Guest
Divertimento in G major - J. Haydn - Allegro - with score - Daniel Roberts | Pianist The keyboard divertimenti resemble the sonata, but its purpose was more for entertainment. Haydn’s divertimentos tend to have three movements in a quick-slow-quick form, but the 18th century divertimento can have up to nine movements. The opening and closing allegro movements are usually in sonata and are characteristically galant. In a letter from Haydn to the Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, December 6, 1766, Haydn references six new divertimenti that he had composed. This divertimento, seeing as it is classified by Landon as Divertimento No. 1, might be among the divertimenti that he is referencing: “The most joyous Name Feast (which, Your Highness, with the grace of God, may spend in most complete fortune and felicity) obliged me most duly…to deliver to Him, in all humbleness, 6 new divertimenti…. Furthermore, I received the high order to have the divertimenti composed by me (twelve pieces in all) bound. but since Your Highness had returned to me some of them to be changed and I did not annotate those changes into my score, I ask you most obediently to let come to me the first 12 pieces only for the duration of three days, thereafter also the others, one by one, so that everything, including the changes, could be copied well and correctly, and bound.” Daniel Roberts | Pianist Recorded at Durham.
