Haydn's Haus

[El Chupacabra]

I'm not sure I follow completely your line here, but Tom Beghin, in discussing Haydn's sonatas, discusses this dilemma for the player. In the middle (1775-82) Haydn sonatas, Haydn writes things out fully embellished, then marks it da capo. So the decision for the player is what? Do I play it fully embellished twice? Or what do I do?  Beghin's solution is that he feels Haydn is indicating what ornamentation should be used. He isn't writing for professional pianists. Neither is Mozart. In 1775, professional pianists would have been embarrassed to play someone else's work. They were writing for good amateurs, and showing them how to ornament properly. So Beghin tends to play it the first time through without the ornaments, or with minimal ornaments. On the da capo, then, he can properly play it as written. I have every PI/HIP piano sonata disk of Haydn, and most of Mozart, and Beghin is in my top few in terms of realistic interpretation.

I can understand why you can't follow because I believe there is a discrepancy in what you trust in. Do you have Beghin's K570 handy, in order to establish a common point, which I'll try to spend time on it and explain if you do?

Edit:

I'll go on anyway because it was in front of me and I'm sure if it interests you you'd listen to it...

Beghin is a big interventionist.

At times, his embellishments amount to wholesale recomposition of Mozart's notated score, for instance, in the repeat of bars 7 and 8, where the right hand becomes quite rhapsodic. In the first (c minor) episode, Beghin applies an embellishment at the repeat of bar 13, beats 1 and 3, similar to that of Brautigam (the rhythm is the same, though the shape of Beghin's figure is slightly different and is doubled in thirds), when this moment returns for the last time (in the repeat of bar 21), Beghin plays demisemiquavers in doubled thirds which highlights this as a climactic moment in his reading of the structure while simultaneously relating it (quantitatively, by degree) to the embellishment of bar 13's repeat. As his performance of the episode unfolds, so the density of embellishment applied to this figure grows, and his activity – especially his importation of virtuosity at the climactic bar 21 – defines the performance space memorably as a primary level equivalent in status to the notated text. Mozart's text is here creatively extended to include the gestural not simply as an agency for the representation of the 'Work', but as a mode of conveying understanding. You can say that Beghin's performance here is itself a 'text'. (It is a text that contains clear strategic planning in its application of rhapsodic, florid right-hand embellishment at cadence approaches (for instance, the repeat of bars 29–30), as also of sextuplet semiquavers to enhance repeats of ascending phrases (at bars 5, 18, 34 and 37, for instance). Uniquely, at bar 22, beat 4, Beghin introduces a sextuplet decoration in the left hand.) Beghin's entire approach is overtly rhetorical in nature...as far as I know one of his studies on Haydn with Goldberg is called Performance of Rhetoric (and I have a Virtual Haydn book of his which I'll skim tonight)...maximizing the impact of local gesture by careful emphasis of the precise articulations (especially the separation between adjacent slurred groups throughout the opening phrase), building phrases by speaking their individual components, rather than moulding everything into a seamless legato, and, most notably, deliberately sacrificing all attempts at a steady tempo in order to allow this. The tempo varies considerably from section to section, even within individual phrases; if there is a notional tempo, it lies at roughly 42, though it increases to 48–50 within even the first section of the opening theme, and the first episode is notably a quicker 52...to wrap it up, this many 'interventions' and your 'top few in terms of realistic interpretation' does not fit the scope that I tried to describe previously.

[kishnevi]

But if Mozart and Haydn expected interventions from the performer, then Beghin's treatment is realistic.

[Gurn Blanston]

But if Mozart and Haydn expected interventions from the performer, then Beghin's treatment is realistic.

Which exactly begs the question.

I can understand why you can't follow because I believe there is a discrepancy in what you trust in. Do you have Beghin's K570 handy, in order to establish a common point, which I'll try to spend time on it and explain if you do?

Edit:

I'll go on anyway because it was in front of me and I'm sure if it interests you you'd listen to it...

Beghin is a big interventionist.

At times, his embellishments amount to wholesale recomposition of Mozart's notated score, for instance, in the repeat of bars 7 and 8, where the right hand becomes quite rhapsodic. In the first (c minor) episode, Beghin applies an embellishment at the repeat of bar 13, beats 1 and 3, similar to that of Brautigam (the rhythm is the same, though the shape of Beghin's figure is slightly different and is doubled in thirds), when this moment returns for the last time (in the repeat of bar 21), Beghin plays demisemiquavers in doubled thirds which highlights this as a climactic moment in his reading of the structure while simultaneously relating it (quantitatively, by degree) to the embellishment of bar 13's repeat. As his performance of the episode unfolds, so the density of embellishment applied to this figure grows, and his activity – especially his importation of virtuosity at the climactic bar 21 – defines the performance space memorably as a primary level equivalent in status to the notated text. Mozart's text is here creatively extended to include the gestural not simply as an agency for the representation of the 'Work', but as a mode of conveying understanding. You can say that Beghin's performance here is itself a 'text'. (It is a text that contains clear strategic planning in its application of rhapsodic, florid right-hand embellishment at cadence approaches (for instance, the repeat of bars 29–30), as also of sextuplet semiquavers to enhance repeats of ascending phrases (at bars 5, 18, 34 and 37, for instance). Uniquely, at bar 22, beat 4, Beghin introduces a sextuplet decoration in the left hand.) Beghin's entire approach is overtly rhetorical in nature...as far as I know one of his studies on Haydn with Goldberg is called Performance of Rhetoric (and I have a Virtual Haydn book of his which I'll skim tonight)...maximizing the impact of local gesture by careful emphasis of the precise articulations (especially the separation between adjacent slurred groups throughout the opening phrase), building phrases by speaking their individual components, rather than moulding everything into a seamless legato, and, most notably, deliberately sacrificing all attempts at a steady tempo in order to allow this. The tempo varies considerably from section to section, even within individual phrases; if there is a notional tempo, it lies at roughly 42, though it increases to 48–50 within even the first section of the opening theme, and the first episode is notably a quicker 52...to wrap it up, this many 'interventions' and your 'top few in terms of realistic interpretation' does not fit the scope that I tried to describe previously.

The idea of 'non-interventionism' is a 19th century invention, or post-Beethovenian to be more accurate. In the 18th century, a performer was expected to be 'interventionist' as you state it. I am not a musician nor an analyst of music, so I can't really answer your points, although I see what you are saying. I do know a little bit of history though, and one thing I know is that note for note adherence to a written score had little place in 18th century performance. It was a long range goal, especially in orchestral music, the arc of which lasted the entire 18th century, and continued into the early 19th. But in solo keyboard works, it was up to the performer to analyze and decide what and how to play what he saw on paper. It was actually only after Haydn started writing specifically for publication that he began indicating things like dynamics and using various symbols for ornaments, many of which he took from CPE Bach's publications, some of which he devised on his own. For anyone playing off an original manuscript, there is a hell of a lot more decision-making involved than when playing from a 19th or 20th century edition which has meticulously had the thought process removed by careful editing.

So yes, from the point of view of what entertains me when I listen to Haydn's keyboard music, Beghin is well up the list. 

[Mandryka]

I can understand why you can't follow because I believe there is a discrepancy in what you trust in. Do you have Beghin's K570 handy, in order to establish a common point, which I'll try to spend time on it and explain if you do?

Edit:

I'll go on anyway because it was in front of me and I'm sure if it interests you you'd listen to it...

Beghin is a big interventionist.

At times, his embellishments amount to wholesale recomposition of Mozart's notated score, for instance, in the repeat of bars 7 and 8, where the right hand becomes quite rhapsodic. In the first (c minor) episode, Beghin applies an embellishment at the repeat of bar 13, beats 1 and 3, similar to that of Brautigam (the rhythm is the same, though the shape of Beghin's figure is slightly different and is doubled in thirds), when this moment returns for the last time (in the repeat of bar 21), Beghin plays demisemiquavers in doubled thirds which highlights this as a climactic moment in his reading of the structure while simultaneously relating it (quantitatively, by degree) to the embellishment of bar 13's repeat. As his performance of the episode unfolds, so the density of embellishment applied to this figure grows, and his activity – especially his importation of virtuosity at the climactic bar 21 – defines the performance space memorably as a primary level equivalent in status to the notated text. Mozart's text is here creatively extended to include the gestural not simply as an agency for the representation of the 'Work', but as a mode of conveying understanding. You can say that Beghin's performance here is itself a 'text'. (It is a text that contains clear strategic planning in its application of rhapsodic, florid right-hand embellishment at cadence approaches (for instance, the repeat of bars 29–30), as also of sextuplet semiquavers to enhance repeats of ascending phrases (at bars 5, 18, 34 and 37, for instance). Uniquely, at bar 22, beat 4, Beghin introduces a sextuplet decoration in the left hand.) Beghin's entire approach is overtly rhetorical in nature...as far as I know one of his studies on Haydn with Goldberg is called Performance of Rhetoric (and I have a Virtual Haydn book of his which I'll skim tonight)...maximizing the impact of local gesture by careful emphasis of the precise articulations (especially the separation between adjacent slurred groups throughout the opening phrase), building phrases by speaking their individual components, rather than moulding everything into a seamless legato, and, most notably, deliberately sacrificing all attempts at a steady tempo in order to allow this. The tempo varies considerably from section to section, even within individual phrases; if there is a notional tempo, it lies at roughly 42, though it increases to 48–50 within even the first section of the opening theme, and the first episode is notably a quicker 52...to wrap it up, this many 'interventions' and your 'top few in terms of realistic interpretation' does not fit the scope that I tried to describe previously.

Just focussing on one of these things so I can understand your position better, I guess you like what he does at bar 21, where the ornamentation comes from an idea about a climax in the score.

Sometimes I wonder whether small cell articulation isn't used unreflectively, performers assuming that all early music has an underlying rhetorical plan. If Beghin has an argument to suggest that Mozart was following a ground plan like a speech by Quintilian, then I'd love to see it. Because as far as I can see that's what he'd need to justify the rhetorical approach.

[Mandryka]

But if Mozart and Haydn expected interventions from the performer, then Beghin's treatment is realistic.

Yes but what were the interventions expected to be like? Were they supposed to make ideas present in the score more evident, or were they supposed to come out of the casual creative will of the performer?

[El Chupacabra]

But if Mozart and Haydn expected interventions from the performer...

These are not dark ages anymore. We have enough texts and letters by Mozart to know that that's not the case but I don't know that much about Haydn. Sometimes it helps to keep in mind that 1750's are the beginnings of modern music publishing, too.

...For anyone playing off an original manuscript, there is a hell of a lot more decision-making involved than when playing from a 19th or 20th century edition which has meticulously had the thought process removed by careful editing.

So yes, from the point of view of what entertains me when I listen to Haydn's keyboard music, Beghin is well up the list. 

Of course, there a lot to consider. I wasn't trying to be simplistic. Entertaining ourselves is the aim of us all.

[Gurn Blanston]

These are not dark ages anymore. We have enough texts and letters by Mozart to know that that's not the case but I don't know that much about Haydn. Sometimes it helps to keep in mind that 1750's are the beginnings of modern music publishing, too.
Of course, there a lot to consider. I wasn't trying to be simplistic. Entertaining ourselves is the aim of us all.

Amen to that!

My only aim here was to make the point that the 19th century concept of slavish devotion to the script simply didn't exist. Even composers like Mozart (especially in his piano concertos!!) left a lot open for the performer. If you read his letters to Nannerl when he sent her things to play, there he told her he wrote them out for her (because he knew she lacked the inventiveness to devise something herself). But that was just a favor for a sister.   

[El Chupacabra]

Amen to that!

My only aim here was to make the point that the 19th century concept of slavish devotion to the script simply didn't exist. Even composers like Mozart (especially in his piano concertos!!) left a lot open for the performer. If you read his letters to Nannerl when he sent her things to play, there he told her he wrote them out for her (because he knew she lacked the inventiveness to devise something herself). But that was just a favor for a sister.   

You are incorrigible.

It's not the composers of the 18th but the writers of the period that pushed it. Such as this example from 1771 by Anselm Bayly's "treatise on singing, etc" (the writer could as well be you )
"Many composers insert appoggiaturas and graces, which indeed may assist the learner, but not a performer well educated and of a good taste, who may omit them as he shall judge proper, vary them, or introduce others from his own fancy and imagination. ... The business of a composer is to give the air and expression in plain notes, who goes out of his province when he writes graces, which serve for the most part only to stop and confine the invention and imagination of a singer. The only excuse a composer can plead for this practice, is the want of qualifications in the generality of singers"
The view is the same as you try to input but by different forces.
What I am saying is, scholarship has only recently begun to make a modest impact, that is to regard Classical and Romantic composers' notation as literal and definitive, and to adhere to it as closely as possible in performance. The more we examine the letters between his father and Mozart, the more we adhere... enough said.

[Gurn Blanston]

You are incorrigible.

It's not the composers of the 18th but the writers of the period that pushed it. Such as this example from 1771 by Anselm Bayly's "treatise on singing, etc" (the writer could as well be you )
"Many composers insert appoggiaturas and graces, which indeed may assist the learner, but not a performer well educated and of a good taste, who may omit them as he shall judge proper, vary them, or introduce others from his own fancy and imagination. ... The business of a composer is to give the air and expression in plain notes, who goes out of his province when he writes graces, which serve for the most part only to stop and confine the invention and imagination of a singer. The only excuse a composer can plead for this practice, is the want of qualifications in the generality of singers"
The view is the same as you try to input but by different forces.
What I am saying is, scholarship has only recently begun to make a modest impact, that is to regard Classical and Romantic composers' notation as literal and definitive, and to adhere to it as closely as possible in performance. The more we examine the letters between his father and Mozart, the more we adhere... enough said.

Oh yes, incorrigibility is both my middle name and my watchword!

I will get back to you on this when I am not at work.  Clearly we are of a different mind. A thread on this outside of this Haydn one might open up the discussion a bit more. Anyway, more later. Ciao bello.

[El Chupacabra]

♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ [the sound of ominous organ music indicating trouble ahead]

[Madiel]

But as everybody knows they were contemporaries and friends so it seems preposterous to claim that Haydn "was still in the baroque style" and should therefore be played differently from Mozart.

Friends, yes. Contemporaries?

You don't think the fact that one was 24 years older than the other had any bearing on their music? I'm sure I've had friends who were 24 years different in age from me, but they didn't grow up in the same world that I did.

When Haydn was growing up, Baroque composers like J.S. Bach and Vivaldi and Handel were alive and composing. To Mozart, these people were purely historical figures. There were styles that Haydn would've remembered coming into being (indeed, he helped bring them into being) that for Mozart were just a fact of life.

[Jo498]

Both Mozart and Haydn grew probably up with the same "old style" church music and Fux' "Gradus ad Parnassum" counterpoint exercises. Haydn was not (more) familiar with e.g. Bach's or Handel's music only because their lifetimes overlapped for a longer time. Mozart was also precocious, trained from an early age by a zealous father, a very accomplished composer who had absorbed most of contemporary styles with 17 or so, whereas Haydn had to find his way after having to leave the choir and could not "settle" down before his late 20s, so in "professional age" they were certainly not 24 years apart, more like 12 or 15. Sure, Haydn had composed quite a bit since the late 1750s, but most of his important compositions are in fact contemporary with work by Mozart.
Already in the early 1770s we have the teenage Mozart reacting to important works by Haydn and other composers, e.g. (probably) to Haydn's op.20 in his second batch of string quartets K 168-173. So I'd say they were contemporaries for the important parts of their careers.

There were no big cultural rifts between 1750 or 1770 Austria, so I don't buy the idea that Haydn's early training and influences received around 1750 would make him stylistically the way he was. Sure, he is different from Mozart, but I don't hear in his (mature) music that he is closer to the baroque/gallant style of the 1740s because he was older than WAM.

[Gurn Blanston]

If we are only counting mature music and what the 19th century called his greatest works, that is one argument. I agree with what you are saying. If we are counting entire oeuvres, that is something else altogether. 75% of Haydn's output came before 1780, or before Mozart's Golden Age in Vienna.  Apples v Oranges...

[Jo498]

I think it would be somewhat perverse for the Haydn lover to discount works post 1780 only because some of the earlier ones might have been underappreciated, wouldn't it Furthermore, I was not talking about post-1780, rather post-1770.

But that's all beside the point. One reading of the remarks of that Jerusalem quartet player is that Haydn's style is somewhat closer to the baroque or in any case in important aspects different from Mozart's BECAUSE he was older. First of all, I do not find any evidence of this in the music, discounting some really early works or church music (which is often different and more "conservative"). When we are talking string quartets, the only pieces one would have to exclude as not contemporary (and they are hardly baroque in my view) are opp. 1+2.

Because it would hardly be fruitful to insist that e.g. Haydn's op.9 were "not contemporary" with Mozart's 1773 quartets because they were written in 1769. Surely, music composed within a window of 5 or 10 years will usually count as contemporary to each other! Finer gradings would certainly need a special argument, I believe.
So for most common readings of "contemporary" the works of the teenager Mozart in the early 1770s are contemporary not only with Haydn's "narrowly contemporary" works of the early 1770s but also with Haydn's works of the early 1760s.

If one wants to argue that Haydn's earliest pieces, say, before his job with Esterhazy, should not count as contemporary with Mozart, that's fine, but one would hardly want to make an argument based on those early works for the position that Haydn's oeuvre, taken as a whole, is not (in the usual wider sense) contemporary with Mozart's.

If anything, it seems more fruitful to claim that Haydn's *late works* are not contemporary with Mozart, because the latter was dead. But of course this would be very dubious again with regard to the normal coarser grained usage of "contemporary" and it would never help with establishing any claims based on Haydn being 24 years older

It seems obvious to me that stylistic differences are not so simply tied to the exact time a composer learned or lived in that merely referring to Haydn being older by 24 years would make an auspicious argument for such differences. Joh. Chr. Bach (1735-82) surely must count as the same generation as Haydn but his music is far closer to Mozart (or more precisely the other way round, because the youngest Bach son was an important influence on the child Mozart).

[Gurn Blanston]

Yup. you're right. In that context, you are correct.

[Gurn Blanston]

Here are some quartets which don't particularly have their roots in the Baroque, despite rumors to the contrary. Opus 64 is one of those hidden gems which has to fight for the attention it deserves.

French Tost? Well, maybe!

Thanks,

[Gurn Blanston]

When I started out on this Haydn journey, I wasn't much of a fan of vocal music. Now, I realize I'm going to miss my weekly look at what's happening at the ole Opry... 

Going out on a high note

Thanks,

[Gurn Blanston]

Well, I've safely seen Haydn onto the road to London, by far his biggest adventure ever. Mine too, for that matter. See how I wrapped up the loose ends of 1790 this week.

Almost an opera!

Thanks,

[Bogey]

When I started out on this Haydn journey, I wasn't much of a fan of vocal music. Now, I realize I'm going to miss my weekly look at what's happening at the ole Opry... 

Going out on a high note

Thanks,

You almost went Minnie Pearl on us there, Gurn.

[Gurn Blanston]

You almost went Minnie Pearl on us there, Gurn.

Had you checking your hat for a price tag, eh, Bill?