Haydn’s Sonata in Eb Major, Hoboken XVI: 52

This sonata bears the date of December 1798.1 Haydn wrote it in his sixty-sixth year, twenty years after Mozart wrote his Sonata in A Minor (1778) and two years after Beethoven wrote his Sonata in F Minor, Op. 2, No. 1.2 Even though the younger masters raced ahead of him, Haydn, as is becoming of a genius who relies on God, remained a pioneer, his own man, a man who lent an indestructible body and the wings of an eternal soul to a new perfection. These three are kindred masters, not because they lived during the same period of time, but because they produced tonal synthesis with the same superior strength and were servants of tone who were blessed with connection.