Haydn and Development

It takes patience to understand Haydn. His music rewards close listening — the brilliance is in the craft, not the spectacle.

Four Challenges of Orchestral Writing

1. Developing ideas — taking a small motif and building a movement from it
2. Transitions — getting from one section to the next without seams showing
3. Accompaniments — what everyone else plays while the melody speaks
4. Subtle choices — the small decisions in voicing, doubling, and register that separate good writing from great

Development Techniques

• Fragmentation — breaking a theme into smaller pieces and working with the fragments
• Sequence — repeating a pattern at different pitch levels
• Inversion — flipping the melody upside down
• Augmentation / Diminution — stretching or compressing the rhythm of a theme

Haydn to Beethoven

Haydn invented the playbook. Beethoven took it and turned up the intensity. Understanding Haydn's methods is the key to understanding everything that came after — including Beethoven's dramatic use of Unison and Octave Doubling and Tremolo.

Listening

• Haydn: Symphony No. 104
• Beethoven: Symphony No. 1
• Beethoven: Symphony No. 5

See also: Orchestration