# Differences in the music by Haydn and Mozart...



## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Mozart will be my favorite composer forever. I've heard a lot of music by Mozart and Haydn, but still wonder how one can tell them apart...Since I've heard so much music from them I know many themes and can tell who composed it, but I don't think I can describe the difference in their styles.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Well there is cross influence and certainly similarities. I think Haydn's thematic material is generally more square and jocular, Mozart's style is more lyrical and operatic. Mozart mastered opera, Haydn did not. Mozart demonstrates in his operas an understanding of large scale structure that exceeds anything in Haydn's oeuvre. There is something that sounds very organic and cantabile in Mozart's approach, perhaps lacking in Haydn. Mozart's melodic material seems freer to me and less constructed. 

In Haydn's large scale works I think there is more diversity in the different roles of instrumentation. Charles Rosen and Rimsky Korsakov both suggest Haydn was the greatest orchestrator among the classicists.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I believe with Mozart, the flow of melody is central, even throughout all rhythmic changes and transformations. Haydn tends to tie together shorter phrases of melody which serve as more distinct, sometimes contrasting, functions. Melody in Mozart is more organic as a result.


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

I agree with all mentioned above. I could also add that in symphonic woodwind writing, Haydn tended to utilize the flute more than Mozart and Mozart tended to favor the clarinet.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I find that in many cases in the sonata form, Mozart has 38% of the material as exposition and 62% of the material as development and recapitulation http://fibonaccifacts.blogspot.com/2014/11/mozart-and-golden-ratio_2.html (as if to adhere to the golden ratio as much as possible while not sacrificing expression. Schubert seems to have imitated this with his 5th symphony). He has a shorter development section than Haydn and Beethoven, but instead has surprises in the recapitulation, especially towards his late period. Many times, Mozart seems to treat the development and recapitulation almost as a single entity. At times when he's more adventurous I find his "recapitulation section" just as interesting as his "development section".
Haydn on the other hand seems to treat the exposition, development, recapitulation sections separately and try to have them in the same length as much as possible (I think this was his "golden rule"), like the 83th symphony "La Poule", for example. At least when it comes to the treatment of the sonata-form, Haydn seems to have had greater influence on Beethoven than Mozart did.










There's a lot more monothematicism with the sonata form in Haydn: he liked to derive motifs for the second theme of the sonata form from the first theme. He works with shorter motivic phrases more often than Mozart. By contrast Mozart preferred to have more richly varied melodic material and only a few of his sonatas are written in monothematicism. (4th movements of String Quartet K464, Symphony K543. 1st movements of String Quintet K593, Piano Sonata K570) 
Mozart has a lot of chromaticism with melody and part-writing. It's hard to find a theme chromatically going up a 10th in chromatic scale like the slow movement of 38th symphony "Prague" in Haydn. 



Haydn wouldn't write chromatically like, for example
2:36
6:16





There is a way to begin a piece with an introduction (like certain phrases and cadences) that is unique to Haydn such as the beginning 78th symphony (



) and the Nelson Mass (



). You won't find this in Mozart. This video discusses the different elements of Haydn and Mozart that had influence on Beethoven.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

There is no simple answer since they are closely tied in many ways. I think of Mozart often as more elegant legato and Haydn more rhythmic, the predecessor to Beethoven. I don't believe Mozart would have written the Sturm und Drang symphonies of Haydn that predated the Romantic era of the next century. And I could never imagine Haydn writing something like the Concerto for Flute and Harp or Eine Kleine Nachmusik. Yet Mozart wrote Don Giovanni, the C minor mass and Requiem and Haydn wrote The Creation, multifaceted works that defy all attempts to tag the composers in any way.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

There are certainly big differences between the two and it is usually not difficult to recognise Mozart as Mozart and Haydn as Haydn. But putting the ways they differ into words is not so easy for me.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I don't see much difference. The similarities are more obvious.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Some very good comments here. An earlier poster mentioned Charles Rosen. He is probably the best contemporary writer on issues like this. tdc's comment "Mozart demonstrates in his operas an understanding of large scale structure that exceeds anything in Haydn's oeuvre" is an especially good one, and there is much more to it that can be discussed in a post here. But it can be said that this understanding of large scale structure trickles down into his mature symphonies and piano concerti, his mature chamber music works, and nearly all of his other works to at least some extent. There is unity in a Mozart work, operating simultaneously and on different levels, and achieved through a very sophisticated use of thematic development and modulation.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Phil loves classical said:


> I believe with Mozart, the flow of melody is central, even throughout all rhythmic changes and transformations. Haydn tends to tie together shorter phrases of melody which serve as more distinct, sometimes contrasting, functions. Melody in Mozart is more organic as a result.


I think this is a good illustration of the differences. Check out how with Mozart it is an unending stream of melody, a lot of momentum, even when the tempo slows, the momentum doesn't. The melodies are carried across all the instruments, like a huge melting pot.






With Haydn, there is always a coherence, but not to the extent of the unity in Mozart treating the orchestra as one. The contrasts are more noticeable. Certain sections and instruments retain their individuality.






Maybe I was cheating by showing the Haffner that didn't have an Adagio intro. Here is a more similarly structured one by Mozart, and you can still tell the difference in unity. Mozart is more aware (at least in his use) of the inertia of sound/music than Haydn, which is why Haydn sounds more bold and 'muscular'. If Haydn is the Yang, then Mozart is the Yin.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Olias said:


> I agree with all mentioned above. I could also add that in symphonic woodwind writing, Haydn tended to utilize the flute more than Mozart and Mozart tended to favor the clarinet.


I know what you mean, but wouldn't put it quite that way. Mozart wrote one masterful solo concerto for each of the principal woodwinds: flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon, showing a profound understanding of the characteristics of each. (Also four great horn concertos, but that is largely because he had a close friend who was a horn player). The clarinet concerto is the only one from his late period that produced his greatest works. He also reworked the oboe concerto into a second flute concerto, with great success. But he did that in partial satisfaction of a commission from a wealthy amateur flutist who wanted short, easy pieces, an assignment that evidently did not inspire him, as unlike Beethoven, he was not content to write lesser music for the right price. So he wrote a letter to his father complaining that he "could not stand" the flute, really making an excuse for not completing the commission, to his father's dismay.

As for Haydn, of course he was older than Mozart, and learned his art at a time when the clarinet was still a relatively new instrument. The flute, on the other hand, was already well-established and very popular with wealthy amateurs (the "old system" flute, that is, an entirely different instrument from the modern flute that was invented in 1847). I view modern chamber music for strings on a highly-developed, sophisticated level to a large extent as an invention of Haydn, whereas modern chamber music for winds, mixed strings and winds, and of course piano, strings and winds, on the highest level was largely a creation of Mozart, who had a particular interest in the different sonorities of various instruments.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Thank-you for putting some time into great comments here! I usually know if a piece is by Mozart or Haydn but haven't really studied scores and compared all the elements you can observe. As I said, Mozart has always been my favorite, but lately I've listened to more Haydn.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

hammeredklavier said:


> Mozart has a lot of chromaticism with melody and part-writing. It's hard to find a theme chromatically going up a 10th in chromatic scale like the slow movement of 38th symphony "Prague" in Haydn.


This is a good point. Mozart uses more chromaticism over a given key, Haydn tends to use chromaticism to modulate. The aural effect is more harmonic 'spice' in Mozart.

I love the Prague symphony, and no I don't recall ever hearing the use of chromaticism like that in Haydn.


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