Joseph Haydn

Eventually he found career success, spending much of his working life as music director for the wealthy Esterházy family at their palace of Eszterháza in rural Hungary.

There is reason to think that Haydn's singing impressed those who heard him, because in 1739[f] he was brought to the attention of Georg Reutter the Younger, the director of music in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, who happened to be visiting Hainburg and was looking for new choirboys.

As he later told his biographer Albert Christoph Dies, Haydn was motivated to sing well, in hopes of gaining more invitations to perform before aristocratic audiences, where the singers were usually served refreshments.

Haydn struggled at first, working at many different jobs: as a music teacher, as a street serenader, and eventually, in 1752, as valet-accompanist for the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, from whom he later said he learned "the true fundamentals of composition".

[20] As his skills increased, Haydn began to acquire a public reputation, first as the composer of an opera, Der krumme Teufel, "The Limping Devil", written for the comic actor Joseph Felix von Kurz, whose stage name was "Bernardon".

[25] The Count lived the typical aristocractic lifestyle: winters in fashionable Vienna, but in summer escaping the heat and dust of the city for the ancestral estate in the country; this was at Unterlukawitz, now in the Czech Republic.

[j] Count Morzin soon suffered financial reverses that forced him to dismiss his musical establishment, but Haydn was quickly offered a similar job (1761) by Prince Paul Anton, head of the immensely wealthy Esterházy family.

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.

In about 1765, the prince obtained and began to learn to play the baryton, an uncommon musical instrument similar to the bass viol, but with a set of plucked sympathetic strings.

Haydn was commanded to provide music for the prince to play, and over the next ten years produced about 200 works for this instrument in various ensembles, the most notable of which are the 126 baryton trios.

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.

By 1790 Haydn was in the paradoxical position ... of being Europe's leading composer, but someone who spent his time as a duty-bound Kapellmeister in a remote palace in the Hungarian countryside.

[34] Of these, a particularly important one was with Maria Anna von Genzinger (1754–1793), the wife of Prince Nikolaus's personal physician in Vienna, who began a close, platonic relationship with the composer in 1789.

[40] Since Anton had little need of Haydn's services, he was willing to let him travel, and the composer accepted a lucrative offer from Johann Peter Salomon, a German violinist and impresario, to visit England and conduct new symphonies with a large orchestra.

[41] After fond farewells from Mozart and other friends,[42] Haydn departed from Vienna with Salomon on 15 December 1790, arriving in Calais in time to cross the English Channel on New Year's Day of 1791.

[m] Charles Burney reviewed the first concert thus: "Haydn himself presided at the piano-forte; and the sight of that renowned composer so electrified the audience, as to excite an attention and a pleasure superior to any that had ever been caused by instrumental music in England.

Musically, Haydn's visits to England generated some of his best-known work, including the Surprise, Military, Drumroll and London symphonies; the Rider quartet; and the "Gypsy Rondo" piano trio.

In 1795, Salomon had abandoned his own series, citing difficulty in obtaining "vocal performers of the first rank from abroad", and Haydn joined forces with the Opera Concerts, headed by the violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti.

Prince Anton had died, and his successor Nikolaus II proposed that the Esterházy musical establishment be revived with Haydn serving again as Kapellmeister.

Haydn frequently appeared before the public, often leading performances of The Creation and The Seasons for charity benefits, including Tonkünstler-Societät programs with massed musical forces.

As debility set in, he made largely futile efforts at composition, attempting to revise a rediscovered Missa brevis from his teenage years and complete his final string quartet.

The very frail composer was brought into the hall on an armchair to the sound of trumpets and drums and was greeted by Beethoven, Salieri (who led the performance) and by other musicians and members of the aristocracy.

[55] Haydn, was, however, deeply moved and appreciative when on 17 May a French cavalry officer named Sulémy came to pay his respects and sang, skillfully, an aria from The Creation.

His head took a different journey; it was stolen by phrenologists shortly after burial, and the skull was reunited with the other remains only in 1954, now interred in a tomb in the north tower of the Bergkirche.

[60] He retained this practice even in his secular works; he frequently only uses the initials "L. D.", "S. D. G." [soli Deo gloria], or Laus Deo et B. V. M. [... and to Beatae Virgini Mariae] and sometimes adds, "et oms sis" (et omnibus sanctis – and all saints)[61] Haydn's early years of poverty and awareness of the financial precariousness of musical life made him astute and even sharp in his business dealings.

'"[63] Haydn generally enjoyed good health, but he suffered from nasal polyps during much of his adult life,[64] an agonizing and debilitating condition that at times prevented him from writing music.

Nurtured by ... a victorious optimism maintained through all the vicissitudes of a long and arduous life, this radiant joyfulness again and again manifested itself, and Haydn considered it his mission to let his fellow beings share in this unique gift.

[v] The most famous example is the sudden loud chord in the slow movement of his "Surprise" symphony; Haydn's many other musical jokes include numerous false endings (e.g., in the quartets Op.

Geiringer emphasizes how Haydn was struck by the emotional depth of Bach's work: "Up to then he had been familiar with the gay and superficial idiom of the musical rococo; here he found compositions that deeply stirred and excited him.".

This is reflected in the subject matter of The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), which address such weighty topics as the meaning of life and the purpose of humankind and represent an attempt to render the sublime in music.