Autobiographical sketch (Haydn)

Haydn wrote the sketch, which is about two pages long, when he was 44 at the request, relayed to him by a chain of two mutual acquaintances, of Ignaz de Luca, who was preparing a volume of brief biographies of Austrian luminaries, Das gelehrte Oesterreich ("Learned Austria").

[4] The sketch goes on to list what Haydn regarded as his most important works up to that time: the operas Le pescatrici, L'incontro improvviso, and L'infedelta delusa; his oratorio Il Ritorno di Tobia (1775) and his Stabat Mater (1767).

All of them are vocal music; Haydn omits the pre-1776 instrumental works that arguably have received greater critical acclaim in modern times, such as the "Farewell" Symphony[5] or the string quartets, Opus 20.

"[6] Haydn also offers an assessment of his then-current reputation as a composer, expressing appreciation for the praise and support of Johann Adolph Hasse, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Gottfried van Swieten as well as considerable resentment directed at various (unnamed) critics in Berlin: The sketch concludes thus: The musicologist Elaine Sisman has offered a novel interpretation of the sketch as having been written, whether consciously or not, according to principles of rhetoric laid down in the Middle Ages.

Sisman annotates the sections of Haydn's original letter as follows: The sketch is a classic rhetorically organized composition, drawing particularly on the medieval ars dictaminis, the art of letter-writing: first an introduction (exordium), incorporating the so-called "securing of good-will" (benevolentiae captatio, in this case by self-deprecation);[7] then the narration of facts (narratio, his biography); the supporting evidence (corraboratio, the list of pieces); the refutation of his enemies' arguments (confutatio, the Berlin critics); and the conclusion, revealing again his good qualities as well as those whom he admires and respects (peroratio).