Bonds, Haydn, Sterne and Musical Irony

Transcription

Haydn, Laurence Sterne, and the Origins of Musical Irony
Author(s): Mark Evan Bonds
Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 57-91
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society
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Haydn, Laurence Sterne, and the
Origins of Musical Irony
BY MARK EVAN BONDS
HE RECEPTION OF A COMPOSER'S WORK during his
own lifetime can
sometimes provide insights into musical qualities that later
generations, for any number of reasons, may be prone to misinterpret
or ignore altogether. In the case of Joseph Haydn's instrumental
music, the qualities of "wit" and "humor" have been the focus of
considerable commentary from the composer's own day down to the
present.' Yet our perspective on these elements today differs subtly
but significantly from that of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. To Haydn's contemporaneous critics, the effect of "witty"
and "humorous" devices was more than merely local. Within a
broader aesthetic context, these techniques were perceived to undermine the traditional premise of aesthetic illusion, thereby creating a
sense of ironic distance between the work and the listener.
"Aesthetic illusion" and "ironic distance" are not terms normally
associated with instrumental music, and they are not among the
specific terms used by Haydn's contemporariesto describe his music.
Yet they represent concepts central to the essence of much that was
new and controversial about the composer's instrumental works.
'The issues of wit and humor in Haydn's music have been the object of several
valuable recent studies: Gretchen A. Wheelock, "Wit, Humor, and the Instrumental
Music of Joseph Haydn" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1979); Steven E. Paul, "Wit,
Comedy, and Humour in the Instrumental Music of Franz Joseph Haydn" (Ph.D.
diss., Cambridge University, i980); and idem, "Comedy, Wit, and Humor in
Haydn's Instrumental Music," in Jens Peter Larsen, Howard Serwer, and James
Webster, eds., Haydn Studies:Proceedingsof the InternationalHaydn Conference,Washington, D.C., 1975 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981). Wheelock, in particular,
addresses the complex issues of terminology surrounding the terms Laune, Witz, and
Humor in eighteenth-century criticism. More general discussions of these issues in
music are also available in Bellamy Hosler, ChangingAestheticViewsof Instrumental
Music in i8th-CenturyGermany(Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), and Tilden
A. Russell, "Minuet, Scherzando, and Scherzo: The Dance Movement in Transition,
1781-1825" (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolinaat Chapel Hill, 1983). I would
like to thankJohn Daverio and Jeremy Yudkin, both colleagues at Boston University,
for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this study.
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
58
The conceptual basis of this perspective is most clearly illustrated
by the repeated comparisons made during Haydn's lifetime between
the composer and the English novelist Laurence Sterne (1713-1768).
Through a variety of techniques, usually categorized as "humorous,"
both Sterne and Haydn succeeded in calling attention to the very
artificiality of their own works. The resulting subversion of aesthetic
illusion, in turn, led to a sense of ironic distance between the artist, his
work, and his audience. And though the technique of ironic distance
had already enjoyed a long tradition in literature, it represented a
new, and to many critics objectionable, aesthetic of music in the
second half of the eighteenth century.
There is always a danger, of course, of reading too much into
comparisons between a composer and a specific artist in another field.
Quite apart from the inherent and obvious differences between the
arts, it is by no means always clear just which characteristics of an
artist a critic might have in mind when proposing such similarities.
The potential value of such comparisons is further reduced when one
composer is likened to many artists (e.g., Beethoven to Michelangelo,
Shakespeare, Jean Paul, and Byron, among others), or when many
composers are likened to a single artist (e.g., Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven all to Shakespeare).2 Haydn was in fact compared to
several literary figures during his lifetime, including Gellert as well as
Shakespeare. But such parallels, on the whole, were relatively isolated.3 Laurence Sterne remains the only figure consistently associated
with Haydn throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. It would appear, moreover, that Haydn is the only
composer of his day to have been compared to this particular writer.
The issue here is not one of direct or even indirect influence.
Sterne's writings were enormously popular on the continent, espe2
Judith Rohr, "Die Kiinstler-Parallele in der Musikanschauung der Leipziger
'Allgemeinen musikalischen Zeitung,"' SchweizerBeitrage zur Musikwissenschaft
4
(1980): 35-50, considers the increasing number of artist-composer parallels in the
nineteenth century to be one manifestation of the century's growing interest in the
unity of the arts.
3 On Gellert, see David P. Schroeder, "Haydn and Gellert: Parallels in Eighteenth-Century Music and Literature," CurrentMusicology35 (1983): 7-18. The
references to Shakespeare are limited almost exclusively to the London press of the
and Works[Bloomington: Indiana
1790s (see H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn:Chronicle
University Press, 1976-80], vol. 2, 595 and 598, vol. 3, 34, 49, 93, and 104) and
seldom go beyond broad expressions of praise (e.g., "the Shakespeare of music").
Howard Irving, "Haydn and Laurence Sterne: Similarities in Eighteenth-Century
Literary and Musical Wit," CurrentMusicology40 (1985): 34-49, examines Triest's
comments in detail but does not cite any of the other comparisons quoted below.
HAYDN, LAURENCE STERNE, AND THE ORIGINS OF MUSICAL IRONY
59
cially in Germany and Austria, and late in his life Haydn did in fact
acquire an English-language edition of A SentimentalJourney
published
in Vienna in 1798.4 But Haydn was already a relatively mature
composer by the time Sterne's works began to be disseminated
abroad, and the roots of the composer's ironic outlook are evident even
in his early works. What is important here is that more than one
contemporaneous critic should have attempted to explain the nature of
Haydn's music by drawing parallels to Sterne's prose.5
The earliest such comparison appears in an anonymous but
Almanach
extremely perceptive biographical entry in the Musikalischer
The
of
account
1782.
auf dasJahr
"Hayden" begins by calling him
a musicaljokester,but, likeYorick[i.e., Sterne],not of bathosbut rather
of the high comic;and this is dreadfullydifficultin music. It is for this
reasonthat so few peoplesensethat Haydnis makinga joke,even when
he is makingone. ...
We note two differentstyles or epochswithin Haydn'scompositions.In
the earlierworks,Haydn often laughedwholeheartedly;
in the worksof
the secondperiod,he contractshis visageinto a meresmile.This is easily
explained,for age makesone moreserious.6
4On Sterne's popularity in Germany, see Harvey Waterman Thayer, Laurence
Sterne in Germany:A Contributionto the Study of the LiteraryRelationsof Englandand
Germanyin theEighteenthCentury(New York: Macmillan, 1905);Roswitha Strommer,
"Die Rezeption der englischen Literatur im Lebensumkreis und zur Zeit Joseph
Haydns," in JosephHaydnunddie LiteraturseinerZeit, ed. Herbert Zeman (Eisenstadt:
Institut fuir6sterreichischeKulturgeschichte, 1976), 123-55; and Alain Montandon, La
Riceptionde LaurenceSterneen Allemagne(Clermont-Ferrand:Association des Publications de la Faculte des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, 1985). Peter Michelsen, Laurence
Sterneund derdeutscheRomandesachtzehnten
Jahrhunderts
(G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck and
Ruprecht, I962) surveys the author's many imitators in German-speaking lands.
Haydn's copy of A SentimentalJourney is cited in Maria Horwarthner, "Joseph
Haydns Bibliothek-Versuch einer literarischenRekonstruktion,"in osephHaydnund
die LiteraturseinerZeit, 179.
5More recently, William Freedman, LaurenceSterneand the Originsof the Musical
Novel (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1978), has argued that Sterne's Tristram
Shandycan be considered a "musical"novel on the basis of its repeated use of musical
imagery and its parallels to certain formal designs of instrumental music. None of the
contemporary parallels between Haydn and Sterne makes such a comparison,
however.
6 "MusikalischerSpassmacher, aber, so wie Yori[c]k, nicht fiirs Bathos, sondern
fuirshohe Komische; und dies ist in der Musik verzweifelt schwer. Deswegen fuihlen
auch so wenig Leute-dass Hayden Spass mache, und wenn er ihn mache. ... Wir
bemerken zwey Style oder zwey Epochen der Haydenschen Compositionen. In den
erstern lachte Hayden oft aus vollem Halse; in den Compositionen der zweyten
Epoche verzieht er blos die Miene zum Licheln. Dies ist sehr erklarlich; das Alter
macht ernsthafter." "Hayden (in Salzburg),"Musikalischer
Almanachauf dasJahr 1782,
The reference to Salzburg (i.e., Johann Michael Haydn) in the heading of this
19-20.
entry is an error not otherwise reflected in the subsequent account. The mistake
60
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
Parson Yorick, the central figure and narrator of A Sentimental
Journey, also appears in TristramShandy,but the reference here is to
Sterne himself. Like his fictional character, Sterne was an Anglican
priest, and he cultivated the identity with Yorick, publishing several
works under that name. Most commentators of the day, both in
England and in Germany, referred to Yorick and Sterne interchangeably.
The distinction between bathos and "high comedy" is particularly
significant. In his AllgemeineTheoriederschinenKiinste,Johann Georg
Sulzer defines the latter as that variety of comedy "bordering on
tragedy," in which "strong and serious passions come into play."7 In
the case of Haydn, the distinction between serious and comic
elements is by no means always obvious, for the medium of instrumental music makes it all the more difficult to detect "that Haydn is
making a joke, even when he is making one." This is held to be
particularlytrue of the composer's more recent works (as of 1782), and
although we are not told precisely what date might demarcate this
second period within Haydn's output, it seems reasonable to suggest
that the most prominent break occurs between those eccentric and at
times bizarre works of the late I76os and early I77os-one need think
only of the Symphony no. 45 in F# Minor ("Farewell")-and the less
overtly unconventional compositions that followed in the mid- to later
I770s. One wonders, in any case, if the author of this biographical
sketch would have made such an assertion about age and seriousness
had he known the String Quartets of op. 33, also published in 1782.8
Another anonymous essay, in Leipzig's Allgemeinemusikalische
Zeitungof i8oo, makes a similar comparison with Yorick/Sterne:
I cannottell you enough what a sense of pure comfortand well-being
comes over me when I listen to Haydn'sworks.To me, it is something
like the feelingI get when I readYorick'swritings,afterwhich I always
havea particulardesireto do somethinggood. The merry,mischievous,
would later be corrected in "Berichtigungen und Zusatze zu den musikalischen
Almanachen auf die Jahre 1782. 1783. I784. (Fortsetzung),"Musikalische
Korrespondenz
der teutschenfilarmonischen
2, no. 4 (26 January 1791): 28.
Gesellschaft
7 Johann Georg Sulzer, AllgemeineTheorieder
sch6nenKiinste, 2nd. ed. (1792-94;
reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967-70), vol. I, 485A review of Haydn's Symphonies nos. 75, 63, 70, 71, 62, and 74 (collected and
8
published by Hummel as "Opus XVIII, Libro III") and of op. 33 (published by
Hummel as "Opus XIX") in Johann Friedrich Reichardt, "Six simphonies ...
Oeuvre XVIII" and "Six quatuors ... Oeuvre XIX," Musikalisches
Kunstmagazin1
(1782): 205, makes a similar observation about the "youthful petulance" and "exuberant joviality" of the composer's earlier works, in contrast to the "more manly
humor" of his later ones. See Landon, Haydn: Chronicleand Works,vol. 2, 466-67.
6
good-natured,ingenioushumor[Laune],combinedwith a high-spirited
fantasy,with strength,learnedness,and fullness-in short, this revelry
in a springtimeof notes and beautiful modulations--canmake life
pleasant.9
The combination of "mischievous humor" with "learnedness" and
"strength" echoes the earlier critic's image of high comedy. Once
again, the emphasis is on Haydn's capacity to synthesize lighter and
more serious elements within a single work.
One of the more intractable terms of eighteenth-century thought,
Launeis perhaps best translated as "humor,"but in the older sense of
the term, signifying one's general disposition as determined by the
mixture of bodily humors. The predominant humor of an artist,
according to this line of thought, will be evident in his work. Like
"wit," Launewould eventually come to be associated with the comic;
but these terms are not necessarily interchangeable with "comic" in
the eighteenth century. Sulzer, for one, calls Laune"atemperament in
which a vaguely pleasant or unpleasant feeling is so predominant that
all ideas and utterances of the soul are infected by it."'o More
important still is the belief that an artist'sdisposition will be indirectly
but inevitably present within his work.
This last point is particularly evident in the comments of the
insightful but enigmatic cleric Johann Karl Friedrich Triest," who
attributes Haydn's greatness in large measure to "his deft handling of
rhythm, in which no one approximates him," and also to
9 "Ich kann Ihnen nicht genug sagen, welch eine reine Behaglichkeit und welch
ein Wohlseyn aus Haydn's Werken zu mir obergeht. Es ist mir ungefehr so dabey zu
Muthe, als wenn ich in Yoricks Schriften lese, wonach ich allemal einen besonderen
Willen habe etwas Gutes zu tun. Die heitere, schalkhafte, gutmiithige, geistreiche
Laune, verbunden mit der iibermiithigen Phantasie, mit der Kraft und Gelehrsamkeit
und Fiille-kurz dies Schwelgen in einem Fruhling von Tonen und sch6nen
Modulationen, kann das Leben angenehm machen." "Briefean einen Freund fiber die
Musik in Berlin: zweyter Brief vom 25sten October," Allgemeinemusikalische
Zeitung3,
no. 8 (19 November
130.
800oo):
10". ..
eine Gemuithsfassung, in der eine unbestimmte angenehme oder verdriessliche Empfindung so herrschend ist, dass alle Vorstellungen und Aeusserungen
der Seele davon angestekt werden." Sulzer, AllgemeineTheoriedersch6nenKiinste,vol.
eine
3, 150. A similar view is expressed by Carl Ludwig Junker, ZwanzigComponisten:
Skizze (Bern: Typographische Gesellschaft, 1776), 55-67" Triest
(1764-I8 io), was a cleric at St. Gertrud in Stettin. Ernst Ludwig
Lexikonder Tonkiinstler,VierterTheil(Leipzig: A.
Gerber, Neueshistorisch-biographisches
Kuhnel, 1814), vol. 4, 388-89, had high praise for him ("aworthy dilettant of learning
and taste") but was unable to provide a first name. On Triest's identity, see the
editor's footnote to Carl Dahlhaus, "Zur Entstehung der romantischen BachDeutung," Bach-Jahrbuch
64 (1978): 197, n. 15a.
62
SOCIETY
that which an Englishmancalls "Humor,"which the German word
"Laune"does not captureentirely.It is fromthis lattercharacteristic
that
his inclinationtowardcomic turns-and their still greatersuccess than
seriousones-may be explained.If one wanted to seek a parallelhere
with other famousmen, thenJosephHaydn, as regardsthe fruitfulness
of his fantasy,mightperhapsbe comparedwith ourJeanPaul(excluding,
of course,the latter'schaoticordering,for lucidpresentation(lucidus
ordo)
is not amongthe leastof Haydn'smerits),and as regardshis humor,his
peculiardisposition(viscomica),with Lor. Sterne.,
Triest was perhaps unaware of the debt that the novelist Jean Paul
Richter himself acknowledged to Sterne,'3 but he was certainly aware
that Sterne's "peculiardisposition," his originelleLaune,figures prominently in virtually every eighteenth-century discussion of the English
writer's style. And Laune, as Triest was also surely aware, was an
attribute consistently associated with Haydn as well. Most of Carl
Ludwig Junker's essay on the composer, first published in 1776, is in
fact devoted to an extended discussion of Laune in music and in
musicians. Junker had challenged his readers "to name a single work
by Haydn in which Launeis not a markedquality," assuring them that
they would, in fact, find no such work.14
Triest's comments on "lucid presentation,"on the other hand, are
strikingly contradicted by Jean Paul's own observations on the
parallels between Haydn and Sterne. In the second edition of his
2
"Die Quintessenz derselben scheint mir in der ausnehmend leichten Handhabung des Rhythmus, worin ihm keiner gleich kommt, und in dem zu liegen, was
der Englander Humornennt, und woffir das deutsche Wort 'Laune' nicht ganz passt.
Aus dieser le[t]zteren Eigenschaft lasst sich sein Hang zu komischen Wendungen und
das noch grossere Gelingen derselben, als der ernsthaften, erklren. -Wollte man
auch hier eine Parallele mit andern beriihmten Mannern aufsuchen, so liesse J.
Haydn sich in Ansehung der Fruchtbarkeit seiner Phantasie vielleicht mit unserm
Jean Paul (die chaotische Anordnung, wie sich versteht, abgerechnet, denn die
lichtvolle Darstellung (lucidusordo) ist keiner von Haydns geringsten Vorzugen)
vergleichen, und in Ansehung seines Humors, seiner originellen Laune (vis comica)
mit Lor. Sterne." Triest, "Bemerkungen fiber die Ausbildung der Tonkunst in
Deutschland im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Forsetzung)," Allgemeinemusikalische
Zeitung 3, no. 24 (I March i8oi), 407. Jean Paul, in turn, was often compared to Sterne.
Heinrich Heine, for example, called the former "der lustigste Schriftsteller und
zugleich der sentimentalste" and went on to note this same combination of qualities
in Sterne (Heine, Die romantische
der Werke,
Schule,in Historisch-kritische
Gesamtausgabe
ed. Manfred Windfuhr (Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe, 1979), vol. 8, part I, 220.
des
'3 See Johann Czerny, Sterne, Hippel undJean Paul: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte
Romansin Deutschland(Berlin: A. Duncker, 1904), and Michelsen,
humoristischen
LaurenceSterne, 311-I 3.
'4 Junker, Zwanzig Componisten,66.
HAYDN, LAURENCESTERNE, AND THE ORIGINSOF MUSICALIRONY
63
Vorschuleder Asthetik (1813), Jean Paul compares the "annihilating
humor" of Sterne's prose with Haydn's music:
Sterne, for example, repeatedlyspeaksat length and weightily about
certainphenomenabeforefinallyconcludingthat not a single word of it
all, in any case, has been true.
One can sensesomethingsimilarto the audacityof annihilatinghumorand at the sametime an expressionof disdainfor the world-in certain
music, e.g., Haydn's, which annihilatesentire key-areasthrough one
that is foreign,and which stormsalongbetweenpianissimoand fortissimo, prestoand andante.'5
Jean Paul's concept of "annihilation"can be understood on several
levels. What is "annihilated"most immediately is that which precedes
an abrupt change. Within the dynamics of the temporal arts, however, it is also the reader'sor listener's anticipationof what is to follow
that is annihilated. The very fact that an idea is discussed "at length
and weightily" leads us to expect that it will be of some import in the
larger scheme of things. In the case of instrumental music, we expect
the flow of a work to follow certain conventions of tonality, dynamics,
and tempo. In thwarting these expectations, Haydn does not "disdain" his listeners in the sense of ignoring them-indeed, he calculates
and plays upon their anticipations masterfully-but the effect of such
devices, as Jean Paul observes, is to create a sense of separateness and
distance from the world at large, including the listener.
On a still broader level, what is destroyed is nothing less than the
perception of the art-work itself as a finite, self-sufficient entity.
"When man looks down, as ancient theology did, from the celestial to
the earthly world, the latter seems small and vain in the distance;
when he uses the small world to measure out the one that is infinite
and then joins the two, as humor does, a kind of laughter results that
still contains both pain and greatness."'6 Through the immediate
's "So spricht z.B. Sterne mehrmals lang und erwagend fiber gewisse Begebenheiten, bis er endlich entscheidet: es sei ohnehin kein Wort davon wahr. Etwas der
Keckheit des vernichtenden Humors Ahnliches, gleichsam einen Ausdruck der
Welt-Verachtung kann man bei mancher Musik, z.B. der Haydnschen, vernehmen,
welche ganze Tonreihen durch eine fremde vernichtet und zwischen Pianissimo und
der
Fortissimo, Presto und Andante wechselnd stuirmt."Jean Paul Richter, Vorschule
Asthetik,in Werke,series i, ed. Norbert Miller (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1963), vol. 5,
The comments on Haydn appeared in the first edition of the Vorschule(1804);
3'I. on
those
Sterne were added for the second edition (18
I3).
'6 "Wenn der Mensch, wie die alte Theologie tat, aus der iiberirdischen Welt auf
die irdische herunterschauet: so zieht diese klein und eitel dahin; wenn er mit der
64
SOCIETY
juxtaposition of the great and small, humor "thus annihilates both
great and small, because before infinity everything is equal and
nothing."'7 Jean Paul, along with other German Romantics, considered the "annihilating"quality of humor to be a positive attribute, for
it intensifies aesthetic experience by drawing attention to the very act
of perception itself. The beholder can thereby perceive the art-work
with a greater sense of detachment and a correspondingly greater
sense of objectivity. Humor's "annihilating"essence is thus paradoxically an "infinite"quality as well, in that it opens the door to a world
of mirrors reflected within mirrors.
The concept of aesthetic "annihilation" is central to Romantic
irony. Indeed, there are striking parallels, as Rey M. Longyear has
shown, between the ironic perspectives manifested in Beethoven's
instrumental music and the theories of Romantic irony expounded by
such turn-of-the-century writers as Friedrich Schlegel and Ludwig
Tieck.'8 But Longyear's distinction between Beethoven's "irony"and
Haydn's "playfulness" overlooks the profound implications of playfulness. The origins of irony in instrumental music go back at least a
generation earlier to Haydn, just as the origins of Romantic irony can
be traced in no small measure to Sterne himself, as numerous
subsequent writers of the late eighteenth century, including Goethe,
Friedrich Schlegel, and Ludwig Tieck, were quick to acknowledge. It
is this element of irony, more than the merely comic, that not only
links the critical perceptions of Haydn and Sterne but also helps to
explain some of the more striking contradictions among the parallels
cited above.
Sterne's two major works, TheLifeand Opinionsof TristramShandy,
Gentleman(1759-1767) and A SentimentalJourney ThroughFranceand
Italy (i 768), could scarcely be less alike, at least on the surface. The
first is a sprawling, nine-volume work that confounds the reader's
expectations at almost every turn. The novel as a whole has justly
been called "a comedy that is one vast rhetoricaltrap for the unwary,"
a work that derives its unique characterfrom its "rhetoricalplay upon
kleinen, wie der Humor tut, die unendliche ausmisset und verkntipft: so entsteht
jenes Lachen, worin noch ein Schmerz und eine Gr6sse ist." Richter, Vorschuleder
Aesthetik,129.
'7 "und so beide zu vernichten, weil vor der Unendlichkeit alles Gleich ist und
nichts." Richter, Vorschule
derAsthetik, 125.
'8 Rey M. Longyear, "Beethoven and Romantic Irony," TheMusical
Quarterly56
(1970): 647-64.
65
standardized reactions."'9 TristramShandy,as has often been noted,
violates the very premise of its self-proclaimed genre, for it is not
really a "life and opinions" at all. Tristram's birth is imminent at the
opening of volume one, as one might well expect in such a work, but
the birth itself does not actually occur until volume three and is
mentioned there almost in passing. The true focus of this early
portion of the novel, if it can be said to have a focus at all, is the
conversation between Tristram's father and Uncle Toby that takes
place while the two await Tristram's birth. This conversation, in its
turn, is interspersed with a seemingly endless array of digressions.
Tristram's subsequent narrativenever really takes him beyond the age
of five, that is to say, the approximate age at which an autobiographer's earliest memories ordinarily begin. Even Book VII, describing
his adult journeys through France, reveals remarkablylittle about his
life and still less about his opinions. The novel ends with an extended
account of Uncle Toby's wooing of the Widow Wadman. In a sense,
the entire work is one long digression: the central character, if there be
one at all, is not Tristram but his father and his uncle, both of whom
we come to know far better than Tristram himself.
This willful violation of generic convention is but one of many
techniques by which the reader is constantly reminded that he is
reading a literary artifice. The book's marbled end-pages, dedication,
and preface are scattered throughout the body of the text, two
consecutive chapters each consist of nothing more than a blank page,
and Sterne elsewhere offers yet another blank page upon which the
reader is invited to draw his own illustration of one of the work's
characters.
The SentimentalJourney is a much briefer work. True to its
announced genre, it describes the impressions of Parson Yorick
abroad, chronicling human sensitivity to the emotional values latent in
the most seemingly insignificant objects and events. Quite unlike
TristramShandy,the SentimentalJourneyproceeds more or less chronologically in its narration of events.
At a deeper level, however, the differences between the two novels
are not nearly so great. TristramShandyis full of sentimentality, just
as A SentimentalJourneyhas more than its share of irony. For all their
comic humor, Walter Shandy and Uncle Toby emerge as true
personalities, figures capable of arousing no small degree of sympathy
in the reader. In his Versuchiiberden Romanof 1774, Friedrich von
'gJohn Traugott, Tristram Shandy'sWorld: Sterne'sPhilosophicalRhetoric(New
York: Russell and Russell, 1970), xv and 84.
66
Blankenburg praised tbe two as "admirable"and in some respects
even "noble" figures, while the literary critic and essayist William
Hazlitt considered Uncle Toby's characterizationto be "one of the
finest compliments ever paid to human nature."20' Sterne, moreover,
gives consistently meticulous attention to matters of detail in Tristram
Shandy,usually at the expense of a more orderly sequence of narrative
on the larger scale. Many of the work's digressions are sparked by an
object, remark, or action that in almost any other novel would seem
insignificant if not wholly irrelevant.
The irony of the SentimentalJourney is more subtle but no less
integral. In the second chapter, for example, Parson Yorick meditates
at length upon his resolve to do good in the world and to distribute his
wealth; yet only a few moments later, he denies even a sou to a
mendicant monk. He then proceeds to meditate at length upon the
motivations for this act as if his previous resolve had never existed.
Here as elsewhere, Yorick seems oblivious to the contradictions
between his thoughts and his actions.2 The entire work is so subtly
ironic, in fact, that it has been variously interpreted as either the
supreme manifesto of sentimentality (as it often was in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries) or as a devastating parody of the same.
On the basis of A SentimentalJourney, Sterne became a central
figure for the cult of sentimentality that flourished in Germany during
the last third of the eighteenth century.22 This in itself is ironic, for
a significant number of Sterne's admirers and imitators were able to
penetrate beneath the superficiallayer of sentimentality and recognize
the work's kinship with the author's earlier novel. Neither sentiment
nor irony alone gives Sterne's writing its unique character: it is his
peculiar synthesis of these qualities that distinguishes him most
clearly from his contemporaries.
2o Friedrich von Blankenburg, Versuchiiberden Roman(i774; reprint, Stuttgart:
Metzler, 1965), 192; William Hazlitt, "Standard Novels and Romances," Complete
Works,ed. P. P. Howe (London: J. M. Dent, 1933), vol. i6, 19. See also Robert
Burns' expressed admiration for the sentimentality of TristramShandy, quoted in
Richard C. Boys, "'Tristram Shandy' and the Conventional Novel," in Laurence
Sterne, ed. Gerd Rohmann (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 198O),
347.
2' For a fuller discussion of
irony in this novel, see Gardner D. Stout, Jr.,
"Yorick's Sentimental Journey," in LaurenceSterne, 249-67, and Michael Seidel,
"Narrative Crossings: Sterne's A SentimentalJourney,"Genrei8 (1985): 1-22.
22
In his early (I8io) biography of Haydn, for example, Albert Christoph Dies
invokes the SentimentalJourneywhile describing some of the more minute details of
Haydn's domestic life; he does not, however, propose any parallels between the
composer's music and Sterne's prose (Dies, Biographische
NachrichtenvonJosephHaydn,
ed. Horst Seeger [Berlin: Henschel, 1962], 98-99).
67
The parallels with Haydn cited earlier reflect the seemingly
contradictory fusion of sentiment and irony in Sterne's prose. The
first of the passages quoted above, it will be remembered, calls Haydn
a "jokester . . . of the high comic" whose wit is so subtle that few
listeners sense when or even if he is making a joke. It is possible, in
other words, to accept his music at face value, without any cognizance
of its wit. This kind of reaction would be possible for the unsuspecting reader of A Sentimental
Journey,but certainly not for anyone who
has read more than a few chapters of TristramShandy.The second of
the comparisons cited earlier, in turn, begins by echoing Parson
Yorick of A SentimentalJourney directly: the author of this essay
declares himself to be similarly overwhelmed with benevolence and a
determination to bring happiness and well-being into the world. But
in describing the composer's humor as both "mischievous" and
"ingenious," he touches on qualities more closely associated with
TristramShandy.Triest's formulation is equally ambivalent, in that it
acknowledges Sterne's comic strength-a typical reaction to Tristram
Shandy-yet specifically excludes the "chaotic ordering" of events
found in Jean Paul's works, as if this trait were not the very essence of
TristramShandyas well.
This fusion of the witty and sentimental in such a way that a work
can be interpreted either at face value or as a comic commentary upon
itself points specifically to the technique of irony. Unlike wit and
humor, irony has never achieved the prominence in music that it has
enjoyed in other arts, particularly literature.23 And with good reason:
it is highly questionable whether nonprogrammatic instrumental
music is capable of sustaining irony, at least in the traditional sense of
"saying one thing and meaning another." The concept of "meaning"
in absolute music is far too vague to provide the kind of referential
basis that is essential for this kind of irony to make its effect.
But there is a broadersense of irony that comes much closer to the
spirit of both Haydn's music and Sterne's prose. Most commonly
23
Irony is a complex topic that has spawned an immense literature. The most
useful general studies include Norman Knox, The Word Irony and its Context,
1500-1755 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1961); Douglas D. Muecke, The
Compassof Irony (London: Methuen, 1969); idem, Irony (London: Methuen, 1970);
idem, Irony and the Ironic(London: Methuen, 1982); Wayne C. Booth, A Rhetoricof
Irony(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974);and Ingrid Strohschneider-Kohrs,
Die romantischeIronie in Theorieund Gestaltung,2nd ed. (Tfibingen: Max Niemeyer,
1977). Vladimir Jankelvitch, in his monograph L'ironie(Paris: Flammarion, 1964),
makes frequent references to music among other arts, but no systematic review of this
concept as it applies specifically to music is as yet available. Longyear, "Beethoven
and Romantic Irony," remains the most useful investigation to date.
68
SOCIETY
associated with the slightly later phenomenon of Romantic irony, this
concept takes irony beyond its traditional (and relatively local) status
as a rhetorical trope to embrace a wider aesthetic in which art-works
overtly call attention to their own techniques of artifice. When
successful, this approach establishes a quality of aesthetic distance
between the artist and his work, which in turn calls into question the
basic premises of the traditional relationship between the artist, his
work, and his audience.
In this sense, one of the most basic manifestations of Sterne's
oft-cited Launeis his fundamentally ironic stance toward the roles of
author, narrator, and reader. By consistently engaging the reflective
capacity of the reader, not least of all in matters of formal structure,
Sterne interjects both himself and the conventional forms of narrative
into the forefront of the reader's consciousness. This technique was
by no means new with Sterne, but he cultivated it to a degree that was
without precedent in his time: it is a central element of his art. No
single excerpt can convey the extent or variety of this technique, for
it permeates TristramShandyin a dazzling array of guises. Yet an
extended passage can convey at least some sense of this approach. In
one of numerous digressions, the narrator (whose identity is by no
means always to be associated with Tristram himself) pauses to
contemplate the craft of writing and the relationship between author
and reader. In so doing, he addresses the very process by which the
reader becomes engaged in the course of the narrative:
Writing,when properlymanaged,(asyou may be sureI thinkmine is) is
but a differentnamefor conversation:As no one, who knowswhat he is
about in good company,would ventureto talkall;-so no author,who
understandsthe just boundariesof decorumand good breeding,would
presumeto thinkall:The truestrespectwhichyou canpayto the reader's
understanding,is to halvethis matteramicably,andleavehimsomething
to imagine,in his turn, as well as yourself.
For my own part, I am eternallypayinghim complimentsof this kind,
and do all that lies in my powerto keep his imaginationas busy as my
own.
'Tis his turn now;-I have given an ampledescriptionof Dr Slop'ssad
overthrow,and of his sad appearancein the backparlour;-his imagination must now on with it for a while.
Let the readerimaginethen, that Dr Slophas told his tale;-and in what
his fancychooses:-Let him suppose
words,and with whataggravations
that Obadiah
has told his tale also, and with such ruefullooksof affected
concern,as he thinksbest will contrastthe two figuresas they standby
each other:Let him imagine,that my fatherhas stepp'dup stairsto See
my mother:-And, to conclude this work of imagination,-let him
imagine the doctor wash'd,-rubb'd down,--condoled with,-felicita-
69
ted,-got into a pairof Obadiah's
pumps, steppingforwardstowardsthe
door, upon the very point of enteringupon action.24
The narrator,having called attention to (and congratulatedhimself
upon) his reliance on the reader's imagination, goes on to tell the
reader precisely what to imagine. He openly declares his strategy of
narrative and then just as openly violates it. This kind of irony
epitomizes Sterne's attitude toward narrative. His overtly self-conscious approach toward telling his story, as John Traugott observes, is
fundamentally different from that of conventional narrative, for
Sterne calls attention to his own technique as an author far too openly.
The rhetoric of TristramShandy is not the traditional rhetoric of
persuasion. A true orator, as Traugott points out, would "probably
not ask the jury to consider" the technical classification of "his last,
most subtle device."25 Yet this is the essence of Sterne's narrative
technique: he consistently draws the reader's attention to the stylistic
surface, to the artifice of the work.26
This approach undermines the basic pretense of aesthetic illusion,
for it precludes the traditional suspension of disbelief on the part of
the reader. Constantly reminded that he is confronting a work of
fiction, the reader cannot be as easily or as consistently moved by the
work at hand; instead, he is made all the more conscious of the
artificiality of the process by which the artist is manipulating the
reader's evolving response. What Wayne C. Booth has called "the
transforming presence of an intruding narrator,"moreover, affects the
entire nature of a work and not merely those specific passages in
which the narrator calls attention directly to himself."7 Once a
24
Laurence Sterne, TristramShandy,ed. Melvyn New and Joan New (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1978-84), vol. i, 125-26.
25 Traugott, TristramShandy'sWorld, i i i.
26 Richard Lanham, TristramShandy: The Games
of Pleasure(Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), and idem, The Motivesof Eloquence:
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
LiteraryRhetoricin the Renaissance
1976), points out that Sterne is part of a long tradition of discourse in which the
author overtly draws attention to his use of rhetorical devices, thereby making the
reader or listener all the more conscious of the artifice of language. Prior to the
nineteenth century, however, this tradition had remained very much in the minority
in Western poetics, which for the most part had consistently advocated a covert
application of rhetorical principles in order to persuade an audience.
27 Booth, "The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction Before Tristram
Shandy,"Publicationsof theModernLanguageAssociation67 (1952): i63. On the historical
position of Sterne's narrativetechnique, see also Douglas William Jefferson, "Tristram
Shandyand the Tradition of Learned Wit," Essaysin Criticismi (1951): 225-48; and
70
SOCIETY
narratorhas introduced himself into his story, he is as likely to return
as any of the work's other, more traditional characters.
Like Sterne's prose, Haydn's instrumental music often calls attention to its own structural rhetoric. There is of course no direct
equivalent to a "narrator"in purely instrumental music, but the
conventional forms of Classic music-sonata form, rondo, theme and
variations, etc.-serve much the same function as narrative conventions in literary genres."' From this perspective, a composer's adherence to a stereotypical pattern will facilitate the listener's comprehension of smaller-scaleevents. Conversely, a large-scaleformal deviation
that openly calls attention to itself will tend to draw the listener's
attention away from the content of the composer's argument and
toward the technique of its presentation.
In one of the rare discussions of this issue in contemporary
eighteenth-century theory, Heinrich Christoph Koch makes just this
point in dealing with the question of whether or not a composer
should adhere to established conventions of large-scale form. Koch
concedes that the repeated use of the same conventional forms can
lead to too great a degree of predictability, thereby robbing a
movement of its expressive power; but he also argues that "if one is set
on creating new forms for no particular reason," the resulting
"preoccupation with form" can similarly deprive a movement of its
ability to move listeners.29
By Koch's criteria, many of Haydn's instrumental movements are
as "preoccupied"with form as are Sterne's novels. In the well-known
ending to the finale of the String Quartet op. 33, no. 2 ("The Joke"),
for example, Haydn violates the conventions of musical closure in
such a way that only the initiated listener can be certain at just what
moment the piece actually ends. Haydn achieves this effect in so
brazen a manner that the listener cannot help but be made aware of
the very act of listening to a work of music: to what is, in the literal
sense of the term, an artifice. What had first functioned as an opening
Howard Anderson, "TristramShandyand the Reader'sImagination,"Publicationsof the
ModernLanguageAssociation86 (197 966-7 3
i):
28 On the
concept of stereotypical large-scale forms as narrativeconventions, see
Anthony Newcomb, "Sound and Feeling," CriticalInquiry io (1984): 614-43; idem,
"Once More 'Between Absolute and Program Music': Schumann's Second Symphony," 19th CenturyMusic 7 (1984): 233-50; idem, "Schumann and Late EighteenthCentury Narrative Strategies," 19th CenturyMusic ii (1987): 164-74; and Bonds,
WordlessRhetoric:MusicalForm and the Metaphorof the Oration(Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, forthcoming).
29
Heinrich Christoph Koch, Versucheiner Anleitung zur Composition
(i782-93;
reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969), vol. 2, 117-19-
71
antecedent phrase now serves as the final cadence of the work, and the
rhythmic play on the conventions of closure makes the listener all the
more conscious of those very conventions.
The drumstroke in the "Surprise"Symphony's slow movement is
an even more celebrated example of the manner in which Haydn first
establishes and then violates a pattern of "narrativeconvention" in
music. The opening theme's phrasing, eight measures long, is extremely--one might well say exaggeratedly-conventional in its
rhythmic construction and textural regularity. These features, together with the idea's stable dynamics, narrow ambitus, straightforward orchestration, and exceedingly limited harmonic range, all lead
the listener to anticipate correctly that this theme will serve as the
basis for a set of variations. The subsequent repetition of these
opening eight measures strengthens the listener's anticipation of the
movement's large-scale structure, for this kind of repetition is yet
another convention of the form. The lowering of the dynamic level
from piano to pianissimo(mm. 8-16) is less conventional, but also less
readily audible than the structural repetition of the theme's first eight
measures. The shock of the drumstroke and tutti in measure 16 is
based on more than a sudden change in dynamics, for this moment
represents an equally abrupt shift away from the established pattern
of repetition within the theme. By violating the conventions of
stability and repetition within the opening statement of this theme,
then, Haydn does more than merely surprise us: he directs our
attention toward his own open manipulation of the various artifices
that we as listeners, through our familiarity with this idiom, have
come to expect. The composer's intruding presence, moreover, never
really leaves the remainder of the movement, for the intelligent
listener will inevitably wait for the return of the drum-stroke. True to
the nature of the movement's play upon expectations, it does not in
fact return in its original guise; and when it does reappear(first at the
downbeat of Variation I at m. 34 and then again on the offbeats of
Variation 4 at mm. Io7ff.), it is used in more conventional (and thus
for this movement, paradoxically, unexpected) contexts.30
Devices like these are certainly humorous in the comic sense, and
they have delighted audiences for more than two centuries, even after
repeated hearings. But such passages also manifest a change in the
traditional relationship between the composer, his work, and his
30 Other discussions of this celebrated passage may be found in Paul, "Wit,
Comedy, and Humor," and Georg Feder, "Haydns Paukenschlag und andere
21 (1966): 5-8.
Uberraschungen," Osterreichische
Musikzeitschrift
72
SOCIETY
audience. By violating the conventions of form so flagrantly, Haydn
calls attention to them, thereby asserting his presence not only within,
but also outside the work. He establishes, in effect, a certain distance
between himself and that which he has created. In calling attention to
the craft of his art, the composer makes the listener aware of the very
artificiality of that art, thereby emphasizing the gap between art as a
technique and art as an aesthetic experience.
There is, of course, a wide range of devices that can elicit such a
response, as well as a correspondingly wide range of reactions among
listeners. Not every unconventional passage will elicit an awareness of
the composer's presence in every listener, for a great deal depends
upon one's familiarity with the musical idiom of the work at hand.
Some devices, like the gradual exit of the musicians in the finale of the
"Farewell" Symphony, or the false ending of the String Quartet op.
33, no. 2, are obvious even to those with only a rudimentary
familiarity with late eighteenth-century style. Other devices are more
subtle and may well depend upon the nature of the performanceitself.
The striking juxtaposition of E Major and Eb Major between the
second and third movements of the Piano Sonata Hob. XVI:52, for
example, becomes all the more jarring if the performer avoids an
extended pause between movements.
A closer examination of one particularwork, the Symphony no. 46
in B Major, can help illustrate a wide range of these techniques, both
subtle and overt, even within a work that is not generally considered
to be humorous in the comical sense.3' This symphony, composed in
is justly renowned for the return of the minuet within the
i772,
course of its finale, more than 35 years before Beethoven's Fifth
Symphony. After the recapitulation has more or less run its course,
the music stops on the dominant, only to resume with a literal
repetition of the minuet, beginning at a point corresponding to
measure 15 of the third movement (see Example i).
At measure 188, the reprise of the minuet comes to an abrupt halt,
and the original tempo and theme of the finale return to close out the
movement. The entire sequence of events from measure 153 onward is
highly irregular, for it openly violates any number of formal conventions one expects in a finale (and for that matter in any independent
movement) from this period. But what makes this structurally bizarre
finale particularly satisfying is the manner in which the unexpected
return of the minuet complements the events of the first movement.
3' A more detailed discussion of this work, with special emphasis on the first
movement, appears in chap. 5 of Bonds, Wordless
Rhetoric.
73
ExampleI
Haydn, SymphonyNo. 46, iv, mm. 147-72
Prestoe scherzando
150
+2 Ob.,2 Hn.
-•4-
Vln.r
A
Vin. 1
Vla.
Vc. + Cb.
I?istessoTempo di Menuet
155
Via 8va
Vlc. + Cb.
+2 Ob., 2
Hn.160
+2 Ob.
VI
n
o8va
Within the opening Vivace,Haydn pursues a similar but far more
subtle strategy of disruption. Just as the exposition appears to be
drawing to a close in the dominant (F# Major)with a cadential figure
at measure 35, the music swerves suddenly and without warning
toward the minor (see Example 2). This is a minor-mode re-interpre-
SOCIETY
74
Example 2
Haydn, Symphony No. 46, i, mm. 26-59
Str.
Vivace
L4 4
26
Str.,Ob.
Ob.
Str.Str.,
Str.
30Ob.
Str.
Ob., Hrns.
AttSr
.-
rrrSrrrr
r
r
Ob
r35r
40
r
u
75
Example 2 (continued)
I
r
TIM
Str.Str.,
.
Hrns.~
Vlc.,
Vl.
Ob.,Hrns.
A
A
A
A
A
S
V
V
tation of an idea that had originally been heard much earlier, in
measure 3. But after sixteen measures in the minor, this theme is
76
SOCIETY
abruptly abandoned for a resumption of the same idea that before had
seemed to herald the end of the exposition; the minor-mode interruption, in other words, is itself interrupted by a return to that which it
had earlier interrupted. The end of the exposition is especially witty,
for the final closing figure turns out to be the major-mode version of
the idea first heard in measure 13, then again in measure 36 in minor.
This same pattern of disruption and unexpected return continues
in the development section, which begins with a densely imitative
manipulation of the movement's opening idea. After ten measures,
however, the opening idea returns in its original tonality and in
essentially the same orchestration(see Example 3). In another context,
this might well appear to be the onset of the recapitulation, but the
simultaneous return of the tonic and the opening theme at this early
point in the development seems as prematureas the first appearanceof
the "closing" idea in measure 31 of the exposition. And in fact, the
music once again turns abruptly to the minor, with precisely the same
idea that had earlier interrupted the exposition at measure 36.32
The entire first movement, then, is punctuated by a series of
unexpected interruptions and equally unexpected resumptions of the
very ideas that had previously been interrupted. In this light, the
finale emerges as an overt application of this same strategy. The
opening movement, by contrast, illustrates the manner in which the
listener might find it difficult to "sense that Haydn is making a joke,
even when he is making one."
Surprise is of course scarcely an invention of the late eighteenth
century, and in one sense, a composer's presence is evident in any
work he writes. But in the case of Haydn, contemporaneous critics
sensed a personal presence so obvious as to manifest a qualitatively
different approach to composition. As early as 1776, Junker had
singled out Haydn as the one composer whose works consistently
bore witness to their creator's Laune. Christian Friedrich Michaelis,
writing in I807, similarly recognized that there was something
fundamentally new in the tendency of Haydn's Launeto call attention
to the person of the composer. Michaelis begins with some broad
observations on musical humor in general:
32
Whether or not one calls this device a false recapitulation depends upon how
one defines that term; what is important here is the effect upon the listener familiar
with the idiom of the day. This particularpassage is in any case decidedly different
from those brief, highly formulaic returns to the tonic key and opening theme early
in the development section within a number of early works by Haydn. See Bonds,
"Haydn's False Recapitulations," 220-27 and 303- 3-
77
Example 3
Haydn, SymphonyNo. 46, i, mm. 60-77
60
V
Str.
T
V
V
65
AIU
TI
1w-0
"-v
70 Tutti
Str.
/
p
Ob.,Hrns.
75
Ob.
8v
Str.
v
A
f
8va
/v
Music is humorous if the composition betrays more the disposition
[Laune]of the composer than the strict application of an artistic system.
The musical ideas are extremely peculiar and unusual; they do not follow
one another in the manner one might expect, say, on the basis of certain
conventions or according to the natural progressions of harmony or
modulation. Instead, these ideas surprise us through turns of phrase and
transitions that are entirely unexpected, or by wholly new and unusually
juxtaposed figures. . . . The humorous composer distinguishes himself
78
by meansof unusualideasthat causeone to smile;he sets himselfabove
and beyond the ordinary... .33
The formulation here is significant: humor "betrays" (verrath)the
presence of the composer within the work. Michaelis does not cite
specific works by Haydn, but it would be easy to add to the list of
passages cited earlier: the new theme at measure lo8 in the first
movement of the "Farewell"Symphony; the "retuning"of the strings
within the finale of the Symphony no. 60 ("I1distratto");the wholly
unexpected pizzicato and piano endings of the String Quartet op. 33,
no. 4, and of the Symphony no. 23; the extraordinary modulatory
sequences within the slow movement of the String Quartet op. 76, no.
6;34 the return of the slow introduction toward the end of the first
movement in the Symphony no. 103 ("Drumroll");the unexpected
slow-fast-slow formal design in the finale of the String Quartet op. 54,
no. 2; the "false ending" to the finale of the Symphony no. 90, with
its seemingly conclusive cadence on the tonic (C) at measure 167,
followed by four-and-a-half measures of silence, followed in turn by
a resumption of the opening theme-in Db Major. And in the finale
of the Symphony no. 98, Haydn managed to interject himself into the
work's first performance quite literally by composing and playing an
altogether unexpected keyboard solo just before the end of the
movement (mm. 365ff-).35
33 "Die Musik ist humoristisch, wenn die Komposition mehr die Laune des
Kuinstlers, als die strenge Ausfibung des Kunstsystems verrath. Die musikalischen
Gedanken sind dann von einer ganz eigenen, ungewohnten Art; sie folgen nicht so auf
einander, wie man etwa nach einem gewissen Herkommen, oder nach dem natfirlichen Gange der Harmonie und Modulation vermuthen sollte, sondern fiberraschen
durch ganz unerwartete Wendungen und Uebergange, durch ganz neue, sonderbar
zusammengesetzte Figuren. Der humoristische Komponist zeichnet sich durch
sonderbare Einfalle aus, die zum Lacheln reizen, er setzt sich fiber das Hergebrachte
hinweg. .. ." Christian Friedrich Michaelis, "Ueber das Humoristische oder Launige
in der musikalischen Komposition," AllgemeinemusikalischeZeitung 9, no. 47 (12
August 1807): 725-26.
of op. 76, no. 6 in its arrangementfor flute and
34 An anonymous reviewer (i 800oo)
piano explicitly calls attention to the listener's awarenes of the composer within the
slow movement: "Ein zarter, empfindungsvoller Gedanke geht, oder vielmehr
schwebt durch die entferntesten Tonarten; in jeder derselben entziickt er auf's neue;
bey jedem Uebergange sucht man lauschend den Sinn des Kiinstlers zu errathen, man
wird jedesmal getauscht, und freut sich der lieblichen Tauschung." Review of Joseph
Haydn, "Nouvelle Sonate pour le Clavecin ou Pianoforte ... ," AllgemeinemusikalischeZeitung 2, no. 42 (17 July i8oo): 728-29.
35 On op. 54, no. 2, see Edward T. Cone, "The Uses of Convention: Stravinsky
and His Models," TheMusicalQuarterly48 (1962): 289-90. For further discussions of
these and other unusual devices in Haydn's works, see Feder, "Haydns Pauken-
79
Michaelis goes on to observe that Haydn was the first composer to
cultivate such techniques extensively:
Amongearliercomposers,humorwassomethingextremelyrare,forthey
gladly adheredto strict regularity,and their imaginationhad not yet
takenthe daringleap that would elevatethem above the conventional.
... The greaterpart of our newest music, by contrast,is humorous,
especiallysinceJosephHaydn, the greatestmasterin this genre, set the
tone for this, particularlyin his highlyoriginalsymphoniesandquartets.
J. S. Bach frequentlyinclined toward this manner, but nevertheless
restrained himself throughout the artful richness of his harmony.
C. P. E. Bach,too, composednot infrequentlyin a humorousstyle; but
it was Haydn who firstdid so at all regularly,therebyinspiringa great
numberof composersof morerecenttimes to write in this vein.36
Before Haydn's time, musical humor (in the comic sense) had been
largely referential, limited primarily to extra-musical associations and
programmaticideas." But Michaelis'sreference to J. S. Bach reminds
us that the "humor"under consideration here refers not to comedy,
but rather to those techniques that by virtue of their unconventionality call attention to the presence of the composer within the work.
"Humorous music," as Michaelis points out, "is either witty and of an
animated, droll character, or it is on the whole more serious and bears
traces of a individualistic temperament."'3 German writers on music
were rather slow to deal directly with the issue of comic humor in
music, and Michaelis is one of the first to discuss its broader aesthetic
schlag;'; Wheelock, "Wit, Humor, and the Instrumental Music"; Paul, "Wit, Comedy, and Humour"; idem, "Comedy, Wit, and Humor"; and Irving, "Haydn and
Laurence Sterne."
36 "Bey den alten Komponisten war das Humoristische etwas sehr Seltenes; weil
sie sich gern an die strenge Regelmassigkeitbanden, und ihre Imagination noch nicht
so leicht den kuhnen Schwung nahm, der sie iiber das Hergebrachte erhob. ...
Hingegen ist unsere neueste Musik grossentheils humoristisch, besonders seitdem
Joseph Haydn, als der gr6sste Meister in dieser Gattung, vorzuglich in seinen
originellen Sinfonieen und Quartetten, den Ton dazu angab. J. Seb. Bach neigte sich
oft schon zu dieser Manier, hielt sich aber immer noch durch seine kunstreiche
Harmonie in Schranken. Auch K. Ph. Eman. Bach komponirte nicht selten im
launigen Stil: aber Haydn that es zuerst mit dem allgemeinen Effekt, und weckte eine
Menge beruihmter Tonkiinstler der neuesten Zeit, in diesem Charakter zu
schreiben. .. ." Michaelis, "Ueber das Humoristische," 728-29.
37 See Paul, "Wit, Comedy, and Humour," especially chap. 3, "Musical Humour
Before Haydn."
38 "Die humoristische Musik ist entweder witzig und von heiterm, plaisantem
Charakter, oder sie ist im Ganzen mehr ernsthaft und trigt die Spuren einer
eigensinnigen Laune. .. ." Michaelis, "Ueber das Humoristische," 727.
80
SOCIETY
implications.39 Whereas many previous writers had simply condemned the mixture of comic and serious elements in music, Michaelis points to a deeper aesthetic effect of using techniques that
"cause one to smile": the composer "betrays"his presence by openly
violating established conventions, making us aware, in effect, of his
own smile as well, much as the anonymous essayist of 1782 had
already implied ("In the earlier works, Haydn often laughed wholeheartedly . . .").
While an acute awareness of a composer's or author's presence
within a work may seem a basic element of aesthetic perception
nowadays, it runs counter to the mainstream of eighteenth-century
aesthetics, which continued to adhere, for the most part, to the
dictum ars est celare artem. As M. H. Abrams points out in his
influential study of early Romantic literature, the traditional aesthetic
outlook of Western art, from Classical antiquity until the late eighteenth century, had been "pragmatic,"in that it viewed the art-work as
"an instrument for getting something done," as opposed to later,
"expressive"theories of art.40 In the case of instrumental music, the
pragmatic goal might range from diverting the listener, especially in
lighter genres like the divertimento, to eliciting an emotional response
in him, as in the more serious genres of the symphony or string
quartet.
To the extent that a work's creator called attention to his own
presence, however, an art-work was perceived to run the risk of not
fulfilling its goal. According to the pragmatic aesthetic, an audience
viewing a drama should ideally be aware only of the fictitious
character being portrayed, not the actor portraying that character or
the playwright who had written the script, much less the formal
conventions used to give the drama its structure. Actor, playwright,
and formal conventions might well be admired for their contributions
to a work in retrospect, after the fact of performance, but the illusion
of their absence is an element traditionally considered essential to an
effective and emotionally moving presentation.
Like irony, illusion is a quality seldom associated with instrumental music, particularly of the nonprogrammaticvariety. In other arts,
however-most notably painting and literature-the concept of illusion was of central importance in eighteenth-century aesthetics,
to Russell, "Minuet, Scherzando, and Scherzo," 176, the first
39 According
extended piece of criticism to address the issue specifically did not appear until
18oo.
40 TheMirrorand the Lamp:RomanticTheoryand the CriticalTradition(New York:
Oxford University Press, 1953), introduction.
81
especially in France.4' Pure instrumental music was all the more
isolated among the arts, for it came to be recognized as being
incapable of mimesis and thus illusion as well.4' This is not entirely
surprising, since the very idea of illusion rests upon some degree of
identification between the work of art and the external world:
painting, drama, prose, poetry, and even vocal music (particularly
opera) are all referential to varying degrees, for they ordinarily deal
with objects or emotions that can be either seen or imagined in some
quasi-tangible form. Absolute music, by contrast, is too far removed
from the external world to run any risk of creating a referential
illusion so powerful as to be confused with reality. Naive representations of tempests, battles, and the like, were generally held in low
esteem within aesthetic theory.
But as in the case of irony, there is a different sense of the term
"illusion" that took on growing importance to all the arts throughout
the eighteenth century. The concept of "aesthetic illusion" refers not
to specific qualities within the art-workitself, but to the attitude of the
beholder that culminates in a willing suspension of the consciousness
of one's physical presence before a work of art.43 It is the artist's
responsibility, in turn, to cultivate this attitude in his audience, for as
Sulzer points out, our "attention to the sole object we should be
contemplating disappears the moment any circumstance causes us to
detect the hand of the artist."44
In his Laokoonof 1766, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing recognized that
all art strives to make present in the mind of the beholder something
that is in fact not physically there. This illusion is pleasurable, indeed
4' See, for example, Ernst H. Gombrich, Art andIllusion:A Studyin thePsychology
of Pictorial Representation,2nd ed. (i96I; reprint, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1972); Marian Hobson, The Objectof Art: The Theoryof Illusion in EighteenthCenturyFrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), which includes a
discussion of illusion in opera; and Vivienne Mylne, The Eighteenth-Century
French
Novel: Techniques
of Illusion, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1985).
42 For a broader discussion of these
trends, see Hosler, ChangingAestheticViews,
and John Neubauer, TheEmancipation
ofMusicfrom Language:Departure
from Mimesisin
Aesthetics(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986).
Eighteenth-Century
43 The history of this concept, discussed under a variety of terminological guises
in the eighteenth century, is summarized by Werner Strube, "Illusion," Historisches
der Philosophie,ed. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Grunder, vol. 4 (Basel:
W6rterbuch
Schwabe, 1976), 203-15. Strube's more detailed study of aesthetic illusion as
cultivated specifically in the eighteenth century gives special attention to the writings
of the Abbe Dubos, Moses Mendelssohn, Georg Friedrich Meier, Johann August
Eberhard, and Henry Home: "Asthetische Illusion: ein kritischer Beitrag zur
Geschichte der Wirkungsisthetik des
18. Jahrhunderts"(Ph.D. diss., Bochum, 197I).
4 Sulzer, AllgemeineTheoriederschonenKiinste,vol. 4, 515.
82
SOCIETY
necessary, if an art-work is to be successful in its goal of arousing the
emotions of the beholder. And this end is possible only when that
individual ceases to be aware of the vehicle by which a work's
impressions are conveyed. The artist himself, the creator, must not
enter into the mind of the beholder; if he does, the work lacks
sufficient illusion.45 Lessing put forward this basic idea even more
pointedly a year later in his Hamburgische
Dramaturgie:
And how weakmust be the impressionmadeby the work,if in thatvery
moment [of beholdingit] one is curiousabout nothing other than the
figureof the author?The true masterpiece,it seemsto me, fills us with
itself so entirelythatwe forgetaboutits creatorandperceiveit not as the
productof a particularindividual,but ratherof natureas a whole. ... If
one is so curiousaboutthe artist,thenthe illusionmustbe veryweak,one
must sense little that is naturaland yet be all the more awareof the
artifice.46
Lessing did not complete his Laokoon,and the projected sections on
music and dance were never written. But he almost certainly would
have applied this paradigm to music along with the other arts: a
listener perpetually conscious of the act of listening is unlikely to be
moved by the composition at hand. Anyone listening to an oration or
a musical composition can be surprised or even moved by an
unexpected event within the presentation, but one's awareness of the
orator, performer, or composer would ideally be indirect at best,
preferably only in retrospect. A revealing exception is the work
written primarily as a vehicle for a solo virtuoso. This kind of
composition is widely disparaged in eighteenth-century criticism
precisely on the grounds that it fails to move the listener's passions;
45 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laokoon,in Werke,ed. Jost Perfahl, vol. 2 (Munich:
Winkler, 1969), chap. 17. On the role of illusion in Lessing's aesthetics, see Armand
Nivelle, Kunst-und Dichtungstheorien
zwischenAufklarungund Klassik,2nd ed. (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1971), 94-102. Lessing's indebtedness in this area to earlier
aestheticians, particularly Baumgarten, Meier, and Mendelssohn, is discussed in
Semioticsand Aestheticsin the Age of
chap. 2 of David E. Wellbery, Lessing's"Laocoon":
Reason(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
46 "Und wie schwach muss der Eindruck sein, den das Werk gemacht hat, wenn
man in ebendem Augenblicke auf nichts begieriger ist, als die Figur des Meisters
dagegenzuhalten? Das wahre Meisterstick, diinkt mich, erfuilletuns so ganz mit sich
selbst, dass wir des Urhebers daruber vergessen; dass wir es nicht als das Produkt
eines einzeln Wesens, sondern der allgemeinen Natur betrachten. ... Die
Tiuschung muss sehr schwach sein, man muss wenig Natur, aber desto mehr Kunstelei
empfinden, wenn man so neugierig nach dem Kiinstler ist." Lessing, Hamburgische
Stuck(i September 1767), in Werke,ed. Jost Perfahl,
Dramaturgie,Sechsunddreissigstes
vol. 2, 425-26.
83
the performer's inescapable presence interferes with the illusion of
affect. In any event, while a listener might be more or less cognizant
of the individuals responsible for the oration or musical work he is
hearing, nothing in the discourse or composition itself would ordinarily call direct attention to a work's structural conventions as
structural conventions perse. The work itself, or more specifically, the
effect of the work upon the audience, is the focal point of the aesthetic
experience. As Johann Maas, writing in 1792, noted of instrumental
music in general: "The best art of composing is this: to compose in
such a way that one notices no art at all."47
Yet it is precisely this principle that Haydn and other composers
of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries began to violate
consistently. Johann Christoph Stockhausen, writing in i771, pointed
out that even a "half-connoisseur"could detect the "odd mixture of
the comic and the serious, the playful and the moving . . . that
predominates" in the music of Haydn, the brothers Toeschi, Cannabich, Filz, Pugnani, and Campioni.48 Haydn's critics, it should be
remembered, did not object to comic elements perse, but rather to the
composer's ostensibly inappropriate mixture of serious and comic
elements within a single work. Johann Adam Hiller, in his W6chentliche Nachrichtenof 1767, emphasized that although the comic taste
should not be regarded as base and reprehensible in and of itself,
we neverthelessdo wish that it wouldnot try so muchto insinuateitself
intootherplaces[outsideof comicopera]whereit doesnot belong;or that
composerswould not mix the comicand the seriousat every momentin
one and the same work. Nowadays we hear so many concertos,
symphonies,etc., that in theirmeasuredand magnificenttones allow us
to perceivethe dignityof music;but beforeone couldeven suspectit, in
springsHansWurst,rightintothe middleof things;andthe moreserious
the emotion that had immediatelyprecededhis arrival,the more he
arousesour compassionwith his vulgartricks.49
47Johann Gebhard Ehrenreich Maas, "Ueber die Instrumentalmusik," Neue
BibliothekderschonenWissenschaften
48 (1792): 23. Maas (1766-i 823) was a Professor of
Philosophy at Halle and the author of several supplementary essays on music for
Sulzer's AllgemeineTheoriederschonenKiinste.
48 Johann Christoph Stockhausen, Critischer
Bibliothek
Entwurfeinerauserlesenen
fir
denLiebhaber
derPhilosophieundschonenWissenschaften,
4th ed. (Berlin, 1771), quoted in
Klaus Winkler, "Alter und neuer Musikstil im Streit zwischen den Berlinern und
Wienern zur Zeit der Friihklassik,"Die Musikforschung
33 (198o): 4o: "Man darf aber
nur ein halber Kenner seyn, um ... die seltsame Mischung vom comischen und
ernsthaften, tindelnden und ruhrenden, zu merken, welche allenthalben herrscht."
4" "Es sey fern, dass wir ihn [den comischen Geschmack] an und ffir sich fuir
schlecht halten sollten; dennoch aber m6chten wir wohl wiinschen, dass er sich nicht
84
SOCIETY
Like Stockhausen, Hiller cites Haydn at the head of a list of other
composers (Leopold Hoffmann, Dittersdorf, and Filtz) guilty of this
musical offense.50 The image of Hans Wurst is particularlyrevealing,
for in the world of theater, he is the one character most likely to
destroy whatever sense of aesthetic illusion an audience might have
enjoyed up until the moment of his arrival. To use Jean Paul's term,
he "annihilates"whatever effect the preceding scene might have made.
His transforming presence reminds us-all too pointedly, in Hiller's
opinion-that the more serious drama we had been witnessing only
moments before is but an illusion.
Hiller, in effect, is reacting against the juxtaposition of sincere
sentiment and ironic distance that is central to the contemporary
parallels between Haydn and Sterne. Those who did not appreciate
the fusion of these two elements were in essence objecting to the
subversion of aesthetic illusion and the concomitant threat to the very
basis of aesthetic experience. The concept of moving the affections
was in danger of being exposed as nothing more than a calculated
scheme based on artifice. Composers before Haydn had been bound
not so much by any specific rules of regularity, as Michaelis had
surmised, as by their commitment to the preservation of aesthetic
illusion.
Haydn's use of devices that call attention to his presence within
the work changes the nature of the aesthetic equation in a fundamental
way, for these devices subvert the sense of illusion. They also
illustrate the manner in which Haydn's new approach distinguishes
itself from the traditional premises of rhetorical irony. In rhetoric,
irony is a trope by which the speaker, through various clues like
gesture, tone of voice, or context, conveys precisely the opposite of
so sehr an andern Orten, wo er nicht hingeh6rt, eindringen m6chte; oder dass die
Componisten nicht alle Augenblicke Comisches und Ernsthaftes in einerley Stfick
unter einander wfirfen. Wie viel Concerte, Sinfonien u.d.g. bekommen wir heut zu
Tage zu h6ren, die uns die Wuirdeder Musik in gesetzten und praichtigenT6nen
fiihlen lassen; aber ehe man es vermuthet, springt Hans Wurst mitten darunter, und
erregt durch seine p6belhaften Possen um so vielmehr unser Mitleid, je ernsthafter
die vorhergegangene Riihrung war." Johann Adam Hiller, "Verzeichnis der im Jahr
NachrichtenundAnweisungen,die
1766 in Italien aufgefiihrten Singspiele," Wichentliche
Musikbetrefend2 (1767):
I3-14.
which similarly
so See also Junker's essay on Dittersdorf in Zwanzig Componisten,
identifies Haydn as the most prominent composer to mix serious and comic elements
in the same work. Charles Burney repeats the general substance of all these remarks
in his GeneralHistoryof Music, vol. 4 (London: the Author, 1789), 6o0i.
85
what he says (e.g., "For Brutus is an honorable man").5' Traditional
rhetoric does not, however, include among its arsenal of techniques
devices that are intentionally designed to mislead or deceive the
listener. Yet this is the essence of the unexpected twist to the
slow-movement theme of the "Surprise" Symphony, or the fugitive
theme within the development section of the "Farewell"Symphony's
first movement. These devices represent a more extended deception of
the audience: the listener becomes a victim of the composer's wit, not
an accomplice.
In fact, techniques like the false ending (op. 33, no. 2, mvt. 4;
Symphony no. 90, mvt. 4) and the unanticipated return of one
movement within the course of another (Symphony no. 46, mvt. 4)
meet most if not all of the criteria identified by Douglas Muecke as
being most commonly associated with irony: (i) a contrast between
appearance and reality; (2) a "confident unawareness," pretended in
the ironist but genuine in the victim of irony, that the appearance is
only an appearance; (3) the comic effect of this unawareness; (4) an
aesthetic element; and (5) the quality of ironic distance.52
This last category of ironic distance draws attention to what
Muecke calls the "double existence" of an artistic creation. As a reader
or listener, we can, at two extremes, be fully absorbed by the sweep
of a novel or a composition, or we can be conscious of the artificiality
of these works. Art-works that cultivate the latter response, as
Muecke points out, provide an important historical antecedent for
Romantic irony.53
Haydn's lifetime spans a period of growing self-consciousness in
all the arts.54Literary narrative, in particular, was becoming increasingly self-conscious during this time: more and more, the reader was
being drawn into the workings of genres like the novel and called upon
to serve as an active participant in its unfolding.55 This technique, it
should be emphasized once again, was not new with Sterne, but he
5I The source for this definition of rhetoricalirony, which was repeated in various
guises by numerous authors well into the nineteenth century, is Quintilian's Institutio
oratoria,book 8, chap. 6, 54. See Booth, A Rhetoricof Irony, 49.
52 Muecke, Irony, 24-48.
53 Muecke, The Compassof Irony, 163-64.
54 See Bernhard Heimrich, Fiktion und Fiktionsironiein Theorieund Dichtungder
deutschenRomantik(Tibingen: Max Niemeyer, 1968), and Lilian R. Furst, Fictionsof
RomanticIrony (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984).
55 See Muecke, The Compassof Irony, 165; John Preston, The CreatedSelf: The
Reader'sRole in Eighteenth-Century
Fiction (New York: Barnes and Noble, I970); and
Robert Alter, Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious
Genre(Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1975)-
86
SOCIETY
was its most prominent and extreme practitioner to date. Wolfgang
Iser has described this change in narrativestrategy as a transition from
the representation of reality to its suggestion, citing TristramShandy
and Tobias Smollett's HumphreyClinkeras works that "markthe end
of the traditional eighteenth-century novel."s6 In similar fashion,
Rene Wellek and Warren Austin place Sterne at the chronological
head of the "romantic-ironicmode of epic narration."57 The "explosion of self-consciousness" in narrative, as Lilian Furst points out, led
to a "metamorphosis of irony" that included a "sabotage of narrative
conventions."'8 Irony, "the least important of the rhetorical tropes"
before the eighteenth century, would go on to provide the conceptual
basis for a large and important body of literature.59 And in the hands
of the German Romantics at the end of the eighteenth century, irony
would become the very core of a new world-view.
I do not mean to suggest that Haydn's instrumental music
perpetually employs devices that foster a sense of ironic distance
between the listener and the work. To be effective, irony must be
used sparingly. There is just enough of a plot in TristramShandyto
allow the countless digressions to be perceived as digressions. Devices
like unprepared modulations or false endings, if used too frequently,
would undermine the contextual, rhetorical base by which these
techniques secure their meaning. Nevertheless, these techniques are
present in Haydn's music to a sufficient degree that they challenged
the composer's contemporaries to reconsider some of the more basic
premises of the listener's relationship toward the musical work. Since
then, such an approach has become almost commonplace in all the
arts: Mann, Brecht, Cage, and many others have cultivated techniques of aesthetic detachment so thoroughly that they no longer have
the same degree of novelty or impact they had in the Classical era.
Nowadays, we expect to be confronted by the artist. But in the late
eighteenth century, ironic distance and the subversion of aesthetic
Patternsof Communication
in ProseFictonfrom
56 Wolfgang Iser, TheImpliedReader:
Bunyan to Beckett(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 78. Walter
Kayser, "Die Anfaingedes modernen Romans im I8. Jahrhundert und seine heutige
und Geisteswissenschaften
28
Krise," DeutscheVierteljahrsschrift
ffr Literaturwissenschaft
(1954): 417-66, makes a similar argument.
57 Rene Welleck and Warren Austin, Theoryof Literature,3rd ed. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1973), 223; see also Ian Watt, TheRiseof theNovel:Studies
in Defoe, Richardson
and Fielding(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1957), 290-95.
5~ Furst, Fictionsof RomanticIrony, 47.
59 Booth, A Rhetoricof Irony, ix.
87
illusion were manifestations of a new and fundamentally different
attitude toward the art of instrumental music.
Boston University
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ABSTRACT
The repeated comparisons during Haydn's own lifetime between his
music and the prose of the English novelist Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
point to qualities that go beyond essentially local devices generally described
as "humorous" or "witty." Both Haydn and Sterne were acknowledged
masters at fusing serious and comic elements in a single work, and both were
strongly associated with the quality of Laune,by which the artist'sdisposition
will inevitably be perceptible in his works. Like Sterne's prose, Haydn's
music frequently calls attention to its own structural rhetoric. By openly
subverting formal conventions of the day, Haydn drew attention to the craft
of his art, thereby making the listener all the more aware of the very
artificiality of that art, just as Sterne had consistently drawn his readers'
attention toward the act of reading. The resulting subversion of aesthetic
illusion led, in both instances, to a sense of ironic distance between the artist,
his work, and his audience. And while techniques that fostered ironic
distance had already enjoyed a long tradition in literature, they represented
a new, and to many critics objectionable, aesthetic of music in the second half
of the eighteenth century.

Bonds, Haydn, Sterne and Musical Irony

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