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The Life of Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn, (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.

A life-long resident of Austria, Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Hungarian aristocratic Esterh�zy 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". At the time of his death, he was one of the most celebrated composers across Europe.

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.

There is reason to think that Haydn's singing impressed those who heard him, because he was soon brought to the attention of Georg von Reutter, the director of music at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, who was touring the provinces looking for talented choirboys. 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 worked at many different jobs: as a music teacher, as a street serenader, and eventually as valet-accompanist for the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, from whom he later said he learned "the true fundamentals of composition".

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, having seen one of Haydn's compositions, summoned him and engaged him as her singing and keyboard teacher. Baron Carl Josef F�rnberg employed Haydn at his country estate, Weinzierl, where the composer wrote his first string quartets. F�rnberg later recommended Haydn to Count Morzin, who in 1757 became his first full time employer.

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 Esterh�zy 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 Esterh�zy establishment, Haydn wore livery and followed the family as they moved among their various palaces, most importantly the family's ancestral seat Schloss Esterh�zy in Eisenstadt and later on Eszterh�za, 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. The Esterh�zy 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 Esterh�zy 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 Esterh�za, far from Vienna, rather than the closer-by Eisenstadt. Haydn particularly longed to visit Vienna because of his friendships there.

Among his friends 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.

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."

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.

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.

Haydn returned to Vienna in 1795, moved into a large house in the suburb of Gumpendorf, 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 Eszterh�zy 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. 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. "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.

James Webster, noted biographer and musicologist, writes of Haydn's public character thus: "Haydn's public life exemplified the Enlightenment ideal of the honn�te 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." Haydn was especially respected by the Eszterh�zy court musicians whom he supervised, as he maintained a cordial working atmosphere and effectively represented the musicians' interests with their employer.

Haydn had a robust sense of humor, evident in his love of practical jokes and often apparent in his music, and he had many friends. 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. 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").

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' ".

-excerpts from wikipedia, Joseph Haydn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn