Haydn's Keyboard Music: Studies in Performance Practice

Book Description
In this first full-scale study of performance practice in Haydn's keyboard music, Bernard Harrison confronts the important issues facing any performer of this repertoire, and considers some of the recurring controversial questions in broader research on Haydn's oeuvre.

Card catalog description
In this comprehensive study of performance practice in Haydn's keyboard music, Bernard Harrison confronts the important issues facing any performer of this repertoire. He deals with the full range of the composer's keyboard work - concertos, divertimenti, concertini, trios, Klavierstucke, and sonatas - and emphasizes the connection between performance practice and compositional style. He addresses many of the most controversial issues in recent research on the performance practice of 18th-century music, and takes a stance on some of the recurring controversies in Haydn research. Haydn's ornamentation is treated in four extensive chapters which range over Haydn's changing notational practices, the large corpus of 18th-century theoretical information on performance, and an examination of the music itself. Other seminal issues in performance - questions of rhythmic interpretation and tempo, articulation, embellishment, and repeat conventions - are elucidated in wide-ranging discussions. Harrison draws variously on a close reading of the source materials of Haydn's keyboard music, on a wide range of 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century writings on the theory and practice of music, and on a familiarity with the instruments for which Haydn wrote his keyboard works. Haydn's keyboard instruments are further discussed in a separate chapter. Harrison presents new evidence on the question of the influence of C. P. E. Bach on Haydn, and in a final chapter he surveys broader aspects of interpretation, commenting sympathetically but critically on the phenomenon of 'early music'.


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In this comprehensive study of performance practice in Haydn's keyboard music, Bernard Harrison confronts the important issues facing any performer of this repertoire. He deals with the full range of the composer's keyboard work - concertos, divertimenti, concertini, trios, Klavierstucke, and sonatas - and emphasizes the connection between performance practice and compositional style. He addresses many of the most controversial issues in recent research on the performance practice of 18th-century music, and takes a stance on some of the recurring controversies in Haydn research. Haydn's ornamentation is treated in four extensive chapters which range over Haydn's changing notational practices, the large corpus of 18th-century theoretical information on performance, and an examination of the music itself. Other seminal issues in performance - questions of rhythmic interpretation and tempo, articulation, embellishment, and repeat conventions - are elucidated in wide-ranging discussions. Harrison draws variously on a close reading of the source materials of Haydn's keyboard music, on a wide range of 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century writings on the theory and practice of music, and on a familiarity with the instruments for which Haydn wrote his keyboard works. Haydn's keyboard instruments are further discussed in a separate chapter. Harrison presents new evidence on the question of the influence of C. P. E. Bach on Haydn, and in a final chapter he surveys broader aspects of interpretation, commenting sympathetically but critically on the phenomenon of 'early music'.


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