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The London Revision of Haydn's Instrumental Style

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1973

László Somfai
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Extract

The most trustworthy contemporary biographer of Joseph Haydn, Georg August Griesinger, interviewing the aged composer, asked him whether it was true that he had composed the Andante of the ‘Surprise’ Symphony in order to waken the English who fell asleep at his concert. Haydn replied:

No, but I was interested in surprising the public with something new, and in making a brilliant debut, so that my student Pleyel, who was at that time engaged by an orchestra in London (in 1792) and whose concerts had opened a week before mine, should not outdo me. The first Allegro of my symphony had already met with countless Bravos, but the enthusiasm reached its highest peak at the Andante with the Drum Stroke. Encore! Encore! sounded in every throat, and Pleyel himself complimented me on my idea.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 100 , 1973 , pp. 159 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Haydn: Two Coniemporary Portraits, transl. and ed. Vernon Gotwals, Madison, Wisconsin, 1968, p. 33.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Symphonies Nos. 6 (‘Le Matin’), 53 (‘L’ Impériale’), 57, 73 (‘La Chasse’), 75 and 86.Google Scholar

3 The Bland edition of Op. 64, published in 1792, noted on the title-page: ‘… performed under [Haydn's] direction, at Mr. Salomon's concert, the Festino Rooms Hanover Square’.Google Scholar

4 This was the first to be printed in 1795 by Corri & Dussek, in the form of an arrangement for piano trio; see Anthony van Hoboken, Joseph Haydn: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, i (Mainz, 1957), 427.Google Scholar

5 Fig. 1 adopts the symbols proposed by Jan La Rue in ‘A System of Symbols for Formal Analysis’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, x (1957), 25–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 A brief survey of the piano trio would be superfluous here in view of the excellent essay in Charles Rosen, The Classical Style, London, 1971, pp. 351 ff.Google Scholar

7 Hoboken XVI. 50–52.Google Scholar

8 The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn, transl. and ed. H. C. Robbins Landon, London, 1959, p. 164.Google Scholar