Haydn's Keyboard Sonata: An Agent of Sensibility

Abstract

The topic of sensibility has been increasingly popular in Haydn scholarship. Notwithstanding, most studies on the role of sensibility in Haydn’s music focus on the composer’s operas, English canzonettas, and chamber music. In light of this, this research aims to shed light on the relationship between sensibility and Haydn’s keyboard sonatas. This paper begins by reviewing the nature of the sonata genre and the mechanics of the keyboard in order to establish the keyboard sonata as an ideal genre for sensibility. It then proceeds to study the musical materials of the Adagio of Haydn’s Keyboard Sonata Hob. XVI: 46 — which Haydn wrote initially for his private pleasure on the clavichord — for the purpose of examining how he utilises the sonata genre and the clavichord to display his own sensibility musically and thereby confirms his identity as 'a man of feeling.' The research also highlights Hob. XVI: 40 in G major, arguing that Haydn used this keyboard sonata to appeal to the sensibility of aristocratic women. In this sonata dedicated to the 15-year-old Princess Maria Esterházy as a wedding gift, Haydn portrays the princess as a combination of several sentimental female character types — a daughter, a virgin, and a young girl entering into marriage. Since educated women in the late 18th century often responded to the reading of sentimental fiction with visible polite responses to secure what Paul Goring calls 'polite identities,' this sonata then arguably also created an opportunity for the princess and other female audience to claim polite identities in a similar manner. In sum, the keyboard sonata becomes an agent of sensibility in Haydn’s creative hands. This agent fostered not only his own identity as a man of deep sensibility but also provided learned ladies a chance to claim 'polite identities.'