# On the works of Mozart, Haydn and Bach



## Arie (Jun 19, 2015)

Whenever conductors, or anyone for that matter, speak of Beethoven, they all say that Beethoven refused to follow the carefully refined structure for symphony (which is perfected by Mozart, Haydn and Bach); and that he disrupted the structure and rules and made groundbreaking, daring music.

I was wondering if Haydn or Mozart never created any symphony in their whole body of works that doesn't follow their 4-movement, 30-minute pattern. Are all their 100+ symphonies written in exactly the same pattern/syntax (or something similar as per the rules they set)?
Give me their works of exception, if any, please.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Some were three movements. Mozart's Paris symphony, no.31.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Well, some of Haydn's have the second movement as the slow movement and some have the third movement slow. Does that count?

(Before people start screaming about Bach perfecting the symphony, I'll assume it's J. C. Bach. Correct?)

[Edit: I found reference to Haydn's Symphony No. 45 "Farewell" written in 1772, decades before Beethoven's convention shattering Symphony No. 3. Though it's divided into four movements, the finale is in essence two separate parts, and it ends on an adagio, highly unusual for a classical symphony. I think both Haydn and Mozart were already well on their way to breaking these conventions, it's just that they weren't as ornery as Beethoven.]


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

OCD made me count Haydn's 3-movement symphonies: 1, 2, 9, 10, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 25, 26, 27, 30 (stopped counting here). I believe one of his has 5 movements! Mozart's Prague, one of his greatest symphonies, has 3 movements...

BTW, to the OP, Bach (the JS one) had little or nothing to do with the symphony we know today, which developed pretty much independently of him.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Haydn's Symphony no.60, 'Il Distratto', has 6 movements.


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## haydnfan (Apr 13, 2011)

Arie said:


> Whenever conductors, or anyone for that matter, speak of Beethoven, they all say that Beethoven refused to follow the carefully refined structure for symphony (which is perfected by Mozart, Haydn and Bach); and that he disrupted the structure and rules and made groundbreaking, daring music.
> 
> I was wondering if Haydn or Mozart never created any symphony in their whole body of works that doesn't follow their 4-movement, 30-minute pattern. Are all their 100+ symphonies written in exactly the same pattern/syntax (or something similar as per the rules they set)?
> Give me their works of exception, if any, please.


The first paragraph and the second paragraph don't have much to do with each other. You've misinterpreted what it meant for Beethoven to write unconventional symphonies. He replaced the minuet and trio with a scherzo. He played around with the expectations of the classical allegro sonata form. When people say that Beethoven disrupted the rules of classical era symphonies, that is what is meant. What is not meant is that it must be 4 movements and 30 minutes long.

Most of Haydn and Mozart's symphonies are not 30 minutes long btw. They're usually 10-20 minutes long. Haydn's early "symphonies" are not symphonies in the way that is being expressed here. They're divertimenti for chamber orchestra. Throughout his career he and his colleagues created and transformed the concept and form of the symphony. Haydn made a habit of subverting expectations of classical form much like his pupil, Beethoven. And Mozart put a great fugue that would knock Bach's socks off in the Jupiter symphony.


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

haydnfan said:


> The first paragraph and the second paragraph don't have much to do with each other. You've misinterpreted what it meant for Beethoven to write unconventional symphonies. He replaced the minuet and trio with a scherzo. He played around with the expectations of the classical allegro sonata form. When people say that Beethoven disrupted the rules of classical era symphonies, that is what is meant. What is not meant is that it must be 4 movements and 30 minutes long.
> 
> Most of Haydn and Mozart's symphonies are not 30 minutes long btw. They're usually 10-20 minutes long. Haydn's early "symphonies" are not symphonies in the way that is being expressed here. They're divertimenti for chamber orchestra. Throughout his career he and his colleagues created and transformed the concept and form of the symphony. Haydn made a habit of subverting expectations of classical form much like his pupil, Beethoven. And Mozart put a great fugue that would knock Bach's socks off in the Jupiter symphony.


Absolutely right, of course. But some of the most rewarding have four movements and go about 30 minutes. What was wrong with them - why couldn't they go 70 minutes like Mahler?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I'm sure any half decent Haydnist could think of symphonies which were infinitely more audacious than anything Beethoven wrote. How about 91?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Steatopygous said:


> Absolutely right, of course. But some of the most rewarding have four movements and go about 30 minutes. What was wrong with them - why couldn't they go 70 minutes like Mahler?


The harmonic and musical language couldn't support it. Look at how many times the finale of Beethoven's Ninth has to start and stop.

Mahler's conception of form is also very different, with a more Romantic rather than Classical idea of what constitutes balance.


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## Chipomarc (Jul 18, 2015)

Steatopygous said:


> Absolutely right, of course. But some of the most rewarding have four movements and go about 30 minutes. What was wrong with them - why couldn't they go 70 minutes like Mahler?


OMG, 70 minutes of Mahler! I get in about 12 minutes and then get up and switch over to a good old Mozart, Beethoven, etc.
But then that's me, I don't like trying new things.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

People in general make too much of the "rules" of classical forms. For example, none of the major works of Haydn or Mozart follow "textbook" sonata form beyond the broad outline.

This leads to people giving Beethoven too much credit for "escaping" the old forms, and Haydn and Mozart too little credit for their formal explorations.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Steatopygous said:


> Absolutely right, of course. But some of the most rewarding have four movements and go about 30 minutes. What was wrong with them - *why couldn't they go 70 minutes like Mahler?*


Long movements are possible in Classical and early Romantic symphonies - the first movement of Mozart's "Prague" Symphony is over 12 minutes long, that of Beethoven's "Eroica" may take 17 or 18 minutes, and the whole of Schubert's 9th can last an hour if all the repeats are taken. But the Classical ideal of ease of comprehension places limits on how much information the structure of a piece can convey before comprehensibility starts to break down, and thus how long a piece can go on and still sustain a clear "train of thought."

In the classical style a premium is placed on structural clarity - on actually perceiving, as we listen, a progression of events that feels logical and ultimately satisfying. This entails remembering where we've been and sensing where we're going, or at least feeling that we're going someplace definite and will end up resolving the plot that's being narrated for us. We're taken on a journey in which the signposts are pointed out to us: introduction, exposition, first theme, second theme, repeat, development, etc. If the composer is imaginative there may be plenty of surprises along the way, but they won't be allowed to disrupt our sense of an inevitable progression toward a destination, which will ultimately be a return home. This quest for a comprehensible, rounded narrative is realized, in broad outline, through a harmonic language based on the hierarchy of keys we call (common practice) tonality, which gives us certain expectations of the direction in which the music will move, expectations the composer can satisfy or frustrate according to his expressive and narrative goals. We judge a Classical work as successful or not very largely on the basis of whether the goal of formal coherence, or narrative comprehensibility, has been met.

Although comprensible form remained an important objective after the Classical period, Romantic composers increasingly had other things on their minds. To put it a bit simplistically, the focus shifted from the forest to the trees - from long-range comprehensibility to expressiveness in the moment. The pursuit of such expressiveness entailed the enrichment of sonority and the complexification of harmony - especially an increase in chromaticism and the way it extended harmonic progression in time - and the problem for Romantic composers wishing to write symphonies was how to integrate this more complex vocabulary of effects into a formal narrative that was still comprehensible to the listener. The desire to explore a range of expressive effects by means of an extended harmonic vocabulary meant, among other things, that it took longer to get from signpost A to signpost B on the symphonic journey, and that if we wanted to get home again we'd have to digest a lot of information along the way and risk feeling less certain than we did in a Classical symphony of where we were and where we'd end up.

Romantic symphonies exhibit a wide range of solutions to the problem of narrative coherence, from the deliberate neo-Classicism of Brahms, to the leisurely, episodic constructions of Bruckner, to the various complex hybrids between objective Classical form and subjective "psychodrama" of Berlioz, Tchaikovsky or Mahler. These composers needed more time - sometimes a lot more time - than Mozart and Haydn to make the symphonic journey.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

Mozart early symphonies were in the 3 movement style.I find music that
View attachment 73845
is the classical style to be boring because it is the same sonata movement,dance movement,rondo movement & aria movements.The romantic style is more creative with variety .


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> People in general make too much of the "rules" of classical forms. For example, none of the major works of Haydn or Mozart follow "textbook" sonata form beyond the broad outline.
> 
> This leads to people giving Beethoven too much credit for "escaping" the old forms, and Haydn and Mozart too little credit for their formal explorations.


I said in another thread how the great music critic G.B. Shaw put Mozart and Wagner at the pinnacle. But he put Mozart at the very top because he thought - as you imply - that it is harder to so perfect a style that successors can have nothing more to say but must go in new directions than it is to go in those directions.


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Long movements are possible in Classical and early Romantic symphonies - the first movement of Mozart's "Prague" Symphony is over 12 minutes long, that of Beethoven's "Eroica" may take 17 or 18 minutes, and the whole of Schubert's 9th can last an hour if all the repeats are taken. But the Classical ideal of ease of comprehension places limits on how much information the structure of a piece can convey before comprehensibility starts to break down, and thus how long a piece can go on and still sustain a clear "train of thought."
> 
> In the classical style a premium is placed on structural clarity - on actually perceiving, as we listen, a progression of events that feels logical and ultimately satisfying. This entails remembering where we've been and sensing where we're going, or at least feeling that we're going someplace definite and will end up resolving the plot that's being narrated for us. We're taken on a journey in which the signposts are pointed out to us: introduction, exposition, first theme, second theme, repeat, development, etc. If the composer is imaginative there may be plenty of surprises along the way, but they won't be allowed to disrupt our sense of an inevitable progression toward a destination, which will ultimately be a return home. This quest for a comprehensible, rounded narrative is realized, in broad outline, through a harmonic language based on the hierarchy of keys we call (common practice) tonality, which gives us certain expectations of the direction in which the music will move, expectations the composer can satisfy or frustrate according to his expressive and narrative goals. We judge a Classical work as successful or not very largely on the basis of whether the goal of formal coherence, or narrative comprehensibility, has been met.
> 
> ...


My question was meant to be tongue in cheek, a quip. But those who have taken it seriously have given such good answers that I'm glad I asked it!


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Arie said:


> Whenever conductors, or anyone for that matter, speak of Beethoven, they all say that Beethoven refused to follow the carefully refined structure for symphony (which is perfected by Mozart, Haydn and Bach); and that he disrupted the structure and rules and made groundbreaking, daring music.
> 
> I was wondering if Haydn or Mozart never created any symphony in their whole body of works that doesn't follow their 4-movement, 30-minute pattern. Are all their 100+ symphonies written in exactly the same pattern/syntax (or something similar as per the rules they set)?
> Give me their works of exception, if any, please.


Beethoven is probably the best one to study. In his small number of great symphonies - nine in all - you can see standard established Classical examples (1, 2), early Romantic examples (3, 5) and grand Romantic examples (6, 9). Four movements but that is immaterial given the size of some movements.


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