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Yet it proved to be the darkness before the dawn. Within 50 years of Leibniz’s death in 1716 the German language was flourishing as never before. In part this was a natural consequence of economic and social recovery after the dark days of the previous century. Among other things it brought a growing population, better communications and improving literacy rates. From the 1730s a number of ‘German societies’ were founded to promote the status of the language. In 1761, the year in which Haydn entered the service of the Esterházys, a branch was even founded in Vienna, arguably the least German city in the Holy Roman Empire. It was badly needed: Count Kaunitz, the senior minister in the Habsburg monarchy, spoke the Romance languages perfectly but deliberately chose to butcher his German to demonstrate his distance from the common herd.

By this time, German speakers were beginning to grow in confidence as the improvement in their material conditions was accompanied by cultural achievement. Philosophy was one field in which they could claim at least parity with the rest of Europe, but it was in music that they were beginning to establish pre- eminence. The point is well made by a simple list of 18th-century German composers born before Haydn: Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759), Johann Joachim Quantz (1697-1773), Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783), Carl Heinrich Graun (1703-59), Franz Benda (1709-86), Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712-86), Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-88), Johann Wenzel Anton Stamitz (1717-57), Johann Friedrich Agricola (1720-74) and Georg Anton Benda (1722-95). No wonder that in 1741 a periodical published in Brunswick, entitled Der musikalische Patriot (‘The Musical Patriot’), offered the following triumphant proclamation of the supremacy of German music:

Must not the Italians, who previously were the tutors of the Germans, now envy Germany its estimable composers, and secretly seek to learn from them? Indeed, must not the high and mighty Parisians, who used to deride German talent as something provincial, now take lessons from Telemann of Hamburg? Indeed, I believe that we Germans can go on instructing foreigners in how music can be developed still further, in much the same way that our fellow countrymen, notably Leibniz and Wolff, have demonstrated how the philosophical and mathematical sciences can be raised to a still greater pitch of perfection.

As this jibe at the ‘high and mighty Parisians’ suggests, it was the French against whom the Germans measured themselves. So great had been the power exercised by Louis XIV and so triumphalist was the culture he created at Versailles that a reaction was inevitable sooner or later. It was intensified by the knowledge that the French held the Germans in very low esteem. Voltaire’s Candide (1759), one of the great bestsellers of the century, opened with a contemptuous satire on the clod-hopping Germans:

The most noble Baron of Thunder ten Tronckh was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia; for his castle had not only a gate, but even windows … He was called ‘My Lord’ by all his people, and he never told a story but everyone laughed at it. My Lady Baroness weighed 350 lbs, consequently was a person of no small consideration.

As the German cultural revival gathered pace, so did resentment at French condescension. Perhaps the most distinguished representative of the Austrian Enlightenment was Joseph von Sonnenfels, born in the same year as Haydn and a friend and patron of both Mozart and Beethoven. He complained bitterly that: It is well-known how the French are accustomed to speaking and writing with unseemly contempt about German traditions, intellect, society, taste and everything else that blossoms under the German sun. Their adjectives tudesque, germanique and allemand are for them synonyms for ‘coarse’, ‘ponderous’ and ‘uncultivated’.

Those words were written in 1793, four years after the fall of the Bastille. Initially many, if not most, Germans welcomed the French Revolution as the triumph of reason and liberty over superstition and despotism. Very few, however, wished to see anything similar occurring east of the Rhine. As one conservative sneered: ‘Those who are most favourably disposed towards the French Revolution are also those who are most opposed to it in their own country.’ The majority view, even among those of a liberal disposition, was that the enlightened reforms introduced by rulers such as the Emperor Joseph II, the Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to his death in 1790, made violent upheaval unnecessary. Opposition to the Revolution was strengthened by the outbreak of the French Wars in 1792, the devastation inflicted by the invading armies and by the Terror of 1793-94.

Musicians were as open to cultural influences as any other social group. For all his unique genius, Mozart (1756-91) was a typical intellectual of his time: a man of the Enlightenment and a Freemason but also a devout Christian. He was also proud of his German identity although this is rarely mentioned by his biographers. He wrote home from Paris in the spring of 1778 that the taste of the French had improved a little since his last visit, because at least they could now bring themselves to listen to good music as well as bad, but:

... to expect them to realise that their own music is bad or at least to notice the difference – Heaven preserve us! And their singing! Good Lord! Let me never hear a Frenchwoman singing Italian arias. I can forgive her if she screeches out her French trash, but not if she ruins good music! It’s simply unbearable.

Rather more chilling was the vow he made when the prospect of a commission from ‘these stupid Frenchmen’ for an opera appeared:

I tremble from head to foot with eagerness to teach the French more thoroughly to know, appreciate and fear the Germans.

In another letter to his father, Mozart expressed his ambition ‘to do honour to myself and to the whole German nation’. Haydn never expressed himself in these terms. He was of an older generation and of a more equable temperament than Mozart. Nor did he ever go to Paris. But during his first vist to London he was greatly impressed by the enthusiasm with which theatre audiences sang ‘God Save the King’. On his return from his second visit he reported this to his friends in high places. Either Count Saurau or Baron van Swieten (the evidence is not clear) then commissioned an Austrian version, the text to be written by Lorenz Haschka to music by Haydn. The result was ‘God Save Emperor Francis!’, first performed in all the theatres in Vienna and in many other places throughout the Habsburg monarchy on February 12th, 1797, the Emperor’s birthday. Translated, the first verse runs as follows:

God save Emperor Francis Our good Emperor Francis! Long live Emperor Francis In the brightest splendour of good fortune! May the leaves of laurel bloom for him As a garland of honour, wherever he goes. God save Emperor Francis!

The other four verses are no more exciting, but when sung to Haydn’s melody the combined effect was, by all accounts, electrifying (This will seem less surprising when it is appreciated that in 1841 the melody was borrowed by Hoffmann von Fallersleben for his German national anthem ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles’).

If the reliability of official reports may be doubted, there is no gainsaying the testimony of the canny entrepreneur Emanuel Schikaneder who immediately advertised on his handbills that ‘God Save Emperor Francis!’ would be sung at all performances in his theatre. As the doyen of Haydn studies H.C. Robbins Landon has observed, it ‘was the greatest piece of propaganda ever devised to hold together a people made nervous and uncertain by the French Revolution.’ Above all, it bound together the head of the Habsburg dynasty with nation and people, being variously described as a ‘national anthem’ (Nationallied) and a ‘song of the people’ (Volkslied). The nation in question was ‘German’, not in a political sense – for very few even dreamed of a unified German nation state – but in the cultural sense employed by Mozart. In London, at one of their meetings, George III told Haydn that he admired him for being ‘a good honest German gentleman’, to which Haydn replied: ‘To keep that reputation is my greatest pride.’

“Haydn was given the credit for ‘establishing the supremacy of German music in the concert life of Europe’ “

Haydn himself was greatly attached to his anthem ‘God save Emperor Francis!’ This was confirmed by his early biographers, Georg August Griesinger and Albert Christoph Dies, both of whom visited him frequently during his last ten years and recorded their conversations. He told both men that, whenever he was upset by bad news from the French wars (and there was plenty of it), he calmed himself down by going to his piano and playing and singing it. When Dies observed that he was not surprised because the song was a masterpiece, Haydn replied: ‘I almost think so myself, though I shouldn’t say it.’ Posterity has been less enthusiastic, the words no longer having any resonance. There appears to be only one current recording of just the first verse available (by Emmy Ameling). However, the melody alone has enjoyed much wider currency as Haydn used it for the slow movement of his String Quartet in C major, opus 76 (The Emperor).

Also frequently performed and recorded has been another of Haydn’s musical contributions to the war effort – his Mass in D Minor of 1798. The title Haydn originally gave it in his catalogue was Missa in Angustiis (‘A Mass in Times of Trouble’). As it turned out, just as Haydn was putting notes on the staff, 1,500 miles away the troubled times were being alleviated by Nelson’s destruction of the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile during the night of August 1st. This was one of the most decisive naval battles of all time – ‘victory is not a name strong enough for such a scene’ was Nelson’s own verdict when day dawned. It may have been the coincidence of the arrival of the good news of the British victory with its first performance that led to the Mass being given the name Nelson Mass.

It may also have been retitled in honour of Nelson’s visit to the Esterházy palace at Eisenstadt in 1800. This was the occasion for one of the more intriguing concerts in musical history, as Nelson’s mistress, Lady Emma Hamilton, sang an ode in English to Nelson’s victory set to music by Haydn, who accompanied her at the piano:

Britannia’s leader gives the dread command; Obedient to his summons flames arise: The fierce explosion rends the skies. And high in the air the pond’rous mass is thrown The dire concussion shakes the land. Earth, air and sea united groan. The solid Pyramids confess the shock, And their firm bases to the centre rock.

This was to be Haydn’s last original vocal work for solo voice. He was now 68 and was beginning to find composition hard work. There were two more Masses and The Seasons to come but in 1802, after a serious illness, he stopped creative work. His patriotic attachment to his national anthem, however, was undimmed. In the spring of 1809, as his life neared its end and the fortunes of war turned against the Austrians yet again, he was still using it to lift his spirits. According to Griesinger, he sang and played the song three times in a row on May 26th, just five days before his death.

It was sad indeed that Haydn should have died as Austria was suffering yet another defeat at the hands of Napoleon, for it proved to be the last. Only five years later it was the German powers who would be celebrating a victory parade in Paris to mark Napoleon’s defeat. However, Haydn did leave one further and posthumous gift to the German nation. This was well put by Griesinger at the beginning of his memoir of the great composer, published in 1810:

Joseph Haydn has ended his glorious career. By his death Germany again suffers a national loss; for Haydn was the founder of an epoch in musical culture, and the sound of his harmonies, universally understood, did more than all written matter together to promote the honour of German artistic talent in the remotest lands.

This was a claim made again and again in the 19th century. In 1870, looking back on the past century, the great Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick (mercilessly and unfairly lampooned by Wagner in the person of Beckmesser in The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) gave Haydn the credit for ‘establishing the supremacy of German music in the concert-life of Europe’. It was pride in their cultural achievements that had given the Germans the self-confidence to shake off foreign models and to speak with their own voice. In that process, music in general and Haydn in particular played a crucial role.