The Virtual Haydn: Paradox of a Twenty-First-Century Keyboardist

By Tom Beghin

Haydn’s music has been performed continuously for more than two hundred years. But what do we play, and what do we listen to, when it comes to Haydn? Can we still appreciate the rich rhetorical nuances of this music, which from its earliest days was meant to be played by professionals and amateurs alike?

With The Virtual Haydn, Tom Beghin—himself a professional keyboard player—delves deeply into eighteenth-century history and musicology to help us hear a properly complex Haydn. Unusually for a scholarly work, the book is presented in the first person, as Beghin takes us on what is clearly a very personal journey into the past. When a discussion of a group of Viennese sonatas, for example, leads him into an analysis of the contemporary interest in physiognomy, Beghin applies what he learns about the role of facial expressions during his own performance of the music. Elsewhere, he analyzes gesture and gender, changes in keyboard technology, and the role of amateurs in eighteenth-century musical culture.

The resulting book is itself a fascinating, bravura performance, one that partakes of eighteenth-century idiosyncrasy while drawing on a panoply of twenty-first-century knowledge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: May 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9780226195353

Book preview

Tom Beghin is associate professor at McGill University in Montreal and an internationally active performer on historical keyboards. He is coeditor of Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2015 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2015.

Printed in the United States of America

24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15      1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-15677-4   (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-19535-3   (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226195353.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beghin, Tom, 1967– author.

The virtual Haydn : paradox of a twenty-first-century keyboardist / Tom Beghin.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-226-15677-4 (cloth : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-19535-3 (e-book)

1. Haydn, Joseph, 1732–1809. Keyboard music.   2. Performance practice (Music)—History—18th century.   3. Keyboard instrument music—Analysis, appreciation.   4. Keyboard instruments—Performance.   I. Title.

ML410.H4B34 2015

786.092—dc23

2014017216

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

THE VIRTUAL Haydn

Paradox of a Twenty-First-Century Keyboardist

TOM BEGHIN

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

to

Robert J. Litz (1950–2012)

friend and

partner in crime

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

The Virtual Haydn: A Recording Project

Companion Website

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations, Scores, and Translations

Prologue

1. A Composer, His Dedicatee, Her Instrument, and I

2. Delivery, Delivery, Delivery!

3. Short Octaves müssen sein!

4. Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant

5. An Opus for the Insightful World

6. A Contract with Posterity

Epilogue

Appendix A: Physiognomic Analyses of Plate 5 à la Lavater

Appendix B: Biographical Outlines of Theresa Jansen and Magdalena von Kurzböck

Notes

Works Cited

Index of Names

Index of Musical Works

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

Fig. 1.1. Sonata in E♭ Major, Hob. XVI:52 (London: Longman, Clementi, 1799), title page

Fig. 1.2. Sonata in E♭ Major, Hob. XVI:52 (Vienna: Artaria, 1798), title page

Fig. 1.3. Replica of a 1788 Ignaz Kober Tafelklavier by Chris Maene (Ruiselede, Belgium, 2007)

Fig. 1.4. Stoss action (below) and prell action (above), interchangeable in the same replica of a ca. 1782 Anton Walter grand fortepiano by Chris Maene (Ruiselede, Belgium, 2005)

Fig. 2.1. Sonata in E♭ major, Hob. XVI:49, autograph, first page turn, facsimile by Schott/Universal Edition (Vienna, 1964)

Fig. 2.2. An actor in doubt. Engraving from Engel (1785–86), vol. 1, between pp. 88 and 89

Fig. 3.1. Title page of Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, autograph. From a copy in the Gisella Selden-Goth Collection: Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Fig. 3.2. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm. 247–275, Henle score (ed. Sonja Gerlach), with author’s annotations

Fig. 3.3. Castration of a sow in Burgenland

Fig. 4.1. Two families joined by marriage

Fig. 4.2. Nicolaus Esterházy Sonatas, Hob. XVI:21–26 (Vienna: Kurzböck, 1774), title page

Fig. 4.3. Auenbrugger Sonatas, Hob. XVI:35–39, 20 (Vienna: Artaria, 1780), title page

Fig. 4.4. Marie Esterházy Sonatas, Hob. XVI:40–42 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), title page

Fig. 5.1. Katharina Freifrau Zois Edelstein, née von Auenbrugger. Miniature by Suwis, 1808

Fig. 5.2. Marianna von Auenbrugger, Sonata in E♭ Major, with ode by Antonio Salieri (Vienna: Artaria, ca. 1783), title page

Fig. 5.3. Daniel Niklaus Chodowiecki, Sixteen Heads in Profile, from Lavater (1776), vol. 2, supplement

Fig. 5.4. Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, A Willful Buffoon (after 1770 [No. 5]) and A Buffoon (after 1770 [No. 13])

Fig. 5.5. Sonata in C♯ Minor, Hob. XVI:36 (Vienna: Artaria, 1780), Menuet (No. 6a) and Trio (No. 6b)

Fig. 5.6. Physiognomy and pathognomy of an opus

Fig. 6.1. Sonata in E♭ Major, Hob. XVI:52, autograph, second page (recto)

Fig. 6.2. Sonata in E♭ Major, Hob. XVI:52 (London: Longman, Clementi, 1799), first movement, mm. 31–43

Fig. 6.3. Sonata in E♭ Major, Hob. XVI:52 (Vienna: Artaria, 1798), first movement, mm. 21–37

Musical Examples

Ex. 1.1. Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:50, first movement, mm. 1–8 and 120–124

Ex. 1.2. Sonata in F Major, Hob. XVI:23, second movement, mm. 21–39

Ex. 1.3. Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:39, second movement, mm. 46–62

Ex. 1.4. (a) Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:21, first movement, mm. 1–(transcribed from first edition); (b) Sonata in E♭ Major, Hob. XVI:49, first movement, mm. 1–12 (transcribed from manuscript)

Ex. 1.5. (a) Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:14, first movement, mm. 1–8; (b) Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:48, first movement, mm. 1–10

Ex. 1.6. Sonata in E Minor, Hob. XVI:47, mm. 8–12

Ex. 2.1. Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40: (a) transition between first and second movements; (b) first movement, mm. 73–end, with repeat: written-out performance

Ex. 2.2. Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:42, transition between first and second movements

Ex. 2.3. Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI:26, Menuet al rovescio

Ex. 2.4. Sonata in E♭ Major, Hob. XVI:49, first movement: (a) mm. 24–64; (b) mm. 179–186 (transcribed from manuscript)

Ex. 2.5. Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI:22, first movement: (a) opening theme; (b) development and recapitulation

Ex. 3.1. (a) Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Divertimento Op. 2 No. 2 (WV 53), third movement, mm. 35–end; (b) Wagenseil, Divertimento Op. No. 6 (WV 33), first movement, mm. 89–end; (c) Wagenseil, Divertimento Op. 2 No. 6 (WV 33), third movement, mm. 13–end; (d) Johann Joseph Fux, Suite (Parthie) in G Minor (E 117), first movement, mm. 9–10

Ex. 3.2. (a) Sonata in E Minor, Hob. XVI:47, first movement (Adagio), mm. 1–12; (b) Variations in A Major, Hob. XVII:2: Var. VI, mm. 97–104; Var. IX, mm. 145–148; Var. X, mm. 161–164; Var. XI, mm. 177–184; Var. XX, mm. 321–324; (c) Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI:12, first movement, mm. 21–24; (d) Sonata in A♭ Major, Hob. XVI:46, third movement, mm. 72–78

Ex. 3.3. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, outline

Ex. 3.4. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm. 1–23

Ex. 3.5. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm. 24–61

Ex. 3.6. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm. 62–84

Ex. 3.7. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm. 85–114

Ex. 3.8. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm. 114–157

Ex. 3.9. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII:1, mm. 157–190

Ex. 3.10. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII: 1, mm. 114–157

Ex. 3.11. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII: 1, mm. 233–265

Ex. 3.12. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII: 1, mm. 265–273

Ex. 3.13. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII: 1, mm. 274–295

Ex. 3.14. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII: 1, mm. 296–315

Ex. 3.15. Capriccio in G Major, Hob. XVII: 1, mm. 315–368

Ex. 3.16. (a) Divertimento in F Major, Hob. XVIIa:1, first movement: theme, mm. 1–10; Var. III, mm. 101–106; Var. V, mm. 161–166; Var. VI, mm. 181–184; (b) Baryton Trio in A Major, Hob. XI:38, theme, mm. 1–8

Ex. 4.1. Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), first movement, mm. 1–8

Ex. 4.2. Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), from first movement, m. 80, to second movement, m. 5

Ex. 4.3. Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40, from end of first movement to beginning of second movement, rewritten without transition

Ex. 4.4. Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), second movement, mm. 22–52

Ex. 4.5. Sonata in B♭ Major, Hob. XVI:41 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784): (a) first movement, mm. 1–8; (b) second movement, mm. 1–8

Ex. 4.6. (a) Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), second movement, mm. 1–10; (b) Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:42 (Speyer: Bossler, 1784), second movement, mm. 1–8

Ex. 5.1. One idea, different executions: (a) Sonata in C Minor, Hob. XVI:36, second movement, opening; (b) Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:39, first movement, opening

Ex. 5.2. Opus tonality of the six Auenbrugger Sonatas, Hob. XVI: 35–39, 20

Ex. 5.3. Incipits of the eighteen Auenbrugger pieces

Ex. 5.4. (a) Nun ich meinen Wurstel habe, from Die Feuersbrunst, Hob. XXIXb:A, opening line; (b) No. 6b transposed from C♯ major to D major

Ex. 5.5. Baryton Trio in A Major, Hob. XI:35, Trio, mm. 17–24

Ex. 5.6. Physiognomy of an opus

Ex. 5.7. Comparison of Numbers 3, 5, and 13, opening measures

Ex. 5.8. Comparison of Numbers 2 and 14, selected measures

Ex. 5.9. Pathognomy of an Opus in C Minor

Ex. 5.10. Sonata 6, third movement (No. 18), mm. 102–end

Ex. 5.11. Sonata 4, first movement (No. 10), development and part of recapitulation (mm. 29–57)

Ex. 6.1. Sonata in E♭ Major, Hob. XVI:52 (London: Longman, Clementi, 1799), first movement, mm. 1–13

Ex. 6.2. Jan Ladislav Dussek, Sonata in G Minor, Op. 13 No. 3, first movement, mm. 1–4

Ex. 6.3. Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonata in B♭ Major, Op. 22, fourth movement, mm. 1–8

Ex. 6.4. Sonata in E♭ Major, Hob. XVI:52 (Vienna: Artaria, 1798), first movement, mm. 6–12

Ex. 6.5. Theresa Bartolozzi-Jansen, Grand Sonata in A Major, three movements, incipits

Plates

Plate 1. Viennese short octave: close-up and diagram

Plate 2. Lungau Sauschneider, anonymous gouache (late eighteenth century), and Hanswurst, detail from Kinderspiele, colored etching by Johann Martin Will (1780s)

Plate 3. Letter of Princess Marie Esterházy to Empress Maria Ludovica Beatrix, March 20, 1812, first and third (final) page

Plate 4. Letter of Haydn to Marianne von Genzinger, February 9, 1790, first and fourth (final) page

Plate 5. Physiognomic snapshots of author’s performance

Plate 6. Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Character Heads, selected from Krapf (2002), passim

Plate 7. Lobkowitz Festsaal and ca. 1790 prell-action Anton Walter fortepiano (replica by Chris Maene, 2005)

Plate 8. Holywell Music Room and 1798 Longman, Clementi, & Company piano (replica by Chris Maene, 2004)

Plate 9. Karl Anton Hickel, William Pitt Addressing the House of Commons, 1793–94

THE VIRTUAL HAYDN: A RECORDING PROJECT

The Virtual Haydn: Complete Works for Solo Keyboard by Joseph Haydn, performed by Tom Beghin, is available from Naxos either as a boxed set of four Blu-ray discs (Naxos NBD 0001–04, released in 2009) or twelve CDs and one DVD (Naxos 8.501203, released in 2011). Showcasing the new technology of virtual acoustics, the recordings were produced at the laboratories of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) and the Schulich School of Music of McGill University. Martha de Francisco was the producer; Wieslaw Woszczyk the virtual acoustics engineer/architect.

Many of the concepts espoused in this book have found their sonic counterpart—or, conversely, their inspiration—in the eighteen hours’ worth of recorded material. Fifteen hours are pure audio (in the Blu-ray package presented as both 5.0 surround DTS-HD and high-resolution stereo PCM); three hours are HD video, including a feature-length making of documentary, entitled Playing the Room, directed by Robert J. Litz and Jeremy Tusz.

Listeners experience Haydn’s solo keyboard works in nine virtual rooms—replications of actual rooms where Haydn or contemporary players of his keyboard music would have performed. These have been acoustically sampled, electronically mapped, and virtually reconstructed in the recording studio. Featured rooms range from private to public, from Haydn’s own study in his Eisenstadt home to the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, England. Enhancing the experience are the seven historical keyboards on which the music is performed. All seven instruments, from a 1760s clavichord to a 1798 English grand piano, were especially built for this project, some for the very first time since the eighteenth century.

As a special bonus, the user may navigate from one virtual room to the next—or from one instrument to another—mixing, matching, and comparing the performance of a short piece for musical clock, for a total of sixty-three (seven times nine) possible combinations.

COMPANION WEBSITE

All examples printed in this book may be listened to or viewed at the designated website thevirtualhaydn.com/book. Especially for chapters 3 and 5 (where it is absolutely necessary to also see) and chapter 6 (where part of the argument concerns the acoustics of rooms), we recommend that the reader consult the website in tandem with the book. But the website also serves this book’s broader performance-oriented message: that image and sound take over where score or prose must stop.

To allow for easy cross-navigation, captions and numbers have been kept identical between book and website.

Sound and video excerpts are mostly taken from the author’s own commercially available recordings, by permission of Naxos. In addition, the website features newly recorded video material, notably, for chapter 3, the non-Haydn short-octave examples and Haydn’s four-hand Divertimento Il maestro e lo scolare, Hob. XVIIa:1 (with Gili Loftus); for chapter 5, Marianna von Auenbrugger’s E♭ Major Sonata (by Gili Loftus) and Antonio Salieri’s Ode Deh si piacevoli (with April Babey); and, for chapter 6, Theresa Jansen’s Grand Sonata in A Major. Especially noteworthy too are the evocative readings in their original language of Marie Esterházy’s and Haydn’s letters (for chapter 4), by Geneviève Soly and Tom Pohl.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I now smile at the ambition of a budding performer-scholar, but for the blessing of two giants in the worlds of historical performance and musicology I will be forever grateful. Seated at that special kitchen table in Ithaca, New York, when I unveiled my plan to study the complete Haydn, were Malcolm Bilson and James Webster. Their support has blossomed into warm collegiality and friendship—a privilege that I’ve never ceased to cherish.

Various granting agencies have sponsored my research over the years. I wish particularly to thank the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, where I was William J. Bouwsma Fellow in 2002–3; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), which supported both the recording project (2003–8) and the present book (2011–14); and the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC), which supplied crucial funds during my first years at McGill University.

The Joseph Haydn-Institut in Cologne houses the world’s most significant collection of Haydn-related primary and secondary sources, and it became one of my favorite destinations, especially during my sabbatical year in 2009–10. I thank the director, Armin Raab, and his remarkable team of researchers for their warm welcome. The institute has furthermore helped me develop friendships with scholars I greatly admire, such as László Somfai (whose wisdom and inimitable pragmatism in Haydn-related matters I’ve always taken to heart) and Elaine Sisman (whose originality and excellence have continued to inspire me). On the home front in Montreal, I must salute the hardworking and delightfully supportive team of librarians at the Marvin Duchow Music Library under the directorship of Cynthia Leive.

Both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, at the University of California, Los Angeles (1997–2002) and at McGill University (2003–present), I have submitted many students to my developing ideas on eighteenth- century performance and Haydn. It has been particularly fulfilling to see some of them explore uncharted territories on their own—I think of Erin Helyard’s work on Muzio Clementi and Katelyn Clark’s on Theresa Jansen. Over the years my historical-piano studio has grown into a true laboratory, where knowledge and insight have emerged collectively. The accomplished musicians I’ve had the privilege of working with include, among others, Katharina Brand, Erin Helyard, Alejandro Ochoa, Katelyn Clark, Pascale Roy, Gili Loftus, Meagan Milatz, Ruxandra Oancea, Andrea Botticelli, Ethan Liang, Mélisande McNabney, and Michael Pecak.

One crucial element in our laboratory has been the actual musical instrument itself. I thank Alfons Huber, curator of the instrument collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, for his groundbreaking research into eighteenth-century keyboards, and for his example of always putting evidence over assumption. My admiration for the skill and genius of Chris Maene has only increased since he built my first fortepiano back in 1991. I have since had the good fortune to collaborate with other extraordinary builders or restorers, all of whom have become dear friends: Yves Beaupré, Rob Loomis (who sadly passed away in 2013), Joris Potvlieghe, and Martin Pühringer.

It was in Montreal and at the newly established Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) that sound technology added a new dimension to my work. I owe the virtual in the title of this book—and much more—to my colleague Wieslaw Woszczyk, an expert in the domain of virtual acoustics. Together with Tonmeister Martha de Francisco we formed what felt like a dream team, our collaborations culminating in a special boxed set of recordings. With its catalog number of NBD0001 (as Naxos’s first Blu-ray release), I like to think we wrote a bit of history. I thank Klaus Heymann for his trust and vision.

But the recording couldn’t say it all. After Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric, coedited with the classicist Sander Goldberg (itself an immensely inspiring partnership), I was thrilled to receive renewed confidence from the University of Chicago Press. Editor Kathleen Hansell encouraged me to submit my first draft; her successor, Marta Tonegutti, along with her assistant, Sophie Wereley, expertly guided me through the production process; the professionalism of copy editor Barbara Norton and manuscript editor Erik Carlson helped make the last stage remarkably stress-free. I thank the two reviewers for their astute and helpful comments. One of them formally disclosed her identity, allowing me to thank Elisabeth Le Guin for her inspiring artistry and scholarship, for her friendship, and for the opportunity to make music together, mostly in partnership with Elizabeth Blumenstock. I long for more Trio Galatea moments and sometimes wish that shifting institutional affiliations hadn’t sent us in opposite geographic directions.

Kathleen Hansell and Marta Tonegutti went beyond the call of duty to help me with Italian translations, as did Thomas Pohl, an Austria-based German actor featured on the website, with some challenging eighteenth-century German. The multitalented Erin Helyard took precious time away from his own academic duties to typeset the complex musical examples, and Robert Giglio lent meticulous assistance in matters of copyright and permissions and prepared the two indexes. Jonathan Hong, Jeremy Tusz, and Ryan Frizell were instrumental in constructing the accompanying website. For their support over the years, especially in matters relating to Haydn, I thank Koen Uvin, producer of Klara (Belgian Public Radio), and Geert Robberechts, who has helped me with much more than just the business side of being a musician.

Three chapters are expanded versions of previously published work. Chapter 1 is based on an essay with the same title originally published in The Cambridge Companion to Haydn, edited by Caryl Clark (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Chapter 2 was revised from Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric, edited by the present author and Sander Goldberg (University of Chicago Press, 2007). A much shorter version of chapter 4, in German, was first printed in Haydn Studien 9 (2006) as ‘Votre très humble & très obéissant serviteur’: Männliche und weibliche Rhetorik in Haydns Sonate Hob. XVI:40.

Finally, I thank my wife, Griet Vankeerberghen, for her critical yet encouraging eye every time I showed her what I thought was going to be that next killer draft, and for her love and support. My sons, sixteen-year-old Oscar and eleven-year-old August, are two remarkable individuals who continue to teach me a lot beyond historical keyboards (even as their knowledge of them must be far above average). Robert J. Litz was a family friend and my creative soul mate. His extended stays at our house—while working on a theatrical play, a movie documentary, or a movie script—were invigorating beyond words. More than a year after his passing, I dedicate this book to him.

Tom Beghin

Montreal, March 4, 2014

ABBREVIATIONS, SCORES, AND TRANSLATIONS

AmZ = Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung

JHW = Joseph Haydn Werke

WUE = Wiener Urtext Edition

Unless indicated otherwise, all musical examples are transcribed from JHW, with special permission of G. Henle Verlag (Munich). In accordance with JHW’s editorial practice, material derived from important secondary sources appears in parentheses. Additions and clarifications not found in any authoritative source but deemed essential by the editor appear in square brackets.

All translations, unless otherwise specified, are my own. The original foreign-language quotes (often with slightly more context) may be found as an electronic document posted on the website, organized chapter by chapter.

Capitals C, D, E, and so on are used to indicate musical notes. Context makes clear whether A refers to the single note A or the tonality of A major. When more clarity about an actual pitch is required, the following Helmholtz-like notation has been adopted: FF (for the lowest key of a traditional five-octave keyboard), F, f, f¹, f², and f³ (for the highest key). Our modern-day middle C is thus c¹.

PROLOGUE

September 16 2007, 1:00 p.m. I board the one o’clock ferry in Calais, bound for Dover. Fragments of a letter from Haydn to his dear friend Marianne von Genzinger keep invading my thoughts:

After attending Holy Mass, I boarded the ship, at 7:30 a.m. [on New Year’s Day 1791], and at 5 p.m., God be thanked!, I arrived safe and sound in Dover. . . . During the entire passage I stayed on deck, so as to gaze my fill at that mighty animal, the sea. As long as there was no wind, I wasn’t afraid, but as the wind grew stronger and stronger, and I saw those frighteningly high waves slamming into the ship, a little fear took hold of me, along with a little nausea. But I survived it all without . . . you know, and arrived safely to shore. (January 8, 1791)¹

Like Haydn, I too stayed on deck for the entire voyage. Unlike Haydn’s, my stomach was fine. But then, there were no frighteningly high waves and my crossing took ninety minutes, against Haydn’s nine-and-a-half fraught hours.

The purpose of my trip was to bring a newly built replica of a 1798 Longman, Clementi, & Company piano from its present home in Belgium back to England, specifically to Oxford’s Holywell Music Room, which my team and I had chosen as the venue for the recording of Haydn’s English Concert Sonatas Hob. XVI: 50 and 52. We had deemed it a viable substitute for the London Hanover Square Rooms, which are no longer extant. Built in 1748 and dubbed the oldest music room in Europe by John Henry Mee in 1911, the Holywell Music Room was, from the start, a public venture, that is, funded by public subscription and conceived as a public music venue. Music for the chamber was performed there: sonatas, quartets, trios, concertos, symphonies, and Handel oratorios.

Our task was to sample the room—to take many acoustical digital snapshots of the space—and make a reference recording of the instrument, positioned in recital style, on the stage, lid up. I would be playing Haydn’s Grand Sonata in E♭, No. 52, a piece that Haydn wrote for the London-based, professionally trained pianist Theresa Jansen, pupil of the father of the pianoforte, Muzio Clementi. To create for myself a sense of what it would be like to present a concert in this famous room—mimicking Ms. Jansen—I invited a few British guests to fill Holywell’s built-in benches.

In its simplest terms, an acoustical map of a room is a digital record of its distinctive first and subsequent reverberation responses: how sound waves from a certain source bounce from the walls, windows, niches, floor, ceiling, and seats of a particular room. Sampling a room such as Holywell involved placing sensitive microphones at different elevations and multiple locations within the room. What was recorded was not my piano. The purpose of my playing the Longman & Clementi piano was to determine the position of where I would ideally wish to be seated—in other words, where in the room I would deem the instrument to sound best. (In this particular case, this choice turned out also the most obvious: we selected the modest-size stage, erected around the organ at the front of the room.) The actual recording of Haydn’s sonata would take place a few months and many thousands of miles away. Still, a recorded document of the real interaction of room and instrument would be very useful as a reference later on.

Once we felt satisfied with our real results, we replaced the instrument with a large array of speakers, of various shapes and characteristics, assembled to imitate the complex acoustic behavior of a keyboard instrument, radiating sounds in all possible directions. Recorded in eight channels was an eighty-second sound sweep, as emitted by the various speakers, beginning with subaudible frequencies and gradually rising in pitch to frequencies that only dogs and hummingbirds could hear. Some five hundred such snapshots were taken, from all possible listening positions: low and high, close and far. During the actual sampling, every member of the crew wore protective ear guards, visually monitoring the recording of this sweep on their computer screens. I was told to wait outside.

With the digital data from the room scans logged on our hard drives and vivid memories of playing in the actual room, the team flew back to our home base in Montreal, Canada. There, in the Immersive Laboratory on the top floor of the New Music Building of McGill University, we replicated every thing. Thus, sitting at a 2004 replica of the same Longman, Clementi, & Company grand, in a three-dimensional dome of twenty-four loudspeakers, I play as if I were in the Holywell Music Room, ever so conscious of the acoustical spaciousness that surrounds me. As microphones pick up the sounds of the piano, the computer makes the fastest of calculations, sending reverberation responses identical to those in Oxford back through the loudspeakers. (This process of calculating and transmitting takes less than ten milliseconds.) With the confidence expected of a recitalist, I project those grand opening chords of Sonata No. 52 into a virtual hall. Then, as I play those repetitions in the higher register, dropping silences in between, I actively engage with the acoustical feedback, which complements those lazily dampened, resonant though somewhat muffled English tones amazingly well. Through those moments of staged hesitation, I assert my authority as a professional performer, at the English instrument, in a virtual concert space, with an imaginary audience. (Corresponding video of these contrasted of scenes—actual vs. virtual—may be found on the website.)²

This, by way of example, is the story of a collaborative project conducted at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). Over the course of four months in 2007, we recorded the complete Haydn for solo keyboard (Hob. XVI, the sonatas, and Hob. XVII, the so-called Klavierstücke) divided over ten programs:

1. Courting Nobility, ca. 1755–69, on a Viennese harpsichord in the salon of a noble household;

2. Quality Time, ca. 1750–72, on a German clavichord in the music room of an upper middle class household;

3. The Music Lesson, ca. 1755–67, on a Viennese harpsichord in a private room of a noble household;

4. Haydn’s Workshop, ca. 1760–71, on a German clavichord in Haydn’s study;

5. ‘Your Most Serene Highness!’ (Nicolaus Esterházy Sonatas, published 1774), on a French harpsichord in the Eszterháza Ceremonial Room;

6. The Score (Anno 776 Sonatas, 1776), on a Viennese square piano, faraway location;

7. ‘Equal to the Finest Masters’ (Auenbrugger Sonatas, published 1780), on a Viennese fortepiano with Stossmechanik in a formal salon;

8. Musical Letters to a Princess (Marie Esterházy Sonatas, published 1784), on a Viennese square piano in a private salon;

9. Viennese Culture, 1789–98, on a Viennese fortepiano with Prellmechanik in a formal music salon;

10. The London Scene, 1794–95, on an English grand piano in an English concert hall.³

I had long been a historical keyboardist—or keyboardist for short, in the C. P. E. Bach sense of Clavierist, or someone who has made it a point to be adept on a variety of keyboard instruments. Making space an essential ingredient of my recorded performances attracted me immensely. But, as this opportunity for a remarkable technological experiment presented itself, the trap of historical reconstruction also felt wide open. Instruments, rooms—what would be next: clothes, to empathize with the restricted movements of an eighteenth-century keyboard-playing lady? Candles, to experience what it is like to sight-read from typeset or engraved scores in an environment lacking electricity? Non-controlled humidity, to appreciate the labor of tuning, especially in those simple-key sonatas that typically open a set of six, enjoying the freshness of a well-tempered tuning while it lasts? Though each of these realities in fact raises intriguing issues for modern-day interpretation and performance, I feared that recording in historical rooms or in carefully created digital clones of those rooms would make me an easy target for such fierce authenticity critics as Richard Taruskin or Peter Kivy.⁴ (This kind of conceptual fear has undoubtedly been conditioned by my formative years as a graduate student in the early 1990s, the heydays of such debates between proponents and critics of what was then still called a historical performance movement.)

But I did accept the invitation of my McGill sound recording colleagues, and the presence of yet another reconstructive component in my performances, rather than complicating my approach to Haydn, ended up providing a reassuringly real context for it. Virtuality provided me with choices I didn’t know I’d need or have, inviting me to accept the virtual almost as more real than reality itself—embracing, perhaps, what the cultural philosopher Slavoj Žižek has called the reality of the virtual.⁵ I no longer felt on the receiving end of things, but had to make decisions as concrete as Haydn’s when embarking on another sonata-writing project. For Haydn, these may not have been decisions per se, but concrete elements or circumstances nonetheless that he would have taken into account, even if he did not actively use or exploit them.

Virtual acoustics forced me to be articulate but also allowed my musicological sensitivities to sociocultural context to come to the fore, resulting not just in some interesting liner notes for my listeners, but in clearly assembled and enacted storyboards that informed my performative choices in the most direct of ways. In good rhetorical tradition, ten programs stands for many: undoubtedly, there are more stories of a virtual Haydn to be told, but the crucial point is that they are stories, involving real instruments, rooms, people—the three aspects combining and conspiring to take the singular out of repertoire, or (with the ethnomusicologist Christopher Small) to put the verb back in musicking.⁶

But none of this happens in spite of me—and the quotation marks become all the more essential as we now move from recording project to academic monograph. I am a professional twenty-first-century keyboardist, well versed in historical performance practices, but burdened—like most of us in the classical music world—with the post-1800 custom of learning, interpreting, and performing only masterworks of the past. The fact that, in the case of Haydn’s keyboard music, these works of a master (the reversal to bring us closer to a pre-1800 way of thinking about them) were mostly intended for the female amateur leaves us with a paradox—one that will permeate many pages of this book. (The example given at the outset, of Ms. Jansen playing a concert sonata, is a major exception for Haydn.) Like Diderot’s actor performing a script by Molière or Shakespeare, how can I imbue my professional renditions of a Haydn sonata with skill, with conviction, with sincerity?⁷ The answer cannot be simple. Maybe the anachronism of me now versus her then makes the question itself fallacious. Nonetheless, I (and many like me) do exist, and we create careers out of performing repertoires like Haydn’s. So the question seems worth exploring.

Since the pioneering work of David Schroeder, Mark Evan Bonds, Elaine Sisman, James Webster, and others, scholars and musicians have started piecing together an ever more rewarding understanding of Haydn, the rhetorical man.⁸ Some of these named authors teamed up with colleagues from other fields of the humanities and contributed to the volume Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric, coedited by the classics scholar Sander Goldberg and me (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). The primary aim of that publication was to make performance front and center again of modern-day music-rhetorical discourse—that is, not to think of performance as some finishing stage in a longer process of creative invention and execution, but to appreciate performance as the culminating arena that once defined the very rules and structures of the discipline for classical rhetoric and eighteenth-century music alike. This performance-anchored paradigm of Haydn, the rhetorical man, to be understood as both a broader and a more flexible version of Haydn, the orator, continues to elicit many of the questions explored in this present book.⁹

When performing the rhetoric of Haydn’s solo keyboard music, one important preliminary question concerns the issue of performing and/or listening personae. We now commonly separate the two activities, but the division could not be taken for granted for a genre that revolved around private musicking. Sometimes it is more useful—whether transforming or reflecting a real-life social interaction—to think of the player of a Haydn sonata as the pupil of a real-time musical lesson, the interlocutor of some musical conversation, or the addressee of some musical letter. After some practicing—but not too much, because there’s always the next piece to play—this letter may be shared, yes, performed for someone else than your music teacher or governess. It may even evolve into an actual declamation or oration, entirely worthy of third-party listening. But as this process unfolds, initial interactions—spontaneous and surprising—yield something more rehearsed and predictable. This after, however, is not necessarily more interesting than the before. Often, it’s not. How, then, do I hang on to those initial meanings and incorporate them in my polished renditions of a sonata or piece? This is one challenge I would like to explore in this book. It goes to the heart of the oratorical paradox of ars versus natura.

Internalizing this paradox for the keyboardist, then (as Diderot did for the actor), I found myself interested more in playing Haydn her way than in playing him his way.¹⁰ My quest—my obsession, even—to learn as much as possible about the personalities of my female counterparts has led to some serious perusal of primary documents, a number of which make it into modern-day print here for the first time. Honoring the factual value of these new documents (which deserve to become a part of Haydn scholarship in their own right) while remaining true to my artistic mission as a performer (where fact and fiction almost must merge) was not an easy balance to strike. I can imagine that for some readers I did not go far enough, while others might find my at times deliberate gray zones unnecessarily speculative.

However strongly I identify with various female dedicatees, the driving presence throughout the book remains my own as a longtime performer of Haydn—Haydn here implying more than the usual metonymy of person for work. About her relationship with Boccherini, the cellist Elisabeth Le Guin has evoked a virtual presence of her subject-composer, to the extent of her becoming him, that is, not just his hands, but his binding agent, the continuity, the consciousness.¹¹ As I perform or write about Haydn, I too like to imagine him as a living presence—not necessarily in or not even next to me, but still as a real-life person, someone whose rhetorical outlook on art and life I ought to try and understand.

This book has six chapters,