Joseph Haydn's Use of Musical Humor in his Deformation of Sonata Form

Jennifer Salamone, University of Kentucky

Franz Joseph Haydn has long been known for not only his compositional prowess but also for his love of a good joke, and this jovial nature and sense of humor came forth in many of his compositions. He was fond of playing jokes on his listeners, be it through sudden dynamic changes, melodic and harmonic devices, or even the manipulation of silence. This paper explores Haydn's use of humor in the sonata form deformation of his string quartets.

The most obvious place to start if one is exploring humor in Haydn's string quartets is the String Quartet in E♭ major, Op. 33, no. 2, nicknamed "The Joke." The opening movement contains a false recapitulation -- one of Haydn's most favored deformational tactics. A false recapitulation in and of itself is not humorous, but Haydn approaches this one in such a way that the moment of realization can only be met with laughter.

The String Quartet in G major, Op. 77, no. 1 also contains a false recapitulation in which Haydn suspends the audience for several measures, exploiting our expectations as theme after theme enters only to lose its grasp on tonic soon thereafter. When the recapitulation finally occurs, after three failed and forte attempts, all voices are marked piano, as if Haydn tries to impishly sneak the moment by unnoticed.

In the finale of the String Quartet in B minor, Op. 33, no. 1, it is a continuous exposition that creates humor. While the first movement begins with several measures of tonal ambiguity, the finale is very clearly in B minor -- so much so, in fact, that the players seem unwilling to let go of the tonic key. The exposition loses its chance for a second theme area because by the time the music finally relinquishes tonic, the moment for a medial caesura has long since passed. I assert that Haydn uses these types of musical devices -- tonal ambiguity, rhetorical "discussions" among ensemble members, and unusual key areas -- in his creation of humor via sonata form deformation.