JosephHaydn

On 4 May 1795, Haydn gave a benefit concert at the King’s Theatre in London. The programme included his new D major Symphony, now numbered 104. Afterwards he wrote in his notebook: “The whole company was extremely pleased, and so was I. I made four thousand gulden this evening. Such a thing can only be done in England.” He was sixty-three. He was a wheelwright’s son and had spent most of his adult life in the livery of a servant of the Esterházy family.

1732–⁠60St Stephen’s, Porpora and Count Morzin

Haydn was born in Rohrau in 1732. His father was a wheelwright who played the harp by ear and sang; his mother had worked as a cook. At about six, Joseph left home for schooling in Hainburg. By 1740 he was a choirboy at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. As a chorister he sang church music daily but received little instruction in composition. Performances outside the cathedral also gave him chances to get a meal. When his voice broke and he was dismissed in 1749, another musician, Johann Michael Spangler, took him into his family’s crowded room.

For the next years Haydn earned his living by teaching, accompanying and freelance playing. He studied Fux’s counterpoint and worked through the keyboard sonatas of C. P. E. Bach. He became accompanist and servant to the singing teacher Nicola Porpora, and learned from him how to accompany a voice at the keyboard. In the service of Count Morzin he had an orchestra at his disposal, and he wrote his first symphonies there. In 1760 he married Maria Anna Keller. The marriage was unhappy and childless.

EsterházyKapellmeister to the Esterházy princes

Prince Paul Anton Esterházy appointed him vice-Kapellmeister in 1761. Under the next prince, Nikolaus, he became full Kapellmeister in 1766. His contract covered much more than composition. He had to rehearse the musicians, maintain their instruments, answer requests and see that they appeared properly dressed. At Eisenstadt and the new palace of Eszterháza he learnt the abilities of particular players. The 1761 symphonies Le Matin, Le Midi and Le Soir give them solo passages. In Le Matin the double bass also has a solo, in the trio of the minuet.

The musicians also had wives and children. In 1772 their stay at Eszterháza dragged on, while most of their families remained in Eisenstadt. Haydn told Griesinger and his fellow biographer Albert Christoph Dies how he put their request to go home to the prince. In the “Farewell” Symphony the fast finale breaks off and an Adagio begins. The players finish their parts, put out their candles and leave, until only two muted violins remain. The prince understood the request. The symphony opens in F♯ minor and ends quietly in F♯ major.

Four playersQuartets, Paris symphonies and Mozart

The six Op. 20 quartets, also written in 1772, give the cello demanding parts, and three of them end with fugal finales. Each player has to take up the subject in turn or drop out while another part has it. Nine years later, in the Op. 33 quartets, Haydn treated ordinary tunes in new ways. In the finale of the E♭ major “Joke”, he breaks the returning melody into fragments separated by long rests. The last fragment, a quiet half of the opening phrase, comes after nearly five bars of silence.

A new contract in 1779 removed the old restriction on selling his compositions beyond the court. Haydn dealt with publishers and accepted distant commissions. The six “Paris” symphonies of 1785–⁠86 went to the Concert de la Loge Olympique, whose orchestra was larger than his own. In No. 83 a G minor opening is followed by an oboe repeating a dotted rhythm, which listeners heard as clucking and which earned the symphony its nickname, “The Hen”.

In Vienna he had found a colleague whose opinion mattered to him. Mozart dedicated six quartets to Haydn in 1785. On 12 February, after hearing the last three at Mozart’s home, Haydn told Leopold Mozart: “Before God, and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer I know, personally or by name.” Leopold wrote the words down in a letter to his daughter. Haydn went on to praise Wolfgang’s taste and knowledge of composition.

1791–⁠95London and the Salomon concerts

During these visits he also heard Handel’s oratorios, performed with large choirs and orchestras. Back in Vienna in 1792–⁠94, he taught Beethoven. When he returned from England for good, he had money and an international audience, and he brought with him an English libretto about the creation of the world.

The late worksThe Creation and the late works

Baron Gottfried van Swieten turned that libretto, drawn from Genesis, the Psalms and Milton, into the German text of The Creation. The orchestral opening is in C minor and repeatedly avoids a full cadence. On the word “Licht”, chorus and orchestra enter fortissimo on a chord of C major. Private performances followed in 1798, a public performance in Vienna in 1799, and publication with both German and English words in 1800.

Between 1796 and 1802 he also wrote six late masses for the renewed Esterházy establishment under Nikolaus II. In the Missa in tempore belli, timpani and trumpet calls enter during the Agnus Dei’s prayer for mercy. Haydn used the tune of his 1797 hymn Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser again in the “Emperor” Quartet, where it passes intact from one player to the next among the four while the accompaniment changes. For The Seasons, completed in 1801, van Swieten adapted James Thomson. The work includes field-workers and hunters, a summer storm and a winter landscape.