Joseph Haydn
"I was cut off from the world. There was no one to confuse or torment me, so I was forced to become original."
At a glance 🔭💭
People at his side ⏳🌊
- FamilyMathias HaydnAn amateur harpist father whose folk songs, sung every evening, became the first root of Haydn's music.
- TeacherNicola PorporaHe treated Haydn harshly, working him as a servant, but taught him composition and Italian vocal technique.
- FamilyMaria Anna KellerHis wife, whom he married in 1760; she was indifferent to music, and the couple had no children.
- PatronageNikolaus EsterházyHis patron for about thirty years, whose isolated estate, far removed from the world, pushed him toward originality instead of holding him back.
- FriendshipWolfgang Amadeus MozartA friend who held him in deep mutual esteem; Mozart dedicated a set of string quartets to Haydn, and Haydn mourned his early death for a long time.
- InfluenceGeorge Frideric HandelThe two never met, but a performance of Messiah that Haydn heard in London in 1791 became the decisive spark for The Creation and The Seasons.
I. A boy in Rohrau · 1732–1740 (age 0–8)
(birth) He was born on March 31, 1732, in Rohrau, a border village east of Vienna, Austria. He was baptized the following day, April 1. His father, Mathias Haydn, was a wheelwright, and his mother, Maria Koller, was a cook in the household of the local lord, Count Harrach. He was the second of twelve children, many of whom died young. (music) His father was a self-taught amateur harpist who sang folk songs with his mother every evening. Neither could read music, but the songs they learned by ear filled the household, and young Joseph grew up listening to those sounds. He later said he traced the roots of his musical sensibility to the songs of this humble home. (parting) When he was six, a relative named Johann Matthias Frankh, recognizing his talent, took him to the neighboring town of Hainburg to begin formal musical training. Life apart from his parents was hard. He later recalled that he often went hungry and was beaten in Frankh's house, but it was there that he first learned to read music and play several instruments. (brothers) His younger brother Michael Haydn later became a composer of renown in Salzburg, and another brother, Johann Evangelist, became a singer in Joseph's own orchestra. That three brothers from a poor rural craftsman's household should all take up music as a livelihood was a rare thing.
II. St. Stephen's and the years on the street · 1740–1759 (age 8–27)
(chosen) In 1740, Georg von Reutter, kapellmeister of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, stopped in Hainburg while scouting for boys with good voices and chose the eight-year-old Haydn for the boys' choir. He moved to Vienna and spent about nine years there, singing. (self-taught) The choir offered only vocal training and basic instruction on instruments, with almost no teaching in composition theory. Haydn obtained Johann Joseph Fux's counterpoint treatise and a collection of keyboard sonatas by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach on his own and studied them late into the night, teaching himself to compose. The habit of wrestling with scores without a formal teacher, formed in these years, stayed with him for the rest of his working life. (expulsion) When his voice broke, Reutter no longer considered him useful. According to one story that has come down, he was caned and dismissed after cutting off a fellow chorister's pigtail as a prank. Around 1749, the seventeen-year-old Haydn was thrown out onto the streets of Vienna with nowhere to sleep and no money. (hardship) For several years he drifted from one garret to another, teaching violin and keyboard and earning small change playing serenades. He became servant and accompanist to the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, learning composition and Italian vocal technique in exchange for shining shoes and tending to his clothes. Porpora treated him roughly, but Haydn endured the humiliation and absorbed the idiom of Europe's high musical circles. Around this time he began, little by little, to make a name for himself, meeting patrons such as Countess Thun and Baron Fürnberg.
III. Marriage and the first kapellmeister post · 1759–1766 (age 27–34)
(Morzin) In 1759, he obtained his first formal post as kapellmeister to the Bohemian nobleman Count Karl von Morzin. There he wrote his first symphony for a small orchestra. In this stable position he could, for the first time, freely experiment with orchestral writing under his own name. (marriage) The following year, 1760, he married Maria Anna Keller, daughter of a wigmaker. The story goes that the woman he had actually set his heart on was her younger sister Therese, but when Therese entered a convent, he married the elder sister instead. The marriage was strained from the start. His wife had no interest in his music, and the two grew so estranged that, according to one anecdote, she later used his manuscripts to line pie tins. The couple had no children. (employment) When Count Morzin's finances collapsed and his orchestra was disbanded, Haydn moved in 1761 to become vice-kapellmeister to the great Hungarian house of Esterházy. Under the aging senior kapellmeister Gregor Werner, he built his skills assisting with church music, and when Werner died in 1766, he finally rose to the full post of kapellmeister. It had taken fewer than thirty-four years for the son of a poor wheelwright to become the music director of one of Europe's leading noble houses.
His first symphony, written for Count Morzin's small orchestra — a first step taken as kapellmeister.
- The opening of the first movement begins with an orchestral effect that grows louder from a quiet start (a crescendo), showing how the young Haydn absorbed a technique then fashionable with the Mannheim orchestra.
- The second movement, a simple, song-like movement scored for strings alone without winds, reveals the restrained orchestration typical of his early works.
- The horn call at the close of the third movement borrows the mood of hunting music, reflecting the taste of aristocratic society at the time.
IV. Isolation and creation at Esterháza · 1766–1790 (age 34–58)
(isolation) Prince Nikolaus Esterházy was a patron with a taste for splendor. He built a grand new palace called Esterháza in the middle of the Hungarian steppe and moved his orchestra there, and in this place far from Vienna, Haydn lived effectively cut off from the world. He later recalled, "I was cut off from the world. There was no one to confuse or torment me, and so I was forced to become original." Over nearly thirty years of this isolation, he wrote symphonies, string quartets, and operas experimentally, perfecting an idiom entirely his own. (farewell) In 1772, aware that his musicians were exhausted from being kept away from their families for so long, Haydn arranged the final movement of his Symphony No. 45 so that the players would blow out their candles and leave the stage one by one. As the two remaining violins brought the piece to a quiet close, the prince caught the meaning and granted the orchestra leave the very next day. (Mozart) In the early 1780s he met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Vienna. Despite the difference in age, the two men held each other's gifts in deep esteem and even played chamber music together. Mozart dedicated a set of six string quartets to Haydn, and Haydn told Mozart's father, Leopold, "Your son is the greatest composer known to me." In Vienna at the same time, Christoph Willibald Gluck's reform operas were the talk of the town, and Haydn, too, held his work in high regard. (companion) During this time he grew close to Luigia Polzelli, wife of the orchestra's Italian singer Luigi Polzelli, exchanging letters with her for years. Records survive suggesting he believed her son Alois Anton might have been his own child. In his unhappy marriage, he found comfort in ties such as these.
A piece written to speak for musicians kept apart from their families, in which the players actually leave the stage one by one in the final movement.
- In the closing adagio (slow), the score directs each player to blow out a candle and leave the stage upon finishing their part, so the listener actually hears the ensemble thinning out.
- The quiet duet exchanged by the two violins that remain to the end is read as Haydn's own farewell to the concertmaster.
- The choice of F-sharp minor, an unusual key for the period, lends the work a dark, unsettled color, and it is often discussed in connection with the so-called Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) tendency.
A set that Haydn himself declared he had written "in a completely new and special way," and the impetus behind Mozart's dedication of string quartets to Haydn.
- The scherzo (a faster, more playful triple-meter movement than the minuet) that he substituted for the minuet reveals Haydn's characteristic sense of humor.
- The texture, in which the four instruments converse as equals, is far more sophisticated than in the string quartets of the previous generation.
- The final movement of Quartet No. 5, 'The Joke,' is famous for its repeated false endings (passages that sound as though the piece has finished when it has not), tricking concert audiences into applauding too soon.
V. Freedom in London · 1791–1795 (age 59–63)
(freedom) When Prince Nikolaus died in 1790, his successor Prince Anton had no interest in music and disbanded the orchestra. He kept Haydn on with a nominal salary alone, granting him freedom in all but name. After long years bound to the court, Haydn could for the first time act on his own will. (London) At the invitation of the impresario Johann Peter Salomon, he visited London twice, in 1791 and 1794. His new symphonies drove audiences into raptures, and Oxford University granted him an honorary doctorate in music. Unlike his years in Vienna, where he was treated as a servant bound to the court, London gave him his first experience of a public and a market that lionized the artist. He also grew close to the widow Rebecca Schroeter, exchanging tender letters with her. (Handel) At a Handel commemoration concert held at Westminster Abbey in 1791, he was deeply shaken to hear Messiah sung by a chorus of hundreds. He never forgot the overwhelming power of that massed choir, and the experience became the seed of the great oratorios he would later write. (loss and a pupil) In 1792, while staying in Vienna between his London trips, he took the young Ludwig van Beethoven on as a pupil. Their clashing temperaments made the relationship far from smooth, but Haydn recognized his talent. The following year, he received word in London of Mozart's death and grieved deeply. He had once said he wished to bring Mozart to London to work together, which made the loss all the more painful to bear.
A work that met with great success before London audiences, the fruit of a freedom in which he met the public directly for the first time, out from under the shadow of the court.
- In the second-movement theme and variations, a very loud chord (fortissimo) that erupts without warning out of a quiet melody gave the work its nickname 'Surprise'; the story goes that Haydn meant to startle audience members who had dozed off at the premiere.
- After this sudden chord, the original quiet theme resumes as though nothing had happened, a moment that carries Haydn's characteristic mischievous humor.
- The lively theme of the fourth movement borrows folk-dance rhythms, designed to sound familiar to London audiences' ears.
VI. The Creation and The Seasons · 1795–1803 (age 63–71)
(Return) In 1795 he returned to Vienna for good. The new Esterházy prince, Nicolaus II, revived the orchestra on a small scale and recalled him, but this time his only obligation was light — composing one mass each summer. Past sixty, he was now the most revered composer in Europe. (Creation) Stirred by Handel's choruses, which he had heard in London, he wrote the oratorio The Creation to a libretto arranged by Baron Gottfried van Swieten. At its 1798 premiere, the introduction depicting chaos and the explosive chord set to the words "Let there be light" overwhelmed the audience. He then completed The Seasons in 1801, depicting rural life through the four seasons. Both works were suffused with reverent wonder at nature as God's creation, echoing the simple, unshaken faith he held throughout his life. (Anthem) In 1797 he composed "God Save Emperor Francis" for Emperor Francis. This melody would later become the national anthem of Austria and Germany, and he himself reused it as the theme of the second movement of the String Quartet Op. 76, No. 3. Though raised frugally, he had by this time accumulated considerable wealth, and he bought a house in the Viennese suburbs, where he tended a garden in preparation for his remaining years.
Born from the deep impression made by Handel's Messiah, heard in London, this monumental work is filled with reverence for faith and nature.
- The introduction, 'The Representation of Chaos,' lacks a clear tonal center and mixes in dissonance, depicting the unordered state before creation.
- The moment the chorus bursts into a sudden C major tutti following the words "Let there be light" is regarded as the most famous passage in the entire oratorio.
- In Part Three, the passage where the orchestra imitates the roar of the lion, the movement of the tiger, and the wriggling of the worm is often cited as a prime example of nature-depicting music.
- Adam and Eve's duet, with its pastoral, tender melody, offers a human moment that contrasts with the oratorio's grandeur.
A late-life masterpiece set to a libretto by Baron van Swieten, depicting the four seasons of rural life and filled with affection for simple living.
- The introduction to 'Spring' depicts nature emerging from winter, conveying the turn of the season through gradually brightening orchestral colors.
- The storm scene in 'Summer' depicts thunder and lightning through a violent tutti of winds and timpani (drums).
- The hunting chorus in 'Autumn' borrows the horn's signal calls to paint the vigor of the outdoors.
- The old man's monologue at the end of 'Winter' carries a quiet reflection on life's close, and many listeners hear in it an echo of Haydn's own old age.
VII. The final days · 1803–1809 (age 71–77)
(Decline) From around 1803, his memory and physical strength visibly deteriorated, and he could no longer complete new compositions. He suffered for a long time from a nasal polyp removal surgery and recurring swelling, and he would tell visitors, half in jest, that he had become an old instrument. (Siege) In the spring of 1809, Napoleon's French forces besieged and bombarded Vienna. Even as cannon fire landed nearby and shook his house, he is said to have reassured his family and servants, saying, "As long as Haydn is here, nothing will happen." A French officer is said to have posted a guard of honor before his house, and there is also a story that he personally sang an aria from The Creation to comfort him. (Final melody) A few days before his death, he rose from his sickbed and played the emperor's anthem he had composed three times on the piano. It was the last habit of a man who had always been gentle and regular. On May 31, 1809, he died in Vienna at the age of seventy-seven. (Afterward) He was buried in Hundsturm Cemetery, but before long two men obsessed with phrenology stole his skull from the grave. It was not until 1954 — 145 years after his death — that his body and skull were reunited and laid to rest together in the family tomb in Eisenstadt. This composer, who had upheld simple faith and diligent work throughout his life, could only find rest after enduring strange twists of fate even in death.
A work built on the emperor's anthem he himself composed, Haydn played this melody on the piano even a few days before his death.
- The second movement takes the emperor's anthem melody as its theme in variation form (a form that repeats a single theme, transformed in different ways each time), with each of the four instruments taking up the melody in turn, singing out the theme in its own voice.
- This second-movement theme later became the national anthem of Austria and Germany, so it may strike listeners as a familiar melody.
- The first movement alternates lively rhythms with lyrical melodies, revealing the mature sense of balance of Haydn's late years.
Glossary 📚🔎
Symphony
A large-scale instrumental work for orchestra in several movements. Haydn refined this form and made it the standard for later composers.
String quartet
A chamber ensemble of two violins, viola, and cello, and the works written for it. Haydn effectively established the framework for this ensemble and is known as the 'father of the string quartet.'
Kapellmeister
The top post responsible for all music at a noble court, overseeing composition, conducting, and the management of musicians.
Oratorio
A large-scale vocal work on biblical or religious themes, performed by soloists, chorus, and orchestra without staging. A form that carries on Handel's tradition.
Sonata form
A movement structure that presents a theme, develops it, and then resolves it again. It became the basic framework of Classical-era instrumental music.
Variation form
A compositional technique that repeats a single theme, altered in different ways each time. Each variation reshapes the melody, harmony, and rhythm.
Crescendo
An orchestral effect that grows gradually louder from a quiet sound. It became popular with the 18th-century Mannheim orchestra and was also used in Haydn's early symphonies.
Scherzo
A movement in triple meter, faster and more playful than a minuet. Haydn was among the first to favor it in his string quartets.