# Haydn is the Greatest Innovator in Western Music History



## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

For me it's an open question, but I phrased it as an over-the-top declarative statement here in hopes of garnering counterexamples by motivated argumentative TC posters. I've been looking for the counterexamples among Haydn's contemporaries and early influences (J. Stamitz, C.P.E. Bach, Sammartini) and have yet to find them. But that doesn't mean they're not there, and if you know any of them, I'm hoping you'll share them, because I would really like to find out how many of these he originated. So please feel free to read through the Top 10 list (9 symphonic, one string quartet) I'm going to include (as comment - too long for this field, I think) and see if any of these innovations - some anticipating Beethoven, some Wagner, some John Cage, some Spike Jones - occur in some work, especially an earlier work, by someone other than Haydn.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Movement section with no foreground content (29/iii) 1765
The trio is all oom-pah-pah accompaniment, with no melody on top. 

Theme organically developed across 4 movements, incl. long verbatim reprise (46) 1772
Descending 5-4-3-2-1 theme in second half of opening phrase is treated in myriad ways throughout movements 1, 3 and 4, including as a striking melody in the minuet that is reprised verbatim in the finale. This is really 2 innovations - one the organic development of a theme across movements, the other an explicit citation of music from another movement - but as a compositional issue, they're part of the same approach.	

Repetitive melody frog-marched to exit, defenestrated (60/v) 1775	
At the end of the slow fifth movement a somewhat banal melody repeats languidly four times, then repeats four times again much faster on its way to close the movement as though being thrown out the window.

Orchestra tunes during written-out movement (60/vi) 1775
Immediately after that movement's end on the dominant, this movement enters in a blaze of fury, then stops for the string players to tune their instruments.

Movement with no valid cadences (64/ii)	1775
As Danuta Mirka has pointed out, this very strange-sounding movement is an exercise in stretching and ultimately eliminating the cadence, repeatedly forcing the listener fill in the missing harmonic punctuation in his/her head while the musicians remain silent across the bar.

Syncopaton created by broken-record effect (65/iii) 1778
A melody containing one repeated motive gets stuck on the repeated motive but in an oddly-sized sample out of sync with the regular rhythm, so that the pattern repeats like an unknowing machine in 3 iterations of 4 beats (which happen to actually correspond to 4 bars of 3 beats) as though a needle were skipping on an LP. Yes, I'm suggesting Haydn created this comic effect before the invention of phonographs.

Silence heard as part of music (Joke Quartet / iv) 1781
The only non-symphony entry, because I don't know the quartets as well as the symphonies. But this one is epic: First Haydn establishes a running gag of pretending to end the movement and then continuing. Then at the very end, by elongating the space between phrases of the main theme, Haydn causes the listener to hear the rests as part of the music - even after the music has actually stopped, because it ends on the first of four conjoined phrases and the listener expects the next phrase to come in after a longer rest, so listens to "non-musical" (since the piece is over) silence as part of the music, until it becomes obvious there's no more music to follow.

Escheresque 3-into-4 switcheroo (77/iii) 1782
As the minuet theme starts we seem solidly in 3 but by the time it reaches the first cadence we seem to have turned out to be in 4, like one of Escher's impossible structures.

Rhythmic displacement folded and/or lasting 31 measures (80/iv)	1784
There are 2 amazing things Haydn does at the outset of this movement: One is to maintain the illusion of the wrong beat being the downbeat up to the 32nd bar, and the other is tricking the listener with a "reveal" of a larger-scale rhythmic displacement in bar 9, where the moving C# to D on what suddenly seem to be the strong beats (i.e. becoming 1/4 where they used to be 2/4) persuades the listener - wrongly - that the rhythmic displacement has now been clarified and no more games are being played. It's like taking a folded piece of paper and folding it again to increase the firmness of the first fold. 

Spaceship-Music-style runs comprising 85 notes (90/i) 1788
This one shouldn't be hard to find in the pre-1788 Classical literature, but I haven't encountered it yet. For 7 bars (but not 8, of course) from 74-80 Haydn goes into up-and-down runs that to modern ears recall those in Philip Glass' Spaceship Music from Einstein on the Beach, especially as the entire string section joins in playing these terrifically fast scales in 3 parallel octaves at a time.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Yeah, probably.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Ha, you're too agreeable!


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Monteverdi?.........


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Arnold Schönberg


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

You make a strong case. I haven't analyzed enough music to evaluate it, honestly.

Another candidate that comes to mind is Debussy.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

The only significant innovation you have listed is the second one, a theme developed across the movements of a multimovement work, but CPE Bach got there first multiple times, most notably in Prussian Sonata no. 3 (Wq 48 #3) and a keyboard Concerto in C minor (Wq 43 #4).


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Great - finally a contrary response, with examples! Thanks, EdwardBast. 

I will check out those 2 CPE Bach works, with which I am not familiar. And when you say "multiple times" - any symphonies included, perchance?

The breezy dismissal of all the other devices seems to me a bit brusque. Obviously some are more significant than others, and for any two people "significant" mileage may vary, but if pressed I feel confident I could make a strong musicological case for at least half of them as particularly noteworthy. So even if they're not your cup of significance, are there any others for which you might be able to point me to an antecedent?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Funny said:


> Great - finally a contrary response, with examples! Thanks, EdwardBast.
> 
> I will check out those 2 CPE Bach works, with which I am not familiar. And when you say "multiple times" - any symphonies included, perchance?
> 
> The breezy dismissal of all the other devices seems to me a bit brusque. Obviously some are more significant than others, and for any two people "significant" mileage may vary, but if pressed I feel confident I could make a strong musicological case for at least half of them as particularly noteworthy. So even if they're not your cup of significance, are there any others for which you might be able to point me to an antecedent?


The gas-electric hybrid engine is an innovation. Putting a rhino horn on the front of a '52 Chevy is not. To my mind you are confusing quirks with innovations. Quirks are idiosyncratic, one-of-a-kind affairs. Innovations, in standard usage, point the way to a future common practice adopted because the new idea solves a general problem. This is why thematically integrating multimovement sonata cycles is an innovation. It helps to solve the general problem of unity on a grand scale. None of the other devices you cite meet this criterion.

A few notes on your examples:

The trio section of 29/iii has a melody in the violins. It just happens to be in an oom-pah rhythm.

The passage in 60/v is just winding up for the Presto finale. Strange, but I don't see how the term innovative fits.

Haydn did a lot of experimenting. 64/ii is a strange experiment to be sure. But once again, I don't see how one could properly call it innovative.

Can't think of any cyclic CPE Bach symphonies off hand, but it is the keyboard music Haydn mentions when he acknowledges the value of Bach's works to himself as a composer.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I should have said from the start: Whatever differences of opinion we have on the term innovation and its application to Haydn's music, the examples you have cited are fascinating and, along with Haydn's experimental and adventurous nature, a more than worthy subject for a thread. 

I'm surprised you didn't bring up Symphony no. 47! The first movement, in G major, recapitulates the principle theme in the minor mode. And then there is the Menuetto al roverso, where all of the sections are played in retrograde! Stunning. Surely we can get the other Haydn enthusiasts to add a few more to your list?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Duplicate . . . .........


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> Can't think of any cyclic CPE Bach symphonies off hand, but it is the keyboard music Haydn mentions when he acknowledges the value of Bach's works to himself as a composer.


This is interesting because I recently read C.P.E. Bach had a fondness for linking the three movements of his symphonies together, and this is something that was _not_ his usual practice when writing sonatas for the harpsichord. Apparently his desire in the symphonic works was to get as far away from the old suite form as possible to ensure they would be listened to as a whole. A couple examples are the symphonies in F and D major.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Yes, Haydn was one of the greatest composer and innovator of all times.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

tdc said:


> This is interesting because I recently read C.P.E. Bach had a fondness for linking the three movements of his symphonies together, and this is something that was _not_ his usual practice when writing sonatas for the harpsichord. Apparently his desire in the symphonic works was to get as far away from the old suite form as possible to ensure they would be listened to as a whole. A couple examples are the symphonies in F and D major.


Do you mean linked as in played continuously without a break - _attacca_ - or do you mean thematic quotations from one movement to another? Do you have the Wq or H numbers for those?

Edit: You must be referring to the symphonies Wq 183(?), in which case you probably mean played continuously. In the discussion above we were referring to the other case, works in which the same melodic material is treated in multiple movements.

Funny: 
While listening to the CPE Bach D major symphony tdc mentions, I found in the finale a precedent for the kind of "Syncopation created by broken-record effect" you hear in Haydn's Symphony 65/iii 1778.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> Do you mean linked as in played continuously without a break - _attacca_ - or do you mean thematic quotations from one movement to another? Do you have the Wq or H numbers for those?
> 
> Edit: You must be referring to the symphonies Wq 183(?), in which case you probably mean played continuously. In the discussion above we were referring to the other case, works in which the same melodic material is treated in multiple movements.
> 
> ...


Yes, you are right - played continuously. Though I assumed there would be some thematic continuation there as well - perhaps not?

*edit -* I haven't listened to the symphonies in question. I was just reading about them.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

tdc said:


> Yes, you are right - played continuously. Though I assumed there would be some thematic continuation there as well - perhaps not?
> 
> *edit -* I haven't listened to the symphonies in question. I was just reading about them.


There might be a thematic connection between the principal themes of the first and last movements of the one in D major, that is, Wq. 183 #1. Oddly enough, I own a score to that one - but can't find it. More research is needed . . .

Edit: Found the score. The connection between i and iii I was imagining isn't really there.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> I should have said from the start: Whatever differences of opinion we have on the term innovation and its application to Haydn's music, the examples you have cited are fascinating and, along with Haydn's experimental and adventurous nature, a more than worthy subject for a thread.
> 
> I'm surprised you didn't bring up Symphony no. 47! The first movement, in G major, recapitulates the principle theme in the minor mode. And then there is the Menuetto al roverso, where all of the sections are played in retrograde! Stunning. Surely we can get the other Haydn enthusiasts to add a few more to your list?


There are plenty of these little moments I could have picked. I'm focusing on those that are a) most up my alley, which is in the area of metric games and general humor, b) discrete, in that I can point a particular thing happening at a particular point that stands out, rather than more general overarching practices Haydn introduced over time, and c) devices that I don't already know antecedents for. In the case of 47/iii, even though it's a sterling example of that form, it had already been done many times by several people before him. In the case of 47/i, the effect is distributed over a wider, harder to define area, and it's harder for me to conjecture that it was a significant deviation from standard practice (although I have remarked that Haydn might have been the composer most fond of switching between major and minor versions of a melody up to Grieg).

But yes, any other examples or counterexamples would be most welcome. In fact, I have another that I'm going to put forward as a replacement for 60/v, which I was almost as surprised to see on the list as you - I thought I had already replaced it with this one. Unfortunately I don't have time to type it out now - will have to wait till I go out and come back later.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Well... I think that Haydn's strong harmonic and textural contrasts with minimal material are much more interesting.

To paraphrase from Charles Rosen's book: In op 33 no 1, the way the first two notes in the first violin are later in measures 5 and 9 "stacked" in the viola/second violin/first violin (and even more explosively in the recapitulation!), or how the line between melody/accompaniment between the first violin and cello is blurred, or the two highly destabilizing deceptive motions that make the bassline never establish B minor until measure 11, and how later on (not shown) a deep mighty cello bass D note below the main theme is the "bridge" to D major in the exposition. These sorts of extremely powerful harmonic and textural contrasts with the most minimal motivic material is what Haydn should be remembered for. People sometimes assume Beethoven was the first to do this sort of thing, but it really was Haydn.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Funny said:


> Syncopaton created by broken-record effect (65/iii) 1778
> A melody containing one repeated motive gets stuck on the repeated motive but in an oddly-sized sample out of sync with the regular rhythm, so that the pattern repeats like an unknowing machine in 3 iterations of 4 beats (which happen to actually correspond to 4 bars of 3 beats) as though a needle were skipping on an LP. Yes, I'm suggesting Haydn created this comic effect before the invention of phonographs.


This effect has an exact precedent in the finale of CPE Bach's earlier Symphony in D (H 663/Wq. 183/1) (The horn part in the example is written at concert pitch):


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

Well it sure as hell wasn't Mozart.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

OK, throw the one from 60/v out the window. For me the effect in that one is very similar to Spike Jones' Laura, where he plays the song completely straight (and syrupy) for exactly half the song, then goes into a faster cuckoo-crazy version for the second half. But it is probably the least "significant" of these devices.

Here's one that seems simple to answer but I have not found it. In Symphony 53, in bars 37-40 Haydn suddenly dips into a very clear rhythm of 3-3-3-3-4 on slashing arpeggios, sounding for all the world like he's helping Elmer Bernstein score a 1950s western. It's really remarkable - he goes through the figure twice, and then, other than the repeats of this portion within the movement, I haven't found him doing it anywhere else in his symphonic output. It seems like something old J.S. Bach might have done, but I know a good deal of Bach and haven't yet located that either. I also can't think of any post-Haydn examples that predate the 20th century. Anybody have a few 3-3-3-3-4 (or 3-3-3-3-2-2) antecedents handy? (Symphonic preferred.)


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> This effect has an exact precedent in the finale of CPE Bach's earlier Symphony in D (H 663/Wq. 183/1) (The horn part in the example is written at concert pitch):


Yes! That's just the kind of thing I'm looking for, thanks. Not QUITE exact in that it's unaccompanied arpeggios here where Haydn puts the faux-4 pattern in 2 additional lines of accompaniment as well (which to my mind makes it closer to a broken record because you have a whole musical system repeating out of sync), but still counts as a win for ol' CPE!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Funny said:


> Yes! That's just the kind of thing I'm looking for, thanks. Not QUITE exact in that it's unaccompanied arpeggios here where Haydn puts the faux-4 pattern in 2 additional lines of accompaniment as well (which to my mind makes it closer to a broken record because you have a whole musical system repeating out of sync), but still counts as a win for ol' CPE!


I'm not really clear on why Haydn has to be there first.  What is at stake? Is the innovation thing a thesis statement in a term paper or something? Or are you just collecting oddities for fun?


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Well... I think that Haydn's strong harmonic and textural contrasts with minimal material are much more interesting. ... These sorts of extremely powerful harmonic and textural contrasts with the most minimal motivic material is what Haydn should be remembered for. People sometimes assume Beethoven was the first to do this sort of thing, but it really was Haydn.


Thanks for adding that, SeptimalTritone. Just now getting into all the string quartets, so I will definitely check it out.

I would add that I don't think we really need to restrict what Haydn "should" be remembered for to one of his positive attributes or the other. I realize some bristle at his frequent characterization as a flippant jokester, but it's true that he was great at being that - in addition to many other things.

And if you enjoy his developing minimal material into rich variety I would, not to be a broken record (ha), recommend close study of Symphony #46, which I consider one of the all-time masterpieces. That second half of the first theme is a pretty simple cadential scale but it comes back in all kinds of guises, to the point that by the last movement almost everything is derived from it. The thing is, Haydn had his own style of motivic development that was not as mathematically precise as Beethoven's, and once Beethoven set that standard - which persisted through Schoenberg and into serialism - it seems that people (including some well-versed music historians) find it harder to discern what Haydn was doing. But if you LISTEN to it, it seems very clear. To me, anyway.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> What is at stake? Is the innovation thing a thesis statement in a term paper or something? Or are you just collecting oddities for fun?


Somewhere in between. I will likely eventually do something with whatever I can learn - though I'm not in academe now, so it wouldn't be a thesis-type thing - but mostly I want to learn and sort out for myself how much of Haydn's statement that he was "forced to become original" is reflected in such "originalities," and how much of it is simply stuff I just haven't yet come across. On the flip side, I'm also interested in these kinds of musical ideas in general and do want to "collect" examples of how different composers brought them to life.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> CPE Bach got there first multiple times, most notably in Prussian Sonata no. 3 (Wq 48 #3) and a keyboard Concerto in C minor (Wq 43 #4).


Prussian Sonata no. 3 certainly has cyclic integration, very clear in the first two movements, but a little oblique for the last, where I found the potential correspondences almost indistinguishable from chance. So as compared with Haydn #46, there are 3 key differences: 1) Sonata, not symphony; 2) cyclic integration falls off for last movement (unless I'm really missing something there); and 3) no "reprise" of the theme as it appeared in a previous movement. At any rate, glad you referred me to it - will now check out the Concerto in C minor, thanks.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Alongside very detailed examples of innovation OP said I can realize that "symphony" before Haydn was another name for concerto. Nothing special about it.

I also think he had created some chamber works that weren't before him, not sure about it tho. Like Piano Trio and String Quartet.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Yes, Haydn was probably the single biggest influence on molding the symphony and the string quartet into a standard form that persisted, intact, at least through the beginning of the 20th century. His symphony #104 sounds like an entirely different genre from symphony #1, but it sounds very much like, say, Tchaikovsky a century later. And of course, his shaping of the piano trio form among others was influential. But he didn't introduce any combos that hadn't been done, he just put his stamp on them. Here, despite some quibbles about significance, I'm looking for specific things he did that either had or hadn't been done before (to the extent we can verify through extant examples).


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Some of these devices are particularly interesting because they're often heard in pop music (at least that of the late 20th century), and I wonder if there's a throughline. For instance, opening a song with a rhythmic displacement (#80/iv), so that you hear the beat wrong for a little bit until the rest of the band comes in and you're set right, is a device used by the Beatles ("She's a Woman" and others), Led Zeppelin ("Misty Mountain Hop" and others), Talking Heads ("Cool Water" and others) and many others. But where did it go in the interim? Was it really just a case of "great minds think alike" two centuries apart?

On that topic, two more pop-music tropes that I found in Haydn (can't cite pop sources off the top of my head but I'm hoping you'll recognize having heard these):

Transition back to main theme continues under theme
In Symphony #85 the main theme begins with a long held note over a lightly downward-tripping bass scale. Nearing the first repeat, Haydn gets to a cadence and leads back down to the theme with a lightly tripping bass scale that continues tripping right into the theme itself - the transition figure turns out to be part of the already-stated theme accompaniment.

Theme repeated with foreshortened opening
In Symphony #44 there's a great moment near the end of the initial statement where a strong declamatory melody is stated by the upper strings and flutes (m. 47) beginning with a half-note followed by two quarters. Its a 3-bar theme that lands on the downbeat of the 4th bar, but Haydn immediately repeats it anyway by starting on the second beat with the half-note and then what were two quarters are now two eighths in order to catch up so that the rest of the melody falls in the right places. I think it's safe to say this kind of manipulation is a classical innovation over baroque rules, and I haven't seen it show up anywhere else in others' classical works, but I do hear it happening in pop music. Anyone know of this one in Haydn's contemporaries?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Funny said:


> Some of these devices are particularly interesting because they're often heard in pop music (at least that of the late 20th century), and I wonder if there's a throughline. For instance, opening a song with a rhythmic displacement (#80/iv), so that you hear the beat wrong for a little bit until the rest of the band comes in and you're set right, is a device used by the Beatles ("She's a Woman" and others), Led Zeppelin ("Misty Mountain Hop" and others), Talking Heads ("Cool Water" and others) and many others. But where did it go in the interim? Was it really just a case of "great minds think alike" two centuries apart?


The Scherzo of Mahler's Sixth has lots of rhythmic displacements. It begins with a fortissimo timpani strike, and the timpani keeps playing with an accent every third beat, but it's not until the main theme comes in that you realize it was an upbeat, not a downbeat.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Funny said:


> Theme repeated with foreshortened opening
> In Symphony #44 there's a great moment near the end of the initial statement where a strong declamatory melody is stated by the upper strings and flutes (m. 47) beginning with a half-note followed by two quarters. Its a 3-bar theme that lands on the downbeat of the 4th bar, but Haydn immediately repeats it anyway by starting on the second beat with the half-note and then what were two quarters are now two eighths in order to catch up so that the rest of the melody falls in the right places. *I think it's safe to say this kind of manipulation is a classical innovation over baroque rules*, and I haven't seen it show up anywhere else in others' classical works, but I do hear it happening in pop music. Anyone know of this one in Haydn's contemporaries?


I'd say this is exactly backwards: more normal for Baroque and some pre-classical, less and less so for High Classical. This sort of unevenness of phrase structure is one among many things that is so great about earlier Haydn, and why my favorite run of his symphonies is probably 44 through 47.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Funny said:


> Prussian Sonata no. 3 certainly has cyclic integration, very clear in the first two movements, but a little oblique for the last, where I found the potential correspondences almost indistinguishable from chance. So as compared with Haydn #46, there are 3 key differences: 1) Sonata, not symphony; 2) cyclic integration falls off for last movement (unless I'm really missing something there); and 3) no "reprise" of the theme as it appeared in a previous movement. At any rate, glad you referred me to it - will now check out the Concerto in C minor, thanks.


There are several ways in which Prussian 3 is a more interesting and important essay in cyclic structure than Haydn 46. First, it was almost certainly more influential, as that set of sonatas was widely published and known, whereas the Haydn was for internal consumption at Esterhazy. Second, the Haydn, as you probably know by now, pretty much does exactly what the Bach C minor Concerto does. The main reason it is more important, however, is that its cyclic connection between movements is not just an interesting experiment, as in the Haydn; The slow movement's connection to the opening movement in the Bach is a necessary response to issues and imbalances left unresolved in the first movement. There is therefore a genuine organic, structural reason it is based on the first movement. (And the fact that it does not reprise the first movement theme, but instead quotes its pitches precisely but in varied form, makes it a stronger example of cyclic integration that a mere quotation.) To what issues and imbalances does it respond? The answer requires a closer look at the first movement than I can give here. But: the principal theme of this sonata anticipates one of Beethoven's most important innovations by 65 years, in that it is a dramatic scene that cannot be literally recapitulated. It contains an internal contrast of mode (parallel minor in m. 9!) and a strong antagonistic element that disrupts its progress (16-22), and these elements play out at a structural level. Note that the development asserts the dark minor mode branch of the principal theme, ending with a tense onsalught in C# minor. The recap of the principal theme is then severely truncated and fragmented, almost as if the onslaught shattered it. The original 29 measures are cut down to 8. More important, those 8 measures starkly dramatize the modal conflict. First the opening in major mode is stated, and then immediately, after an uncomfortable pause, its antithesis in minor mode. In this way, the minor mode branch dominates the end of the movement, a single lonely phrase of the opening theme in E major surrounded on both sides by dark statements in minor mode. In this way Bach creates a dramatic imbalance that demands a response later in the cycle. The second movement is that response, which is why it both incorporates the first movement theme wholesale and uses the key (C# minor) in which the dramatic onslaught of the first movement development takes place.

My conclusion is that Prussian 3 is arguably the most important experiment in dramatic sonata form before Beethoven, in that its thematic structures and their implications at the cyclic level are governed by expressive considerations with psychological implications.

P.S. - Measures 16-22 are a prime example of irregular phrase structure of the kind you noted in Haydn 44.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> The Scherzo of Mahler's Sixth has lots of rhythmic displacements. It begins with a fortissimo timpani strike, and the timpani keeps playing with an accent every third beat, but it's not until the main theme comes in that you realize it was an upbeat, not a downbeat.


Thanks. Haven't heard Mahler's 6th in quite a while, but will turn again to it. Your description reminds me of the rhythmic game in the trio of Haydn's 92nd, which opens with a third beat masquerading as the downbeat and Haydn keeps the displacement going throughout the trio - even though he sometimes "tries" to help you hear it right, it's easy to slip back into hearing the wrong downbeat.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> ...the Haydn, as you probably know by now, pretty much does exactly what the Bach C minor Concerto does.


Finally got a chance to hear the C minor concerto and you're right, it is very close - to the point I wonder whether it was the spur to Haydn's 46th (which followed the CPE concerto by a year). While I think Haydn took the device to a very different place, the CPE Bach concerto is certainly noteworthy and a lot of fun. The part where he seems to recap the whole symphony reminds me of the Monty Python episode where they go back and run through the show up to that point for people coming in late. Not as silly, of course, but for me a somewhat similar effect. Anyway, that kind of thing is exactly what I started this thread for, so thanks again.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Also, EdwardBast, thanks for a detailed exegesis on the importance of Prussian #3. Just to reiterate, my over-the-top thread title, exaggerated as it was, only concerned innovation, not importance or influence. I think Haydn's credentials for those are unquestioned, and my interest is merely in checking on specific devices to see what level of innovation we can describe. And again, ignoring those two I-words, there is a scale and level to innovation within the symphonic sphere that is different from that in a keyboard sonata, which is why I keep asking for potential symphony examples - I'd rather compare apples to apples. 

I also think it's a bit of a fool's errand to say that This piece is more "interesting" than That piece, so I'll avoid that whole area. I could supply a long and detailed explanation of what I believe is going on emotionally in 46 and how each development of the main theme over the course of the four movements builds up to create a fascinating effect, but that's a little outside of what I'm trying to discuss here. I do recommend Manchester's discussion of same (even though he barely scratches the surface) in "Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style."

I gotta say, I don't get the correspondence of bars 16-22 in the Prussian to the effect I was talking about in #44. I see that it's a 3-bar phrase repeated but here in the repeat all the note values are exactly the same. Maybe I was unclear, but I'm talking specifically about a repeat that is forced to truncate its beginning because where it would otherwise start is being taken up by the last note of the first time through. If that's happening there, I'm missing it.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> There are several ways in which Prussian 3 is a more interesting and important essay in cyclic structure than Haydn 46. First, it was almost certainly more influential, as that set of sonatas was widely published and known, whereas the Haydn was for internal consumption at Esterhazy.


This was certainly not the case for Haydn's symphonies in general at the time when 46 was composed (1772). As far as I know, there's no reason to think it was the case for 46 in particular, either, but maybe you know something I don't.

See bottom of linked page: https://books.google.com/books?id=iFAhAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA306


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Harold in Columbia said:


> This was certainly not the case for Haydn's symphonies in general at the time when 46 was composed (1772). As far as I know, there's no reason to think it was the case for 46 in particular, either, but maybe you know something I don't.
> 
> See bottom of linked page: https://books.google.com/books?id=iFAhAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA306


Thanks. Sounds like it is certainly possible 46 got out there enough to be influential.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Funny said:


> Also, EdwardBast, thanks for a detailed exegesis on the importance of Prussian #3. Just to reiterate, my over-the-top thread title, exaggerated as it was, only concerned innovation, not importance or influence. I think Haydn's credentials for those are unquestioned, and my interest is merely in checking on specific devices to see what level of innovation we can describe. And again, ignoring those two I-words, there is a scale and level to innovation within the symphonic sphere that is different from that in a keyboard sonata, which is why I keep asking for potential symphony examples - I'd rather compare apples to apples.
> 
> I also think it's a bit of a fool's errand to say that This piece is more "interesting" than That piece, so I'll avoid that whole area. I could supply a long and detailed explanation of what I believe is going on emotionally in 46 and how each development of the main theme over the course of the four movements builds up to create a fascinating effect, but that's a little outside of what I'm trying to discuss here. I do recommend Manchester's discussion of same (even though he barely scratches the surface) in "Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style."
> 
> I gotta say, I don't get the correspondence of bars 16-22 in the Prussian to the effect I was talking about in #44. I see that it's a 3-bar phrase repeated but here in the repeat all the note values are exactly the same. Maybe I was unclear, but I'm talking specifically about a repeat that is forced to truncate its beginning because where it would otherwise start is being taken up by the last note of the first time through. If that's happening there, I'm missing it.


I'd like to hear your thoughts on Haydn 46 in more detail, but understand it is outside the focus. Just a note about apples to apples. I'd say it's all apples. Symphonies, sonatas, string quartets are all the same form, just different performing forces. I see how limiting the inquiry to symphonies makes it easier and a more discrete task for the researcher, but I think structural ideas, rhythmic devices, and all other avenues for innovation, except orchestration, don't respect artificial "genre" border.

P.S. - Sorry I didn't bring this up before, but it sounds like you think there are other thematic connections in Haydn 46 other than those between scherzo and finale. Is this correct? Could you elaborate? I have a score at hand and am curious.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> I'd like to hear your thoughts on Haydn 46 in more detail, but understand it is outside the focus. Just a note about apples to apples. I'd say it's all apples. Symphonies, sonatas, string quartets are all the same form, just different performing forces. I see how limiting the inquiry to symphonies makes it easier and a more discrete task for the researcher, but I think structural ideas, rhythmic devices, and all other avenues for innovation, except orchestration, don't respect artificial "genre" border.


Sure, everything's a sonata. But historically speaking, whether it's fair or not, the symphony has, since Haydn, been the prime exemplar of achievement in working out an idea. It's simply easier to write a sonata for a solo instrument than it is to write a symphony, so it's not surprising that the tradition is to look on innovations occurring in symphonies as more "important" than those in sonatas. It's not an idea I came up with, and it may be unfair, but it's pretty standard in discussing classical music. Still, I would put the concerto pretty much on the same level of difficulty, so for me the C minor Concerto vs. 46th symphony is a fair "fight" and the concerto "wins" by getting there first.



EdwardBast said:


> P.S. - Sorry I didn't bring this up before, but it sounds like you think there are other thematic connections in Haydn 46 other than those between scherzo and finale. Is this correct? Could you elaborate? I have a score at hand and am curious.


I do indeed think that. I can and will elaborate, but as you may have guessed from my slow response, my non-TC life suddenly got very full of commitments, and even now I have to rush out to get dinner. But very briefly, first clear your mind of Beethoven's way of handling motivic development and be open to Haydn's, which is looser, concentrating on the way things come across to the listener and remind us of other things. Then look at the second half of the opening theme, starting on the 4h beat of measure 2 and going to the middle of measure 4. This stair-like 5-4-3-2-(7)-1 is, as James Wester noted, pretty close to both the reprised 3rd-movement theme and to just about all of the music in the 4th movement. More later.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

OK. Now if you look at mm 19-21, Haydn brings back that theme from 2-4, extending it so that it loses the dip below the ultimate note and is more of a straight stair-like pattern (by which I mean a scale that stops at each step and repeats it - as though bringing the second foot down - before continuing to descend). 

Interestingly, this is immediately followed by a quiet 4-bar section where staccato strings are playing a scale that goes up briefly and then descends again through 5-4-3-2-1 (non-stairwise here). When that figure is repeated 2 bars later (m. 25) it's changed slightly so that it turns downward sooner. Now compare that figure to the 2nd measure of movement II, where staccato strings play, in canon, a scale that turns at exactly the same place, and which becomes the foundation of much of that movement, almost, I would argue, taking it over, considering that when he hear measures 1 and 2 of that movement the measure 1 figure seems to be the more important, with the scale merely a way of elaborating the half-cadence - but by the end of the movement the scalar figure has been subjected to much more development and more steady prominence than the "main theme."

Anyway, back to mm. 19-21 of movement I, where Haydn has established this totally stairlike stepwise descent through 5 notes. This is essentially the 3rd movement theme that shows up in m. 15 - but here Haydn has extended it into 3 phrases with almost identical material: The first goes through 5-4-3-2, then the second goes through 4-3-2-1 (with the 1 unsupported by a tonic chord), then finally the third goes through 3-2-1-7 and resolves on 1 with tonic support.

If we removed all the stairs and expressed the most basic form of this theme, it would be 5-4-3-2-7-1. That is very close to the 1st movement (mm. 2-4) theme, and it's EXACTLY the melody that opens the fourth movement in straight quarters. As I said above, almost all the key ideas of this movement seems to come from that, varying it, moving it, enlarging it, shrinking it, etc. Note the quick 8th-note 5-4-3-2-1 on E in 4-5 there, and how the overall melody closes in 16-18 with a rhythmically altered 5-4-3-2-1 (seen most clearly in the horns), as well as the elongated version, with the stairs back again, in 34-38.

Now put down the score and listen to the symphony again, how that theme, seemingly just the response half of a call and response when we first hear it, gradually takes over the whole symphony, to the point that it's not enough that the 4th movement is rife with it, but the most perfect expression of it, from movement 3, actually has to be brought back to express the unity of the whole. Also listen to how the second movement emphasizes that rhythmic pattern of DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-DA, which is exactly the rhythm of the movement 3 theme, which Haydn seemingly wants to make sound familiar to us even though it's a completely "new" melody.

And yes, I'm familiar with LaRue's caution against finding specious correspondences in 18th-century music given the limited vocabulary available and inevitable coincidences of usage, and I recognize that 5-4-3-2-1 is an extremely common pattern, but Haydn goes out of his way to use it prominently over and over in #46 in a way and to an extent that he doesn't in any other symphony, so far as I've been able to tell.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Funny said:


> I do recommend Manchester's discussion of same (even though he barely scratches the surface) in "Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style."


Hey, I happened across this thread while googling for Haydn innovations (ha) and noticed this. No idea why I said "Manchester" as the author of that book. It's Webster, of course, James Webster. That's it. Carry on.


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