The title of Emily I. Dolan's The Orchestral Revolution echoes two of her historical sources. Most clearly there is the 1827 article in the Revue musicale by François-Joseph Fétis, “Des révolutions de l'orchestre,” that takes Haydn's orchestration as a turning point in music history (p. 252). Yet the revolution metaphor also appears in Giuseppe Carpani's biography, Le Haydine (1812).1 “The genius and studies of Haydn's predecessors had been directed toward the voice,” writes Carpani. “They employed instruments only as an agreeable accessory: like the ornaments in architecture or the accessories and landscape in a history painting. Music was a monarchy: the aria reigned absolute; the accompaniments were only subjects.” Haydn, in this narrative, deposed the voice, liberated instruments, and thereby founded a “republic of different, yet connected sounds” (quoted on p. 157).

Fétis seems to describe a compositional revolution, considering Haydn's influence on Beethoven, Rossini, and others. Carpani's references...

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