Piano Sonata in E flat major (H.XVI/49)

Haydn’s last piano sonata - one of three written for Therese Jansen in London in 1794 - is also one of his longest. Even so, its three movements put together are shorter than the slow movement alone of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier.”

While the statistics indicate how far Beethoven had extended the dimensions of the piano sonata in the intervening twenty-five years, they conceal the fact that in other respects the difference between the two works is not so enormous. It is more than a question of style, of Haydn assuming a heroic tone in the E flat major in the main theme of the first movement and of indulging the virtuoso element in his piano writing. It is also a question of harmony, of Haydn adopting modulations so adventurous that by the end of the development he is presenting his playful second subject in E major, which is as far from the starting point as he can get. Beethoven does just the same thing, though by a different process of harmonic thinking, in the first movement of the “Hammerklavier.” Both composers then have to exercise considerable technical skill in restoring the tonic key within a few bars before the beginning of the recapitulation.

Haydn persists in his harmonic adventure by setting his Adagio in that same remote key of E major. Like Beethoven’s Adagio sostenuto, it is abundant in decorative devices, linear beauty and variational ingenuity. The two slow movements are very different in structure, however, both in shape and - not least because Haydn’s is based on only one main theme - in scale. The Presto finale, which has no direct equivalent in the “Hammerklavier,” is another monothematic structure: it offers as its second subject a heavily emphatic version of the repeated notes which are the principal feature of the first subject. It is not, on the other hand, lacking in melodic interest, still less in harmonic inspiration and textural variety. The baroque-style toccata episodes are particularly remarkable phenomenon in this classical context.

Haydn’s last three Pianos Sonatas, like his last three Piano Trios, were written for Theresa Jansen, a pupil of Muzio Clementi and herself a highly successful piano teacher when he met her in London in the 1790s. As one of three witnesses at her marriage to Gaetano Bartolozzi at St James’s Church in Piccadilly in 1795, he clearly knew her very well and he presumably admired her not only for her piano technique but also for her musicianship and her personality. Certainly, the Piano Sonata in E flat, which he dedicated to her a year earlier, presupposes a lively imagination and an open mind as well as a thoroughly accomplished technique.

An ordinary pianist of the day would have found the work difficult enough to play but even more difficult to understand. The first movement is particularly daring in its changes of harmony, some of them approached with disconcertingly little preparation, and the abrupt changes of mood that go with them. Set at a tangent to the rest of the work in its remote key of E major, the slow movement is an extraordinarily fertile and liberated improvisation on the three-note phrase introduced in the very first bar. The Finale restores the tonality to E flat major with a brilliant example of the sustained exuberance Ms Jansen inspired in more than one of the works Haydn wrote for her.   

Haydn’s last piano sonata - one of three written for Therese Jansen in London in 1794 - is also one of his longest. Even so, its three movements put together are shorter    than the slow movement alone of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier.”

While the statistics indicate how far Beethoven had extended the dimensions of the piano sonata in the intervening twenty-five years, they conceal the fact that in other respects the difference between the two works is not so enormous. It is more than a question of style, of Haydn assuming a heroic tone in the E flat major in the main theme of the first movement and of indulging the virtuoso element in his piano writing. It is also a question of harmony, of Haydn adopting modulations so adventurous that by the end of the development he is presenting his playful second subject in E major, which is as far from the starting point as he can get. Beethoven does just the same thing, though by a different process of harmonic thinking, in the first movement of the “Hammerklavier.” Both composers then have to exercise considerable technical skill in restoring the tonic key within a few bars before the beginning of the recapitulation.

Haydn persists in his harmonic adventure by setting his Adagio in that same remote key of E major. Like Beethoven’s Adagio sostenuto, it is abundant in decorative devices, linear beauty and variational ingenuity. The two slow movements are very different in structure, however, both in shape and - not least because Haydn’s is based on only one main theme - in scale. The Presto finale, which has no direct equivalent in the “Hammerklavier,” is another monothematic structure: it offers as its second subject a heavily emphatic version of the repeated notes which are the principal feature of the first subject. It is not, on the other hand, lacking in melodic interest, still less in harmonic inspiration and textural variety. The baroque-style toccata episodes are particularly remarkable phenomenon in this classical context.

“Well, here I sit in my wilderness, foresaken, melancholy…Nothing can console me…My pianoforte which I usually love so much is perverse and disobedient: it irritates rather than calms me.” It could almost be Chopin languishing in the Majorcan winter. In fact, it’s Haydn in February 1790, recently returned from Vienna to Esterhaza and sorely missing the pleasures of life in the capital city, not least the company of the recipient of his letter, Marianna von Genzinger. Four months later, still unhappily exiled in the service of his Prince at Esterhaza, he wrote to tell her that he was writing a sonata for her and that it would be ready “in a fortnight at the latest.” Exactly two weeks later, while acknowledging that only the Adagio was absolutely new, he was able to tell her that her Sonata in E flat was finished and would soon be delivered to her.

In fact, there is a considerable difference in tone between the Adagio cantabile and the two outer movements. The opening Allegro is a spontaneous and delightfully witty but scarcely romantic display of resource in thematic development and structural thinking. The cheerful little first theme seems not very promising at first and, indeed, Haydn does nothing particularly interesting with it until, instead of turning to a new theme for the second subject, he reintroduces it in the dominant - at which point it takes off in a demonstration of joy comparable to that of “Das Wiedersehen” in Les Adieux. Just before the end of the exposition he plants another little seed. A quite unremarkable motif of four repeated notes, it plays such a dramatic part in the development as to challenge the main theme into retrieving its position by way of a short cadenza and provokes such comedy in the recapitulation that it sounds like a parody in advance of “Fate knocking at the door” in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Haydn must have been thinking mainly of the B flat major Adagio cantabile when he declared to Frau von Genzinger, “Oh, how I wish that I could play this Sonata to you a few times: I could then reconcile myself to staying for a while in this wilderness.” And it was certainly because of this movement that he wished she would dispose of her harpsichord and provide herself with a Schantz fortepiano, “for you could then produce twice the effect…Your beautiful hands and their facility of execution deserve this and much more.” Described by the composer as “rather difficult but full of feeling,” it is respectful of classical propriety only until the middle section where, against sonorously arpeggiated B flat minor harmonies in the right hand, the left hand enacts a passionately romantic dialogue between the upper and lower extremes of the keyboard.

Although Prince Nicolaus apparently did present Frau von Genzinger with a fortepiano at about this time, she would not have needed it for the Finale of her Sonata in E flat. It is not a conventional minuet - it invites a quicker pace than Tempo di minuet seems to suggest and it assumes something more like a sonata-rondo than minuet-and-trio shape - but it requires nothing like the expressive colour resources so essential to the preceding Adagio. The purpose of the E flat minor episode shortly before the end is just to add piquancy to the harmonies before the last return of the amiable main theme.