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This article is an extended and revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie in Mainz in 2009. I thank Thomas Christensen, Giorgio Sanguinetti, Markus Neuwirth and Philipp Teriete for their inspiring comments.
Ich schriebe fleissig, doch nicht ganz gegründet, bis ich endlich die gnade hatte von dem berühmten Herrn Porpora (so dazumahl in Wienn ware) die ächten Fundamente der sezkunst zu erlehrnen.1
I wrote diligently but not in a well-founded way until, finally, I had the good fortune to learn the true fundamentals of composition from the celebrated Herr Porpora (who was at that time in Vienna).
One of the most important sentences in Haydn's autobiographical sketch of 1776 was for a long time the least understood. While other possible influences on the young Haydn (such as Johann Joseph Fux and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach) have frequently attracted the attention of Haydn scholars and still exert a strong influence on our idea of Haydn's education, 2 the encounter with Nicola Porpora - the only composer besides Dittersdorf that Haydn mentions by name in his autobiography - has not advanced beyond a small number of studies that do not collectively yield much insight. The notion put forward by various authors that Porpora gave Haydn a basic education in Italian and vocal technique, which was then reflected in Haydn's use of certain vocal idioms and figurations, 3 can be only half of the picture, since Haydn could hardly have regarded these things as 'the true fundamentals of composition'. It is telling that Akio Mayeda, who pursues this hypothesis, has to conclude that one cannot 'definitively trace a direct influence'. 4 Federico Celestini also concludes that it is 'not possible to identify convergences in compositional processes between Porpora and Haydn'.5 Meanwhile, neither author raises the question of how to interpret Haydn's remark about 'true fundamentals'. Even James Dack's observation that Porpora exposed Haydn to the 'current Italianate style in Viennese church music' requires expansion and clarification if it is to explain precisely what Haydn learned. 6 The speculation advanced in The New Grove that 'it may well have been at Porpora's instigation that [Haydn] systematically worked through Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum'...