The precise number of keyboard sonatas to be composed by Joseph Haydn throughout the course of his career is impossible to quantify accurately. Historically, Haydn was involved with the writing of his sonatas during a period of great innovation in keyboard instrument technology, a fact which is itself frequently reflected in these ingenious compositions. Haydn's Keyboard Sonata in C, Hob. XVI:1 is the first such work among 47 listed in Anthony van Hoboken's catalog, and belongs to a group probably written prior to 1760, and therefore intended originally for the harpsichord. But we should not take numbering as any indicator of correct chronology, and there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the work known as "Sonata No. 1" was actually the first to be written.

Autograph copies of Haydn's earliest sonatas have long since disappeared, making it sometimes difficult to establish the authenticity of these works. It is also doubly difficult to make accurate attributions of works thought to have been written before 1766, the starting point for the authoritative Wiener Urtext edition of Haydn's works compiled by Christa Landon, in which a number of sonatas previously considered genuine have been discounted.

In the case of this C major work, however, which is regarded as genuine Haydn by most authorities, there is strong stylistic evidence to suggest that the piece could hardly have been written by anyone else. In addition, we must remember that by the time Haydn himself approved a listing of his compositions (drafted between 1799 and 1803) he was already over 70 years of age, and the very act of cataloging all his works would have presented such a daunting task that inevitably some would have been overlooked.

Haydn's earliest keyboard sonatas were originally called "Partitas" or "Divertimentos," and comprise (like this C major work) of just three movements. The keyboard sonata listed as "No. 10" by Hoboken (Hob. XVI:1) is entirely consistent with the style and manner of its contemporaries. It begins with a sprightly sonata form Allegro, whose principal first subject idea becomes the dominant force in the central development section. One notable feature of this particular work is the manner in which Haydn achieves an almost imperceptibly seamless transition from development to recapitulation sections. There follows a simple slow movement (adagio) with a characteristic triplet rhythm throughout, upon which the touching song-like theme is itself based. Somewhat unusually the sonata ends with a dance movement, in this case the classical Minuet with its contrasted trio episode in the minor key.

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