Hypermeter and phrase structure analysis of the exposition of Haydn’s piano sonata in C major,

Hob.XVI:35, with durational reduction of ms. 1-35

The main reason I took interest in this sonata by Haydn was its sort of improvisatory feel. Some

elements of the music I could already tell played a role in this - for example the

accompanimental triplet motive that becomes more formally important as the piece goes on, the

simple, almost cheesy themes that nevertheless are very energetic and simply accompanied.

When reading and playing through it I began to wonder what formal elements, and more

specifically what elements of phrase structure and hypermeter, if any, were used to achieve this
goal. I was mostly inspired by the articles by Ng and Rothstein, who talked about phrase rhythm

and hypermeter and the interaction between those elements and the musical material. I thought

Haydn’s piece would be sort of rigid analytically, but there are actually nice points of contraction

and expansion of the hypermeter to fit tonal goals that feel quite organic to the piece. The piece

itself is in many parts an uninterrupted 2 or 4 hypermeter. Haydn does however cleverly interrupt

the meter at important junctures, to give in different cases maybe a larger sense of drama, as well

as to extend a short coda after some cadences. My durational reduction above has three examples

of Haydn’s interruption and expansion of hypermeter. Both are telling of a larger compositional

goal, mainly to create larger areas of neighbor and passing chords all revolving around the

dominant. For example, in the first interrupted meter of mm. 13-16, shown in my reduction in

mm. 4-5, Haydn increases the harmonic rhythm dramatically encircling the dominant, so that the

arrival of the C chord can be an elision into a sort of coda figure between chords I and IV. The

hypermeter is interrupted again in ms. 27, mm. 7-8 in my reduction, by a new idea which again

increases the harmonic rhythm, this time circling around the new tonic of G. This interruption

also serves the same goal as the previous ones, to increase the drama of reaching the dominant.

Now in G, after this encircling figure, Haydn reaches a large half cadence on D that lasts five

bars instead of our expected four. This is yet another example of this temporal play of expanding

and contracting the hypermeter to serve a sort of narrative, functional-harmonic goal. I’m not

sure how effective this alone is in capturing the feel of this piece - in fact I may have been right

to look more towards these small motives and other base elements like ornamentation that give

the piece an improvisatory feel. Nevertheless I’ve learned a good deal about how Haydn may

have used hypermeter as an expressive tool through these examples. I think in my analysis and

write up there are certain aspects of both descriptive and suggestive analysis. Descriptive is the
most prominent in terms of the hypermetric reduction and the score’s annotation, but I think

taking into account the other formal considerations and its comparison to a narrative is partly

suggestive - it’s giving rationale to a composer’s technique.