Haydn Piano Sonata 5

Mystery · May 28, 2007, 11:51:34 AM

Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2007, 11:47:18 AM
It is Hob. 35; I've checked all the C major sonatas and 35 is the only one which fits his description (though 50 comes perilously close, only lacking the final l.h. arpeggio. Really Haydn had a limitied imagination - of the 8 sonatas in C I've checked, three (21, 35 and 50) have F major adagio second movements starting with arpeggiated tonic chords.)

BTW, there are no Haydn piano sonatas in D minor to my recollection.

It's a she, if you please

Ooh OK thank you everyone. So I was not being TOO stupid about being confused about form? That's reassuring, seeing as my exam's on Wednesday! My book doesn't seem to have Hob numbers so sorry about that!

lukeottevanger · May 28, 2007, 12:02:48 PM

Quote from: Mystery on May 28, 2007, 11:51:34 AM
It's a she, if you please

Sorry. And I'm not even allowed to make mystery jokes anymore (or Misstery ones)

Quote from: Mystery on May 28, 2007, 11:51:34 AMOoh OK thank you everyone. So I was not being TOO stupid about being confused about form? That's reassuring, seeing as my exam's on Wednesday! My book doesn't seem to have Hob numbers so sorry about that!

You'll forgive me, but your book sounds pretty useless then, at least about this issue. With Haydn more than any other composer - so many different numberings of so many pieces in so many genres and - it is vital to be clear.

But no, you weren't being stupid about form. What is stupid - and it isn't your fault, 'it's the system, man' - is the rigid categorisation of forms your exam is testing you on, when it is formal fluidity, as in this piece, which is so interesting. That's why 'sonata form' movements which predate the formalisation of sonata form (essentially, Classical sonatas) are in the main so much more interesting formally than those which postdate it (essentially, Romantic sonatas).

Mystery · May 28, 2007, 12:07:08 PM

Quote from: lukeottevanger on May 28, 2007, 12:02:48 PM
Sorry. And I'm not even allowed to make mystery jokes anymore (or Misstery ones)

Oh dear...

You'll forgive me, but your book sounds pretty useless then, at least about this issue. With Haydn more than any other composer - so many different numberings of so many pieces in so many genres and - it is vital to be clear.

Now offence is taken

Though you are very right.

But no,
you weren't being stupid about form. What is stupid - and it isn't your fault, 'it's the system, man' - is the rigid categorisation of forms your exam is testing you on, when it is formal fluidity, as in this piece, which is so interesting. That's why 'sonata form' movements which predate the formalisation of sonata form (essentially, Classical sonatas) are in the main so much more interesting formally than those which postdate it (essentially, Romantic sonatas).
[/quote]

Yes, this is a very good point, and I will try to mention it...anything to make me 'stand out' - how does one do well in a Cambridge exam?! Argh!

Mystery · May 28, 2007, 12:08:12 PM

Oh, I seem to be rather appalling at quoting people! Perhaps I shouldn't raise to bait in future!

lukeottevanger · May 28, 2007, 12:11:21 PM

Quote from: Mystery on May 28, 2007, 12:07:08 PM
Yes, this is a very good point, and I will try to mention it...anything to make me 'stand out' - how does one do well in a Cambridge exam?! Argh!

You aren't 'Musiclover' from the old GMG are you?

lukeottevanger · May 28, 2007, 12:19:30 PM

...and if you are (or indeed, if you're not), which exam in particular are you working towards? If you're not Musiclover-as-was I should explain that I studied music at Cambridge (UK) too, in the mid-90s, so might be able to give some words of advice, if I can dredge them up. I don't recall having to do too much about form as we've discussing it...no, that's wrong, we were made very aware of the subtleties of form and nomenclature in our analysis supervisions (especially in the first year), but we were certainly taught to be fluidin the way we saw form, and putting things into boxes was never really what it was about. However, the exam itself was based around a set work* and so we had quite a time to analyse it at our leisure.

*for us, Mozart PC 27 in the first year and Brahms PC 2 in the second; I always felt the examiners were having a game of spot-the-in-joke with our year about last piano concerti in B flat with significant passages in B minor in their development sections

And did Brahms have the Mozart specifically in mind when he wrote his rather Mozartian B flat concerto, which is to his D minor concerto as Mozart's is to his?

Mystery · May 28, 2007, 02:12:44 PM

No... I'm doing first year analysis exam on Wednesday, followed by harmony and counterpoint on Thurs, aural on Fri, opera on Sat, C20/plainchant on Tues, and keyboard on Wed. So this was in relation to the unseen part of our analysis paper. We have one set work (this year it's Mozart's string trio) and can choose to do either one or two questions on that, and then one or two on the unseen, answering three in all. And I'm scared!

lukeottevanger · May 28, 2007, 02:26:45 PM

They may have slightly changed the format for the analysis exam, as I don't remember it being exactly the way you describe. However, what I do know is that during my whole time there the issue of form never really became an important one, analysis-wise; it cropped up ocassionally in supervisions (I recall one on the Mozart E minor Violin Sonata, and another on the slow movement of his E flat Symphony...) but at the level you are working on, it should only ever be a starting point, just as it was for the composers themselves. No exam will ask you to apply formal labels to pieces where the answer is obvious, but that is for the better, because it means that you have something to get your teeth into and discuss. And obviously you are working in the right way in this sense. For instance, the fact that you discerned the way this Haydn Sonata didn't fit comfortably into either rigid 'sonata form' or standard binary form is precisely what you should be doing; rather than it being a worrying problem, it is the sort of thing you should seize upon and make the starting point for your essay. Once you start, other things start to spring to your attention, and before you know it, you start to see and say properly interesting things.

Analysis was always one of my better exam subjects (I got firsts in my Part Ia and IB analysis exams IIRC) but I never really studied things like form; I relied on finding the more individual points of the piece and juggling them around until I began to see relationships between them (and the piece in general, of course). Sorry not to be more precise, but I found this method worked well for me.

Mystery · May 28, 2007, 11:19:41 PM

You got firsts? Oh wow

I like it too though have never been of that quality. I just pick something I find to be prevalent such as an amalgamation of Baroque and Classical styles, and then spend my essay talking about that. However it does require a big flash of inspiration at the time. And other than contrapuntal lines, including the rise in power of viola, in Mozart's string trio I'm not sure what stands out especially.

lukeottevanger · May 29, 2007, 01:14:35 AM

Quote from: Mystery on May 28, 2007, 11:19:41 PM
You got firsts? Oh wow

Well, I think so. I did for the Ia paper; I'm pretty sure I did for the IB. My analysis paper for part II was another matter entirely which it's best not to go into here.....

I blame my supervisor who told me that question x would be on the paper

It wasn't.....Thankfully I got enough good marks elsewhere for it not to matter! (That's the beauty of part II...)

Quote from: Mystery on May 28, 2007, 11:19:41 PMI like it too though have never been of that quality. I just pick something I find to be prevalent such as an amalgamation of Baroque and Classical styles, and then spend my essay talking about that. However it does require a big flash of inspiration at the time. And other than contrapuntal lines, including the rise in power of viola, in Mozart's string trio I'm not sure what stands out especially.

I don't have a score for the trio so can't help you specifically, but I would look for harmonic things first - small details and their relationship to the larger scale and so on; don't forget all the stuff about gesture, topic, narrative and so on. They like[d] that sort of thing. In other words, things intrinsic to the score and not, perhaps, comparisons with trends in other music, which is valid comment but not, strictly, analysis as they are looking for it.

Mystery · May 29, 2007, 02:48:51 AM

Thanks for your help. There doesn't seem to be TOO much to say about harmony, as it's pretty tonic-dominant though there are a number of tertiary relations. I guess a lot of the other papers have changed since you were here, as opera, C20 and plainchant are all new I believe. Though I take it you did songs and Palestrina etc?

Mystery · May 30, 2007, 01:45:08 AM

Not related but not really worthy of another thread... what is the relationship in length between Mozart's two subjects in a sonata form?

lukeottevanger · May 30, 2007, 06:14:58 AM

Quote from: Mystery on May 29, 2007, 02:48:51 AM
Thanks for your help. There doesn't seem to be TOO much to say about harmony, as it's pretty tonic-dominant though there are a number of tertiary relations. I guess a lot of the other papers have changed since you were here, as opera, C20 and plainchant are all new I believe. Though I take it you did songs and Palestrina etc?

Well, the papers do of course change from year to year, but I did do an Italian Opera course in the first year (lecturer was Richard Marlowe, reading straight out of Grove, supervisor was John Deathridge, who seemed to know his stuff a lot better) and a plainchant course in the same year (lectured and supervised by Susan Rankin). 20th century seems a bit of a broad heading - we did plenty of work on various aspects of it throughout the three years, most memorably with Robin Holloway, Sandy Goehr and Hugh Wood. If by Palestrina you mean as part of the counterpoint course then, yes, I did that (supervised by Stephen Cleobury), and if by songs you mean as part of the harmony paper, then yes I did that too (supervised by Andrew Reid, a graduate who I think became organist at Westeminster Cathedral shortly after)

Mystery · May 30, 2007, 11:31:01 PM

You were supervised by Andrew Reid? Wow - he's the organist at Peterborough cathedral - I went to the cathedral school there! How strange...

Oh OK well they must have taken those subjects off and now put them back again as this is the first year for plainchant for example. Hmm feeling rather unprepared...but I'm hopiing that people always do, as there's always more that you can do.

You don't know Rohan Stewart-Macdonald by any chance do you?

lukeottevanger · May 31, 2007, 12:01:26 AM

Know? Not personally, though I exchanged words with him a few times. But I saw him around the faculty pretty much every day, I think - always studying, that's how I remember him.

Mystery · May 31, 2007, 03:47:30 AM

Oh wow, was he in your year? Do you know Matthew Schellhorn?

lukeottevanger · May 31, 2007, 04:01:38 AM

Quote from: Mystery on May 31, 2007, 03:47:30 AM
Oh wow, was he in your year? Do you know Matthew Schellhorn?

No to the first, I think he was a year or two older...unless I'm remembering someone different! (No, just googled him, it's certainly the same guy....except when I saw him around he was always wearing a funny little hat IIRC). No to the second too, though I know the name.