I came a little early to one of my lessons and a younger student was playing a Haydn sonata I had done a few years ago. After the lesson I was fooling around with the music that was left on the desk. Apparently I still had it in my fingers. So anyway my teacher comes in and says, "That's Haydn sonata no 7. Remember it?" ... The piece was really pretty in D major.

Coming home I looked up the piece in my Wiener urtext edition. No 7 in my book was in C major. After some searching, I found it under number 17. They were the same editions, Wiener, except hers I believe was an older edition. Anyways I realize that different books refer to different piano sonata's by the same numbers. Does anyone know why they do this? To me this seems confusing because I don't always remember the Hob but I usually remember the piano sonata number. It just seems that it is outrageous that when you talk about one piece like the beethoven sonata's, everybody knows what you are talking about when you say number 18 or 32, (The Hunt or The op. 111) but with the Haydn not really unless you are using the exact same books. Maybe there should be nicknames for most of them like in Beethoven.

The Hob. numbers refer to the catalogue of Haydn's works by Hoboken. These are the most common. There are 52 listed.

However, the musicologist Christa Landon created a new listing that put the sonatas in a more chronological order and added room for newly discovered sonatas and sonatas that were referenced in Haydn's writings but have not yet been found. Landon's list contains 62 sonatas.

Landon's edition of the sonatas is published by Wiener Urtext and is considered by many to be the best edition currently available. Some other publishers have adopted that system, but Hoboken's numbering has stubbornly remained prevalent despite it's obsolescence.

More here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solo_piano_compositions_by_Joseph_Haydn

But both editions were Wiener. Why did Landon switch the numberings between editing's?

Kreisler essentially explained it. You can't go by sonata "numbers" in Haydn very easily, unless you know exactly which system is being used and you're familiar with that system's numbering. People often talk about the numbers of those sonatas according to which number they are in a particular book that they have. There's a great sonata by Haydn which is "#1" in the first Haydn volume I ever got. Then I found out that it's usually called #52 (Hob., which I later learned meant Hoboken, which I still later learned had nothing to do with New Jersey).

And then I saw it called "#62" elsewhere.

And sometimes the Hob. number has a Roman numeral with it too.

Cliff's Notes: I hardly go by numbers at all, when it comes to Haydn sonatas. I ask what key it's in, and I ask the person to hum a couple of bars.

The Hoboken numbers of Haydn's works are all preceded by a Roman numeral indicating the "category" into which the work falls.
For example :
Hoboken I = Symphonies
Hoboken III = String Quartets
Hoboken VII = Concertos for various instruments
and, of course,
Hoboken XVI = Piano Sonatas
Hoboken XXII = Masses
etc., etc.

So, all the Piano Sonatas in the Hoboken listing are preceded by XVI.

Regards,

Thanks!

But I'm still going to have to use "what key?" and "hum a couple of bars."

BTW: In view of that, I'd argue that if someone is saying "piano sonata" and giving a Hoboken number, they should omit the Roman numeral because it's always XVI and mentioning it doesn't add any information. It only wastes ink.

But then again that's what I just did too....

Well, yes, I wasn't implying that the XVI number helped identify an individual Sonata. I was just adding, for those who don't know, that the Roman numerals themselves do have some significance in the cataloging of the Haydn œuvre.

Regards,

For the record, Beethoven's piano sonatas are usually referred these days by their opus numbers rather than say, No. 16 in G (unless they have nicknames like Pathetique etc). The reason is that Op.2/1 in F minor isn't his first piano sonata by any means, and some people consider one or two mid-period works (the Op.49 ones) to be sonatinas rather than 'proper sonatas'. So, how many piano sonatas Beethoven wrote is open to debate....

Interesting! I'm not sure, but I know a guy I can ask. I'll check with him next time I see him.

I knew that, and I appreciated it!