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Style, aesthetics, compositional method.
Haydn's style was understood in his own day as unique. He famously commented to Griesinger:
My prince was satisfied with all my works; I received approval. As head of an orchestra I could try things out, observe what creates a [good] effect and what weakens it, and thus revise, make additions or cuts, take risks. I was cut off from the world, nobody in my vicinity could upset my self-confidence or annoy me, and so I had no choice but to become original.
By ‘original’ he seems to have meant that he belonged to no school and acknowledged few if any models. However, in late 18th-century aesthetics originality also implied genius, a link emphasized among others by Kant.
In many ways Haydn's style can be understood as analogous to the duality in his personality between earnestness and humour. He said as much when referring to his method of composition: ‘I sat down [at the keyboard] and began to fantasize, according to whether my mood was sad or happy, serious or trifling’. Of course, in his music these qualities are not unmediated binary opposites but poles of a continuum. Admittedly, since about 1800 wit has been the better understood pole. Johann Karl Friedrich Triest wrote (1801) of his ‘unmistakable manner’: ‘what the English call “humour”, for which the German Laune does not quite provide an exact equivalent’. Haydn's ‘unique’ or ‘inimitable’ Laune was a frequent motif in contemporary criticism. Most of the familiar nicknames for his works respond to features that listeners have taken as humorous; e.g. the ‘Surprise’ Symphony or the ‘Joke’ Quartet op.33 no.2. In other cases the wit is on a higher plane, e.g. the ‘ticking’ accompaniment in the slow movement of the ‘Clock’ Symphony, no.101. The crucial point, however, is that Haydn's popular style is not a simple projection of his personality, but his compositional ‘persona’ or ‘musical personality’, deliberately assumed for complex artistic purposes. Indeed ‘wit’ signifies intelligence as well as humour: his inexhaustible rhythmic and motivic inventiveness, the conversational air of many quartet movements, his formal ambiguity and caprice, his brilliant and at times disquieting play with beginnings that are endings and the reverse (the ‘Joke’ Quartet ending has stimulated half a dozen learned exegeses). Often Haydn's wit shades into irony, as was recognized by his contemporaries: ‘Haydn might perhaps be compared, in respect to the fruitfulness of his imagination, with our Jean Paul [Richter] (omitting, obviously, his chaotic design; transparent representation (lucidus ordo) is not the least of Haydn's virtues); or, in respect to his humour, his original wit (vis comica) with Lor. Sterne’ (Triest). In fact, his irony goes beyond wit: a passage may be deceptive in character or function (the D major interlude in the first movement of the ‘Farewell’ Symphony sounds like a minuet out of context, but it is not a minuet and plays a crucial tonal and psychological role), or a movement may systematically subvert listeners' expectations until (or even past) the end (the finale of the Quartet op.54 no.2). Like Beethoven, Haydn often seems to problematize music rather than merely to compose it (the tonal ambiguity at the beginning of op.33 no.1).
Earnestness and depth of feeling are equally important to Haydn's art. These qualities were less appreciated in the 19th and early 20th centuries, owing in part to the absence of his vocal music and much of his earlier instrumental music from the standard repertory, in part to a lack of sympathy for his extra-musical and ethical concerns during the age of absolute music. But Griesinger reported: ‘Haydn said that instead of so many quartets, sonatas and symphonies he should have composed more vocal music, for he could have become one of the leading opera composers’. Until about 1800 vocal music was as responsible for his reputation as instrumental; Gerber wrote in 1790: ‘around the year 1780 he attained the highest level of excellence and fame through his church and theatre works’. Like all 18th-century composers, Haydn believed that the primary purpose of a composition was to move the listener, and that the chief basis of this effect was song. He was an excellent tenor in the chamber (if not the theatre). He insisted to Griesinger that a prerequisite for good music was ‘fluent melody’, and he ‘criticized the fact that now so many musicians compose who have never learnt how to sing: “Singing must almost be reckoned one of the lost arts; instead of song, people allow the instruments to dominate”.
This emphasis on feeling also applies to instrumental music – even sprightly allegros and minuets – and throughout Haydn's career. Much of his early music is earnest, at times even harsh; see the keyboard Trio hXV:f1, the String Trio hV:3, the slow movement of the String Quartet op.2 no.4, Symphony no.22 and much else, to say nothing of vocal works such as the Stabat mater and the Salve regina in G minor. Many of his keyboard works are affective in an intimate way: he wrote to Mme Genzinger regarding the Adagio of Sonata no.49: ‘It means a great deal, which I will analyse for you when I have the chance’. His orchestral music ‘signified’ as well: the slow introductions to the London symphonies are implicit invocations of the sublime, and this topic became overt in the Chaos–Light sequence in The Creation and elsewhere in his late sacred vocal music. Many works that were later taken as humorous he did not intend as such, for example the ‘Farewell’ Symphony. Similarly, even at his wittiest or most programmatic he never abandons tonal and formal coherence.
The duality between earnestness and wit is analogous to the 18th-century distinctions between connoisseurs (‘Kenner’) and amateurs (‘Liebhaber’), and between traditional or learned and modern or galant style. These dualities characterize many of Haydn's works, groups of works and even entire periods. In his pre-Esterházy instrumental music, genre was a primary determinant of style: modest, unpretentious divertimentos, quartets and keyboard concertinos etc. stand seemingly opposed to larger-scale symphonies, string trios and keyboard trios. The three op.20 quartets with fugal finales project, in order of composition, severe tradition (no.5), the galant (no.6) and a studied mixture of both (no.2); yet these monuments to high art originated precisely in the middle of his baryton-trio decade. In the late 1770s most of his symphonies were unambiguously intended as entertainment, but no.70 is selfconsciously learned. In 1785–90 he composed some 45 weighty symphonies, quartets and piano works, but also lyre concertos and notturnos, flute trios and other light works. Of course, the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘entertainment’ cannot be simplistically correlated with differences in artistic quality. Haydn's early string quartets are arguably his most polished pre-Esterházy works; the baryton trios and lyre notturnos are finely wrought compositions, as rewarding in their way as the raw expressionism of the ‘Sturm und Drang’. These stylistic dualities are found even in his late sacred vocal music and long hindered its appreciation. His quotation of the buffa-like contredanse from no.32 of The Creation in the Schöpfungsmesse so offended the empress that she insisted that he alter it in performances at the Habsburg court, many of her high-minded contemporaries took offence at the ‘Tändeleien’ (trifling) and dance-like triple metres in his late masses, and as recently as the 1970s noted authorities still wrote of the ‘triviality’ of the Kyrie of the Missa in tempore belli. Now, however, their stylistic heterodoxy seems as gloriously uplifting as that of Die Zauberflöte.
Haydn usually juxtaposes or contrasts stylistic dualities rather than synthesize them. Perhaps he approaches synthesis most closely when an ostensibly artless or humorous theme later changes in character (e.g. Symphony no.103, minuet) or is subjected to elaborate contrapuntal development; the latter is especially characteristic of finales (e.g. Symphony no.99; Beethoven twice copied out the development section). In general, Haydn's art is based on the traditional principle of variety within unity. ‘Once I had seized upon an idea’, he said to Griesinger, ‘my whole endeavour was to develop and sustain it in keeping with the rules of the art’. A Haydn movement works out a single basic idea; the ‘second theme’ of his sonata forms is often a variant of the opening theme. Often this part of the exposition forswears thematic statements altogether, in favour of unstable developmental passages (his ‘expansion section’); stability is restored only in the position of the usual closing theme. To be sure, that working out usually entails many contrasting treatments and effects (Haydn: ‘light and shade’, i.e. chiaroscuro): the second theme usually differs in treatment, and the recapitulation brings fresh developments; in his double-variation slow movements the alternating major and minor themes are usually variants of each other. Thus both novelty and continuity are maintained from beginning to end.
In one respect, however, Haydn deliberately courted a union of opposites: his ‘popular’ style that simultaneously addressed the connoisseur. ‘If one wanted to describe the character of Haydn's compositions in just two words, they would be … artful popularity or popular (easily comprehensible, effective) artfulness’ (Triest). No other composer – not even C.P.E. Bach or Mozart – had Haydn's gift of writing ostensibly simple or folklike tunes of wide appeal, and broadly humorous sallies, that concealed (or developed into) the highest art. Indeed these aspects of his style intensified in his London and late Vienna years, along with the complexity of his music and its fascination for connoisseurs. One of the best early comments on Haydn's music was Gerber's: he ‘possessed the great art of appearing familiar in his themes’ (emphasis added): that is, their popular character is neither merely given nor a direct reflection of his personality, but the result of calculated artistic shaping. This becomes obvious when he employs folk tunes, as in the Andante of Symphony no.103 and the finale of no.104: the piquant raised fourth-degree of the one, the horn pedal of the other, are not quoted, but adapted to the character of a grand symphony. Haydn's ‘pretension … to a simplicity that appears to come from Nature itself is no mask but the true claim of a style whose command over the whole range of technique is so great that it can ingenuously afford to disdain the outward appearance of high art’ (Rosen, I1971).
Many aspects of Haydn's music can be appreciated only by ignoring the concept of ‘Classical style’. These include lean orchestration (Haydn: ‘no superfluous ornaments, nothing overdone, no deafening accompaniments’), in which the planes of sound do not compactly blend but remain distinct, nervous bass lines, constant motivic-thematic development and a rhythmic vitality and unpredictability that can become almost manic, as in the finales of many late string quartets and piano trios. Many Haydn movements are progressive in form, continually developing (e.g. the first movements of Symphonies nos.92 and 103); on a still larger scale, many works exhibit tendencies towards through-composition or ‘cyclic’ organization; a few are as tightly integrated as any work of Beethoven (e.g. the ‘Farewell’ Symphony and no.46; the string quartets op.20 no.2, op.54 no.2 and op.74 no.3; Piano Sonata no.30).
Haydn was also a master of rhetoric. This is a matter not only of musical ‘topoi’ and rhetorical ‘figures’ but also of contrasts in register, gestures, implications of genre and the rhythms of destabilization and recovery, especially as these play out over the course of an entire movement. Referential associations are common in his instrumental music, especially symphonies (nos.6–8, 22, 26, 30–31, 44–5, 49, 60, 64, 73, 100); they invoke serious human and cultural issues, including religious belief, war, pastoral, the times of day, longing for home, ethnic identity and the hunt. Haydn told Griesinger and Dies that he ‘often portrayed moral characters in his symphonies’ and that one early Adagio presented ‘a dialogue between God and a foolish sinner’ (unidentified; perhaps from no.7, 22 or 26). In his vocal music Haydn (like Handel) was a brilliant and enthusiastic word-painter. This trait is but one aspect of his musical imagery in general: in addition to rhetorical figures and ‘topoi’ it comprises key associations (e.g. E 
with the hereafter), semantic associations (e.g. the flute with the pastoral) and musical conceptualizations (e.g. long notes on ‘E-wigkeit’ in The Creation or ‘ae-ter-num’ in the late Te Deum).
Like all 18th-century composers, Haydn composed for his audiences (which term includes his performers). He calculated Piano Sonata no.49 expressly for Mme Genzinger; in his piano works of 1794–6 he systematically differentiated between a difficult, extroverted style for Therese Jansen and a less demanding, intimate one for Rebecca Schroeter. Regarding the Piano Trio hXV:13 he wrote to Artaria: ‘I send you herewith the third trio, which I have rewritten with variations, to suit your taste’ – i.e. Artaria's estimate of the taste of Haydn's market. When he went to London, his music for public performance became grander and more brilliant. He disliked having to compose without knowing his audience, as he wrote regarding Applausus: ‘If I have perhaps not divined the taste of [the musicians], I am not to be blamed for this; neither the persons nor the place are known to me, and the fact that they were concealed from me truly made my work distasteful’.
‘I was never a hasty writer, and always composed with deliberation and diligence’, Haydn told Griesinger. His method encompassed three stages: ‘phantasieren’ at the keyboard in order to find a viable idea (see above), ‘komponieren’ (working out the musical substance, both at the keyboard and by means of shorthand drafts, usually on one or two staves) and ‘setzen’ (writing the full score). Sketching was a regular procedure: although drafts survive for only a modest proportion of his music, they comprise works in all genres and all types of musical context (including recitatives). A draft for the finale of Symphony no.99 confirms Griesinger's description of his use of numbered cross-references to organize a series of passages originally written down in a different order. His surviving autographs by and large are fair copies, which exhibit few corrections and alterations.
Haydn, Joseph