Posted on 04/30/2009 11:48:32 PM PDT by neb52
Joseph Haydn was born on March 31st, 1732 in the village of Rohrau in Lower Austria, a province of the Habsburg empire. This was arguably the most multinational, multicultural, multilingual and generally diverse great power that Europe had ever seen. Its then ruler, Charles VI, held sway over a great conglomeration of territories stretching from Ostend to Belgrade and from Prague to Palermo. It included all or part of the following present-day countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. As Sir Harold Temperley observed, the Habsburg monarchy was not so much a country as a continent all by itself. The most succinct illustration of this was provided by the trilingual signature of the monarchy’s greatest military commander, Prince Eugene: Eugenio von Savoie. Everyone who visited the capital Vienna was struck by the wonderful variety of languages, clothing and customs on display.
From the age of 29 until the day he died almost half a century later, Haydn was in the service of the Esterházys, the greatest aristocratic dynasty in the monarchy. In the course of the previous century they had risen with amazing speed by helping to defeat their Habsburg overlords’ two great enemies: the Protestants and the Turks. Although the Esterházy family was Hungarian by origin, theirs was a world without national identity in which Italian, French or even Latin was as much used as German. Evidence of its cosmopolitanism can be seen in the visual vocabularies of their three main palaces – in Vienna, at Eisenstadt and at Esterháza. It was at the last of these, built by Prince Nicholas ‘The Magnificent’ in the 1760s, that Haydn was to spend most of his time.
"Emma Hamilton sang an ode in English to Nelson’s victory set to music by Haydn, who also accompanied her at the piano"
At all three palaces Haydn had access to an enormous collection of musical scores. They came from all over Europe but especially from Italy, the centre of the 18th-century musical world. Although Haydn was unusual among contemporary musicians in never actually travelling to Italy, the Vienna in which he received his early musical training was suffused with Italian music. In an autobiographical sketch written in 1776 he recalled that he had ‘the good fortune to learn the true fundamentals of composition from the famous Porpora’, the Neapolitan composer. But Vienna was also a city to which musicians from the Habsburg-ruled kingdom of Bohemia flocked, bringing with them their own distinctive sound. The incorporation of Slavonic melodies and rhythms was one of the many features of Haydn’s music to win the later approval of Richard Wagner. Less often acknowledged but also powerful was the influence of the Protestant north. Haydn himself told one of his two contemporary biographers that he owed ‘a great deal’ to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Kapellmeister at Hamburg.
Of course what Haydn then did with this richly international mix was entirely individual. Tucked away in rural isolation at remote Esterháza, with an excellent orchestra always on hand and writing for a musically sophisticated patron, Haydn could allow his powerful imagination full rein. As he himself put it: My Prince was content with all my works, I received approval, I could, as head of an orchestra, make experiments, observe what enhanced an effect, and what weakened it, thus improving, adding to, cutting away, and running risks. I was set apart from the world, there was nobody in my vicinity to confuse and annoy me in my course, and so I had to be original.
It turned out that what pleased Prince Nicholas also pleased the rest of Europe. Haydn’s original contract stated that everything he wrote was the exclusive property of his patron. But it was not long before news of his talent began to spread, as manuscript copies of his keyboard sonatas and string quartets began to circulate. Always more honoured in the breach than in the observance, the restrictive clause was dropped in a revised contract of 1779, by which time his music was freely available everywhere that music was performed. Haydn was fortunate that his career coincided with a massive expansion of music printing and publishing. He turned out to be a shrewd businessman, driving a hard bargain with the publishers who clamoured for his work.
Over the next two decades an ever-increasing stream of his compositions found their way on to the international market, sometimes in manuscript but increasingly in printed editions. Especially successful was the set of six keyboard sonatas published in 1774 and dedicated to Prince Esterházy, which was soon reprinted in Paris, London and Amsterdam. By the 1780s Haydn was composing music for patrons all over Europe, including the six symphonies composed for a masonic lodge at Paris. The most eloquent visual illustration of his international fame was Goya’s magnificent portrait of the Spanish Duke of Alba holding a book of Haydn’s Four Songs with Pianoforte Accompaniment, now in the Prado.
Nowhere was Haydn’s music more appreciated than in London. Kept within the bounds of the Esterházy residences by his contract, he could not exploit this popularity at first hand until the benevolent but demanding Prince Nicholas died in the autumn of 1790. Pensioned off by his less musical and more thrifty successor, Prince Anton, Haydn was now free to enter the public sphere. Accompanied by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon, Haydn arrived in London on New Year’s Day 1791 to direct a series of concerts of new symphonies. To his great surprise but gratification he found that he was a celebrity. He wrote home to one of his lady friends:
I would love to have seen that.
“”Who? Franz Liszt? Never heard of him.”
Thanks Bugs.
I would love to see a revived Salieri opera
Word has it that Die Schopfung was Pope JP 2’s favorite work as well
The one the showed an excerpt from in Amadeus looked interesting.
I know it's just Hollywood, but I love the beginning of "Amadeus" when the aged Salieri is trying to impress the priest by playing scraps of the music he composed. But the priest recognizes nothing.
"No?" says Salieri. "It was a very popular tune in it's day!"
The he plays a bit of "Un Keine Nachtmusik" (sp?) and the priest lights up and hums along with the tune. "I know that! You wrote that? Oh, that's charming!"
"That was Mozart" croaks Salieri.
True, but Amadeus, as good as it was, did Salieri a great disservice. He is unjustly written off by many classical music enthusiasts who would otherwise love his work.
I can’t remember where I heard it, but there was once a test done to folks—listen to a bit of music and say whether Salieri or Mozart composed it. Quite a few got it wrong.
I’m pretty sure that’s the version I have.
The one with the same part sung by 2 singers because 1 died mid-recording. It’s stellar.
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