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It was a cool day, this 31st
of March 1732, when the wheelwright (Stellmacher) Mathias in
Rohrau, a small village near the Hungarian border of Austria,
and his wife Karla, first welcomed a son to his family. Mathias,
a craftsman who made wooden wheels and the frames for carriages
and farm wagons, was also the well-respected "Marktrichter",
something like the Mayor, in Rohrau. Neither parent could read
music; but 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 also with their neighbours.
Haydn's parents had noticed that their son was musically
talented 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 suggestion from their relative Johann Matthias
Frankh, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, that their
"Sepperl", as he was lovingly called, be apprenticed to Franck
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 then and at the beginning
of a long and industrious musical career.
Franz Joseph Haydn (the ‘Franz’ was later mostly dropped or put
in parenthesises) the composer who, more than any other,
epitomizes the aims and achievements of the ‘Classical’ era.
Perhaps his most important achievement was that he developed and
evolved in innumerable subtle ways the most influential
structural principle in the history of music: his excellence of
the set of expectations known as sonata form made an epochal
impact. In hundreds of instrumental sonatas, string quartets,
and symphonies, Haydn both broke new ground and provided
long-lasting models; indeed, he was among the creators of these
elementary genres of classical music.
His influence upon later composers is immeasurable; Haydn's most
distinguished pupil, Beethoven, was the direct beneficiary of
the elder master's musical imagination, and Haydn's shadow lurks
within (and sometimes looms over) the music of composers like
Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.
 Part and parcel of Haydn's formal mastery was his well-known
sense of humour, his feeling for the unpredictable, elegant
twist. In the Symphony No. 94 ("Surprise" - 1791), where the
composer tweaks those audience members - who typically fall
asleep during slow movements - with the sudden, completely
unexpected intrusion of a fortissimo chord, during a passage of
quietude. Haydn's pictorial sense is much in evidence; works
like his epic oratorio The Creation (1796-1798), in which images
of the universe taking shape are thrillingly, touchingly
portrayed in tones. By one estimate, Haydn produced some 340
hours of music, more than Bach or Handel, Mozart or Beethoven.
Few of them lack some unanticipated detail or clever solution to
a formal difficulty.
Haydn was fruitful not just because he was a tireless worker
with an inexhaustible musical imagination, but also because of
the circumstances of his musical career: he was the last
prominent beneficiary of the system of noble patronage that had
nourished European musical composition since the Renaissance. He
became a choirboy at St. Stephen's cathedral in Vienna when he
was eight. After his voice broke and he was turned out of the
choir, he eked out a precarious living as a teenage freelance
musician in Vienna.
His fortunes began to turn in the late 1750s as members of
Vienna's noble families became aware of his musical talents, and
on May 1, 1761, he went to work for the Esterházy family. He
remained in their employ for the next 30 years, writing many of
his instrumental compositions and operas for performance at
their vast summer palace.
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 Esterhazy in Eisenstadt, their 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 Esterházy princes were musical
connoisseurs who appreciated his work and gave him daily access
to his small orchestra. 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. A friend he met in Vienna
wasWolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom Haydn met sometime around 1784.
According to later testimony, 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 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 was later
used for the Austrian and German national anthems – and still
remains as the German one!
Haydn died on the 31st of May, 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. That was 200
years ago – long gone but not forgotten. He was chosen as the
‘patron’ of this year’s annual ball of the Canadian Austrian
Society - to be held on the last day of February this year.
- rka
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