Presenting a fresh picture of the life and work of Joseph Haydn, this biography captures all the complexities and contradictions of the composer's long career. In his lifetime Haydn achieved a degree of fame that easily surpassed that of Mozart and Beethoven. Later his historical significance was more restricted, regarded exclusively as the composer who first recognised the potential of the symphony and the quartet. However, Haydn had also composed operas, oratorios and church music with similar enthusiasm and self-regard. Too easily buttonholed as a Viennese composer, he interacted...

Hailed in Symphony magazine as "an invaluable aid to scholars," this new paperback edition offers a gold mine of information on the immensely prolific Austrian composer and the father of both the symphony and the string quartet--Joseph Haydn. In more than 900 alphabetical entries, Haydn's world is brought to vivid life. All of his music is highlighted, including his symphonies, concertos, masses, oratorios, operas, string quartets and other chamber works, sonatas, and miscellaneous choral pieces. The volume includes informative entries on Haydn's family, friends, patrons and contemporaries...

The eighteenth century arguably boasts a more remarkable group of significant musical figures, and a more engaging combination of genres, styles and aesthetic orientations than any century before or since, yet huge swathes of its musical activity remain under-appreciated. This History provides a comprehensive survey of eighteenth-century music, examining little-known repertories, works and musical trends alongside more familiar ones. Rather than relying on temporal, periodic and composer-related phenomena to structure the volume, it is organized by genre; chapters are grouped according to the...

This volume brings together a selection of the most stimulating and influential writing on Haydn and his music in the English language. Written by a range of established and younger scholars it probes a variety of aesthetic, biographical, compositional, performance and reception issues. A specially written introduction summarizes the significance of each essay, directs the reader to appropriate complementary material and seeks the common ground between the essays; to assist with consistent referencing the individual essays retain their original pagination. This representative compendium of...