Editing Joseph Haydn (section)

=== Structure ===
[[File:Haydn Kaiserlied Reinschrift.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.3|Original copy of "{{lang|de|[[Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser]]|italic=no}}" in Haydn's hand]]
A central characteristic of Haydn's music is the development of larger structures out of very short, simple musical [[Motif (music)|motifs]], often derived from standard accompanying figures. The music is often quite formally concentrated, and the important musical events of a movement can unfold rather quickly.  W. Dean Sutcliffe  mentions this in a criticism of contemporary Haydn performance practice: 

<blockquote>
[Haydn's] music sometime seems to 'live on its nerves'&nbsp;... It is above all in this respect that Haydn performances often fail, whereby most interpreters lack the mental agility to deal with the ever-changing 'physiognomy' of Haydn's music, subsiding instead into an ease of manner and a concern for broader effects that they have acquired in their playing of Mozart.<ref>Sutcliffe (1989:343)</ref>
</blockquote>

Haydn's work was central to the development of what came to be called [[sonata form]]. His practice, however, differed in some ways from that of [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]] and [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]], his younger contemporaries who likewise excelled in this form of composition. Haydn was particularly fond of the so-called [[Sonata form#Monothematic expositions|monothematic exposition]], in which the music that establishes the dominant key is similar or identical to the opening theme. Haydn also differs from Mozart and Beethoven in his [[Recapitulation (music)|recapitulation]] sections, where he often rearranges the order of themes compared to the exposition and uses extensive [[thematic development]]. Of these "rearranged recapitulations", Rosemary Hughes writes

<blockquote>
 Having begun to 'develop', he could not stop; his recapitulations begin to take on irregular contours, sometimes sharply condensed, sometimes surprisingly expanded, losing their first tame symmetry to regain a balance of a far higher and more satisfying order.<ref>Hughes (1970:12)</ref>
</blockquote>

Haydn's formal inventiveness also led him to integrate the [[fugue]] into the classical style and to enrich the rondo form with more cohesive tonal logic (see [[sonata rondo form]]). Haydn was also the principal exponent of the [[double variation]] form—variations on two alternating themes, which are often major- and minor-mode versions of each other.