possibly trios.
Haydn was certainly the keyboard player for the 1764 performances of his brilliant soprano aria from “Qual dubbio omai” (Hob. XXIVa:4) with orchestra and keyboard obbligato and in the chorus from “A1 tuo arrivo felice” (Hob. XXIVa: 3), both celebratory cantatas for Prince Esterhazy. Indeed, Haydn may also have intended to perform the obbligato in the “Applausus” cantata, written for the occasion of the fiftieth year of the ordination of the abbot at Stift Zwettl, but found that impossible; hence, the famous letter of 1768 with instruction for its performance.7 It has recently been documented that a keyboardist performed during the visit of Maria Theresa to Esterhaza castle in 1773;8 this performer must again have been Haydn himself.
After his promotion to full Kapellmeister following the death of Gregor Werner in March 1766, Haydn returned to playing ana composing for the organ; his duties as chamber musician were now augmented by his assumption of the responsibility for the music in the Prince’s chapel. With the death of the Eisenstadt castle organist Franz Novotny in the summer of 1773, Haydn also took up the task of playing the organ while the musical entourage spent the winter in Eisenstadt; the tenor and castle schoolmaster, Joseph Dietzl, occupied this position while Haydn was absent in the non-winter months.9 During this post-Werner period, Haydn produced three liturgical works in which the organ takes on a soloistic function: the Great Organ Mass, written at the end of the 1760s; the Salve Regina, composed in 1771; and the Little Organ Mass, traditionally dated during the mid-1770s.
In a report from J. A. P. Schulz from ca. 1770 we have the first document concerning Haydn’s compositional routine:
I get up early, and as soon as I have dressed, I kneel down and pray to God and the Holy Virgin that things may go well today. After some breakfast, I sit at the Klavier and begin to improvise. If I hit upon something soon, then things go further without much effort. But if nothing comes to me, then I see that I have through some lapse lost grace; and I pray again for mercy until I feel that I am forgiven.10
Later reports from the early 1800s given by Haydn’s biographers Dies and Griesinger, his amanuensis Johann Elssler, and his longtime friend the Abbe Maximilian Stadler also emphasize Haydn’s use of the keyboard for composing works of all genres.11
By 1776 the musical interests at the Esterhazy court had changed radically from church and chamber music to the theater. Thus, Haydn’s activities as a keyboardist in solo and ensemble capacities were superseded by that of operatic conductor at the harpsichord continuo.12 Perhaps at this time Haydn decided to broaden his study of continuo realization; he owned not only the famous treatises by Mattheson and Emanuel Bach but also other books devoted to the realization of the continuo line by Carissimi, Daube, Gugl, Heinichen, Kellner, Marpurg, and Münster.13
During these years as full Kapellmeister Haydn produced many important compositions for the clavichord, harpsichord, and fortepiano. Between the mid-17608 (after the composition of the Capriccio Hob. XVII: 1 and the Variations Hob. XVII: 2) and 1784, he wrote some thirty solo sonatas—including a series of impressive single sonatas extending to ca. 1771 (Hob. XVI: 18, 45, 19, 46, 44, 20); the Esterhazy Sonatas of 1774 (Hob. XVI: 21–26); the “sonatas of the year 1776” (Hob. XVI: 27–32); the Auenbrugger Sonatas (Hob. XVI: 35–39 [20]), published in 1780; and those for Marie Esterházy (Hob. XVI: 40-42), published in 1784—as well as three harpsichord concertos (Hob. XVIII: 3, 4, 11). After 1784 the number of solo works decreases appreciably to five sonatas and two important Klavierstücke; under pressure from English and Continental publishers, Haydn turned to the composition of keyboard trios.
In the winter months, when operatic performances at Esterháza ceased, Haydn went to Vienna with his Prince, took up residence at the Esterházy Palais on Wallnerstrasse, and allowed himself to enjoy the social and musical amenities offered in the houses of the dilettantes. Haydn’s keyboard trios and solo sonatas were performed in the home of Marianna von Genzinger in the Schottenhof.14 His lieder with keyboard accompaniments also received an audience; as he was to do later in England, Haydn would perform at the clavichord or fortepiano and sing his newest songs, an act he considered his “prerogative.”15
Accounts of these contacts with both connoisseurs and dilettantes during the 1780s broaden our knowledge of Haydn’s keyboard interests. His concern with the amateur extended beyond the composition of keyboard music to its actual presentation, for he complained to his publisher Artaria in 1784 of the “terrible engraving” and “many aggravating mistakes”; the sections that were “unreadable, wrong, or badly arranged and laid out”; and caustically concluded “anyone who buys them will curse the engraver.”16 His works also began to appear in arrangements and transcriptions for keyboard. Here, Haydn’s main concern was with their suitability for the instrument; an entire movement or several variations might be deleted. Concerning an arrangement of Symphony No. 69, “The Laudon,” Haydn told Artaria: “The last or 4th movement is not practicable on the Clavier, and I don’t think it necessary to print it.”17 At this time, Haydn also began to express an interest in the special attributes of various instruments, complaining that Herr Walter’s were expensive and too inconsistent in quality and recommending those of Herr Schanz to Frau von Genzinger.
With the death of Prince Nikolaus in September 1790, Haydn’s operatic and other musical duties came to an abrupt halt; by the end of the month the entire musical establishment was dissolved, and the former Esterházy Kapellmeister moved to Vienna. On the eighth of December, Johann Peter Salomon struck a deal with Haydn for concerts in London, and on the first of January 1791 the two set foot on English soil. This first venture outside the environs of Vienna had a profound effect on Haydn’s activities as a composer: his high production of first-rate keyboard works ceased as Haydn concentrated on new symphonies and the opera L’anima del filosofo.
However, during his first English visit the keyboard was at the center of Haydn’s public appearances at the Salomon orchestral concerts in the Hanover Square rooms; as the newspaper notices stated—and Charles Burney confirmed—Haydn “presided at the pianoforte.” Subsequent historical commentary has been reluctant to take this statement at face value, explaining that it merely meant that the composer conducted from the keyboard, that the keyboard continuo was an unnecessary part of the texture in his late symphonies, and that, in any case, the keyboard could not be heard. On the other hand, it is difficult to believe that in fact Haydn did not play a continuo part and that in this capacity he did not provide rhythmic and harmonic support to the ensemble, as he had done in the theater at Esterháza for some fourteen years. In 1792 Haydn even incorporated a solo into the finale of Symphony No. 98. As Samuel Wesley recalled:
His performance on the piano-forte, although not as such 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 utmost accuracy and precision.18
Haydn also performed a number of times as an accompanist; his appearances are documented in one of several performances of “Arianna a Naxos” in February 1791 and in a “difficult English Aria by Purcell” (“From rosy bower”) for the benefit concert of Madame Mara in June 1792.19
In 1793, during the respite in Vienna between the two London journeys, Haydn composed the F-minor Variations (Hob. XVII: 6), which presents a microcosmic but complete view of his late keyboard style. Armed with the power of this work, Haydn undertook the second London journey and apparently entered another phase of intensive compositional activity in 1794–1795. During this period he probably produced three solo sonatas (Hob. XVI: 50–52), fourteen or fifteen keyboard trios (Hob. XV:32, 18–29, 31), and vocal works with obbligato keyboard parts: fourteen songs with English texts, two duets with Italian texts, and the occasional piece “Dr. Harrington’s Compliment.”
Even though Haydn complained to Frau von Genzinger of his overwhelming social schedule at the beginning of his first London journey,20 this new repertoire must have increased his appeal to the English capital’s society: his singing and playing of the newly composed Canzonettas among royalty, nobility, and gentry seem to have been a highlight of British party life that could only be matched by owning the printed copy of the first set autographed by the composer.21
After his introduction [to George III], Haydn, by desire of the queen, sat down to the pianoforte, and surrounded by Her Majesty and her royal and accomplished daughters, sang and accompanied himself admirably in several of his canzonets.22
While in London Haydn took an active interest in English developments and experiments in keyboard construction. In The Morning Herald of 27 April 1792 he addressed a letter to Mr. Clagget, the proprietor of a musical museum:
I called at your house, during your absence, and examined your improvements on the Pianoforte, and Harpsichords, and I found you had made them perfect instruments. I therefore, in justice to your invention, cannot forbear giving you my full approbation, as by this means you have rendered one of the finest instruments ever invented, perfect, and therefore the fittest to conduct any musical performance, and to accompany the human voice.23
Another report tells us that Haydn went to Stodart’s place of business on Lad Lane to see his fortepiano of grand dimensions in the form of a bookcase. He supposedly expressed delight not only with its “new possibilities” for case-making but also with the quality of its sound.24
During his time in London Haydn must also have had the opportunity to become familiar with many more virtuoso keyboardists than he had encountered previously. Although in Vienna there were Mozart and Beethoven, London—with its active public concert life and its attraction of immigrant musicians from revolutionary Paris—was populated by both amateur and professional players of unusual skill in remarkable numbers. In his London Notebook from 1791–1792, Haydn provides us with what may be the best list of pianists active in the British capital during the 1790s: Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), Johann Ladislaus Dussek (1760–1812), Adalbert Gyrowetz (1763-1830), Joseph Diettenhofer (ca. 1743-1797?), Charles Burney (1726-1814), Miss Esther Burney (1749-1832), Nicolas-Joseph Hüllmandel (1751–1823), Johann G. Graff, Miss Cecilia Barthelemon, Johann B. Cramer (1771–1858), Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837), Therese Jansen [Bartolozzi] (ca. 1770–1843), and Heinrich Gerhard von Lenz (1764?–1839).25
From Haydn’s final return to Vienna in 1795 until his death in 1809, his involvement with keyboard performance and composition seems to have been minimal; only a single accompanied sonata (Hob. XV: 30) was completed, although he repeatedly expressed an intent to compose more. His vocal quartets and trios contain obligatory fortepiano parts, as do the numerous arrangements of Scottish and other national songs produced by Haydn for Thomson and Napier. Solo passages for the organ are present in the “Nelson” and “Creation” masses—two of six composed for the Princess Esterházy’s name day between 1796 and 1802. The single documented performance for this final period was a semi-public one at an entertainment given by the Princess Esterházy for the Archduchess Pawlowna on 31 October 1800.26
During his final years, when he was no longer able to compose, the old man derived a great deal of comfort from hearing the fortepiano, although at times he was hypersensitive to its sound, as his Swedish student Paul Struck reports in December 1804:
Recently I had to play something for him. To begin with, he sat next to the Fortepiano, but he immediately carried the chair to the [other] end of the room because the Fortepiano was far too loud for him. There, however, he sat for a long time and said that he enjoyed listening.27
This condition probably caused Haydn to sell his fortepiano, an event ruefully recorded in his “Krakauer Schreibkalender” (see Plate 1). Thus, in his last years he probably used the clavichord exclusively. Even in his final months he played “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser” at this quiet instrument with regularity until five days before his death: “I have often found support and consolation from it on restless days—I can’t do otherwise; I must play it once a day. I feel quite contented whenever I play it and for a little while after, too.”28
The picture that emerges is not the traditional one of a composer disinterested in the keyboard and his own keyboard music, but rather one in which the instrument and its music had a compelling place in his life. Haydn not only performed on the instrument with precision and an uncommon expression but also used it as a means for developing ideas that later emerged as full-fledged compositions. In addition, the keyboard was for him something more personal: it provided psychological comfort, and served as a social lubricator for his presence in the Viennese and London salons. Haydn also kept himself abreast of the newest developments in the design of these instruments, the special characteristics of the products of individual makers, and the current crop of virtuosi in both Vienna and London. Finally, Haydn was always concerned with the presentation of his keyboard works and the suitability of arrangements and transcriptions to the instrument’s idiom. Indeed, no other instrument seems to have consistently occupied him so completely.
Thus, it is time to revise our view of Haydn and the keyboard. The overwhelming evidence is that the keyboard was at the very center of Haydn’s musical life and interests from a tender age until mere days before his death at the age of seventy-seven.
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