Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn was born on March 31, 1732, in Rohrau, Lower Austria. When he died on May 31, 1809, at the age of 77 in Gumpendorf near Vienna, he had transformed Western music more profoundly than any composer before or after him, and he could look back on one of the most fortunate artistic lives we know of. "I was cut off from the world, no one near me could confuse or torment me, and so I was forced to become original." To properly appreciate Haydn's genius, one must consider, through his most famous quote, what "to become original" meant to him. For a large proportion of the ingredients of Viennese Classicism, now taken for granted—the symphony, the string quartet, the piano sonata, the oratorio, or sonata form—are Joseph Haydn's creations or ideas. Without Haydn's life's work, the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, or Bruckner would never have been composed in the form we know and love. Concerts and Operas by Joseph Haydn Watch on STAGE+ Joseph Haydn was born the son of a wheelwright. His parents could not read music, but the family loved music, as evidenced by the later careers of his brothers Michael (composer) and Johann Evangelist (tenor). Haydn's musical talent was recognized early, and at the age of five, he went to live with relatives in Hainburg an der Donau to be trained as a choir singer. Two years later, he was "discovered" by Georg von Reutter, the musical director of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. Reutter took the child to Vienna, where Joseph spent the next seven years as a choir singer, was trained on various instruments, and began to compose. From 1749, Haydn's high vocal range was a thing of the past. Over the next ten years, the most arduous of his life, he tried to establish himself as a freelance musician and, largely self-taught, to train himself as a composer. Among other things, he served as valet and travel companion to the then-famous composer Niccola Porpora and was also his student. His first symphony, the first of 104 in total (strictly speaking 108, as Symphonies No. 22, 53, and 63 exist in two versions, and Haydn composed an alternative ending for Symphony No. 103), is dated to 1757. Probably in the same year, Haydn received his first important appointment at the court of Count Karl von Morzin at Schloss Lukavec near Pilsen. There he conducted a small orchestra, for which he composed his earliest symphonies. Due to financial difficulties, Count Morzin had to give up his orchestra shortly thereafter, but Haydn quickly received a similar offer of employment: In 1761, he joined the court staff of one of the most powerful figures in the entire Danube Monarchy, Prince Esterházy, as Vice-Kapellmeister. Haydn was to spend most of his career, from 1761 to 1790, in the service of the highly cultured and very wealthy Hungarian princely family Esterházy, who greatly appreciated and promoted Haydn's work and music in general. In 1766, after the death of the previous Kapellmeister, he himself rose to this position. The obligations of a Kapellmeister at such an exposed court entailed an enormous workload. At the family's three main residences, Haydn was responsible as both composer and performing musician for directing the permanent orchestra, for chamber music soirées, and for the annual summer opera season, which also included rearranging and composing operas. For practically seamless consecutive occasions, he had to deliver a huge number of commissioned works, which, however, by no means oppressed him but, on the contrary, fueled him and, as numerous sources confirm, filled him with joy. As his music became increasingly known and popular, he soon composed almost as much for numerous other patrons as for his master, in addition to his court duties. Important commissions, such as for the Paris Symphonies (1785–86) or the original orchestral version of The Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross (1786), came from abroad. From about 1781, Haydn developed a close friendship with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose development he passionately followed and significantly influenced. In 1785, during a family visit to Vienna, he expressed his assessment of the young genius to Mozart's father Leopold with the words, famous to this day: "I tell you before God, as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer I know personally and by name; he has taste, and moreover the greatest compositional knowledge." Mozart and Haydn enjoyed making chamber music together and spurred each other on to peak compositional achievements, especially in the string quartet genre. Besides music, the two men were also connected by their membership in Freemasonry. From 1785, Haydn belonged to the lodge Zur wahren Eintracht, where Mozart was also a journeyman, in addition to his membership in the lodge Zur Wohltätigkeit. Haydn also influenced Ludwig van Beethoven's development. From 1792, he shared the role of Beethoven's composition teacher with Antonio Salieri. Beethoven dedicated his first three piano sonatas, Op. 2, to him. Stylistically, Joseph Haydn's music continuously evolved towards increasingly complex, freer, and sometimes daring forms during his thirty years in the service of the Esterházys. Without question, he was an artist of the kind who always wants to experiment and learn, which also explains the enormous appeal his personality had for younger composers. The year 1790 marked a tremendous turning point in Haydn's life, which, however, was to lead to a very positive development. Prince Nikolaus I von Esterházy died, and his successor, Prince Anton, who also had to contend with his father's gigantic debt, had far less interest in music and disbanded the entire court music. At 58, Haydn suddenly found himself a freelance musician. He eventually accepted an invitation to England, where his symphonies, which he could perform there with a large orchestra, met with enormous resonance. Haydn traveled to London several times until 1795, each time with overwhelming success, bringing him great fame and considerable wealth. In 1793, Haydn acquired a large house with a garden in Gumpendorf, then a suburb, now part of Vienna. There he increasingly turned to the composition of large sacred works. His last trip to England, where he heard some of George Frideric Handel's most famous works, inspired him to compose his great oratorios The Creation and The Seasons. Both works, as well as six other masses, were again commissioned by the Esterházy family, who, since 1794, had been led by a more musical head, Prince Nikolaus II. The premiere of The Seasons and the last three string quartets—the Emperor Quartet, the Fifths Quartet, and The Sunrise—mark the end of Haydn's brilliant career. From 1802, due to his poor physical condition, he no longer felt able to compose, although he was still full of drive despite his advanced age. "How much remains to be done in this glorious art!" he wrote in a famous letter. Numerous independent sources describe Joseph Haydn as a small, amiable, and sociable man who was at peace with himself and the world. He was considered kind-hearted, generous, and optimistic, and was universally liked for his rather coarse humor, which often found expression in his compositions: Haydn, for example, did not shy away from suddenly having all the musicians play chaotically in a concert to startle the audience. Not a single credible image of his face has been preserved. Since all portrait painters of his life sought to conceal an unfavorable, scarred appearance, none of his portraits resemble another. 108 symphonies, 52 piano sonatas, 83 string quartets, 46 piano trios, 14 masses, 6 oratorios, 24 operas, and the German national anthem form the core of Joseph Haydn's gigantic oeuvre. The German anthem is actually the theme of the slow movement from Haydn's String Quartet in C major, Op. 76 No. 3, the Emperor Quartet of 1797. In the same year, Haydn had composed this theme for the song Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser and later varied it in the string quartet. On March 27, 1808, Joseph Haydn appeared in public for the last time at a performance of The Creation, which Ludwig van Beethoven also attended. On May 31, 18 days after the occupation of Vienna by Napoleon's troops, he died of general exhaustion.