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Can you please help me pick a Haydn sonata? My teacher and I thought it would be fun to work on one to solidify my familiarity with the style. He made so many suggestions, my head is spinning. The problem is my old scores don't have Hoboken numbers and my new scores haven't arrived yet. I've been listening to Jando's CD's and they are all lovely, but none have grabbed me yet. All of them are well within my ability to play quite well. (I've played about 6 so far.)

What's your favorite and why?

(If you don't know me, Here is a sampling of what I've played to a fairly decent performance level:

Beethoven Opus 110, 53, 54, 22 and others
Liszt Sonetto 104
Many WTC preludes and fugues
Chopin Ballade #3 and Barcarolle.)

Hands down (so to speak) one of my favourites in the E minor, Hoboken 34. (Easy to locate on IMSLP.) For some reason the transition from 2nd to 3rd movement is always an 'ah!' moment.

Recently I heard our local keyboardist Byron Schenkman give a sizzling performance on fortepiano.

That's one of the ones my teacher suggested. I'll noodle around with it and see. Thanks Jason.

That one's very good. I also like the big E-flat sonata HOB 52, the C major HOB 50, and another C major HOB 48 that has a very beautiful andante 1st movement, and a cool presto ending that goes lickety split!

Thanks Greg. I'll take a look.

Haydn! Haydn! Haydn!

The ones suggested are awesome, and they are also among the 4-5 most often heard Haydn sonatas... here are some I love that are a bit more off the beaten path

Hob. XVI:6 in G, I think the best of his early sonatas, high energy with big contrasts from vocal-style melodic writing to horn calls and long ribbons of trills. The first movement is really good for learning how to switch between different rhythms within a consistent pulse, and it rewards you for doing so because that's what keeps the energy level bright and cheerful without being panicked. The Minuet is unusually dramatic and there's a lot you can do both with fine detail and larger-scale phrases/sections. The Adagio in G minor is just heartbreakingly lovely. The finale is very dancy and a lot of fun.

The sonata called Hob. XVI:11 is made up of short pieces that were not originally intended as a sonata. The opening Presto is very appealing and fun to play. The Andante in G minor is incredibly beautiful and it is a perfect example of Haydn making spectacular music with very simple ingredients. Neither piece is very difficult, both are short, and either could be handled by anyone who's played Clementi Op. 36 sonatinas, but a lot of room for mature interpretation in the Andante. I don't really like the Menuet movement, so I don't usually play the whole "sonata".

Hob. XVI:47, the version in E minor that goes Adagio then attacca to Allegro then Minuet, is one of my favorite things in all of Haydn. It's a smaller-scale piece but so lovely and fun to play.

Hob. XVI:44 in G minor, creates some great orchestral effects on the piano with not that many notes (considering) -- I love this aspect of later Haydn and Beethoven and it's interesting to see it being developed here. The Minuet is unusually well-developed and it has sort of an urgent quality due to a lot of turns and dotted rhythms.

Hob. XVI:20 in C minor, I think a bit more often played, and with good reason.

Hob. XVI:33 in D major I find really engages an audience. Big contrast between rocket type theme and cantabile theme. Ear-catching development starting in the low range of the piano. The D minor Adagio is one of the most genius things ever done with quarter rests. The minuet is in double variation form and the faster variations sound much harder than they are. You don't have to tell the audience though

Hob. XVI:23 in F major I think of as being very operatic, combining playful and dramatic vocal passages with extremely fast pianistic passagework. Some fun humorous moments in the first movement.

Hob. XVI:32 in B minor has a dark and dramatic quality and the Presto is very rhythmically driving with a lot of imitation between the hands. I really enjoy playing this one.

Hob. XVI:36 in C sharp minor is another one with a lot of orchestral effects and drama. Then the second movement is playful and fun with lots of great little ideas that go quickly. The minuet isn't as good as the rest of it, but it's a nice gentle experience after the other two movements have happened.

Hob. XVI:38 in E flat major has a lot of humor packed into the first movement. (XVI:52 in E flat major is pretty humorous too. Something about E flat major?) Then a dramatic 6/8 slow movement and a sweet Minuet.

I'd write about more of them but haven't time...

EDIT Your comment about "pretty but none have grabbed me yet" could be partly due to the choice of pianist, which matters a lot in Haydn -- try some other recordings too.

Off the beaten path - that I like. Thanks Heather!

Deborah,

I have found that the way to be grabbed by Haydn is to sight-read through him. Listening to polished recordings tends to make his music sound diminished and cliched to my ears. But when I play him (usually slowly), and really hear the sounds, the chords, the unexpected twists, then I feel I'm in the presence of genius.

The same thing happens to me with Faure, and, to a lesser extent, Schumann for some reason.


-J

I like Heather's suggestions. I'm very fond of the F Maj., No. 38, Hob. XVI/23. (You might start with the last mvt.)

There is a fine performance of the 1st mvt. by Hanna Jaszyk (about whom I do not know much, but her playing is wonderful).

[video:youtube] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qouz6Z8_V5w&index=9&list=FLbSjG13qcU4q0ytqMFTRaEw [/video]

Not in the sonatas is the Fantasy in C Major, which is a hoot!

Deborah,
my personal favourite has always been the A major, Esterhazy Sonata No. 6 - such a beautiful 1st movement, with two very short movements following. I have played this for about 30 years and still am not tired of it. But even better is beet31425's idea: sight-read them all, and find your own personal favourite! You can never really play enough Haydn.

Not a Sonata but quite sensational....his Capriccio in G major.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5uRYySwgR0

That is a great one too! I like the slightly crazed recording of Backhaus playing this on Youtube.

Two of my favorites. The C minor has some truly lovely moments, e.g. the little sequential passage in the development of the first movement, and some highly expressive structural gestures, such as the poignant transformation of the major ninth at the emotional climax of the first movement exposition into the minor ninth at the corresponding point in the recap. Haydn sonatas are just so much more interesting - and better! - than Mozart's.

Don't go there!! They're different, but one is not necessarily "better" than the other in any objective sense.

F Major (Hob. XVI: 23) is one of my all-time favorites. I'm teaching the C-sharp minor (Hob. XVI: 36) right now and it's a ton of fun.

I also like the B minor (Hob. XVI: 32), especially for its last movement. G Major (Hob. XVI: 39) is very interesting.

Another unknown gem: A flat major Hob.XVI: 46.

Magnificient! Very fun to listen to. Somehow it makes me think about Beethoven's Eroica variations.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken from Mountain Interval (1920)

[video:youtube]ie2Mspukx14[/video]

My absolute favorite Haydn sonata.

The first movement has all of those wonderful elements common to Haydn: sudden shifts in mood and dynamics, unexpected pauses and fermatas. The development section is very long and wonderfully inventive. At one point in the recapitulation Haydn ventures into the key of A-flat minor!

The slow movement is extraordinary. It has a wonderful lyricism and is written in the key of D-flat major which was almost unheard of during that time.

The presto finale is charming and quirky with a closing figure that sounds almost like a pop tune.

And structurally its interesting because all three movements are in sonata form.

Actually, I would respectfully disagree, and so would many analysts (espec. Schenker!). Objective measures such as structural balance and coherence, harmonic range, rhythm, and density, melodic shaping, voice-leading, orchestration/instrumental scoring, texture, and the whole gamut of technical aspects - "correctness" of counterpoint and use of dissonance, for example - are just a few of the ways that we are able to distinguish quality enough so we spend more of our valuable time listening to Stravinsky, say, than Spontini.

The idea that quality is purely subjective is incorrect IMO, though refinement of subjective faculties such as taste and interpretation certainly helps us to pick from the vast repertory of identifiably great music the stuff that brings us the most bang for our personal buck. And think about it: If we didn't have objective criteria, how would we teach music? A student chorale harmonization that's full of consecutive 5ths, unprepared suspensions, harmonic non-sequiturs, and the like is clearly inferior to one that isn't.

So yes, Haydn's sonatas are different from Mozart's. But I not only prefer the former, I also do think that on the whole they are better music. By the same token, if someone were to suggest to me that La fedeltà premiata is as good of an opera as Così fan tutte, just different, I would politely laugh out loud.

Have there been any threads here on "objective" vs. "subjective" themes?