Haydn and the Enlightenment: the Late Symphonies and Their Audience

by David P. Schroeder

Overview

This book challenges the widely held view of Haydn as an inspired instrumental musician who composed in isolation from eighteenth-century enlightened thinking. Schroeder presents Haydn as a culturally and politically sensitive representative of the Age of Enlightenment, arguing that Haydn's awareness of contemporary aesthetic opinion and the tenets of the Enlightenment are reflected by the transformation in his compositional style. He explores Haydn's relationship with his audience, and suggests that Haydn was well acquainted with the contemporary view that works of art should serve a moral function, pointing to numerous instances in the late symphonies where this end is effectively pursued.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198166825
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/08/1998
Series:	Clarendon Paperbacks
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	230
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Dalhousie University, Halifax

Table of Contents

IntroductionPart I Haydn and Enlightened Though1. Haydn and Shaftesbury: Music and Morality2. Pre-English Literary Influences3. The Lodge ‘Zur wahren Eintracht'4. Opera, Rhetoric, and Rittergedichte5. String Quartets, Op. 33: ‘A New and Special Way'6. Theory versus Practice: Aesthetics and Instrumental Music7. Symphonies Ascent: Pre-Paris to the Loge OlympiquePart II Audience Receptionand England8. The Composer-Audience Relationship9. Haydn and the English AudiencePart III The Symphonies10. Symphonic Intelligibility and Sonata Form11. Melodic Sources and Musical Images12. Symphonies and the Salomon ConcertsConclusionsBibliographyIndex