Joseph Haydn - Biography
Franz Josef Haydn was born on March 31st, 1732 in the Austrian town of Rohrau near the Hungarian border and died in Vienna on May 31st, 1809. Haydn was the son of wheelwright Mathias Haydn who was also the village sexton. His mother was Anna Maria Koller a former cook in an aristocratic household. He was the second of twelve children which included his brother famed composer Michael Haydn who was five years younger. Of all composers, Haydn was born in what must be the humblest of circumstances. His father was an amateur musician who played the harp and accompanied his family and neighbors in community sing-a-longs.
Haydn’s father realized that his son showed musical talent at an early age, and sought the help of a relative Johann Matthias Franck, a choir director in Hainburg the closest large town. Haydn who left home at six, quickly learned the rudiments of harpsichord and violin by playing along as part of his duties as a chorister. He also suffered dire poverty and often went hungry. Haydn’s musical talent was noted and at eight he auditioned and was accepted into the boys’ choir of Saint Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. He was to remain there for the next nine years, the last few years alongside his younger brother Michael. His material circumstance didn’t improve dramatically and he often had to sing for his supper when the choir performed in the homes of local aristocrats. Though he didn’t receive private musical tutelage, as a sharp young boy in one of Vienna’s foremost music institutions he received a strong practical music education.
Haydn’s voice didn’t break until he reached seventeen probably because of his malnourishment, which left him undersized. Upon losing his soprano voice, he was dismissed from the choir. He lived precariously through his late teens as a street musician, and a valet for Italian composer Nicola Pompora, whom he credited with teaching him the fundamentals of musical composition. He supplemented his knowledge gaps in musical theory by studying the works of the famous music theorist Fux. As he reached his early twenties, Haydn began to compose professionally. One his earliest works was a comic opera entitled The Limping Devil which is lost. In fact, most of his works from his early twenties are lost.
By the late 1750’s, Haydn finally procured a patron in one, Countess Thun, whom he also gave musical instruction to. This portal to the Austrian aristocracy led to Haydn’s first permanent position in 1757 with Count Morzin, who had a small orchestra at his estate which he became Kapellmeister (music director) of. It was during this period that Haydn composed the first of his extant 104 symphonies and eighty-two string quartets. Haydn married Anna Maria Keeler who was two years older than him in 1760. Their marriage lasted until her death forty years later, they were evidently thoroughly incompatible and childless, and during Haydn’s later celebrity they lived totally apart from each other.
Count Morzin soon experienced financial problems which forced him to abandon his orchestra. Haydn quickly gained a position as Vice Kapellmeister in a larger estate owned by Prince Paul Anton Esterhazy. The Esterhazy family was one of the wealthiest in Austria and supported an orchestra of the highest level. Within the year the prince had died, and Haydn became a full Kapellmeister for his brother, Prince Nikolaus the First. Haydn worked for him for nearly thirty years at his large estate in Esterhaza, just inside the Hungarian border. Haydn was treated as a servant and lived in servant quarters along with his musicians. He was forced to present himself in a livery uniform with a powdered wig daily to the prince to receive orders and to detail progress on what he was working on. The prince played the Baryton, a bowed string instrument that is somewhat like a cello; Haydn was obliged to write 125 trios for this obscure instrument for the prince. The prince also staged operas and his many until recently forgotten operas were written for the court stage. During this period, he wrote three sets of six String Quartets, opus 9, 17 and 20 (Sun). The first forty or so of his Symphonies were also written during this time, including the well known numbers 6, 7, 8 (Morning, Noon and Night), number 22 (Philosopher) and number 31(Horn Signal). One of the more colorful incidents in Haydn’s rather sedate life occurred with the composition of Symphony no. 45 (Farewell), in the last movement the players are instructed one by one to stop playing and leave the orchestra. Evidently this was in response to rumors that the prince was going to disband the orchestra and this movement was to gently protest that outcome.
In the 1770’s he wrote another thirty or so symphonies including the well known Sturm and Drung (Storm and Stress) series of numbers 44 through 49, many operas including Il Mundo della Luna, L’incontro Improviso, L’Isola Disabitata and La Fedelta Premiata. When Haydn turned fifty, his fame spread well beyond the provinces of Austria and he was permitted to publish compositions on his own. (Prior to this, all his compositions were the property of Esterhazy, which accounts for so many of his works being in limbo or lost.) The extent of his fame can be measured by a commission for six Symphonies for Paris (numbers 82 through 87) and another for the Cathedral of Cadiz in Spain for an instrumental passion entitled The Seven Last Words of Christ, which he later revised as an oratorio. His freedom to travel enabled him to visit Vienna often, where he developed a deep friendship with Mozart and his father. Haydn had very little professional jealousy and with deep emotion told Mozart’s father that his son was the greatest composer that he knew of in person or by reputation. During this time, he composed three sets of String Quartets Opus 33, Opus 50 (Prussian) and Opus 54 along with many Keyboard Sonatas and Piano Trios. Haydn also developed during this time a platonic relationship with the wife of Prince Nikolaus, physician Maria Anna von Genzinger. He maintained a long correspondence with her until her death in 1793, which gives us a sense of Haydn’s isolation and loneliness.
In 1790 Prince Esterhazy died and was succeeded by an unmusical Prince who disbanded the orchestra and pensioned Haydn off. As Haydn approached sixty, this freedom allowed him to exploit his considerable European fame. A musical impresario, Johann Peter Solomon, arranged a series of concerts in London in 1791 that were so successful that Haydn was engaged for another series in 1794 and 1795. During his first visit to London, he received a Doctorate of Music from Oxford where he presented them a Symphony, number 92 (Oxford). The London concerts were given in the Hanover Square rooms, and first series produced Symphonies 92 through 98. This included no. 94 (known as the Surprise because of a powerful chord accented by the tympani in the second movement which was to awaken dozing patrons). The series of six symphonies numbers 99 through 104 for the second tour includes number 101 (Clock), number 103 (Drum Roll), and 104 (London). Along with these works the London years saw the writing of more Piano Trios many String Quartets and an opera, Orfeo ed Eurydice, whose production was blocked by intrigue. In between English visits, he attempted to teach composition to the young Beethoven who didn’t take well to his tutelage, establishing what would be a tense relationship until Haydn’s death. Haydn, who in later years was willing to acknowledge Beethoven’s genius, was intitally put off by his fiery personality and referred to him as the “Grand Mogul.”
Haydn returned to Vienna in 1795 to start the last phase of his career as one of the great masters of sacred choral music. He wrote six great masses between 1796 and 1802: Heiligmesse, Mass in Time of War, Nelson Mass, Creation Mass, Theresien Mass and Harmonie Mass. These masses raised the level of the musical setting of the Catholic Mass to symphonic proportions and became the prototype of Viennese masses by Beethoven, Schubert and Bruckner, among others. Haydn also wrote two Oratorios, The Creation based on the opening passages of Genesis and a secular one The Seasons that depicts characteristic events of the four seasons musically. This phase of his career also included the famous Trumpet Concerto, The six opus 76 String Quartets that includes the Emperor Quartet whose slow movement was to furnish Austria and Germany with its national anthem, and finally the Opus 77 and unfinished opus 103 quartet. As he passed seventy, he was stricken by a debilitating illness which kept him in a semi-invalid state for the last six years of his life. On May 31st, 1809 while Vienna was under bombardment, Haydn died with a honor guard of French troops guarding his home.
Haydn, of all the composers who are regarded as the greatest by musicians and connoisseurs, has had the least appreciation and popularity outside of German-speaking countries. This has improved greatly since the long playing record in the 1950’s that made hundreds of his pieces readily available for the first time. Much of this is also due to the work of an American musicologist, HC Robbins Landon, who went to Vienna as a very young man and did pioneering work in studying documents surrounding Haydn’s life. Robbins Landon even co-founded a record label in 1950, the Haydn Society, devoted entirely to releasing the music of Haydn. Haydn also seems to be popular with the general public when the work has a nickname like Surprise or Clock attached to it. Among Haydn’s attributes was his musical sense of humor which requires careful listening. Some of this humor though is of the low bawdy type like the growling bassoon note at the end of the slow movement of Symphony no. 93. On the other hand, he was a deeply devout Catholic whose humility as expressed in his Masses and the opening of The Creation are deeply moving. Yes, he is papa Haydn, the “father of the symphony” that we learned about in music appreciation courses, but he is far more than that.