Franz Josef Haydn's Keyboard Sonata in D major, H. 16/33, was composed in 1778 and published in the early 1780s, a period during which Haydn is thought to have begun adopting the fortepiano, with its expanded articulatory possibilities (rather than the older harpsichord, with its less nuanced mechanism) as his instrument of choice. This sonata suggests that Haydn was thinking in more dynamically oriented terms at the time of its composition, with the kind of characteristically witty pauses, sudden accented notes or weighty chords, and metrical play that would have benefited from the fortepiano's expanded range of inflection. The work is cast in the standard three-movement form, with a fast opening movement, a central Adagio, and a closing Tempo di Menuetto (in place of the slightly more common Presto finale). The lively opening movement exploits a common gesture for Haydn: rising or falling arpeggios executed so quickly as to hover between melodic curve and ornamentally rolled chord. These ornate gestures outline the skeletons of simple melodic shape, which direct themselves toward clear structural articulations. The bass voice serves as comic relief in this movement, unexpectedly echoing the subject from the depths of the keyboard or heralding the development section's initial shift to the minor mode with a loud, stridently chromatic chord and a portentous pause. The D minor second movement is plaintive and Spartan, the isolated halves of its simple balanced phrases separated by pensive breaths. As the steady arpeggio accompaniment gains its footing and the harmony moves to F major, the melody likewise grows more lyrical and optimistic. It is the tension between these moods and modes that lends the movement its expressive impetus and in fact lingers in the final unresolved dominant chord of the second movement. This leads directly, as one often finds in Haydn's keyboard works, attacca into the sprightly D major of the final movement. Having been influenced by C.P.E. Bach's use of "altered reprise" form in some of his keyboard sonatas, Haydn treats the reprise of his final movement with considerable freedom. The second appearance vastly outshines the first in terms of melodic ornamentation, variety of texture, and virtuosic show; the intervening episodes show similar invention. The third and final iteration of the reprise appears at first to return to the simple da capo version, but suddenly launches into a series of frenetic runs across the keyboard that carry the work to its flashy conclusion.

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