1785 – The Music part 3 - Accompanied Sonatas or more?

Hob. #	Genre		Key	Number	Instrument(s)		Notes
08:06	March		Eb		2 Clarinets, 2 Bassoons, 2 Horns, Trumpet & Serpent
15:07	Accompanied Sonata		D	20	Keyboard, Violin & Cello		15:06, 07 & 08 were Artaria's Opus 40
15:08	Accompanied Sonata		Bb	21	Keyboard, Violin & Cello
15:09	Accompanied Sonata		A	22	Keyboard, Violin & Cello		15:02, 15:09 & 15:10 - published as a set by Forster in London
15:10	Accompanied Sonata		Eb	23	Keyboard, Violin & Cello
17:deest / 09:08	Minuet w/Trio				Solo Keyboard - reductions		Original orchestrations lost
Hob. #		Genre				Character / Opera / Original Composer
24b:07		Replacement Aria - Signor, voi sapete				for 'Rosina' (Sop) - "Il matrimonio per inganno" by Anfossi
24b:08		Replacement Aria - Dica pure chi vuol dire				for 'Modesta' (Sop) - "Il geloso in cimento" by Anfossi

[To ARTARIA & Co., VIENNA. German]

Estoras, 10^th December, 1785.

Mon tres cher Amy!

Day before yesterday I received the pianoforte Sonatas¹, and was astounded to have to see such bad engraving and so many glaring errors in all the parts, especially the pianoforte part. I was at first so furious that I wanted to return the money to you and send the score of the Sonatas instantly to Herr Hummel in Berlin; for the sections which are occasionally illegible, and the passages omitted or badly spaced will bring little honor to me and little profit to you. (edit: but I came to my senses, of course!)

Everyone who buys them will curse the engraver and have to stop playing, especially on page 8, and on the 1^st page of the 3^rd Divertimento, page 15, where the [ (measures) ] marked in red are especially badly laid out, and this really seems to be the result of complete torpidity. I would rather pay for two new plates out of my own pocket than to see such confusion. (edit: but see edit above)

Even a professional would have to study before disentangling this passage, and then where would the dilettante be? Four notes are missing on page 18, and in the last line the engraver was too lazy to write out the whole of the bass part: such abbreviations and signs are all very well in the viola part of symphonies, but not in piano-forte parts.

And so on for three more paragraphs.

1 – Hoboken 15:6 - 7 – 8 Artaria's Opus 40

(H.C. Robbins-Landon – The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn 1959)

I wish I had the time to type out the whole letter; it is a combination of genuine concern for the musical public and acid sarcasm for the typesetter/engravers employed by Artaria. In addition, here is proof that the viola jokes in our present time began long before any of us were born! I love that! The other great benefit for modern musicology to come from this letter is in the part I can't transcribe, but I did put a picture there for you to see, and you can estimate the value for yourself, as this goes on for quite some time. A diatribe of value, then.

Where did this 'accompanied sonata' music spring from though? I have often seen it merely attributed to an extension of the Baroque trios for two violins with continuo, and/or the Italian concerto grosso tradition. And while this may have been true in some places, it was not so in Vienna. In their article on 'Accompanied Keyboard Music', The New Grove points out that;

Vienna was isolated from most of these developments – and these foreign publications – until the 1770s. Early Viennese chamber music with keyboard was an indigenous tradition dependent on Austrian models. In the 1750s and 60s the genre was cultivated by the leading keyboard players, Wagenseil, Hofmann, Steffan, Vanhal and especially Haydn, whose early keyboard trios are the expression and summit of this style. The duo sonata with violin was virtually unknown there; the Viennese preferred the left hand of the keyboard to be doubled by a string instrument (cello or viola). The keyboard trio and the concertino or divertimento for harpsichord, two violins and bass were the scorings of choice. The ad libitum string texture was restricted for the most part to the keyboard quartet scoring. The keyboard trio reveals a strong tradition of obbligato violin writing, inspired by the Austrian trio sonata and string trio. In the absence of a local publishing industry, this repertory was disseminated in manuscripts; Wagenseil's op.5 (1770) is the only Viennese print of chamber music with keyboard during this period. And the genre was virtually abandoned in Vienna in the 1770s by all but Vanhal and the Pressburg composer Anton Zimmermann.

Frontispiece from Artaria's later publication of Hob 15:10

So Vienna, as usual, is different. In this case, the 'foreign publications' mainly emanated from Berlin (C.P.E. Bach) and Paris (Schobert, Edelmann). So what we see here is the roots of 'Keyboard Trios' in the Early Classic era, but also being an indigenous genre. As we have seen already, and which is reinforced by Grove here, the musical form was on hiatus for a bit over two decades. Haydn wrote only one trio in the period of his employ with the Esterházy's before now, this being Hob 15:2, back in 1772 where its composition (or arrangement from a concertino/divertimento, to be more precise) fell about halfway between the last of the early trios and the first of the late ones. We see it finally finding a home this year though, along with Hob 9 & 10 in London.

Things change though. The 'modern' accompanied sonata was suddenly all the rage, and as we see here, this was both in Vienna and London, as well as elsewhere. What we are seeing here is not just a change in musical taste, nor even a change in usage of certain types of music; but it is still nothing short of a social revolution. Whereas the wonderful social custom of young ladies of the aristocracy learning to play the (always ladylike!) keyboard as a prerequisite to marriageability had been going on for over a century, the spread of Enlightened thought now allowed the nouveau riche middle classes to act like aristocrats too. I doubt that Joseph II was adumbrating Hoover with a 'pianoforte in every home' slogan, but this initial surge in that direction led to a 19^th century which very nearly accomplished this goal! And above all, what was needed to stoke this flame was music, music, ever more music!

Which is not to overlook the continued value of the salons, whose denizens were no doubt delighted with the sheer musicianship required to play and appreciate even these early efforts. Every advance Haydn had made over the years in symphonic, quartet and sonata writing was lavished on these works too. For a hundred years and more, and even today for a few incorrigibles, the wisdom concerning Haydn's keyboard trios was that the string parts were totally superfluous and need not be played at all, since they merely doubled the keyboard. Surprisingly, this bit of lunacy came from the

Publication by Nadermann of Piano Trio Hob 6 arranged as a String Trio, allegedly by Haydn himself

top tier of the critical ladder, from people who should have known better. That they didn't know better speaks volumes about the age in which they lived. As early as the 1930's, Donald Tovey led the charge to demonstrate what works of genius these trios actually are. It only took another 40 years for a complete cycle to be recorded, by the Beaux Arts Trio, and eventually the period instrument groups' adoption of Haydn swept these along in their wake. We will be seeing a lot of this genre in the next few years, because Haydn wrote twenty-eight of them between 1784 and 1796, a number which is surpassed only by the thirty-four string quartets from that same span!

I have been attempting to acquire and provide accurate numbers for the next topic for discussion, but so far, not possible. This would be arrangements and reductions of works from their primary setting into more marketable form for Artaria and other publishers to sell. The problems arise from more than one source; was there even a setting? If so, who did it, Haydn or someone else? As we see from the picture here, one can be hard pressed to prove the claims by publishers. Did Haydn actually do this? If so, it would have been this year, since this was published in Paris in 1785. It is a question which possibly has been answered by Hoboken, although I haven't got his books and can't read German even if I did have them, and apparently the topic isn't sexy enough for multilingual dispersal. I like them though. Most of what I have found so far has been in an incidental sort of way, and an expanded essay on this topic is still in the future. Why bring it up now then? Well, one of the other genres which benefitted from the expansion of interest in playing at home is the dances written for the Redoutensaal. Haydn wasn't the only beneficiary of this side interest insofar as preservation of his works was concerned. Our current Hoboken 9:08, along with 03, 11, 12 & 20, as far as I know, only exist as

The Redoutensaal, home of elegant dance - Meytens - 1760

keyboard reductions, the original orchestral parts being lost. But Beethoven's 6 Minuets (WoO 10) and 7 Ländler (WoO 11) and 12 German Dances (WoO 13) would also be lost in their entirety without surviving keyboard reductions. The unusual fact of Mozart's entire dance oeuvre remaining intact, as far as we know, is a combination of two factors; he had a publisher (Artaria) ready at hand who published his dances immediately even in the orchestral version, as well as the keyboard reduction, and secondly, later on when he was official court composer, his original scores went into the Imperial archives. But there were thousands of dances composed in the last two decades of the 18^th century and obviously for the entire 19^th century, and only a relative handful exist in any other way. The newly acquired Viennese 'play-at-home' habit saved the day!

In the period between 1780 and Nicholas' death in 1790, Haydn likely only composed one march for the Princely Grenadiers, and it is this one. Note the clarinets, the Grenadiers had two of them in their band. This is a classic military style march in every way, a delightful miniature for wind band. Looking forward as far as 1793, when Haydn was arranging some of his works for Flötenuhr (Musical Clock), he transposed this piece to D major and added it to the thirty or so other works there. If you have the set, you can hear it now, as #25 (Hob 19:25). Of course, a recording of the original is more desirable. The one pictured, the only recording available at all, albeit on modern instruments, is wonderfully played; a worthwhile investment for certain.

Our last works for the year are two 'replacement' arias, both for Polzelli. Five years into their relationship, he was still watching out for her and cementing her career with the Eszterháza Opera. There are many other changes and edits to the operas of this year, but the general feeling is that it is too difficult to enumerate them, not least because when changes were made, the original parts were thrown away, and so attributing them with no documentation is without value. While conceding the validity of this, I would also point out; 'who else would have made the musical changes?'. But for all that, the 'Polzelli' arias will live on, firmly established as a loving gift from a lonely composer to his illicit sweetheart.

Next time we will look at 1786, and like a snowball rolling downhill, the Haydn story just gets larger and larger!

Thanks for reading!