9 - Papa Doc's recap caper: Haydn and temporal dyslexia

Summary

Discussions of sonata form, and especially analyses of movements in sonata form, routinely pay less attention to recapitulations than to expositions or developments, probably because of an assumption that a section whose main purpose is resolution should raise few new problems of its own. Such an assumption is not always unjustified: sparks might not often fly in a discussion of Schubert's (or even many of Mozart's) recapitulations.

But if some composers take a vacation during the recapitulation, Haydn is not among them. His recapitulations often involve the complete recomposition of their respective expositions, causing Tovey repeatedly – and misleadingly – to remark that they resembled Beethoven's biggest codas. The means by which Haydn transforms the exposition into something completely new in the recapitulation (prefix, suffix, expansion, contraction, parenthetical insertion, reinterpretation of function, ellipsis, splice, overlap, elision) are the same ones he uses to turn simple sentences or periods into more complex or asymmetrical local groups. In addition to putting the material of the exposition through a kaleidoscope, Haydn usually changes the position and harmonic orientation of its main cadences: he is equally inventive with respect to phrase design, harmonic structure, and to the relationship between the two.

Haydn's extreme wildness can provoke an unseemly haste to demonstrate the hidden lawfulness of his most delicious misdeeds. Just as performances often smooth over Haydn's rough edges, we run the risk of a attributing his compositional decisions to thought-processes as pedestrian as those of the analyst.