Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in his Instrumental Music

by James Webster

• ISBN13: 9780521612012
• ISBN10: 0521612012
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-11-11
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This volume offers a new view of Joseph Haydn’s instrumental music. It argues that many of Haydn’s greatest and most characteristic instrumental works are ‘through-composed’ in the sense that their several movements are bound together into a cycle. This cyclic integration is articulated, among other ways, by the ‘progressive’ form of individual movements, structural and gestural links between the movements, and extramusical associations. Central to the study is a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the ‘Farewell’ Symphony, No. 45 in F sharp minor (1772). The analysis is distinguished by its systematic use of different methods (Toveyan formalism, Schenkerian voice leading, Schoenbergian developing variation) to elucidate the work’s overall coherence. The work’s unique musical processes, in turn, suggest an interpretation of the entire piece (not merely the famous ‘farewell’ finale) in terms of the familiar programmatic story of the musicians’ wish to leave Castle Eszterhaza. In a book which relates systematically the results of analysis and interpretation, Professor Webster challenges the concept of ‘classical style’ which, he argues has distorted our understanding of Haydn’s development, and he stresses the need for a greater appreciation of Haydn’s early music and of his stature as Beethoven’s equal.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xiii
Ian Bent
Preface	xv
Author's note	xviii
List of abbreviations	xix
Introduction	1	(1)
The origins of the Farewell Symphony	1	(2)
Analysis and interpretation	3	(3)
Through-composition in Haydn's music	6	(3)
Haydn and ``Classical style''	9	(4)
Part I: The Farewell Symphony
The construction of the whole	13	(17)
A through-composed symphony	13	(4)
Major/minor equivalence and remote third-relations	17	(3)
Developing variation	20	(10)
Instability	30	(43)
Allegro assai	30	(27)
Adagio: motivic transformation and expressive melody	57	(7)
Minuet and trio: ambiguity	64	(7)
A promise of resolution	71	(2)
Resolution	73	(40)
The form of the double finale	73	(9)
Motivic liquidation, background structure, and closure	82	(28)
An apotheosis of ethereality	110	(3)
The program	113	(10)
Reception	113	(3)
An interpretation	116	(7)
Part II: Cyclic Organization in Haydn's Instrumental Music
Progressive form and the rhetoric of instability	123	(51)
Gesture and rhetoric	123	(4)
Destabilization	127	(28)
Through-composition	155	(12)
Symphonies Nos. 80 and 92, first movements	167	(7)
Integration of the cycle	174	(51)
The background of genre	176	(3)
Cyclic form?	179	(7)
Run-on movement pairs and compound movements	186	(8)
Thematicism	194	(10)
Tonal organization	204	(21)
Extramusical associations	225	(25)
Austrian instrumental music in Haydn's time	225	(2)
Extramusicality in Haydn's aesthetics	227	(9)
Haydn's extramusical symphonies	236	(11)
Implications	247	(3)
Individual compositions	250	(85)
Two early symphonies: cyclic patterns and thematic links	251	(8)
Two expressive symphonies, c. 1770	259	(29)
Symphony No. 49 in F minor: monotonality	259	(8)
Symphony No. 46 in B: the meaning of musical reminiscence	267	(21)
Sonata No. 30 in A: the limits of through-composition	288	(6)
Two C major quartets: the finale as culmination	294	(20)
Op. 20 No. 2 and the ``problem'' of the fugal finale	294	(6)
Op. 54 No. 2 and the dialectic of listeners' expectations	300	(14)
Two masterworks of 1793	314	(15)
Op. 74 No. 3: minor into major	314	(6)
Symphony No. 99 and remote third relations	320	(9)
The dialectic of ``type'' and uniqueness	329	(6)
Historiographical conclusion: Haydn's maturity and ``Classical style''	335	(40)
Rosen's criticism	335	(6)
Sandberger's tale	341	(6)
``Classical style''	347	(10)
``Maturity''	357	(9)
The Farewell Symphony, through-composition, and Beethoven	366	(9)
Bibliography	375	(15)
Index	390