Section II · Haydn · Hob. XVI:20 · slow movement
The whole slow movement, 67 bars, line by line, with the questions an examiner asks about its form and its details. Look, answer out loud in English, then check.
Play from this score · big, page by page, for iPadThe notes were typed in from photographs of one edition (Henle), and drawn by computer. Every page was transcribed twice, independently, and every disagreement was settled against the photograph (zoomed in, and the position of each disputed note head measured against the staff lines). The facts below about keys, bars, repeats and returns of music were found by searching the typed notes. As a check, the same music was typed from two different pages (bars 12 to 25 and bars 54 to 67) and comes out almost the same. Not exact: ornaments (the turns in bars 56 and 57 carry a natural sign that cannot be typed), the small grace notes, and some slurs may differ in detail from the print. Not typed in: fingering, most dynamics, and the editorial brackets. If anything here disagrees with your own score, your score is right.
The numbers under each line are the ones printed in the Henle edition (the small number above the first bar of each line). Another edition may number differently, so in the exam point to the music, or name the edition, before you say a number.
Press a part to see its bars lit up on the score below.
Each question sits under the line where its bars begin. Answer out loud first, then open the answer.
Before you play: what does the first page tell you about the piece, the tempo, the time and the key?
The heading is Andante con moto (page 180 of the volume). The time signature is 3/4 and the key signature has four flats: A♭ major, the flat submediant (♭VI) of C minor. Bar 1 begins with three repeated E♭4 notes in the right hand.
How is the movement laid out? Where are the repeat signs?
It has 67 bars in two parts, each with its own repeat. A repeat sign closes bar 25 and a repeat sign opens bar 26: the first part is bars 1 to 25 and the second part is bars 26 to 67. A second repeat sign closes the movement at the end of bar 67.
Two returns tie the parts together: the opening (bars 1 to 3) comes back at bar 26 a fifth higher, and the end of the first part (bars 12 to 25) comes back as the end of the whole movement (bars 54 to 67) a fourth higher. So the movement ends in A♭ with the music that ended the first part in E♭.
Describe what the score shows (two repeated parts with these returns) rather than naming a larger form you cannot prove.
How does the first part end, and how does the second part begin?
Bar 25, the last bar before the repeat sign, ends on E♭: E♭2 in the bass, with E♭4 and G3 above on the second beat. E♭ is the dominant of A♭.
The second part starts at bar 26 with the opening again, a fifth higher: three repeated B♭4 notes in the right hand (each with an A natural below), where bar 1 had three E♭4 notes. I compared bars 1 to 3 with bars 26 to 28 by computer: all 17 right-hand notes and all 17 left-hand notes match once moved up seven semitones, at the same beat and length. After bar 28 the two passages go different ways.
Where are the lowest and the highest notes of the movement?
The lowest note is B♭1 in the left hand of bar 21. The highest is f6, which appears in the right hand in bars 53, 65 and 66: the same top f as in the finale.
Look at bars 33 to 35. What is unusual about the notes?
The music reaches notes that are not in the A♭ major key signature: C♭ and G♭ in bars 33 to 35, and in bar 35 even an F♭ and a B double-flat (B♭♭4). Bar 42 has an F♭ as well, and G♭ appears in every bar from 40 to 46, with F in the bass on the first beat of bars 43 and 44 and D♭ in bars 45, 46 and 47. These are the most remote notes of the movement.
What do you notice about bars 54 to 67?
They are bars 12 to 25 again, a fourth higher. I compared them by computer: all 112 right-hand notes and 118 of the 123 left-hand notes match once moved up five semitones, at the same beat and length (the left hand differs only in the cadence, bars 20 and 21 against 62 and 63). The closing music of the first part was in E♭ (the dominant); now it is in A♭, the home key, so the movement ends where it began.
It is also a check on the typed notes: the same music read from two different pages comes out note for note the same in the right hand and nearly so in the left.
How does the movement end? Is there a cadenza before the end?
The end is a plain cadence in A♭: the bass goes D♭–E♭–A♭ (IV–V–I) twice, in bars 63 to 64 and again in bars 66 to 67. The very last chord, on the second beat of bar 67, has A♭ in the bass with A♭ and C above: a major third and no fifth. The last bar carries the repeat sign.
The course notes mention a written-out cadenza before the final cadence. In the edition photographed I see no fermata anywhere in the movement and no tempo word. What is there are runs of thirty-second notes in bars 62 and 65. Those two bars are the same figures as bars 20 and 23 (the return of bars 12 to 25), so they are written-out flourishes, not a free cadenza: say “written-out flourishes before the cadence”, and call it a cadenza only if your teacher does.
The words to use are on the Answer Cards (Haydn, Q3). To practise speaking, use the voice examiner and ask for Haydn, question 3.