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Joseph Haydn |
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(Franz) Joseph Haydn |
(b Rohrau, 31 March 1732; d Vienna, 31 May 1809). Austrian composer. The son of a wheelwright, he was trained as a choirboy and taken into the choir at St Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, where he sang from c1740 to c1750. He then worked as a freelance musician, playing the violin and keyboard instruments, accompanying for singing lessons given by the composer Porpora, who helped and encouraged him. At this time he wrote some sacred works, music for theatre comedies and chamber music. In c1759 he was appointed music director to Count Morzin; but he soon moved, into service as Vice-Kapellmeister with one of the leading Hungarian families, the Esterházys, becoming full Kapellmeister on Werner's death in 1766. He was director of an ensemble of generally some 15-20 musicians, with responsibility for the music and the instruments, and was required to compose as his employer - from 1762, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy - might command. At first he lived at Eisenstadt, c30 miles south-east of Vienna; by 1767 the family's chief residence, and Haydn's chief place of work, was at the new palace at Eszterháza. In his early years Haydn chiefly wrote instrumental music, including symphonies and other pieces for the twice-weekly concerts and the prince's Tafelmusik, and works for the instrument played by the prince, the baryton (a kind of viol), for which he composed c125 trios in ten years. There were also cantatas and a little church music. After Werner's death church music became more central, and so, after the opening of a new opera house at Eszterháza in 1768, did opera. Some of the symphonies from c1770 show Haydn expanding his musical horizons from occasional, entertainment music towards larger and more original pieces, for example nos.26, 39, 49, 44 and 52 (many of them in minor keys, and serious in mood, in line with trends in the contemporary symphony in Germany and Austria). Also from 1768-72 come three sets of string quartets, probably not written for the Esterházy establishment but for another patron or perhaps for publication (Haydn was allowed to write other than for the Esterházys only with permission); op.20 clearly shows the beginnings of a more adventurous and integrated quartet style.
Among the operas from this period are Lo speziale (for the opening of the new house), L′infedeltà delusa (1773) and Il mondo della luna (1777). Operatic activity became increasingly central from the mid-1770s as regular performances came to be given at the new house. It was part of Haydn's job to prepare the music, adapting or arranging it for the voices of the resident singers. In 1779 the opera house burnt down; Haydn composed La fedeltà premiata for its reopening in1781. Until then his operas had largely been in a comic genre; his last two for Eszterháza, Orlando paladino (1782) and Armida (1783), are in mixed or serious genres. Although his operas never attained wider exposure, Haydn's reputation had now grown and was international. Much of his music had been published in all the main European centres; under a revised contract with the Esterháza his employers no longer had exclusive rights to his music.
His works of the 1780s that carried his name further afield include piano sonatas, piano trios, symphonies (nos.76-81 were published in 1784-5, and nos.82-7 were written on commission for a concert organization in Paris in 1785-6) and string quartets. His influential op.33 quartets, issued in 1782, were said to be ‘in a quite new, special manner’: this is sometimes thought to refer to the use of instruments or the style of thematic development, but could refer to the introduction of scherzos or might simply be an advertising device. More quartets appeared at the end of the decade, op.50 (dedicated to the King of Prussia and often said to be influenced by the quartets Mozart had dedicated to Haydn) and two sets (opp. 54-5 and 64) written for a former Esterházy violinist who became a Viennese businessman. All these show an increasing enterprise, originality and freedom of style as well as melodic fluency, command of form, and humour. Other works that carried Haydn's reputation beyond central Europe include concertos and notturnos for a type of hurdy-gurdy, written on commission for the King of Naples, and The Seven Last Words, commissioned for Holy Week from Cadíz Cathedral and existing not only in its original orchestral form but also for string quartet, for piano and (later) for chorus and orchestra.
In 1790, Nikolaus Esterházy died; Haydn (unlike most of his musicians) was retained by his son but was free to live in Vienna (which he had many times visited) and to travel. He was invited by the impresario and violinist J P. Salomon to go to London to write an opera, symphonies and other works. In the event he went to London twice, in 1791-2 and 1794-5. He composed his last 12 symphonies for performance there, where they enjoyed great success; he also wrote a symphonie concertante, choral pieces, piano trios, piano sonatas and songs (some to English words) as well as arranging British folksongs for publishers in London and Edinburgh. But because of intrigues his opera, L′anima del filosofo, on the Orpheus story, remained unperformed. He was honoured (with an Oxford DMus) and fêted generously, and played, sang and conducted before the royal family. He also heard performances of Handel's music by large choirs in Westminster Abbey.
Back in Vienna, he resumed work for Nikolaus Esterházy's grandson (whose father had now died); his main duty was to produce masses for the princess's nameday. He wrote six works, firmly in the Austrian mass tradition but strengthened and invigorated by his command of symphonic technique. Other works of these late years include further string quartets (opp. 71 and 74 between the London visits, op.76 and the op.77 pair after them), showing great diversity of style and seriousness of content yet retaining his vitality and fluency of utterance; some have a more public manner, acknowledging the new use of string quartets at concerts as well as in the home. The most important work, however, is his oratorio The Creation in which his essentially simple-hearted joy in Man, Beast and Nature, and his gratitude to God for his creation of these things to our benefit, are made a part of universal experience by his treatment of them in an oratorio modelled on Handle's, with massive choral writing of a kind he had not essayed before. He followed this with The Seasons, in a similar vein but more a series of attractive episodes than a whole.
Haydn died in 1809, after twice dictating his recollections and preparing a catalogue of his works. He was widely revered, even though by then his music was old-fashioned compared with Beethoven's. He was immensely prolific: some of his music remains unpublished and little known. His operas have never succeeded in holding the stage. But he is regarded, with some justice, as father of the symphony and the string quartet: he saw both genres from their beginnings to a high level of sophistication and artistic expression, even if he did not originate them. He brought to them new intellectual weight, and his closely argued style of development laid the foundations for the larger structures of Beethoven and later composers.
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Biography:
Franz Joseph Haydn |
The Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) in his instrumental music, especially the symphonies and string quartets, essentially founded and brought to first mature realization the formal and structural principles of the classical style.
Joseph Haydn virtually created the classical formal structures of the string quartet and symphony, which were developed later by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. He participated in the development of other forms of 18th-century instrumental music, in addition to composing prolifically in the fields of sacred music, opera, and song. Throughout a lifetime of experimentation he developed in the quartet and symphony a fully mature classical tonal idiom, characterized externally by the four-movement structure (allegro, slow movement, minuet and trio, and finale) of the majority of these works and internally by emphasis on thematic and motivic development within a balanced tonal framework. Haydn evolved a tonal language that exhibited a gradual growth toward contrapuntal complexity and a vast range of expression in comparison to the technical simplicity and expressive triviality of much mid-18th-century instrumental music of the style galant.
Haydn was born in Rohrau, Lower Austria, on March 31, 1732. At the age of 8 he became a choirboy at the Cathedral of St. Stephen's in Vienna, remaining there until his dismissal in 1749. By his own account his early years were largely given to self-instruction in music: he developed some facility as a violinist and keyboard player (but he was never a virtuoso performer); he studied briefly with the Italian opera composer and singing master Niccolò Porpora; and he became thoroughly acquainted with Viennese musical life of the period 1740-1760 and knew its leading figures.
Haydn made his first attempts at composition; as he later described them, "I wrote industriously but not quite correctly." His early works included a Singspiel entitled Der krumme Teufel (1752), a few keyboard sonatas and trios, and his first string quartet, written during the 1750s. This first period of his development concluded with 2 years (1758-1760) in private service in Bohemia, during which he evidently composed his first symphony (generally dated 1759).
In Service of Esterházy Family
In 1761 Haydn entered the private service of the noble Hungarian Esterházy family, serving under Prince Paul Esterházy and then, on his death in 1762, under Prince Nicholas. Haydn embarked on the longest and most productive period of private service at a single court enjoyed by any major composer of the 18th century and perhaps of the entire epoch of court patronage of musicians. He remained in the Esterházy service until 1790. At first he held the post of vice kapellmeister, or conductor. In 1766 Prince Nicholas opened a new estate at Esterházy (the previous one had been at Eisenstadt), and that year, on the death of Gregor Werner, Haydn was promoted to kapellmeister.
Haydn was in charge of the musical forces of the court, which included an orchestra of 12 musicians and a group of singers. His duties were to provide two operas and two concerts a week plus a Sunday Mass and whatever additional music might be wanted. Under these conditions his productivity and originality were equally remarkable. As he described it in a famous statement: "As head of an orchestra I could experiment, observe what heightened the effect and what weakened it, and so could improve, expand, cut, take risks; I was cut off from the world, there was no one near me to torment me or make me doubt myself, and so I had to become original."
During the 3 decades of his Esterházy service Haydn's output was prodigious. By 1770 he had produced some 40 symphonies, the quartets up to the six of Opus 9 (1769), much chamber music for baryton (an instrument of the viol family, played by Prince Nicholas), several concertos, operas, keyboard music, and his first Masses. During the period 1771-1780 (called by some biographers his "romantic" period) his music deepened in seriousness and elaborative richness, and he struck out in new paths; as one biographer, E.L. Gerber, put it in 1812: "Haydn's finest symphonic period begins with the year 1770 and from then on gains each year in magnificence." From 1771 and 1772 come the 12 quartets of Opus 17 and Opus 20, with special importance attaching to the latter group, several of which have fugal finales; about 30 more symphonies, including the Mourning Symphony, No. 44, and the Farewell, No. 45 (1772); and about 18 keyboard sonatas, 6 operas and other dramatic music, and two Masses.
Friendship with Mozart
During his last decade in private service, a most important influence on Haydn's music arose from his contact with Mozart. This relationship dates from the time Mozart took up residence in Vienna in 1781; in the next years Haydn came to know him during his trips to Vienna, and they admired each other's music beyond that of any other contemporary. Haydn commented often on Mozart's remarkable gifts and complained bitterly over the lack of recognition and the absence of any permanent post for Mozart comparable to the one Haydn enjoyed. When an official of Prague asked him for an opera in 1787, 2 months after the premiere of Mozart's Don Giovanni there, Haydn declined, saying in part: "It is hardly possible for anyone to stand beside the great Mozart. For if I could impress Mozart's inimitable works as deeply, and with that musical understanding and keen feeling with which I myself grasp and feel them, upon the soul of every music lover … the nations would compete for the possession of such a jewel within their borders."
Haydn's major works of this period seemed to his younger contemporaries to show a considerable influence of Mozart's mature style, and the relationship was openly reciprocal. In this decade Haydn produced about 20 symphonies, including the 6 Paris Symphonies, Nos. 82-87 (1786), and the Oxford Symphony, No. 92 (1788). He also produced the 25 quartets constituting Opus 33 (1781), "written in a new and special manner"; Opus 42 (1785); Opus 50 (1787); Opus 54 and Opus 55 (1789); and Opus 64 (1790). His reputation had by now spread throughout Europe, despite his isolation, owing in part to his being regularly published by a leading Viennese music publisher, Artaria.
Last Years
In 1791 the death of Prince Nicholas freed Haydn from private service, and he embarked on the last and most international phase of his career. He made his first visit to England, at the invitation of the impresario J. P. Salomon, to give concerts of his own works. This visit was a triumph in every respect: Haydn was awarded a degree by Oxford University, met and was honored by members of English society, and gave a highly successful series of concerts. In 1792 he returned to the Continent, passing through Bonn, where he met the young Beethoven, who became his pupil in Vienna. In 1794 he returned to London for another successful tour, then in 1795 settled in Vienna for good. In these years of his travels to England, Haydn, already in his sixties, produced many of his finest late works: his 12 last and greatest symphonies, Nos. 93-104, called the London Symphonies, and the last of his piano trios and piano sonatas.
In 1795-1800, on his return to the Continent, Haydn not only continued his extraordinary productivity but turned once again in a new and progressive direction as a composer. The quartets of Opus 71 belong to 1793; the six of Opus 76 (including the Emperor and Sunrise Quartets) were composed as late as 1797-1798; and the final quartets of Opus 77, Nos. 1 and 2, and the unfinished Opus 103 come from 1799 and 1803. In 1797 Haydn wrote the "Kaiser-Hymn" as a deliberately patriotic gesture in time of war, and it became, as he intended that it should, the Austrian national anthem. In 1796-1798 he set to work on the first of his two final major works - the oratorios The Creation and The Seasons.
The Oratorios
The Creation was based on a German translation by Baron Gottfried van Swieten of an anonymous English oratorio libretto that had been prepared for George Frederick Handel and was based on John Milton's Paradise Lost. With this work Haydn produced a work deliberately planned on the grand scale, based on a religious subject but freely developed in content, for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra. The work as a whole set him at once in the great tradition of oratorio that he had come to know in Handel's works during his visits to England. Although the strain of writing The Creation virtually exhausted him, Haydn in 1800 set to work on another oratorio of similar magnitude: The Seasons, again with libretto by Van Swieten based on James Thomson's poem.
In these oratorios Haydn came as close as he was ever to come to matching Mozart's sense of dramatic action articulated through music. Neither oratorio is truly a stage work, but both have strong elements of the dramatic and the pictorial, and at times have musicodramatic moments of the highest order. Among these is the entire first part of The Creation, beginning with a representation of "Chaos" as orchestral introduction, and then narrating the creation of the world. After the first recitative the chorus enters sotto voce with the words "And the spirit of God moved upon the waters; and God said, 'Let there be light."' The arrival of the chorus at a fortissimo climax on the word "light" electrified the audiences of Haydn's time, and at his last appearance in public before his death in Vienna on May 31, 1809, at a performance of The Creation in 1808 given as a tribute to him, he rose at this point and attributed, in effect, all his creative ability to divine power.
Enormous Output
Haydn's output was so large that at the end of his life he himself could not be absolutely sure how many works he had written. The problems of compiling an accurate catalog of his works, sorting out spurious compositions, and producing an accurate and complete edition have still not been solved. For example, the six string quartets of Opus 3 have been attributed on good grounds to a minor contemporary named Hoffstetter, whose name appeared on the title page of the original edition but was effaced and replaced with that of Haydn.
But the essential mass of Haydn's output remains unshakable in its attribution to him, and it is of formidable proportions: 104 symphonies; 78 string quartets (omitting Opus 3 and counting as separate items the seven movements of The Seven Last Words of Christ as arranged for quartet); numerous concertos for keyboard, violin, and violoncello; over 125 baryton trios; numerous divertimenti for winds and for mixed ensembles; 52 keyboard sonatas; over 30 piano trios; 12 Masses and a number of other sacred works; approximately 13 operas; and arias and songs.
Further Reading
A valuable primary source is The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn, edited by H. C. Robbins London (1959). The most important early biographies of Haydn are those by G.A. Griesinger (1809) and A.C. Dies (1810), both based on interviews with Haydn in his last years and available in English translation by Vernon Gotwals, Joseph Haydn: Eighteenth-Century Gentleman and Genius (1963). Modern biographies include K. Geiringer, Haydn: A Creative Life in Music (1946; 2d rev. ed. 1963), and Rosemary Hughes, Haydn (1950). Major studies in English on sectors of Haydn's work are few. Excellent contributions are H.C. Robbins Landon, The Symphonies of Joseph Haydn (1955), and D. F. Tovey, "Haydn's Chamber Music, " in his The Main Stream of Music and Other Essays (1949). Perceptive analytic studies of a number of works are in Felix Salzer, Structural Hearing: Tonal Coherence in Music (2 vols., 1952).
Additional Sources
Bobillier, Marie, Haydn, Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press 1972; New York: B. Blom, 1972.
Butterworth, Neil, Haydn: his life and times, Tunbridge Wells, Eng.: Midas Books, 1977.
Geiringer, Karl, Haydn: a creative life in music, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Greene, Carol, Franz Joseph Haydn: great man of music, Chicago: Children's Press, 1994.
Landon, H. C. Robbins (Howard Chandler Robbins), Haydn: chronicle and works, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976-1980.
Landon, H. C. Robbins (Howard Chandler Robbins), Haydn: chronicle and works, London: Thames and Hudson, 1976-c1980.
Landon, H. C. Robbins (Howard Chandler Robbins), Haydn: his life and music, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Landon, H. C. Robbins (Howard Chandler Robbins), Haydn, a documentary study, New York: Rizzoli, 1981.
Lasker, David., The boy who loved music, New York: Viking Press, 1979.
Thompson, Wendy, Joseph Haydn, New York: Viking, 1991.
Vignal, Marc, Joseph Haydn, Paris: Fayard, 1988.
Dictionary of Dance:
Franz Joseph Haydn |
Haydn, Franz Joseph (b Rohrau, probably 31 Mar. 1732, d Vienna, 31 May 1809). Austrian composer. He wrote no ballet scores but many dance works have been set to his concert music including Viganò's Milan production of The Creatures of Prometheus (1813), Massine's Clock Symphony (Sadler's Wells Ballet, 1948), Balanchine's Trumpet Concerto (Sadler's Wells Ballet, 1950), Taras's Haydn Concerto (New York City Ballet, 1968), Tharp's As Time Goes By (Joffrey Ballet, 1973) and Push Comes to Shove (American Ballet Theatre, 1976), and Kylián's Symphony in D (Netherlands Dance Theatre, 1976, revised 1977).
German Literature Companion:
Joseph Haydn |
Haydn, Joseph (Rohrau/Leitha, 1732-1809, Vienna), a choirboy at St Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, until his voice broke, spent most of his life in the service of the Hungarian princely family of Esterhazy as director of music at the two palaces of Eisenstadt and Esterhaz. He was pensioned in 1790, visited London 1791-2, and was there again 1794-5. On his first visit to England he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Music from Oxford University. His Symphony No. 92, though not written specially for the occasion, was played at Oxford on the day of the conferment, and has since been known as the ‘Oxford’ Symphony. Haydn's last twelve symphonies (Nos. 93-104) were commissioned by the London impresario Salomon, and are sometimes called the ‘Salomon’ Symphonies.
In addition to orchestral and chamber music Haydn composed a number of Latin masses, including six of exceptional merit composed for the name day of his patroness Princess Maria Hermenegildis Esterhazy in the years 1796-1802. One of these, the D minor, was named the ‘Nelson’ Mass after it had been performed in Nelson's presence in 1800. Haydn's principal non-liturgical works are the oratorios Die Schöpfung (1798), based on Paradise Lost, and Die Jahreszeiten (1801), based on James Thomson's The Seasons. The German libretto for each of these works was prepared by Baron G. van Swieten.
In connection with his visits to Britain Haydn set some Welsh and Scottish folk-songs to music. He also composed the tune of the Austrian national anthem, ‘Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser’.
Columbia Encyclopedia:
Franz Joseph Haydn |
Bibliography
See biographies by L. Nohl (1902, 7th ed. 1971), R. Hughes (rev. ed. 1978), and K. and I. Geiringer (3d ed. 1982); C. Rosen, The Classical Style (1972); H. C. R. Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works (5 vol., 1976-77).
History 1450-1789:
Franz Joseph Haydn |
Haydn, Franz Joseph (1732–1809), Austrian composer considered the founder of Vienna classicism. Born in modest circumstances as the son of a wheelwright in the Lower Austrian town of Rohrau, Haydn was by 1800 the most celebrated composer in Europe. He is sometimes called the father of both the symphony and the string quartet.
Haydn was raised in a devoutly Catholic household and his parents had hopes of his entering the clergy. He showed an early aptitude for music, which was noticed by a visiting schoolmaster who convinced his parents to send the six-year-old Joseph to a parish school in the neighboring town of Hainburg. Catholic parish schools had traditionally emphasized music (the schoolmaster usually doubled as the church organist) since pupils were needed to sing or perform in the parish's annual cycle of regular masses, baptisms, funerals, and processions. Haydn acquired his first formal training in music at the Hainburg school, and at the age of eight left to continue his musical education as a pupil at the choir school of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. He remained a pupil at St. Stephen's for almost ten years until he was forced to leave around 1749—not, as legend has it, to escape castration but because his voice broke.
Haydn's early years as a composer and musician illustrate the crucial importance of aristocratic musical patronage in eighteenth-century Europe. After struggling for several years as a teacher, freelance musician, and occasional composer for the popular Viennese stage, Haydn finally obtained a measure of financial security when Count Karl Joseph Franz Morzin took him into his household as music director around 1757. Haydn's first symphonies as well as his earliest string quartets date from this period. Decisive for his career was his entry a few years later (1761) into the service of Prince Paul Anton Esterházy, scion of the wealthiest magnate family in Hungary. Haydn, in his capacity as Vice-Kapellmeister (1761–1765) and later Kapellmeister (1761–1790), was in charge of supervising, if not composing, the music performed at the prince's palace at Esterháza. There Haydn was responsible for providing both vocal and instrumental music, including operas performed in the prince's lavish theater. Although Haydn's operas are today the least regarded part of his musical oeuvre—perhaps because they would soon be so overshadowed by Mozart's—Haydn devoted much of his musical energy in the years between 1766 and 1783 to operatic compositions. Best known today are his comic (or buffa) operas, such as those based on librettos by the eighteenth-century Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni (Lo speziale [1768)], Le pescatrici [1769–1770], and Il mondo della luna [1777]). But they also included dramatic pieces like Armida (1783), adapted from the late-humanist poet Torquato Tasso, which was the last opera Haydn produced. In the meantime Haydn continued to experiment with the symphonic form, moving from the syncopated eccentricities of his Sturm und Drang ('storm and stress') phase (1768–1772) to the exquisite sublimity of his later symphonies. During Haydn's years at Esterháza his string quartets also acquired the quintessentially conversational style that would be their hallmark, evoking the atmosphere of the Enlightenment salons he frequented during visits to Vienna in the 1770s and 1780s.
By the 1780s Haydn had begun to free himself financially from dependence on his Esterházy patrons. He did this partly by successfully marketing his compositions to publishing houses in Vienna, London, and Paris, and partly through commissions like Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze (1785–1786; Seven last words of our Redeemer on the cross), an oratorio composed for the cathedral of Cádiz in southern Spain for performance during Holy Week. But it was above all the financial success of Haydn's triumphal London tours (1791–1792, 1794–1795) that sealed his economic independence. Haydn skillfully exploited the opportunities for performance and composition offered by the city's commercialized musical culture with its theaters, subscription concerts, and public pleasure gardens. All in all, Haydn's London visits earned him some 24,000 gulden, the equivalent of twenty years' salary at Esterháza. His "London symphonies" (nos. 93–104) achieved particular success in the British capital. His succeeding years in Vienna, where he spent the remainder of his life, won him popular acclaim as well. Die Schöpfung (1797; The creation) and Die Jahreszeiten (1801; The seasons), oratorios that remain two of his most beloved compositions today, served especially to crown his broad popularity in the Austrian capital.
In this respect Haydn's career epitomized the transition from aristocratic patronage to public performance that had begun to characterize the social history of music during his day. The legend of "Papa Haydn," the good-natured and self-effacing figure known for his generous encouragement of Mozart and Beethoven, can obscure the attention Haydn devoted to promoting the public reception of his own music. Commercially savvy, Haydn was keenly attuned to the tastes of his public. He often incorporated folk themes into his music, and the playful and mischievous qualities that came to be a hallmark of many of Haydn's compositions doubtless contributed to his broad appeal. As his "Surprise" Symphony (no. 94) or "Joke" Quartet (op. 33, no. 2) illustrate, Haydn loved musical gags, sudden reversals of tempo, the injection of a humorous moment into an ostensibly serious one. Critics of his day sometimes attacked this aspect of Haydn's music, noting his penchant for shifting unexpectedly between refinement and coarseness, the elevated and the vulgar. Yet Haydn's success in blurring the boundaries between high and low was a key element of his popularity, attesting to his ability to appeal to a wide audience.
Bibliography
Gotwals, Vernon. Haydn: Two Contemporary Portraits. Madison, Wis., 1963.
Landon, H. C. Robbins. Haydn: Chronicle and Works. 5 vols. London, 1976–1980.
Landon, H. C. Robbins, and David Wyn Jones. Haydn: His Life and Music. London and Bloomington, Ind., 1988.
Webster, James. "Haydn, (Franz) Joseph." In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie, vol. 11, pp. 171–271. London and New York, 2001.
—JAMES VAN HORN MELTON
Fine Arts Dictionary:
Haydn, Franz Josef |
An eighteenth-century Austrian composer, one of the great composers of the classic era. Haydn is credited with establishing the symphony as a musical form. Of his more than one hundred symphonies, Surprise Symphony and Clock Symphony are especially well known. He also composed many string quartets.
Artist:
Franz Joseph Haydn |
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Wikipedia:
Joseph Haydn |
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Franz Joseph Haydn[1][2] (March 31, 1732 – May 31, 1809) was an Austrian composer. He was one of the most important, prolific and prominent composers of the classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these genres. He was also instrumental in the development of the piano trio and in the evolution of sonata form.[3][4]
A life-long resident of Austria, Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Hungarian aristocratic Esterházy family on their remote estate. Isolated from other composers and trends in music until the later part of his long life, he was, as he put it, "forced to become original".[5] At the time of his death, he was one of the most celebrated composers in Europe.[6]
Joseph Haydn was the brother of Michael Haydn, himself a highly regarded composer, and Johann Evangelist Haydn, a tenor. He was also a close friend of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a teacher of Ludwig van Beethoven.
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Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, a village near the border with Hungary. His father was Mathias Haydn, a wheelwright who also served as "Marktrichter", an office akin to village mayor. Haydn's mother Maria, née Koller, had previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau. Neither parent could read music;[7] however, Mathias was an enthusiastic folk musician, who during the journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the harp. According to Haydn's later reminiscences, his childhood family was extremely musical, and frequently sang together and with their neighbours.[8]
Haydn's parents had noticed that their son was musically gifted and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain any serious musical training. It was for this reason that they accepted a proposal from their relative Johann Matthias Frankh, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, that Haydn be apprenticed to Frankh in his home to train as a musician. Haydn therefore went off with Frankh to Hainburg (seven miles away) and never again lived with his parents. He was six years old.
Life in the Frankh household was not easy for Haydn, who later remembered being frequently hungry[9] as well as constantly humiliated by the filthy state of his clothing.[10] However, he did begin his musical training there, and soon was able to play both harpsichord and violin. The people of Hainburg were soon hearing him sing treble parts in the church choir.
There is reason to think that Haydn's singing impressed those who heard him, because he was soon[11] brought to the attention of Georg von Reutter, the director of music in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, who happened to be visiting Hainburg. Haydn passed his audition with Reutter, and in 1740 moved to Vienna, where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister, after 1745 in the company of his younger brother Michael.
Haydn lived in the Kapellhaus next to the cathedral, along with Reutter, Reutter's family, and the other four choirboys.[12] He was instructed in Latin and other school subjects as well as voice, violin, and keyboard.[13] Reutter was of little help to Haydn in the areas of music theory and composition, giving him only two lessons in his entire time as chorister.[14] However, since St. Stephen's was one of the leading musical centers in Europe, Haydn was able to learn a great deal simply by serving as a professional musician there.[15]
Like Frankh before him, Reutter did not always bother to make sure Haydn was properly fed. As he later told his biographer Albert Christoph Dies, Haydn was motivated to sing very well, in hopes of gaining more invitations to perform before aristocratic audiences—where the singers were usually served refreshments.[16]
By 1749, Haydn had finally matured physically to the point that he was no longer able to sing high choral parts--the Empress herself complained to Reutter about his singing, calling it "crowing".[17] One day, Haydn carried out a prank, snipping off the pigtail of a fellow chorister.[18] This was enough for Reutter: Haydn was first caned, then summarily dismissed and sent into the streets with no home to go to.[19] However, he had the good fortune to be taken in by a friend, Johann Michael Spangler, who for a few months shared with Haydn his family's crowded garret room. Haydn was able to begin immediately his pursuit of a career as a freelance musician.
During this arduous time, Haydn worked at many different jobs: as a music teacher, as a street serenader, and eventually, in 1752, as valet–accompanist for the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, from whom he later said he learned "the true fundamentals of composition".[20]
When he was a chorister, Haydn had not received serious training in music theory and composition, which he perceived as a serious gap. To fill it, he worked his way through the counterpoint exercises in the text Gradus ad Parnassum by Johann Joseph Fux, and carefully studied the work of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whom he later acknowledged as an important influence.[21]
As his skills increased, Haydn began to acquire a public reputation, first as the composer of an opera, Der krumme Teufel "The Limping Devil", written for the comic actor Johann Joseph Felix Kurz, whose stage name was "Bernardon". The work was premiered successfully in 1753, but was soon closed down by the censors.[22] Haydn also noticed, apparently without annoyance, that works he had simply given away were being published and sold in local music shops.[23] Between 1754 and 1756 Haydn also worked freelance for the court in Vienna. He was among several musicians who were paid for services as supplementary musicians at balls given for the imperial children during carnival season, and as supplementary singers in the imperial chapel (the Hofkapelle) in Lent and Holy Week.[24]
With the increase in his reputation, Haydn eventually was able to obtain aristocratic patronage, crucial for the career of a composer in his day. Countess Thun,[25] having seen one of Haydn's compositions, summoned him and engaged him as her singing and keyboard teacher.[26] In 1756, Baron Carl Josef Fürnberg employed Haydn at his country estate, Weinzierl, where the composer wrote his first string quartets. Fürnberg later recommended Haydn to Count Morzin, who, in 1757,[27] became his first full time employer.[28]
Haydn's job title under Count Morzin was Kapellmeister, that is, music director. He led the count's small orchestra and wrote his first symphonies for this ensemble. In 1760, with the security of a Kapellmeister position, Haydn married. His wife was the former Maria Anna Aloysia Apollonia Keller (1729–1800), the sister of Therese (b. 1733), with whom Haydn had previously been in love. Haydn and his wife had a completely unhappy marriage,[29] from which the laws of the time permitted them no escape; and they produced no children. Both took lovers.[30]
Count Morzin soon suffered financial reverses that forced him to dismiss his musical establishment, but Haydn was quickly offered a similar job (1761) as Vice Kapellmeister to the Esterházy family, one of the wealthiest and most important in the Austrian Empire. When the old Kapellmeister, Gregor Werner, died in 1766, Haydn was elevated to full Kapellmeister.
As a "house officer" in the Esterházy establishment, Haydn wore livery and followed the family as they moved among their various palaces, most importantly the family's ancestral seat Schloss Esterházy in Eisenstadt and later on Eszterháza, a grand new palace built in rural Hungary in the 1760s. Haydn had a huge range of responsibilities, including composition, running the orchestra, playing chamber music for and with his patrons, and eventually the mounting of operatic productions. Despite this workload, the job was in artistic terms a superb opportunity for Haydn.[31] The Esterházy princes (first Paul Anton, then most importantly Nikolaus I) were musical connoisseurs who appreciated his work and gave him daily access to his own small orchestra.
During the nearly thirty years that Haydn worked at the Esterházy court, he produced a flood of compositions, and his musical style continued to develop. His popularity in the outside world also increased. Gradually, Haydn came to write as much for publication as for his employer, and several important works of this period, such as the Paris symphonies (1785–1786) and the original orchestral version of The Seven Last Words of Christ (1786), were commissions from abroad.
Haydn also gradually came to feel more isolated and lonely, particularly as the court came to spend most of the year at Esterháza, far from Vienna, rather than the closer-by Eisenstadt.[32] Haydn particularly longed to visit Vienna because of his friendships there.[33]
Of these, a particularly important one was with Maria Anna von Genzinger (1750–93), the wife of Prince Nikolaus's personal physician in Vienna, who began a close, platonic, relationship with the composer in 1789. Haydn wrote to Mrs. Genzinger often, expressing his loneliness at Eszterháza and his happiness for the few occasions on which he was able to visit her in Vienna; later on, Haydn wrote to her frequently from London. Her premature death in 1793 was a blow to Haydn, and his F minor variations for piano, Hob. XVII:6, may have been written in response to her death.[34]
Another friend in Vienna was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom Haydn met sometime around 1784. According to later testimony by Michael Kelly and others, the two composers occasionally played in string quartets together. Haydn was hugely impressed with Mozart's work and praised it unstintingly to others. Mozart evidently returned the esteem, as seen in his dedication of a set of six quartets, now called the "Haydn" quartets, to his friend. For further details see Haydn and Mozart.
In 1790, Prince Nikolaus died and was succeeded by a thoroughly unmusical prince who dismissed the entire musical establishment and put Haydn on a pension. Freed of his obligations, Haydn was able to accept a lucrative offer from Johann Peter Salomon, a German impresario, to visit England and conduct new symphonies with a large orchestra.
The visit (1791–1792), along with a repeat visit (1794–1795), was a huge success. Audiences flocked to Haydn's concerts; Haydn augmented his fame and made large profits, thus becoming financially secure. Charles Burney reviewed the first concert thus: "Haydn himself presided at the piano-forte; and the sight of that renowned composer so electrified the audience, as to excite an attention and a pleasure superior to any that had ever been caused by instrumental music in England."[35]
Musically, the visits to England generated some of Haydn's best-known work, including the Surprise, Military, Drumroll, and London symphonies, the Rider quartet, and the "Gypsy Rondo" piano trio. The only misstep in the venture was an opera, Orfeo ed Euridice, also called L'Anima del Filosofo, which Haydn was contracted to compose, but whose performance was blocked by intrigues.[36] Haydn made many new friends and was involved for a time in a romantic relationship with Rebecca Schroeter.
Between visits, Haydn taught Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven found him unsatisfactory as a teacher and sought help from others; the relationship between the two was sometimes rather tense. For discussion of their relationship, see Beethoven and his contemporaries.[37]
Haydn returned to Vienna in 1795, moved into a large house in the suburb of Gumpendorf,[38] and turned to the composition of large religious works for chorus and orchestra. These include his two great oratorios (The Creation and The Seasons) and six masses for the Eszterházy family, which by this time was once again headed by a musically-inclined prince. Haydn also composed instrumental music: the popular Trumpet Concerto and the last nine in his long series of string quartets, including the Fifths, Emperor, and Sunrise quartets.
In 1802, an illness from which Haydn had been suffering for some time had increased in severity to the point that he became physically unable to compose. This was doubtless very difficult for him because, as he acknowledged, the flow of fresh musical ideas waiting to be worked out as compositions did not cease. Haydn was well cared for by his servants, and he received many visitors and public honours during his last years, but they could not have been very happy years for him. During his illness, Haydn often found solace by sitting at the piano and playing Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, which he had composed himself as a patriotic gesture in 1797.[39] This melody later was used for the Austrian and German national anthems.
Haydn died at the end of May in 1809, shortly after an attack on Vienna by the French army under Napoleon. He was 77. Among his last words was his attempt to calm and reassure his servants when cannon shot fell in the neighborhood.[40] "My children, have no fear, for where Haydn is, no harm can fall." Two weeks later, a memorial service was held in the Schottenkirche on June 15, 1809, at which Mozart's Requiem was performed.
Haydn made a fortune from his composition, and at his death left a net estate of over 10,000 florins, hundreds of times the median estate of a composer in Vienna at that time, and solidly in the upper-middle class.[41]
James Webster writes of Haydn's public character thus: "Haydn's public life exemplified the Enlightenment ideal of the honnête homme (honest man): the man whose good character and worldly success enable and justify each other. His modesty and probity were everywhere acknowledged. These traits were not only prerequisites to his success as Kapellmeister, entrepreneur and public figure, but also aided the favourable reception of his music."[42] Haydn was especially respected by the Eszterházy court musicians whom he supervised, as he maintained a cordial working atmosphere and effectively represented the musicians' interests with their employer; see Papa Haydn and the tale of the "Farewell" Symphony.
Haydn had a robust sense of humor, evident in his love of practical jokes[43] and often apparent in his music, and he had many friends. For much of his life he benefited from a "happy and naturally cheerful temperament",[44] but in his later life, there is evidence for periods of depression, notably in the correspondence with Mrs. Genzinger and in Dies's biography, based on visits made in Haydn's old age.
Haydn was a devout Catholic who often turned to his rosary when he had trouble composing, a practice that he usually found to be effective.[45] He normally began the manuscript of each composition with "in nomine Domini" ("in the name of the Lord") and ended with "Laus Deo" ("praise be to God").[46]
Haydn was short in stature, perhaps as a result of having been underfed throughout most of his youth. He was not handsome, and like many in his day he was a survivor of smallpox, his face being pitted with the scars of this disease. His biographer Dies wrote, "he couldn't understand how it happened that in his life he had been loved by many a pretty woman. 'They couldn't have been led to it by my beauty'".[47]
Haydn also suffered from nasal polyposis for much of his adult life; this was an agonizing and debilitating disease in the 18th century, and at times it prevented him from writing music.[48]
James Webster summarizes Haydn's role in the history of classical music as follows:[49] "He excelled in every musical genre… He is familiarly known as the 'father of the symphony' and could with greater justice be thus regarded for the string quartet; no other composer approaches his combination of productivity, quality and historical importance in these genres."
A central characteristic of Haydn's music is the development of larger structures out of very short, simple musical motifs, often derived from standard accompanying figures. The music is often quite formally concentrated, and the important musical events of a movement can unfold rather quickly.[50]
Haydn's work was central to the development of what came to be called sonata form. His practice, however, differed in some ways from that of Mozart and Beethoven, his younger contemporaries who likewise excelled in this form of composition. Haydn was particularly fond of the so-called "monothematic exposition", in which the music that establishes the dominant key is similar or identical to the opening theme. Haydn also differs from Mozart and Beethoven in his recapitulation sections, where he often rearranges the order of themes compared to the exposition and uses extensive thematic development.[51]
Haydn's formal inventiveness also led him to integrate the fugue into the classical style and to enrich the rondo form with more cohesive tonal logic (see sonata rondo form). Haydn was also the principal exponent of the double variation form – variations on two alternating themes, which are often major- and minor-mode versions of each other.
Perhaps more than any other composer's, Haydn's music is known for its humor.[52] The most famous example is the sudden loud chord in the slow movement of his "Surprise" symphony; Haydn's many other musical jokes include numerous false endings (e.g., in the quartets Op. 33 No. 2 and Op. 50 No. 3), and the remarkable rhythmic illusion placed in the trio section of the third movement of Op. 50 No. 1.
Much of the music was written to please and delight a prince, and its emotional tone is correspondingly upbeat.[citation needed] This tone also reflects, perhaps, Haydn's fundamentally healthy and well-balanced personality. Occasional minor-key works, often deadly serious in character, form striking exceptions to the general rule. Haydn's fast movements tend to be rhythmically propulsive and often impart a great sense of energy, especially in the finales. Some characteristic examples of Haydn's "rollicking" finale type are found in the "London" symphony No. 104, the string quartet Op. 50 No. 1, and the piano trio Hob XV: 27. Haydn's early slow movements are usually not too slow in tempo, relaxed, and reflective. Later on, the emotional range of the slow movements increases, notably in the deeply felt slow movements of the quartets Op. 76 Nos. 3 and 5, symphony No. 102, and piano trio Hob XV: 23. The minuets tend to have a strong downbeat and a clearly popular character. As early as Op. 33 (1781) Haydn turned some of his minuets into "scherzi" which are much faster, at one beat to the bar.
Haydn's early work dates from a period in which the compositional style of the High Baroque (seen in Bach and Handel) had gone out of fashion. This was a period of exploration and uncertainty, and Haydn, born 18 years before the death of Bach, was himself one of the musical explorers of this time.[53] An older contemporary whose work Haydn acknowledged as an important influence was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.[21]
Tracing Haydn's work over the six decades in which it was produced (roughly, 1749 to 1802), one finds a gradual but steady increase in complexity and musical sophistication, which developed as Haydn learned from his own experience and that of his colleagues. Several important landmarks have been observed in the evolution of Haydn's musical style.
In the late 1760s and early 1770s Haydn entered a stylistic period known as "Sturm und Drang" (storm and stress). This term is taken from a literary movement of about the same time, though it appears that the musical development actually preceded the literary one by a few years.[54] The musical language of this period is similar to what went before, but it is deployed in work that is more intensely expressive, especially in the works in minor keys. James Webster describes the works of this period as "longer, more passionate, and more daring."[55] Some of the most famous compositions of this time are the "Farewell" Symphony No. 45, the piano sonata in C minor (Hob. XVI/20, L. 33), and the six string quartets of Op. 20 (the "Sun" quartets), all from 1772. It was also around this time that Haydn became interested in writing fugues in the Baroque style, and three of the Op. 20 quartets end with such fugues.
Following the climax of the "Sturm und Drang", Haydn returned to a lighter, more overtly entertaining style. There are no quartets from this period, and the symphonies take on new features: the scoring often includes trumpets and timpani. These changes are often related to a major shift in Haydn's professional duties, which moved him away from "pure" music and toward the production of comic operas, which were very popular in 18th Century Italy. Several of the operas were Haydn's own work (see List of operas by Joseph Haydn); these are seldom performed today. Haydn sometimes recycled his opera music in symphonic works,[56] which helped him continue his career as a symphonist during this hectic decade.
In 1779, an important change in Haydn's contract permitted him to publish his compositions without prior authorization from his employer. This may have encouraged Haydn to rekindle his career as a composer of "pure" music. The change made itself felt most dramatically in 1781, when Haydn published the six string quartets of Opus 33, announcing (in a letter to potential purchasers) that they were written in "a completely new and special way". Charles Rosen has argued that this assertion on Haydn's part was not just sales talk, but meant quite seriously; and he points out a number of important advances in Haydn's compositional technique that appear in these quartets, advances that mark the advent of the Classical style in full flower. These include a fluid form of phrasing, in which each motif emerges from the previous one without interruption, the practice of letting accompanying material evolve into melodic material, and a kind of "Classical counterpoint" in which each instrumental part maintains its own integrity. These traits continue in the many quartets that Haydn wrote after Opus 33.[57]
In the 1790s, stimulated by his England journeys, Haydn developed what Rosen calls his "popular style", a way of composition that, with unprecedented success, created music having great popular appeal but retaining a learned and rigorous musical structure.[58] An important element of the popular style was the frequent use of folk or folk-like material, as discussed in the article Haydn and folk music. Haydn took care to deploy this material in appropriate locations, such as the endings of sonata expositions or the opening themes of finales. In such locations, the folk material serves as an element of stability, helping to anchor the larger structure.[59] Haydn's popular style can be heard in virtually all of his later work, including the twelve London symphonies, the late quartets and piano trios, and the two late oratorios.
The return to Vienna in 1795 marked the last turning point in Haydn's career. Although his musical style evolved little, his intentions as a composer changed. While he had been a servant, and later a busy entrepreneur, Haydn wrote his works quickly and in profusion, with frequent deadlines. As a rich man, Haydn now felt he had the privilege of taking his time and writing for posterity. This is reflected in the subject matter of The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), which address such weighty topics as the meaning of life and the purpose of humankind, and represent an attempt to render the sublime in music. Haydn's new intentions also meant that he was willing to spend much time on a single work: both oratorios took him over a year to complete. Haydn once remarked that he had worked on The Creation so long because he wanted it to last.[60]
The change in Haydn's approach was important in the history of music, as other composers soon were following his lead. Notably, Beethoven adopted the practice of taking his time and aiming high.[61]
Haydn's works are listed in a comprehensive catalogue prepared by Anthony van Hoboken. This Hoboken catalogue provides each work with an identifying number, called its Hoboken number (abbreviation: H. or Hob.). The string quartets also have Hoboken numbers, but are usually identified instead by their opus numbers, which have the advantage of indicating the groups of six quartets that Haydn published together; thus for example the string quartet Opus 76, No. 3 is the third of the six quartets published in 1799 as Opus 76.
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