Haydn's Keyboard Music: Studies in Performance Practice (Oxford Monographs on Music) - Tapa dura

written in a continuous and stylish prose which makes it a delight to read ... An excellent bibliography and index finish off the volume. It is highly recommended. (Harpsichord & fortepiano, Vol 9, No 1, Spring 2001)

Harrison is always eager to examine every scrap of evidence in detail, spelling out his thought processes before arriving at cautious conclusions ... excellent book. (David Rowland, Early Music)

this is an extremely valuable study ... (Early Music Review, 32, July 1997)

If a choice must be limited ot one text on how to perform Haydn's keyboard music, the edge must go to Harrison's for its comprehensiveness, clarity and exclusive focus ... this is a valuable contribution to what will certainly be a continuing discussion of an elusive subject. (A. Peter Brown, Music and Letters)

Harrison provides useful insights into the performance practices concerning Joseph Haydn's sonatas for keyboard instruments ... graduate students and faculty will find much of interest in this book. (W. E. Grim, CHOICE)

In this comprehensive study of performance practice in Haydn's keyboard music, Bernard Harrison confronts the important issues facing any performer of Haydn's keyboard music. He deals with the full range of Haydn's keyboard work - concertos, divertimenti, concertini, trios, Klavierstücke, and sonatas - and emphasizes the connection between performance practice and compositional style. He addresses many of the most controversial issues in recent research on the performance practice of eighteenth- century music, and takes a stance on some of the recurring controversies in Haydn research.

Haydn's ornamentation is treated in four extensive chapters which range over Haydn's changing notational practices, the large corpus of 18th-century theoretical information on performance, and an examination of the music itself. Other issues in performance are elucidated in wide-ranging discussions, and Harrison presents new evidence on the question of the influence of C.P.E. Bach on Haydn. He surveys broader aspects of interpretation, commenting sympathetically but critically on the phenomenon of `early music'.