ABSTRACT
In his Treatise on the Art of Music of 1784, the Reverend William Jones dismissed Joseph Haydn as a "wild warbler of the wood," whose chamber works "differ from some pieces of G. F. Handel as the talk and laughter of the Tea-table differs from the oratory of the Bar and the Pulpit." This chapter is concerned with features of musical discourse within the chamber that extend beyond a self-sufficient private exchange to provoke awareness of dialogue in play between listeners and players. It argues that Haydn's procedures challenge Adorno's notion that "in chamber music no provision is made for any difference between player and listener." The marking of that difference in Opus 33 suggests the strategies of a composer addressing a newly extended audience in the chamber. Haydn's point of departure in the quartet that opened Artaria's edition of Opus 33 might be taken as symbolic of new beginnings—and endings.
