Joseph Haydn

1732–1809, AUSTRIAN

Highly prolific, Haydn wrote more than a hundred symphonies and a host of chamber works that founded the Classical era in Western music. His works were a major influence on Mozart and more especially on Beethoven.

JOSEPH HAYDN
In this 18th-century portrait, Haydn is shown hard at work and elegantly dressed in clothes that suggest his considerable success. From humble beginnings, he built himself an impressive and lucrative career.

IN CONTEXT

The Esterházy princes

The Esterházys were a Hungarian noble family, princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and among the largest landowners in Europe. They were loyal subjects of the Hapsburg emperors in Vienna, although often wealthier than the Hapsburgs themselves. Their Esterháza palace, begun in the 1760s, was on such a grand scale it was known as the “Hungarian Versailles.” It earned Haydn’s main patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy (1714–1790), the sobriquet “the Magnificent.” Prince Nikolaus II (1765–1833) was also a patron of music, commissioning Beethoven’s Mass in C in 1807, but the family’s fortunes never recovered from his profligacy and debauchery.

NIKOLAUS I, WEARING THE UNIFORM OF HIS HUNGARIAN INFANTRY REGIMENT

Franz Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 in the village of Rohrau, near the border between Austria and Hungary, the son of a wagonmaker and a cook. Neither of his parents was musically literate, but an uncle was responsible for the music at a church in the nearby town of Hainburg. At the age of five, Haydn was sent to live in this relative’s house and join in the church music-making. There he was spotted by the choirmaster from Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral and recruited to the cathedral choir. From the age of eight, he endured the casual ill-treatment—poor food, frequent flogging—visited upon 18th-century choristers, but picked up valuable practical musical experience.

ST. STEPHEN’S CATHEDRAL
Vienna’s imposing cathedral, one of the city’s most symbolic buildings, is where Joseph Haydn and his younger brother Michael served as choristers.

From cathedral to street

By the age of 17, Haydn had lost the pure treble voice required of choirboys. An incident in which he allegedly cut off the pigtail of a fellow chorister was used as a pretext for his dismissal. Thrown out with only the clothes on his back, he survived as a busker, singing serenades on street corners.

From this unpromising start, with determination, luck, and irrepressible talent, he built a musical career. While scratching a living in Vienna, he taught himself the basics of composition from manuals and the study of other people’s music, notably the keyboard works of C.P.E. Bach. Exploiting a chance encounter, he made himself a useful servant to Italian composer and teacher Nicola Porpora, receiving in return advice on composition and contacts with potential patrons among the aristocracy.

Court life

Around the age of 27, Haydn secured his first full-time employment as musical director at the modest court of Count Ferdinand Maximilian von Morzin. It was for Count Morzin’s small orchestra that he wrote his first symphonies. At last enjoying a regular income, he rushed into a marriage with Maria Anna Keller, the daughter of a hairdresser. The couple proved incompatible—Haydn had really been in love with Maria Anna’s sister—and endured an acrimonious childless union, from which both sought relief with other lovers, until Maria Anna’s death in 1800.

In 1761, Haydn moved his services to a far grander establishment, the princely court of the Hungarian Esterházy family (see box). By 1766, he was the Esterházy’s director of music, in control of an orchestra of more than 20 players—large for its time—and of an opera house at the newly built Esterháza palace. Technically he was only a senior palace servant, but he in fact enjoyed an enviable degree of independence. He was in effect permitted to use the court musicians as a testbed for his compositions and could, as he later said, “be as bold as I pleased.” His only significant constraint was the need to write many pieces for the baryton (a now extinct instrument related to the cello), which Prince Nikolaus Esterházy liked to play.

BARYTON, c. 1720
At the request of his employer, Haydn composed around 200 pieces (mostly trios) for the baryton, an instrument that had both plucked and bowed strings.

Classical innovation

Haydn met the requirements of the court for operas and concerts to entertain the household and its guests, who sometimes included the Austrian empress, Maria Theresa. His operas are now largely forgotten, but the orchestral and chamber music he wrote at this time founded the Classical style in Western music. He established the four-movement symphony as the standard orchestral work and virtually invented the string quartet and piano trio. In his hands, formal musical structures, such as the sonata and rondo, revealed their rich potential for variety of expression and dramatic effect.

Later critics have identified a Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) period in his music of the early 1770s, allegedly reflecting a wider cultural turn toward troubled emotion. But Haydn did not fit the profile of an anguished Romantic; he was a man of sanguine temperament who peppered his works with musical jokes and surprises. He knew how to evoke grave sadness, gentle melancholy, and aching beauty, but his works always resolved into a bracing display of energy and joy in life.

International reputation

Haydn labored in relative isolation at the Esterháza palace, but enjoyed mounting fame in the wider world as his works filtered into print. From 1779, the Esterházys allowed him to publish for his own profit and he began to write for the international market. His Paris symphonies, written in 1785–1786, were commissioned for performance in the French capital.

He was allowed to spend more time in Vienna, where he met Mozart, forming a relationship of mutual admiration and influence. Meanwhile court life was enhanced by a sexual liaison with a young Italian mezzo-soprano, Luigia Polzelli, carried on with the connivance of her husband.

In 1790, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy died and his successor, Prince Anton, was uninterested in maintaining an expensive musical establishment. Although still on the Esterházy payroll, Haydn found himself with no orchestra and little to do. Musical impresario Johann Peter Salomon (see box) was eager to engage a composer whose work was famous but who had never been seen by the public. He enlisted Haydn for a series of concerts in London in 1791.

ESTERHAZA PALACE
In 1766–1790, Haydn lived in a four-room apartment in servant’s quarters near the main Esterháza palace. The remoteness of the palace led to boredom among his musicians, but allowed Haydn time to develop his compositions.

Triumph in London

Haydn’s arrival in music-mad London caused “a great sensation.” He was wined and dined, met the king, went to the races, received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University, and conducted a romance with a widow, Rebecca Schröter. His concerts, for which he wrote six new symphonies, were a triumph. Known today as his “London” Symphonies, they are among his best-loved works. Haydn went again to England, in 1794–1795, composing six more symphonies for the occasion. The London concerts were a success financially as well as musically. He was now a wealthy man.

The accession of a new Esterházy prince, Nikolaus II, in 1794 led to a partial resumption of Haydn’s duties. He produced a series of Masses and in 1797 wrote a patriotic anthem for the Austrian Empire, then engaged in desperate warfare against the armies of the French Revolution. Partly through the influence of the young Beethoven, Haydn explored new musical territory. Composed in 1797–1798, his final set of string quartets, Op. 76, and his last piano trios exceed any of his previous chamber works in intensity and expressive range.

Two oratorios, The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), formed the climax of his creative life. Inspired by Handel’s oratorios that Haydn had seen in London, they set libretti by Gottfried van Swieten (based respectively on the Book of Genesis and the poetry of James Thomson). The Creation in particular inspired fervent enthusiasm in its audiences. It was given more than 80 performances in Haydn’s lifetime, both in Vienna and abroad.

Aging and ill, Haydn retired in 1802. His last appearance was at a performance of The Creation given in his honor in 1808. He died the following year in Vienna. His final days were not peaceful, coinciding with a major defeat of his beloved Austria by French forces in the Napoleonic Wars.

VIENNA BOMBARDED
During Haydn’s terminal illness in May 1809, French troops besieging Vienna bombarded the district where he lived with explosive shells. By the time the composer died on the last day of the month, the French had occupied the city.

IN PROFILE

Johann Peter Salomon

Born in Bonn, German musician Johann Salomon (1745–1815) was the son of an oboist. He moved to London in 1781, becoming a leading figure in the city’s musical life as an admired violinist, composer, and conductor. He is most remembered, however, as the musical impresario who brought Haydn to Britain in the 1790s. He was later one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society, which created the first permanent orchestra in London in 1813. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

JOHANN PETER SALOMON, THOMAS HARDY, 1790–1792