Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-2l2gl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-28T14:24:17.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - The Haydn piano trio: textual facts and textural principles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

W. Dean Sutcliffe
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

In a survey of the piano trios in her Master Musicians volume, Rosemary Hughes grants exceptional status to the opening movement of Trio No. 22 in A major (see Ex. 8.24 later in the chapter), as representing ‘for once a real interplay between keyboard and strings’. While this vote of approval implies a rather limited conception of the possibilities of the form, one based on the opposition of its two constituent instrumental forces, the vote is at least registered, whereas both H. C. Robbins Landon and Charles Rosen, for example, surprisingly make no comment on this Adagio. Certainly in no other Haydn trio movement is the duel between keyboard and strings so explicitly waged, in the form of a large-scale melodic dialogue that Haydn normally shunned in favour of a more closely contained exchange of ideas. The opposing melodic contributions remain mostly separate and successive until the coda (bars 55ff.). Here the violin and piano (and ultimately the cello, at bar 57) engage in a stretto whose purpose is to reconcile the previously sectional melodic interests at the point of climax. Somewhat ironically, given the prevalent textural image of the Haydn trios, this governing principle of alternation was to become the most common means of progress in later piano trios (to take just one example from many, see the opening of Ravel's Piano Trio in A minor), whereas Haydn, having hit upon a new timbral effect, as with the all-pizzicato ending to the String Quartet Op.33 No.4, or the collegno conclusion to the Adagio of his Symphony No. 67, characteristically leaves the discovery behind to move on to fresher fields.

Type
Chapter
Information
Haydn Studies , pp. 246 - 290
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×