Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn

Born: 31 March 1732, Rohrau, Lower Austria
Died: 31 May 1809, Vienna 

With a legacy of over a hundred symphonies, it is difficult to overstate the influence of Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn — known as both the “Father of the Symphony” and the “Father of the String Quartet”— on these genres of classical music. The elder brother of fellow Austrian composer Michael Haydn, both a mentor and companion to Mozart, and a tutor of Beethoven, his musical contributions have influenced generations of musicians.

Haydn was born in 1732 in the small Lower Austrian village of Rohrau, the second son to parents of humble origins. His father worked as a wheelwright; his mother, prior to her marriage, worked as a cook for the lord of the manor. Though of common birth, young Haydn exhibited remarkable musical aptitude. At six years of age, he was taken in by a relative, who was employed as a school principal and choirmaster in the nearby town of Hainburg. His endeavours here equipped him with a foundational knowledge of music, the ability to play several instruments, and a good deal of practice singing in the church choir. This musical training marked the first steps of a remarkable journey that would take Haydn to heights hard to imagine for a boy from a small village. At eight years of age, young Haydn caught the attention of an important visitor to Hainburg — the musical director of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. After a successful audition Haydn was invited to join the choir there and moved to Vienna in 1740. He stayed on for nine years, amassing a depth of practical knowledge through frequent musical performances. When Haydn’s voice changed as he approached adolescence, he was dismissed from both the choir and the school at St. Stephen’s.

Upon leaving St. Stephen’s with little to his name, the seventeen-year old Haydn found himself living in the garret of a fellow musician, “miserably” slogging through a menagerie of small musical jobs. He made ends meet by teaching and performing where he could and cultivating aristocratic contacts, all the while devoting any excess of time to ambitious self-instruction in musical theory. The key to success for any composer in the mid-18^th century was aristocratic patronage. With the increase in his reputation, Haydn eventually obtained the position of music director (Kapellmeister) for Count Karl Morzin in 1757, which ended a period of struggle and economic insecurity for him.  When the Count went bankrupt in 1760 he had to let Haydn go, but he did recommend him to his much wealthier colleague, Prince Paul Anton Esterházy, who engaged Haydn as Vice-Kapellmeister in 1761.

Prince Paul was succeeded by his brother Prince Nikolaus, an ardent music lover, who greatly enhanced his personal musical establishment, including building his own opera house. Haydn was promoted to full Kapellmeister in 1766. Much of Haydn's activity at the time followed the musical taste of his patron, whom he was obliged to follow as he moved among his various palaces – generally in Vienna during the winter and on his more remote country estate during the summers. It was a position that would support Haydn financially for nearly three decades, but would also isolate him from other composers and contemporary musical trends. Here he was, as he put it, "forced to become original” in his compositions.

1779 was a watershed year for Haydn, as his contract was renegotiated: whereas previously all his compositions were the property of the Esterházy family, he now was permitted to write for others and sell his work to publishers. Haydn soon shifted his emphasis in composition to reflect this (fewer operas, and more quartets and symphonies) and he negotiated with multiple publishers, both Austrian and foreign.  By 1790 he was widely considered the leading composer in Europe, so that when Prince Nicholas died that year and his son and successor, Prince Anton, dismissed his father’s musical establishment (though keeping Haydn on a nominal salary), Haydn was free to accept invitations elsewhere. At the invitation of the London impresario, Johan Peter Salomon, he made two lengthy trips to England (1791-1792 and 1794-1795) where he composed some of his most famous symphonies and was feted as the greatest composer of his time. 

He returned to Vienna in 1795 as a financially secure international celebrity. After the sudden death of Prince Anton in 1794 his son, Prince Nikolaus II partially revived his grandfather’s musical establishment and persuaded Haydn to return, at least on a part-time basis, to his former position.  Haydn worked on some commissions for the prince, notably a series of six masses for the name day of his wife, but by this time Haydn had become largely independent and lived permanently in a new house he bought for himself in the suburbs of Vienna.  He now wrote works primarily for public performance, including his late string quartets and his two major oratorios.  Above all, he was especially proud of a composition that was inspired by his experience in England, where the singing of the anthem, “God Save the King,” inspired great patriotic enthusiasm there.  Haydn resolved to write a similar anthem for his own country, “God save Emperor Francis,” which became the imperial anthem of the Austrian Empire until its demise in 1918.  The tune was incorporated into Haydn’s own string quartet, Op. 76, No. 3, and was used by a number of subsequent Central European composers from Beethoven, to Czerny, Smetana and Wieniawski. It was also widely used in Christian hymns and school hymns.  When, after 1803 Haydn was plagued by infirmity and could no longer compose, this was the tune he would repeatedly play for himself as a consolation, including on the day he collapsed and subsequently died at the age of seventy-seven in 1809. In 1922 the tune was appropriated by the Weimar Republic of Germany to a German nationalist text and has served as the national anthem of Germany since then.