J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

among his clavier sonatas. With the Sonata in E, no.19 in Christa Landon’s edition
(written before 1766; no Hoboken number, though related to Hob.XVI:47 in F) his
style definitively outgrew that of Wagenseil, Galuppi, and Sammartini, and in richness
and scale he did not surpass some of the sonatas that followed (Hob.XVI:20, 33, 46)
for nearly twenty years.
Although in later life Haydn would recollect the overpowering influence of C.
P. E. Bach’s sonatas at the very start of his career, it has for some time been recognised
that his earliest works show not the slightest trace of Emanuel’s distinctive style.
Either the influence took some time to germinate or, more likely, the aged Haydn had
displaced this incident by about fifteen years when conversing with Griesinger. At any
rate, it is these sonatas of c.1766-1772 which are now generally associated with
Emanuel’s influence. At first sight they seem to bristle with Bachian mannerisms,
although particular points of influence have a disconcerting tendency to fade under
closer scrutiny. 46 Rather than particular mannerisms, however, the most important
effect of Bach’s music upon Haydn may well have been an enlarged conception of
what the clavier sonata might be, far transcending the disposable Unterhaltungsmusik
of Wagenseil and Hofmann. When C. P. E. Bach wrote his sonatas he was aware of
the monumentality of his father’s keyboard works, and despite the stylistic gulf
between them maintained the same thorough technique and seriousness of intent. 47 It
is possible to argue that these were the qualities transmitted to his Viennese admirer,
although even at this stage the means to that end were largely Haydn’s own. A similar
transformation began to take place in Haydn’s chamber music very soon afterwards.
Evidence for a fundamental shift in attitude about this time has turned up in an
unexpected place. In an unpublished treatise ‘Sur la musique comme art purement
46 See A. Peter Brown, Joseph Haydn’s keyboard music: sources and style (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1986), pp.203-29. It is worth pointing out that the music of Haydn’s gifted
contemporary Johann Anton Steffan (1726-1797) showed much the same development over the same
period, in his case with no apparent connection to C. P. E. Bach.
47 His Versuch is by far the most obsessively correct thoroughbass textbook ever written, probably
surpassing the practice even of his own father in this respect.
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