ABSTRACT
Joseph Haydn's texts are one stage in a rhetorical process. Like Giuseppe Cicero's texts, they reflect performance but almost surely not the whole performance. That Haydn's interests as a composer were first and foremost in the performance of his texts may be corroborated by many statements about his desire to create certain effects and to provoke certain reactions from his audience. The autograph of the same "Genzinger Sonata" presents remarkable testimony of Haydn's integrated approach, from conceived idea through rhetorical figure to declamatory gesture. Teaching oratory appears to be exactly what Haydn did in his published keyboard sonatas. The act of performance was described and, one may assume, conceived of in rhetorical terms. Striking parallels can be drawn between the terms and phrases used by C. P. E. Bach, Johann Agricola, Johann Joachim Quantz, and Daniel Gottlob Turk, and those of Johann Christoph Gottsched, Marcus Fabius Quintilian, or any other author on classical rhetoric.
