Haydn's Keyboard Music

In this comprehensive study of performance practice in Haydn's keyboard music, Bernard Harrison confronts the important issues facing any performer of Haydn's keyboard music. He deals with the full range of Haydn's keyboard work - concertos, divertimenti, concertini, trios, Klavierstuecke, 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 eighteenth- 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 issues in performance are elucidated in wide-ranging discussions, and Harrison presents new evidence on the question of the influence of C.P.E. Bach on Haydn. He surveys broader aspects of interpretation, commenting sympathetically but critically on the phenomenon of `early music'.