The Virtual Haydn: Paradox of a Twenty-First-Century KeyboardistThis is a highly original book about Haydn’s keyboard music, about 18th-century keyboard practices and culture, and about performance. Written in the first person by the author, himself a professional keyboard player, the study places the performer, both historical and contemporary, at the center of the scholarly inquiry and explores in exquisite detail the process by which a modern performer arrives at a historically-informed interpretation of Haydn’s sonatas. The veiled reference to Diderot’s Paradox of an Actor in the title explicitly situates the study within the context of 18th-century debates on performance--a crucial issue in the period, with the rapid expansion of music publishing, of concert culture, of amateur music making, especially among aristocratic women performers, and with rapid changes in the technology and the physical properties of the instruments themselves. The reference to Diderot also hints at the way in which Beghin’s text itself "performs” in the manner of many 18th-century critical texts: like them, it has a tendency to be personal and idiosyncratic. Discussing a group of Viennese sonatas, for example, the author explores the contemporary fascination with physiognomy and goes on to try out facial gestures in his own performance of the music, which he documents in photographs reproduced in the book vis-à-vis Messerschmidt’s grimacing busts of the same period. Introducing the female dedicatees and performers of sonatas written for both Vienna and London, he links rhetoric and gender showing how femininity was encoded into the music through rhetorical gestures comparable to those Haydn employed in letters to female friends and patrons. Using wit and imagination to illuminate and bridge the gulf between 18th-century and 21st-century concepts of performance, this book helps define a fresh approach to keyboard studies and performance studies today. |
Contents
1 A Composer His Dedicatee Her Instrument and I | 1 |
2 Delivery Delivery Delivery | 43 |
3 Short Octaves müssen sein | 77 |
4 Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant | 127 |
5 An Opus for the Insightful World | 169 |
6 A Contract with Posterity | 219 |
Epilogue | 255 |
Physiognomic Analyses of Plate 5 à la Lavater | 257 |
Biographical Outlines of Theresa Jansen and Magdalena von Kurzböck | 261 |
Notes | 273 |
| 305 | |
| 321 | |
| 327 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
actual appoggiatura Artaria Auenbrugger become beginning Capriccio castrate chapter chord Clementi close complete composer concert considered continued dedicated direct dominant edition effect English especially Esterházy exactly example expression eyes fact feel figure final finger force fortepiano four front G Major Genzinger give grand hand harpsichord Haydn hold idea imagine Italy Jansen Joseph keyboard kind Kurzböck less letter listener London Longman look Marie master minor movement octave opening opus orator performance pianist piano piece play present Prince published pupil question reference remained repeat respect rhetorical Sauschneider score seems short single skill Sonata sound started takes term third tion turn Variations Vienna Viennese whole wish writing written