1. Background, childhood, choirboy, 1732–c1749.

Documentary information on Haydn’s life and musical activity before his employ by the Esterházy court in 1761 is scanty. The primary sources comprise an autobiographical letter of 1776 and brief biographies published just after his death by (in order of general reliability) Georg August Griesinger, Albert Christoph Dies, Giuseppe Carpani and Nicolas Etienne Framery, supplemented by parish registers, musical archives, dated autographs and the like. Haydn was born into a family of primarily south German stock, albeit in an area of considerable ethnic diversity in which Croats and Hungarians were also prominent. His immediate ancestors were not peasants (as legend has it), but artisans and tradespeople. His grandfather and his father, Mathias (1699–1763), were master wheelwrights; Mathias also functioned as Marktrichter (magistrate) of the ‘market village’ (as Haydn called it) Rohrau, near Bruck an der Leitha. Rohrau was a possession of Count Karl Anton Harrach (1692–1758); his grandson Karl Leonhard (1765–1831) erected a monument to Haydn in the castle garden in 1793. Haydn’s mother, Anna Maria Koller (1707–54), had before her marriage in 1728 been a cook at the Harrach castle.

Mathias Haydn was ‘a great lover of music by nature’ (this phrase in Haydn’s laconic account is ordinarily taken as applying to Harrach, but it must be his father who was meant), who ‘played the harp without reading a note of music’; his mother sang the melodies. Indeed all three of their surviving male children became professional musicians, two of them famous composers. (The third, Johann Evangelist, 1743–1805, was a tenor in a church choir and later at the Esterházy court.) Dies says of Haydn’s father that ‘all the children had to join in his concerts, to learn the songs, and to develop their singing voice’, adding that he also organized concerts among the neighbours.

Haydn’s talent became evident early on. ‘As a boy of five I sang all [my father’s] simple easy pieces correctly’; according to Griesinger he still remembered these melodies in old age. ‘Almighty God … granted me so much facility, especially in music, that when I was only six I boldly sang masses down from the choirloft, and could also get around on the harpsichord and violin.’ In 1737 or 1738 Johann Mathias Franck, a cousin of Mathias Haydn’s by marriage and a school principal in the nearby town of Hainburg (Mathias’s birthplace), heard Haydn sing in the family circle; Griesinger and Dies also have him pretending to be playing a violin by scraping a stick against his arm. Franck was so impressed by Haydn’s voice and musical accuracy that he suggested that he come to live with him, ‘so that there I could learn the rudiments of music along with other juvenile necessities’. It being clear that his abilities could not be developed in Rohrau, his parents agreed, whether in the hope that he might amount to something as a musician or the belief that musical and educational accomplishments might be useful in what they (especially his mother) imagined as his true calling, that of a priest.

Franck was not only a school principal but the choir director of a Hainburg church; presumably he oversaw Haydn’s education personally. The latter was scarcely an autodidact, as myth used to have it. Griesinger writes:

He received instruction in reading and writing, in the catechism, in singing, and on almost all the string and wind instruments, and even on the timpani: ‘I will be grateful to this man even in the grave’, Haydn often said, ‘that he taught me so much, even though in the process I received more beatings than food’.

Such exaggerations aside, he doubtless made rapid progress; his account of mass singing and harpsichord and violin studies ‘in my sixth year’ implies that these took place in Hainburg. As Griesinger says, his schooling was not musical alone; this was also the case when he was a choirboy in Vienna, where his non-musical studies, though ‘scanty’, included Latin, religion, arithmetic and writing.

In 1739 or 1740 (‘in my 7th year’; Griesinger and Dies: in his eighth year) Haydn was recruited to serve as choirboy at the Stephansdom in Vienna: ‘Kapellmeister Reutter, on a trip through Hainburg, heard my thin but pleasant voice from a distance, and at once accepted me into the Capell Hauss’ (choir school). Georg Reutter the younger, Kapellmeister at the Stephansdom since 1738 (later Hofkapellmeister), was travelling through the provinces in search of new talent; in Hainburg the parish priest, an old friend, suggested that Haydn might be a suitable candidate. According to several accounts Haydn did not know how to trill but, after Reutter demonstrated, triumphantly got it right on his third attempt, thus sealing his acceptance. For the next ten years, ‘I sang soprano both at St Stephan’s and at court to great applause’. At the choir school, ‘I was taught the art of singing, the harpsichord and the violin by very good masters’; in singing these included Adam Gegenbauer and the tenor Ignaz Finsterbusch (both d 1753). To be sure, there was apparently little formal training in theory or composition, although the singing included solfeggio and the harpsichord instruction probably entailed figured bass. But in their enthusiasm for the notion that Haydn’s development amounted to ‘making something out of nothing’ (Dies, allegedly quoting Haydn), most accounts again exaggerate this supposed lack of instruction. ‘Haydn recalled having had only two lessons [in theory] from the worthy Reutter’, writes Griesinger, but if he could recall two, he might have had more. In any case, ‘Reutter encouraged him to make whatever variations he liked on the motets and Salves that he had to sing in church, and this discipline soon led him to ideas of his own, which Reutter corrected’; this scarcely implies outright neglect.

It was surely not on Haydn’s own that ‘he also came to know Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739) and Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum (1725). With tireless exertion Haydn sought to understand Fux’s theory; he worked his way through the entire treatise’. However, although both Griesinger and Dies mention Fux in the context of the choir school, Haydn’s study of him would more plausibly have taken place during the 1750s. In any case, his copy of Gradus is heavily annotated (in Latin); he made it the basis of his own teaching of composition, as did Mozart. Another activity entrusted to competent older choirboys was the instruction of their younger colleagues in musical fundamentals; among those whom Haydn taught was his brother Michael, who joined him there about 1745. Most important, for ten full years, at a highly impressionable age, Haydn rehearsed and sang in performances of the greatest art-music then being produced in Catholic Europe, amid the pomp and splendour of the cathedral and court of an imperial capital. This experience will have fundamentally shaped his musical intellect even without formal training in composition.

But this life could not last; his voice broke. A characteristic anecdote adds insult to injury by relating that after one performance Maria Theresa said that he sang ‘like a crow’, while rewarding Michael for his beautiful singing. Griesinger states that Reutter had earlier suggested that Haydn might become a castrato, but his father refused permission (although this seems potentially inconsistent with his parents’ original hope that he become a priest). Be this as it may, soon after his voice broke he was dismissed from the choir school. Haydn wrote that he remained there ‘until into my 18th year’ (i.e. April 1749 to March 1750); Griesinger’s estimate, ‘in his sixteenth year’, is generally thought to be too early. Carl Ferdinand Pohl, who had access to many documents now lost but gives no source in this instance, writes: ‘We find Haydn on the street; it was a damp November evening in 1749’. Pathos aside (the date and atmosphere derive from Framery), the date is consistent with Haydn’s statement.

2. Vienna, c1750–61.

Haydn’s account of his freelance 1750s narrates a classic ‘rags to riches’ story:

When my voice finally broke, for eight whole years I was forced to eke out a wretched existence by teaching young people. Many geniuses are ruined by this miserable [need to earn their] daily bread, because they lack time to study. This could well have happened to me; I would never have achieved what little I have done, had I not carried on with my zeal for composition during the night. I composed diligently, but not quite correctly, until I finally had the good fortune to learn the true fundamentals of composition from the famous Porpora (who was in Vienna at the time). Finally, owing to a recommendation from the late [Baron] von Fürnberg (who was especially generous to me), I was appointed as director with Count Morzin, and from there as Kapellmeister with his highness Prince [Esterházy].

This period comprises three stages, of which the first two overlap without clear division. (1) During the ‘lean years’, about 1749 to the mid-1750s, Haydn was a freelance musician, teacher and budding composer. Even then, however, he was reaping professional and social advantage from contact with figures such as Porpora and Metastasio. (2) Beginning around 1753, and increasingly after 1755, his compositional activity expanded, as his reputation and access to patronage grew. (3) His first regular appointment, as director of music for Count Morzin, began probably in 1757 and lasted until winter 1760–61 or spring 1761.

Haydn’s first lodgings (according to Framery) were offered by Johann Michael Spangler, a tenor (later regens chori) at the Michaelerkirche, in a garret with Spangler’s wife and infant son (b February 1749). This situation obviously could be no more than temporary, especially as Spangler’s wife was soon pregnant with their second child, Maddelena (b 4 September 1750); these birthdates are consistent with Haydn’s having moved there in November 1749 and with Framery’s account. (In 1768 Haydn engaged Maddelena Spangler as a soprano at the Esterházy court, where among other roles she created Vespina in L’infedeltà delusa and Rezia in L’incontro improvviso; she was also the first Sara in Il ritorno di Tobia.) Another good deed was done him by Johann Wilhelm Buchholz, a lacemaker, whose granddaughter was remembered in Haydn’s will ‘because her grandfather lent me 150 gulden without interest in my youth and great need’; the amount was close to a year’s salary for an ordinary musician at a minor court. It was perhaps in the following spring (1750) that he journeyed to the huge Benedictine pilgrimage church in Mariazell (Styria). Griesinger relates that he took with him ‘several motets which he had composed and asked the regens chori there for permission to put out the parts in the church and sing them’, and continues with an anecdote according to which Haydn the next day got his way by trickery. If ‘motet’ means a liturgical work other than a mass, it can only have been his first Lauda Sion hymns, hXXIIIc:5; another possibility is the Missa brevis in F. In any case this pilgrimage was important to Haydn; later he composed both the Missa Cellensis and the ‘Mariazellermesse’ with Mariazell in mind.

According to Pohl, it was in the spring or summer of 1750 that Haydn occupied his most frequently described early lodgings: a ‘miserable little garret without a stove’ (Griesinger) in the so-called Michaelerhaus, attached to the Michaelerkirche. At this time ‘his entire life was devoted to giving lessons, the study of his art, and performing. He played in serenades and in orchestras for pay, and devoted himself diligently to composition, for “when I sat at my old, worm-eaten clavier, I envied no king his good fortune”’. Here occurred the first of many strokes of luck through which, in addition to his genius and unremitting labour, he gradually improved his professional lot. Griesinger writes:

In the same house … lived as well the famous poet Metastasio. He was raising one Fräulein Martinez; Haydn was engaged to give her lessons in singing and on the clavier, in return for which he received free board for three years. At Metastasio’s he also made the acquaintance of the aging Kapellmeister Porpora. Porpora was teaching singing to the mistress of the Venetian ambassador, Correr; however, because he was too proper and too fond of his ease to accompany at the piano himself, he delegated this task to our Giuseppe. ‘There was no lack of Ass, Blockhead, Rascal and pokes in the ribs, but I willingly put up with it all, for I profited immensely from Porpora in singing, composition and Italian.’ In the summer Correr travelled with the lady to the popular bathing resort Mannersdorf …; Porpora went as well … and took Haydn with him. For three months Haydn served there as Porpora’s valet; he ate at Correr’s officers’ table, and was paid six ducats [c25 gulden] a month. From time to time he was required to accompany Porpora on the clavier at one Prince von Hildburghausen’s, in the presence of Gluck, Wagenseil and other famous masters; the approval of these connoisseurs was especially encouraging to him.

Access to such personages – whose overlapping relations were as much social as artistic – was essential for an aspiring young musician. ‘Fräulein Martinez’ was the composer and singer Marianne von Martínez. At the court of Joseph Friedrich, Prince of Sachsen-Hildburghausen (1702–87), Haydn could also have encountered Dittersdorf (whom he certainly knew by the mid-1750s) and Giuseppe Bonno, later Hofkapellmeister.

All these events took place during the first half of the 1750s. Haydn’s instruction of Martínez began in 1751 or 1752; presumably his three years with Metastasio were from 1751 to 1754. Porpora arrived in Vienna from Dresden in late 1752 or early 1753; Haydn might well have met him in March 1753, when Metastasio was considering him as composer of his new opera L’isola disabitata (which in the event he assigned to Bonno; Haydn himself set this libretto in 1779). Given the mastery of Haydn’s music by 1755–6, 1753 or 1754 are the latest plausible dates for his having ‘learnt the true fundamentals of composition’ from Porpora, whose expert knowledge of singing and Italian – ‘singing’ in this context implies Italian opera and oratorio – was also of great importance; Haydn became fluent in Italian and the italianate singing style. In addition, it may well have been at Porpora’s instigation that he systematically worked through Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum (the only work mentioned by any source that offers ‘true fundamentals’). Another important musical encounter was Haydn’s discovery of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, but this is unlikely to have taken place as early as about 1750, as the biographers claim. Dies portrays Haydn asking for ‘a good theoretical textbook’; this can refer only to the second volume of Bach’s Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen. However, it appeared far too late (1762) to serve the function Dies attributes to it; even Bach’s first volume (1753) was apparently not sold in Vienna until the 1760s. Moreover, unlike Fux or Mattheson, neither volume figures in Haydn’s library catalogue (1804) or his estate. Indeed Griesinger speaks more plausibly of compositions:

About this time [his move to the Michaelerhaus] Haydn came upon the first six sonatas of Emanuel Bach; ‘I did not leave my clavier until I had played them through, and whoever knows me thoroughly must discover that I owe a great deal to Emanuel Bach, that I understood him and studied him with diligence. Emanuel Bach once paid me a compliment on that score himself’.

Although it is unclear which of Bach’s sonatas Griesinger meant by ‘the first six’, there is no doubt of his influence on Haydn as a composer. Again, however, Haydn’s style does not reflect that influence until the 1760s.

An important early personal contact was with Joseph Felix von Kurz, a well-known comic actor (under the stage-name Bernardon) and minor impresario active at the Kärntnertortheater, for whom Haydn supplied music to Der krumme Teufel, a comedy of the Hanswurst type. It was apparently given its première in the 1751–2 season and revived in May 1753, with considerable success. Neither libretto nor music of this, his earliest stage work, survives; a libretto does survive for a later version of 1759, often called Der neue krumme Teufel, but, again, there is no music. It has been speculated that many anonymous numbers in contemporary Viennese collections of theatrical songs stem from this work or others that Haydn might have composed, although documentation is lacking.

Haydn’s lot improved substantially in the mid-1750s, as Griesinger describes:

At first Haydn received only two gulden a month for giving lessons, but gradually the price rose to five gulden, so that he was able to look about for more suitable quarters. While he was living in the Seilerstätte, all his few possessions were stolen … Haydn soon saw his loss made good by the generosity of good friends … [he] recovered through a stay of two months with Baron Fürnberg, which cost him nothing.

A 150% increase in fees implies a rise not only in Haydn’s economic status but his professional reputation – and therefore increased access to patronage. The most important figure was Baron Carl Joseph Fürnberg (1720–67), who employed him as music master to his children (he lived near the Seilerstätte), commissioned his first string quartets and eventually recommended him to Morzin. Important as well was the elder Countess Maria Christine Thun, who (according to Framery) took singing and keyboard lessons from Haydn.

His freelance activities continued apace. Griesinger writes:

In this period Haydn was also leader of the orchestra in the convent of the Barmherzige Brüder … at 60 gulden a year. Here he had to be in the church at eight o’clock in the morning on Sundays and feast days, at ten o’clock he played the organ in what was then the chapel of Count Haugwitz, and at eleven o’clock he sang at St Stephan’s. He was paid 17 kreutzer for each service. In the evenings Haydn often went ‘gassatim’ with his musical comrades, when one of his compositions was usually performed, and he recalled having composed a quintet [possibly hII:2] for that purpose in 1753.

(Both Griesinger and Dies supply the obligatory comic anecdotes involving Haydn and Dittersdorf.) Griesinger’s account conflates several church jobs: from 1754 to 1756 Haydn performed as a singer in the Hofkapelle during Lent (1 gulden per service, not 17 kreuzer), and in 1755 and 1756 as an orchestral violinist for balls during carnival (4 gulden per evening). In the Hofkapelle he sang both concerted and a cappella works, including Palestrina’s Stabat mater and the Allegri Miserere. His Sunday job at Count Haugwitz’s newly consecrated chapel near the Piaristenkirche began in mid-1759; he was responsible for the entire concerted music. According to an account by a Prussian prisoner of war, he participated in chamber-music parties arranged by Count Harrach at Rohrau. Of Haydn’s many students during these years, Martínez has already been mentioned; another of more than marginal importance was Robert Kimmerling, later regens chori at Melk.

Although a sizable number of Haydn’s works originated during the 1750s, documented dates are few. Both the very early Missa brevis in F and the first Lauda Sion exhibit technical faults, implying that he composed them before learning the ‘true fundamentals’ (i.e. before c1753–4); such faults are found in no other surviving genuine works. Griesinger writes: ‘In addition to performing and teaching, Haydn was indefatigable in composing. Many of his easy clavier sonatas, trios and so on belong to this period, and he generally took into consideration the needs and capacities of his pupils’. Numerous tiny keyboard sonatas and ‘concertinos’ indeed survive, although some authorities argue that the smallest sonatas are not necessarily the earliest or least accomplished, and the concertinos appear to date from about 1760; possibly some keyboard trios antedate 1755 as well, although none is so short or simple. In any case Haydn’s compositional activity increased exponentially in the mid-1750s. The quintet-divertimento hII:2 survives in a later source dated 1754, and many of his ensemble divertimentos probably date from before 1761. Of the ten or so pre-1780 keyboard trios and the 21 or so string trios, the earliest also may date from the mid-1750s, although others are from the early 1760s. Late in life Haydn dated the autographs of the Organ Concerto in C (hXVIII:1) and the Salve regina in E (hXXIIIb:1) ‘1756’.

The precise dates of the final two stages of Haydn’s early ‘progress’ – Fürnberg and Morzin – also remain uncertain. Griesinger writes:

The following, purely coincidental circumstance led him to try his hand at the composition of quartets. A certain Baron Fürnberg had an estate in Weinzierl, several stages from Vienna; from time to time he invited his parish priest, his estate manager, and Albrechtsberger (a brother of the well-known contrapuntist) in order to have a little music. Fürnberg asked Haydn to compose something that could be played by these four friends of the art. Haydn, who was then 18, accepted the proposal, and so originated his first quartet [incipit of hIII:1], which, immediately upon its appearance, received such uncommon applause as to encourage him to continue in this genre.

Griesinger’s statement that Haydn composed his first quartet at 18, although roughly supported by Dies and Carpani, is far too early. All the circumstantial details, as well as the sheer mastery of Haydn’s early quartets, suggest rather the Seilerstätte period, i.e. about 1755–7. Whether hIII:1 was actually Haydn’s first quartet, or whether he (or Griesinger) named it simply because it occupied first position in Pleyel’s famous edition (1801) and therefore in his own thematic catalogue, cannot be determined. In any case Haydn had not yet adopted the ‘opus’ format; there are, simply, ten early quartets, of which hIII:1–4, 6 (op.1 nos.1–4, 6) and hII:6 (‘op.0’) are probably the earliest, hIII:10, 12 (op.2 nos.4, 6) perhaps in the middle, and hIII:7–8 (op.2 nos.1–2) probably the latest, perhaps even 1759–60.

Regarding Haydn’s employ by Count Karl Joseph Franz Morzin (1717–83), Griesinger states:

In the year 1759 Haydn was engaged as music director to Count Morzin in Vienna at a salary of 200 gulden, free lodging and board at the officers’ table. Here he was finally able to enjoy the happiness of a carefree existence; he was quite contented. The winters were spent in Vienna, the summers in Bohemia [at Dolní Lukavice, usually referred to as Lukavec]…. As music director in the service of Count Morzin Haydn composed his first symphony [incipit of no.1].

Although Dies agrees regarding the date (‘about 27’), Haydn’s earliest symphony cannot be as late as 1759: a manuscript source for no.37 is dated 1758 (Carpani’s date), implying a date of composition in that year or, more likely, at least a year earlier. Moreover, Haydn himself in old age organized a list of his symphonies according to ten-year periods: 1757–67, 1767–77 etc.; ‘1757’ is so precise that he must have believed that it was the actual year of his first symphony – or, perhaps, of his appointment with Morzin. (The list also appears to confirm Griesinger’s identification of the symphony we know as ‘no.1’ as the earliest.) Finally, if one accepts 1749 as the date of Haydn’s dismissal from the Stephansdom and takes literally his ‘eight whole years’ of ‘wretched existence’, 1757 is implied as end-point; but the most likely marker of the latter, again, was his appointment with Morzin. Be all this as it may, the free-spending Count Morzin soon had to dissolve his little musical establishment. Although the early biographers again disagree as to the date, Haydn’s marriage certificate (26 November 1760) refers to him as ‘Music Director with Count v. Morzin’, so he probably moved from Morzin to Esterházy without meaningful interruption. Haydn’s compositions during the Morzin years include about 15 symphonies; keyboard sonatas (including hXVI:6, probably not later than 1760), trios, divertimentos (including hXIV:11, 1760) and concertos; string trios; partitas for wind band (including hII:15, 1760) and possibly the quartets op.2 nos.1–2.

On 26 November 1760 Haydn was married to Maria Anna Aloysia Apollonia Keller (bap. 9 Feb 1729; d 20 March 1800); the marriage contract, in which he pledged 1000 gulden as a matching sum to her dowry (a common custom), is dated 9 November. The bride was the daughter of the wigmaker Johann Peter Keller, who is said variously to have assisted him in his years of poverty or employed him as a music teacher. The early biographers relate that in the mid-1750s Haydn had fallen in love with her younger sister Therese (b 1733), who however was compelled by her devout parents to enter a nunnery in 1755, taking her formal vows in 1756. It has been speculated that he composed the Salve regina in E and perhaps the Organ Concerto in C on the latter occasion. Whether (the speculation continues) out of continuing gratitude to the Kellers or owing to a psychological displacement of his own affections, he married the elder sister four years later. The marriage was an unhappy one (we have only his side of the story) and led to infidelities on both sides; as he said to Griesinger (somewhat illogically): ‘My wife was incapable of bearing children, and thus I was less indifferent to the charms of other women’.

3. Esterházy court, 1761–90.

(iii) Opera impresario, 1776–90.

In 1778 Haydn sold his house in Eisenstadt; the court now stayed at Eszterháza at least ten months every year, and he increasingly spent the short winter season in Vienna (see §3(iv)). The very long stays at Eszterháza were linked to Nicolaus’s reorganization of the theatrical entertainment there in 1776. Now there was a regular ‘season’ each year, comprising opera, stage plays and marionette operas (in a separate small theatre); in principle there was theatrical entertainment every evening the prince was in residence. At first, stage plays predominated (184 evenings in 1778, as opposed to only 50 operas – and only two musical academies; four others took place during the day, in the ‘apartments’), but the number of opera evenings increased steadily, reaching a high of 124 or 125 in 1786. New productions were henceforth not grand, ‘occasional’ events, but a regular occurrence; in 1776 there were five, and in the banner year 1786 there were eight, together with nine revivals. Under these conditions Haydn could not compose more than a small fraction of what was needed, nor were new works commissioned from other composers. Instead, operas were acquired from Vienna, where there were many productions and a lively trade in copying; it is not known how many were selected by the prince or Haydn during their brief winter sojourns. Some were acquired by agents (e.g. Nunziato Porta, the librettist of Orlando paladino), others supplied by newly arrived singers etc., and still others purchased from archives and estates (Dittersdorf sold the court several of his own operas in 1776). The up-to-date repertory centred on opera buffa: the composer represented by the greatest number of productions from 1776 to 1790 was Cimarosa (13), followed in order by Anfossi, Paisiello, Sarti and Haydn (seven), and 24 other composers with fewer.

Once it was decided to produce a given opera, Haydn was responsible for any musical alterations that might be required, supervising the copying of parts, rehearsing the singers and orchestra, and conducting all the performances – for no fewer than 88 productions in the 15 years from 1776 to 1790. This was by any reckoning a full-time job, even if one does not count his own new stage works, of which six originated between 1777 and 1783, or almost one per year. First came a dramma giocoso by Goldoni, Il mondo della luna (given on 3 August 1777, on the marriage of Nicolaus’s younger son). La vera costanza (1778–9) is the subject of implausible and conflicting anecdotes in Griesinger and Dies, according to which it was originally commissioned for the Burgtheater in Vienna but scuttled by intrigue (neither Joseph II nor his musicians were well-disposed towards Haydn); in fact it had its première at Eszterháza, on 25 April 1779. It was lost in the fire that largely destroyed the Eszterháza opera theatre on 18 November 1779; the surviving version represents Haydn’s reconstruction of the work from 1785. It is a measure of the prince’s commitment (or obsession) that an opera was given just three days after the fire, in the marionette theatre, which had been hastily adapted for staged opera (yet another noble marriage was to be celebrated). Haydn’s L’isola disabitata to a libretto by Metastasio also had its première on schedule on 6 December (the prince’s nameday). Next came La fedeltà premiata (1780; given on 25 February 1781, on the inauguration of the rebuilt opera house). In 1783 Haydn took the unusual step of publishing the great scena for Celia in Act 2, ‘Ah, come il core … Ombra del caro bene’, in full score; it received a detailed and laudatory review by C.F. Cramer in his Magazin der Musik. Haydn’s last two Eszterháza operas were Orlando paladino (1782, for the prince’s nameday) and Armida (1783; given 26 February 1784). The later 1770s saw three German marionette operas, also all lost in the 1779 fire: Dido (1776), Vom abgebrannten Haus (date uncertain) and Die bestrafte Rachbegierde (1779; its production can be inferred only from the printed libretto); the occasionally seen Die Feuersbrunst is either spurious or represents an arrangement of Vom abgebrannten Haus.

After 1783 Haydn composed no more operas for the court. It is not known why he abandoned the genre, which he had cultivated intensively since 1766 and in which he was proud of his achievements (see §6 below), or how he persuaded the prince to consent at a time when the number of productions was still rising. Perhaps he was increasingly drawn to his new career as composer of instrumental music for publication (see §(iv) below). In any case all his other duties for the court theatre remained in force; in particular he still revised the operas in production to suit his provincial stage and limited personnel. Haydn made many cuts, both of entire numbers and within them, re-orchestrated (often adding winds), changed tempos (usually speeding them up) and ‘tailored’ arias to ‘fit’ his singers, as Mozart would have said. He composed about 20 substitute (‘insertion’) arias (hXXIVb) as well as long passages within numbers not rejected as a whole.

Open in new tab

4. Joseph Haydn: engraving by Luigi Schiavonetti after the second version of a portrait by Ludwig Guttenbrunn, c1792; the first version of the portrait probably dates from c1770

The majority of the insertion arias and simplifications were composed for Luigia Polzelli, a young Italian mezzo-soprano who joined the troupe in March 1779 along with her much older husband, a violinist. Both proved inadequate and were dismissed in December 1780 – but promptly rehired: Luigia and Haydn had become lovers, a relationship that, like so many in that milieu, was probably an open secret. (Haydn told Griesinger that the painter Ludwig Guttenbrunn had been his wife’s lover during his stay at the court in 1770–72.) While at Eszterháza Luigia gave birth to her second son, Antonio, in 1783. He and his mother believed that Haydn was the father (there is no evidence of such a belief on Haydn’s part); he became a professional musician and was appointed to the Esterházy orchestra in 1803. Haydn was well disposed towards him, and even more towards his elder brother Pietro (b 1777); he taught them both music and maintained contact with them throughout his life. As for Luigia, following the dissolution of the Kapelle in 1790 Haydn attempted to procure engagements for her in Italy; however, he would not have her with him in London, even though her sister was engaged there as a singer (see §4 below). Although there are no letters from the 1780s by which we might assess the nature of their feelings, he wrote to her often (in Italian) during his first London visit. Those up to early spring 1792 are ardent: ‘Perhaps I shall never regain the good humour that I used to have with you; you are always in my heart, and I shall never, never forget you … Think from time to time about your Haydn, who esteems you and loves you tenderly, and will always be faithful to you’ (14 January). But those from May and June are notably cooler – he had entered a new relationship – and none survives from his second London visit. He acceded to Polzelli’s requests for money, but not always immediately or in the demanded amount, while complaining (misleadingly) how little he had, as well as (accurately) how hard he had to work.

The vastly increased operatic and theatrical activity at the Esterházy court from 1776 on led to an equally drastic reduction in the performance of instrumental music. As noted above, only six ‘academies’ were listed for the entire year 1778 (all in January and February). Presumably the prince simply lost interest; even Haydn’s stream of baryton works began to dry up after 1773 and ceased entirely about 1775, following the octets hX:1–6. The symphony, from the late 1750s to 1775 the one constant in Haydn’s output, declined as well; only nine were completed in the six years 1776–81 (nos.53, 61–3, 70–71, 73–5), none at all in 1777 or the first half of 1778. Even these few symphonies often include adaptations of stage music. No.63 in C begins with the overture to Il mondo della luna, and the slow movement (‘La Roxelane’) is based on a theme from a stage play; the slow movement of no.73, ‘La chasse’, uses his own lied Gegenliebe and the finale recycles the overture to La fedeltà premiata. He even recycled the overture hIa:7 twice, in the finale of one version of no.53 (‘Imperial’) and the opening movement of no.62. From this time on, the Esterházy court was no longer the primary destination for Haydn’s instrumental music.

4. London, 1791–5.

Johann Peter Salomon, born in Bonn but living in London as a violinist and concert producer, heard of Nicolaus Esterházy’s death while in Europe engaging musicians for the coming season; he immediately travelled to Vienna, called on Haydn and ‘informed’ him that he would now be going to London. Salomon was not the first to contemplate this. In 1783 Haydn said of Symphonies nos.76–8 that they were composed ‘for the English gentlemen, and I intended to bring them over myself and produce them’ at the Professional Concert (the successor to the Bach-Abel Concerts of 1774–82); in July 1787 he contemplated composing an opera and instrumental works for G.A.B. Gallini, the impresario of the Italian opera. Salomon himself had had business dealings with Haydn, who in a letter to Bland of April 1790 referred to 40 ducats owed him by Salomon. However, as long as Nicolaus Esterházy was alive Haydn had been unwilling or unable to negotiate his freedom; now, Prince Anton willingly granted him a year’s leave.

Salomon’s initial contract with Haydn governed the 1791 season. Haydn was guaranteed £300 for an opera (here Salomon was acting as agent for Gallini), £300 for six symphonies, £200 for the rights to publish the latter, £200 for 20 other compositions to be conducted at his concerts and £200 profit from a ‘benefit’ concert. Haydn and Salomon left Vienna on 15 December, travelling via Munich, Wallerstein (where Haydn conducted Symphony no.92) and Bonn to Calais, from where they sailed to Dover on New Year’s Day 1791, arriving in London the next day. ‘I stayed on deck during the entire crossing’, he wrote to Mme Genzinger on 8 January, ‘so as to gaze my fill of that great monster, the ocean’.

London was the largest and economically most vibrant city in the world, made even more cosmopolitan by refugees from the French Revolution. Haydn settled in the same house where Salomon lived and also had a studio at Broadwood’s music shop, although he complained of the noise and later moved to a suburb. He immediately plunged into a hectic social and professional life which, however stimulating, competed with his need to compose:

My arrival caused a great sensation … I went the rounds of all the newspapers for three successive days. Everyone wants to know me … If I wanted, I could dine out every day; but first I must consider my health, and second my work. Except for the nobility, I admit no callers until 2 o’clock.

He also had to give fortepiano lessons, primarily to high personages; he was soon invited to a ball at the Court of St James, and to a concert sponsored by the Prince of Wales (later George IV). The latter was an enthusiastic amateur who became Haydn’s most important royal patron; on 1 February 1795 he arranged a soirée with George III and the queen in attendance, in which all the music was of Haydn’s composition and he both played and sang. Other royal invitations followed that month and in April.

London’s musical life was active and varied, and enriched by a constant stream of artists from abroad. It is abundantly documented; about Haydn’s activities there are also his letters to Genzinger and Polzelli, as well as the observations and anecdotes jotted down in his ‘London Notebooks’. The ‘season’ ran from February to May; it included two series of concerts in the Hanover Square Rooms (Salomon and Haydn on Monday and the Professional Concert on Friday), opera on Tuesday and Saturday, and ‘ancient music’ on Wednesday. Performing forces were generally larger than in Vienna or Eszterháza; in 1791–2 Haydn’s symphonies were performed by about 40 players, in 1795 by about 60. The typical concert was a mixed affair, including symphonies, sonatas, arias and duets. A special feature was the massed choral performances in Westminster Abbey; Haydn’s experience of hearing Handel’s oratorios there was the chief stimulus for The Creation.

Haydn arrived with relatively few new works except the string quartets op.64; they were published in 1791–2 by Bland, ‘composed by Giuseppe Haydn, and performed under his direction, at M^r Salomon’s Concert’. However, Symphonies nos.90–92 had not yet been printed in England; Haydn made use of nos.90 and 92 in 1791, as well as lyre notturnos (arranged for flute and oboe) and Arianna a Naxos. Symphony no.92 soon became a favourite, and was one of several symphonies performed on the occasion of his receiving the honorary doctorate of music at Oxford, 6–8 July 1791 (whence its nickname). This event meant a great deal to him; thereafter he often referred to himself in public documents (or when needing to assert his status) as ‘Doktor der Tonkunst’.

Among Haydn’s new compositions in 1791–2 were the first six ‘London’ symphonies (nos.93–8). Only nos.95 in C minor and 96 in D (‘Miracle’) were given in 1791; the others followed in 1792, although nos.93–4 had been composed in the second half of 1791: no.93 in D (17 February), 98 in B♭ (2 March), 94 in G (‘Surprise’, 23 March), 97 in C (3 or 4 May). His benefit concert in May (fig.3) cleared £350, nearly double the £200 he had been guaranteed. Even though the journalistic prose is somewhat formulaic and may to some extent even have been ‘suggested’ by Salomon, these concerts were a sensation. The following report is of the first, on 11 March 1791:

Never, perhaps, was there a richer musical treat. It is not wonderful that to souls capable of being touched by music, haydn should be an object of homage, and even of idolatry; for like our own shakspeare he moves and governs the passions at will. His new Grand Overture [symphony] was pronounced by every scientific ear to be a most wonderful composition; but the first movement in particular rises in grandeur of the subject, and in the rich variety of air and passion, beyond any even of his own productions.

The symphony was no.92, 95 or 96. Charles Burney, with whom Haydn was to become fast friends, waxed equally enthusiastic:

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, to my knowledge, been caused by instrumental music in England. All the slow middle movements were encored; which never happened before, I believe, in any country.

By contrast, Haydn’s new opera, L’anima del filosofo or Orfeo ed Euridice, was never produced: although he composed it during the spring of 1791 and it had entered rehearsal, Gallini (owing to political intrigue) was denied a licence for the theatre.

Open in new tab

6. Advertisement from ‘The Times’ (16 May 1791) concerning Haydn’s benefit concert, to be given on that day

By the end of the 1791 season Salomon and Haydn were agreed that he would stay for another year. However, Anton Esterházy (who had written to Haydn cordially in February) wanted him to return; when Haydn informed him that he had signed a new contract with Salomon and requested an additional year’s leave, the prince refused, demanding that he inform him ‘by the next post the exact time when you will arrive back here again’. Haydn feared outright dismissal; as so often, it did not come to that. The summer and autumn gave him ample opportunity to compose, travel and expand his social circle. In August and early September he stayed on the estate of Nathaniel Brassey, a banker, in Hertfordshire. By mid-September he was back in London; on 5 November he attended an official banquet given by the newly installed Lord Mayor (amusingly described in the Notebooks). On 24–5 November he stayed at Oatlands, a property of the Duke of York, who the previous day had been married to a daughter of the King of Prussia; the new duchess became one of his most loyal patrons.

Meanwhile, he had begun giving piano lessons to Rebecca Schroeter, the attractive and well-to-do widow of the composer and pianist Johann Samuel Schroeter. During the winter of 1791–2 this relationship blossomed into a passionate affair, documented by copies Haydn made of her letters to him (beginning with this one, from 7 March):

My D[ear]: I was extremely sorry to part with you so suddenly last Night … I had a thousand affectionate things to say to you, my heart was and is full of tenderness for you, you are dearer to me every day of my life … I am truly sensible of your goodness, and I assure you my D. if anything had happened to trouble me, I would have opened my heart, & told you with the most perfect confidence. Oh how earnestly [I] wish to see you. I hope you will come to me tomorrow. I shall be happy to see you both in the Morning and the Evening.

Haydn later confirmed the relationship to Dies: ‘an English widow in London, who loved me … a beautiful and charming woman and I would have married her very easily if I had been free’. Although no letters between them survive following his departure in the summer of 1792, they remained close: Haydn dedicated the piano trios hXV:24–6 (1795) to her, she witnessed an important contract of 1796 regarding English editions of his music, they were in touch again regarding business in 1797 and she was a subscriber to The Creation.

Haydn’s and Salomon’s plans for the 1792 season were complicated by the organizers of the Professional Concert, whom Haydn had disappointed in the 1780s and who in 1791 had printed scurrilous notices alleging that his talent had dried up. As he wrote to Genzinger (17 January), complaining of overwork:

At present I am [composing] for Salomon’s concerts, and I am making every effort to do my best, because our rivals, the Professional Concert, have had my pupil Pleyel from Strasbourg come here to conduct their concerts. So now a bloody harmonious war will commence between master and pupil. The newspapers are all full of it, but it seems to me that there will soon be an armistice, because my reputation is so firmly established. Pleyel behaved so modestly towards me on his arrival that he won my affection again.

Pleyel’s music, similar to but far less brilliant and complex than his master’s, was then very popular. Haydn’s outward modesty and good manners notwithstanding, he was not about to be upstaged by a former student whose talent lay far beneath his own. Even his most famous ‘surprise’, in the eponymous symphony, played a role. Griesinger writes:

I jokingly asked him once if it was true that he composed the Andante … in order to wake up the dozing English audience. ‘No … my intention was to surprise the public with something new, and to debut in a brilliant manner, in order to prevent my rank from being usurped by Pleyel, my pupil …’

Another orchestral work of 1792 is the ‘Concertante’, a symphonie concertante for violin, cello, oboe and bassoon and orchestra (given on 9 March); it was composed in direct competition with Pleyel’s most popular composition.

On 10 April 1792 Haydn wrote to Prince Anton, informing him that ‘our concerts will be finished at the end of June, after which I shall begin the journey home without delay, in order to serve my most gracious prince and lord again’. He departed from London at the end of June or beginning of July, travelling via Bonn (where he met Beethoven) and Frankfurt. There is considerable evidence that he intended to return for the 1793 season; in the event he did not until 1794. On 24 July 1792 he arrived in Vienna, occupying the same lodgings as in the autumn of 1790. His 18 months in the Habsburg capital were uneventful. Polzelli was in Italy (still asking for money), and Mme Genzinger died on 20 January 1793. Haydn must have been lonely when not absorbed in his work, a condition presumably not ameliorated by his wife’s suggestion that they purchase a small house in the suburb of Gumpendorf (not occupied until 1797; it is now the Vienna Haydn Museum). Beethoven arrived in November, and their intercourse began immediately; it included a stay at Eisenstadt with Haydn in the summer of 1793. Haydn set him (like all his students) to a systematic course of counterpoint on Fux’s model, but had neither time nor inclination to correct the exercises systematically, and Beethoven switched to Albrechtsberger. More important to both composers was doubtless whatever comments Haydn made about free composition, as well as shop-talk about musical life and career-building (these seem to have been his chief contribution to the training of his many ‘pupils’ during the 1790s). By early winter he had decided not to return to London in 1793: he had finally determined to undergo an operation for a long-painful polyp in his nose, and perhaps he feared travelling at a dangerous stage in the Napoleonic Wars. In any case it was to his advantage to take an additional year, so as to be able to have new compositions in his portfolio on his return.

In November 1792 Haydn produced 12 each of new minuets and German dances (hIX:11–12) at a charity ball, and immediately published them with Artaria. Keess had produced Symphonies nos.95–6 in the winter of 1791–2; Haydn produced others himself on 15 March 1793, and again for the Tonkünstler-Societät in December, where he also gave his choral ‘madrigal’ The Storm (hXXIVa:8) in a revised version with a German text, possibly by Swieten. He began the string quartets op.71/74 (a single opus of six) in late 1792 and composed them mainly in 1793, with a view to producing them in London. He also refined his sales methods: a nobleman (in this case Count Anton Georg Apponyi) purchased the ‘dedication’ for 100 ducats, for which he received the exclusive right (in Vienna) to own a manuscript copy and to perform the quartets until Haydn published them (after one or two years), and was named as dedicatee on the editions. Later in 1793 Haydn worked on three symphonies for London, completing no.99 in E♭, the second and third movements of no.100 in G (‘Military’) and all but the first movement of no.101 in D (‘Clock’); he may also have begun the first set of English songs. Another major composition from 1793 is the variations for piano in F minor hXVII:6. On 19 January 1794 he departed for London, accompanied by the former Esterházy copyist Johann Elssler, now his amanuensis; they arrived on 5 February. On the way they stayed in Passau, where he heard a choral arrangement of the Seven Last Words by the local Kapellmeister, Joseph Friebert.

The Professional Concert having disbanded, in 1794 Haydn and Salomon had the stage to themselves. Symphony no.99 had its première on 10 February 1794, no.101 on 3 March, no.100 on 31 March. In the summer Haydn travelled to Portsmouth, the Isle of Wight, Bath and Bristol. For the 1795 season, however, Salomon abandoned his concerts, owing to the difficulty of obtaining ‘vocal performers of the first rank from abroad’ (he resumed them in 1796). Haydn therefore allied himself with the so-called Opera Concerts, directed by the violinist and composer Giovanni Battista Viotti, with an even larger orchestra, of approximately 60 players; Symphony no.102 was first given on 2 February, no.103 (‘Drumroll’) on 2 March, and no.104 – ‘The 12th which I have composed in England’, Haydn wrote on the autograph, doubtless with more than a touch of pride – at his benefit concert on 4 May. His success was greater than ever; following the benefit, Burney wrote that his 1795 symphonies were ‘such as were never heard before, of any mortal’s production; of what Apollo & the Muses compose or perform we can only judge by such productions as these’. Another important work given its première at this concert was the cantata Berenice, che fai (hXXIVa:10), composed for the reigning prima donna, Brigida Giorgi Banti.

Haydn’s compositions from 1794–5 are more heterogeneous than those from 1791–2. He returned to piano music for the first time since 1790, composing at least three sets of trios: hXV:18–20, dedicated to Maria Therese Esterházy, the widow of Prince Anton; 21–3, dedicated to Maria Hermenegild, the wife of Anton’s successor Prince Nicolaus II; and 24–6, dedicated to Mrs Schroeter. Nos.27–9 were dedicated to his friend Therese Jansen (b c1770), a celebrated virtuoso who in 1795 married a son of the engraver Francesco Bartolozzi (Haydn was a witness); it is unclear whether they date from 1795 or 1796. He composed no.31 for Jansen as well: the finale (1794) originated as an occasional piece titled ‘Jacob’s Dream!’, designed to amuse her by showing up the insufficiencies of a self-important violinist in the higher registers. He also composed sonatas nos.50 and 52 for Jansen, and no.51 probably for Schroeter. Another genre he took up again owing to the influence of a lady was the solo song. The muse was Anne Hunter (1742–1821), another well-to-do widow (of the famous surgeon John Hunter) and a minor poet, who supplied the texts for at least nine of Haydn’s 14 songs in English; 12 appeared as two sets of Original Canzonettas in 1794–5. He also composed numerous arias, divertimentos, marches, canons and other works.

Haydn’s London visits were the highpoint of his career up to that time. Griesinger reports that he earned 24,000 gulden and netted 13,000 (the equivalent of more than 20 years’ salary at the Esterházy court), and that he ‘considered the days spent in England the happiest of his life. He was everywhere appreciated there; it opened a new world to him’. Whether he seriously contemplated staying is not known; Prince Anton Esterházy had died in 1794, freeing him from even a nominal obligation to the court, and the royal family attempted to persuade him to remain. But the question was settled when Anton’s successor, Nicolaus II, offered him reappointment as Esterházy Kapellmeister. Although he remained in London for two months following the end of the 1795 season, composing trios and canzonets and seeing to the publication of many of his English compositions – he established new, long-term relations, for example with the ‘musick seller’ F.A. Hyde, an agent for Longman & Broderip, with whom he signed an elaborate contract in 1796 – he departed (according to Dies) on 15 August, travelling via Hamburg and Dresden and arriving in Vienna presumably around the beginning of September. His new house still not being ready for occupancy, he took lodgings on the Neuer Markt in the old city.

5. Vienna, 1795–1809.

‘Haydn often said that he first became famous in Germany owing to his reputation in England’ (Griesinger). From 1761 to 1790, notwithstanding his fame as a composer and the brilliance of the Esterházy court, he had been ‘stuck in the country’ (letter to Artaria, 17 May 1781); he could never be in Vienna for very long, his music was not in favour at the imperial court and his relationship with the Tonkünstler was strained. In 1795, by contrast, he returned as a culture-hero. Many of his remaining works originated in collaboration with the cultural-political establishment and were staged as ‘events’ of social and ideological as well as musical import. The key figure was Baron van Swieten, the imperial librarian and censor and the resolutely high-minded leader of the Gesellschaft der Associirten, an organization of noble patrons who subsidized large-scale performances of oratorios and the like. In addition, Haydn’s position as Esterházy Kapellmeister was far less onerous than before. Nicolaus II largely abandoned Eszterháza in favour of Vienna and Eisenstadt; Haydn’s primary duty was to supply a mass each year for performance in conjunction with the celebration of the nameday (8 September) of Maria Hermenegild, Nicolaus’s consort; this took place in Eisenstadt, where he usually spent the summer.

As a result, Haydn’s compositional orientation changed fundamentally. He composed little instrumental music: no orchestral works save the Trumpet Concerto (1796) and only one piano work (the trio no.30, 1796; nos.27–9 may have been completed then as well); the only genre he actively cultivated was the string quartet, with op.76 (completed 1797, dedicated to Count Joseph Erdődy; published in 1799) and op.77 (1799, dedicated to Prince Joseph Franz Lobkowitz; published in 1802). Instead, he devoted himself primarily to sacred vocal music: masses for Esterházy and oratorios for Vienna. Both the Missa Sancti Bernardi von Offida (Heiligmesse) and the Missa in tempore belli (Paukenmesse) are dated 1796; the former was apparently composed first and performed in Eisenstadt, while the latter originated in the autumn and was first given at the Piaristenkirche in Vienna on 26 December, then produced in Eisenstadt in 1797. There followed the Missa in angustiis (commonly known as the ‘Nelson Mass’) in 1798, the Theresienmesse in 1799, the Schöpfungsmesse in 1801 and the Harmoniemesse in 1802; thereafter this office was fulfilled by other composers, including Hummel and, in 1807, Beethoven. The absence of new masses in 1797 and 1800 doubtless reflects Haydn’s intense work on The Creation and The Seasons, respectively, during those two years.

Haydn’s collaboration with Swieten began in early 1796 with an arrangement of the Seven Last Words as a kind of oratorio: more precisely, a reworking of Friebert’s arrangement (see §4). He added chorale-like a cappella intonations preceding most of the ‘words’ and a wind band introduction to the second part, rewrote the choral parts and revised the orchestration; Swieten revised the text and arranged for the première at the Schwarzenberg Palace, on 26–7 March. Haydn produced it often thereafter, usually for the benefit of the Tonkünstler-Societät. In 1797 that organization finally made up for its earlier neglect: on 20 January, a letter signed by Salieri and Paul Wranitzky granted Haydn free admission to all their concerts for life, and on 11 December he was elected a ‘senior assessor’ in perpetuity.

An overtly political composition was the ‘Emperor’s Hymn’, Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, from winter 1796–7. Although one later account has Swieten manipulating things, the immediate impetus came from Count Joseph Franz Saurau, the president of Lower Austria and later Minister of the Interior:

I have often regretted that unlike the English we had no national anthem suited to display before the entire world the devoted attachment of the people to their Landesvater … This seemed especially necessary at a time when the Revolution in France was raging at its strongest …

I had a text fashioned by the worthy poet [Lorenz Leopold] Haschka; and to have it set to music, I turned to our immortal compatriot Haydn, who, I felt, was the only man capable of creating something that could be placed at the side of … ‘God Save the King’.

Haydn identified thoroughly with the cultural politics of this project. In late January 1797 the hymn was hastily printed and disseminated, and performed in theatres throughout the Habsburg realm on the emperor’s birthday, 12 February. This ‘Volkslied’, as he called it, combined hymnlike and popular elements so successfully that it became the anthem of both Austria and Germany. Later in 1797 he employed the melody as the basis for the variation movement in the String Quartet op.76 no.3, and in his last years he played it daily at the piano.

But Haydn and Swieten were already pursuing bigger game. On Haydn’s departure from England Salomon had given him a libretto (now lost) entitled The Creation of the World, supposedly written for Handel but never set to music. Back in Vienna, Haydn showed it to Swieten: ‘I recognized at once that such an exalted subject would give Haydn the opportunity I had long desired, to show the whole compass of his profound accomplishments and to express the full power of his inexhaustible genius’; the emphasized phrase implies that Swieten’s purpose was not artistic alone, but cultural-political as well. The Associirten guaranteed Haydn 500 ducats and subsidized the copying and performance. Haydn, whose enthusiasm for the project was bound up with his experience of Handel in London, conceived the remarkable notion of disseminating the work in both German and English (it is apparently the first original bilingual composition). Swieten translated the libretto and adapted the English prosody to his German version; he also made suggestions regarding the musical setting, many of which Haydn adopted. He began the composition apparently in autumn 1796 (Albrechtsberger wrote to Beethoven in December that he had heard him ‘improvise’ from it); it was at least half done by summer 1797 and according to F.S. Silverstolpe (see Stellan Mörner, E1969) was completed during the autumn, in Eisenstadt, although the preparation of performance materials (which entailed revisions) lasted up to March 1798.

The Associirten at first produced the work only in private, again at the Schwarzenberg Palace; following a ‘Generalprobe’ on 29 April the official première took place on the 30th, with additional performances on 7 and 10 May. The effect was overwhelming; Silverstolpe reported:

No one, not even Baron van Swieten, had seen the page of the score wherein the Creation of Light is portrayed … Haydn had the expression of someone who is thinking of biting his tongue, either to hide his embarrassment or to conceal a secret. And in that moment when Light broke forth for the first time, one would have said that light-rays darted from the composer’s blazing eyes. The enchantment of the electrified Viennese was so profound that the performers could not proceed for some minutes.

The first public performance took place on 19 March 1799, at the Burgtheater, with a complement of about 180 performers (not 400, as has been speculated); a benefit for the Tonkünstler followed on 22 December. The work immediately became a staple especially of charity performances, many conducted by Haydn himself, which brought in tens of thousands of gulden. ‘I know that God has favoured me’, he said to Griesinger, ‘but the world may as well know that I have been no useless member of society, and that one can also do good by means of music’. Beyond this, The Creation ‘made history’ immediately and on a pan-European scale in a way equalled by no other composition, owing to its fortunate combination of sublime subject, cultural-historical ‘moment’ on the cusp between Enlightenment and Romanticism, appeal to both high-minded and ordinary listeners, Haydn’s unrivalled stature and the originality and grandeur of his music. His pride in and personal identification with the work, in addition to his usual concern for financial advantage, induced him to publish it himself, selling it ‘by subscription’ all over Europe, with the assistance of colleagues such as Dr Burney; his advertisement (June 1799) reads:

The success which my Oratorio The Creation has been fortunate enough to enjoy … [has] induced me to arrange for its dissemination myself. Thus the work will appear … neatly and correctly engraved and printed on good paper, with German and English texts; and in full score, so that [at least] one work of my composition will be available to the public in its entirety, and the connoisseur will be in a position to see it as a whole and to judge it.

The edition appeared at the end of February 1800 with a list of more than 400 subscribers.

By spring 1799 Haydn and Swieten were planning a second oratorio, The Seasons, with a libretto based on James Thomson’s pastoral epic of 1726–8; Haydn composed the music apparently from autumn 1799 to the end of 1800. He suffered a serious illness in winter 1800–01, as the work neared completion, during which he again identified with his own oratorio. His pupil Sigismund Ritter von Neukomm reported:

Speaking of the penultimate aria, ‘Behold, O weak and foolish man, Behold the picture of thy life’ … he said: ‘This aria refers to me!’ And in this wonderful masterpiece he really did speak entirely from his inmost soul, so much so that he became seriously ill while composing it, and … the Lord … allowed him to see ‘his life’s image and his open grave’.

The private première at the Schwarzenberg Palace took place on 24 April 1801, the first public production on 19 May. Although the initial reception of The Seasons was favourable – Haydn wrote to Clementi that it had enjoyed ‘unanimous approval’ and that ‘many prefer it to The Creation, because of its greater variety’ – critical opinion soon became mixed, owing in part to its perceived ‘lower’ subject, in part to a growing aesthetic resistance to its many pictorialisms. Haydn himself contributed to both strands of criticism: he supposedly said to Francis II, ‘In The Creation angels speak and tell of God, but in The Seasons only Simon speaks’ (Dies); and he indiscreetly criticized Swieten’s croaking frogs (‘Frenchified trash’) and the absurdity of a choral hymn to toil (Fleiss). Nonetheless he maintained that it would join The Creation in assuring his lasting fame. For the publication he took the path of lesser resistance, selling the rights to Breitkopf & Härtel.

Other than masses, Haydn’s only important liturgical work from this period is the Te Deum ‘for the Empress’ (hXXIIIc:2), probably composed in 1800 and apparently first given in September in Eisenstadt, perhaps in conjunction with the visit there of Lord Nelson (whence the nickname ‘Nelson Mass’ for the Missa in angustiis). A very different kind of vocal composition is represented by the 13 partsongs (hXXV), composed in the years 1796–9. A number of lieder and canons date from the same years; the latter were also ‘private’ works, the autographs of which Haydn framed and mounted on the walls of his house. A chapter in its own right is the hundreds of arrangements of British folksongs he sold to the publisher George Thomson in Edinburgh, not all from his own pen; as in so many other respects, Beethoven followed him in this lucrative commission.

In 1799 Haydn began to complain of physical and mental weakness. He wrote to Härtel in June:

Every day the world compliments me on the fire of my recent works, but no one will believe the strain and effort it costs me to produce them. Some days my enfeebled memory and the unstrung state of my nerves crush me to the earth to such an extent that I fall prey to the worst sort of depression, and am quite incapable of finding even a single idea for many days thereafter; until at last Providence revives me, and I can again sit down at the pianoforte and begin to scratch away.

Indeed his productivity began to decline about this time, although his music continued to gain in ‘fire’ and cogency as long as he continued to compose. His last major completed work was the Harmoniemesse given in September 1802; there followed only (perhaps) the ‘Hungarian National March’ (hVIII:4; referred to in a letter of November) and the unfinished String Quartet op.103 of 1802–3, originally intended to go with op.77 to complete an opus of three (published 1806, dedicated to Count Moritz von Fries). He deeply regretted his loss of the stamina and concentration necessary for composition. On 6 December 1802 he thanked Pleyel for the receipt of the latter’s edition of his complete string quartets, adding: ‘I only wish that I could have back 10 years of my advanced age, so that I could provide you with something new of my composition – perhaps – despite everything – it can still happen’; a draft or alternative version (printed by Griesinger) of the letter to Härtel quoted above includes the passage: ‘It is almost as if with the decline in my mental powers, my desire and compulsion to work increase. O God! how much remains to be done in this glorious art, even by such a man as I have been!’ One inevitably thinks of Beethoven, who would soon prove him right: their relationship was difficult around the years 1798–1803, owing to Beethoven’s ‘anxiety of influence’ vis-à-vis Haydn, the crisis of his deafness, Haydn’s increasing frailty and their mutual ambivalence regarding Beethoven’s eventual assumption of the mantle of greatest living composer.

In the same letter Haydn also complained about the press of business (he was then arranging the self-publication of The Creation). Härtel added to that burden by initiating negotiations towards the publication of the so-called Oeuvres complettes (1800–06). This was not a complete edition but comprised salable works for or with piano, analogous to an edition of Mozart already under way. In this connection Härtel sent Haydn a list of compositions attributed to him, asking him to pronounce on their authorship; Haydn (rather casually) did so. This was the first of several initiatives that led to Haydn’s and Elssler’s production in 1805 of the comprehensive ‘Catalogue of all those compositions that I approximately recall having composed from my 18th to my 73rd year’, or ‘Haydn-Verzeichnis’.

In 1800 Haydn’s wife died, leaving much of her modest estate to him. No longer interested in marriage, he signed a declaration in which he promised to marry Luigia Polzelli or no-one, as well as to bequeath her 300 gulden a year (a sum he later reduced to 150). In May–June 1801 he drew up his will; the largest bequests were to his two brothers, but he also included among the beneficiaries many other relatives, former benefactors (and perhaps lovers), servants, religious and charitable institutions. From 1800 on he received a steady stream of distinguished visitors, honours and medals of which a gold medal from and honorary citizenship of the City of Vienna, in recognition of his charitable performances, meant the most to him. He also continued to talk shop with younger musicians; in addition to Pleyel and Beethoven, those who benefited included Anton Wranitzky, Neukomm, Reicha, Eybler, Weigl, Seyfried, Hummel, Diabelli, Kalkbrenner and Weber.

Haydn’s last public musical function was on 26 December 1803, when he conducted the Seven Last Words. Thereafter he mainly stayed at home in Gumpendorf; after 1805 he wrote no letters in his own hand. His youngest brother Johann died in Eisenstadt in that year, and Michael (who in 1801–2 had declined an invitation to succeed him as Esterházy Kapellmeister) followed in 1806. His last public appearance of any kind was on 27 March 1808, at a gala performance of The Creation in honour of his 76th birthday, in the Great Hall of the University. He signed his last will on 7 February 1809, altered primarily to reflect the many deaths that had taken place in the meantime. It disbursed about 24,000 gulden; his estate totalled about 55,000 gulden. During the spring he progressively weakened and had to be cared for by Elssler and other servants. His final decline was hastened by the French bombardment of Vienna on 11–12 May; Napoleon ordered that a guard of honour be stationed at his house, and his last known visitor was a French officer who paid his respects and sang an aria from The Creation. After playing the ‘Emperor’s Hymn’ on 26 May ‘with such expression and taste that our good Papa was astonished about it himself … and was very pleased’ (Elssler), he had to be assisted to bed; he did not rise again. He died at about 20 minutes before 1 a.m. on 31 May; owing to the war only a simple burial was possible, the following afternoon. On 15 June a solemn memorial service was held in the Schottenkirche, with a performance of Mozart’s Requiem. His remains are now interred in the Bergkirche in Eisenstadt.

6. Character and personality.

The traditional image of Haydn’s personality has been that of ‘Papa Haydn’: pious, good-humoured, concerned for the welfare of others, proud of his students, regular in habits, conservative. Although not inaccurate, it is one-sided; it reflects the elderly and increasingly frail man his first biographers knew. Insight into the personality and behaviour of the vigorous and productive composer, performer, Kapellmeister, impresario, businessman, conqueror of London, husband and lover, whose career had already spanned 50 years when Griesinger met him in 1799, must be inferred from his correspondence (which is more revealing than is usually assumed) and from other sources.

Haydn’s public life exemplified the Enlightenment ideal of the honnête homme: the man whose good character and worldly success enable and justify each other. His modesty and probity were everywhere acknowledged (he was occasionally entrusted with secret diplomatic communications). These traits were not only prerequisites to his success as Kapellmeister, entrepreneur and public figure, but also aided the favourable reception of his music. A more appropriate sense of ‘Papa’ would be that of ‘patriarch’, as in the resolution making him a life member of the Tonkünstler-Societät in 1797, ‘by virtue of his extraordinary merit as the father and reformer of the noble art of music’. The many younger musicians who benefited from his teaching and advice, as well as the court performers whom he directed, seem to have regarded him as a father-figure, or kindly uncle; he was well disposed towards them and helped them as he could, although there is little evidence that he thought of them as substitutes for the children he (apparently) never had.

When conditions permitted (i.e. in Vienna and London) Haydn enjoyed a rich emotional and intellectual life. In addition to his intimate relationships with Polzelli, Genzinger and Schroeter, he developed warm friendships with Mozart and Albrechtsberger; with Burney, Dr and Mrs Hunter and Therese Jansen; with an unnamed man to whom he wrote from Vienna in December 1792 (in English), playing the role of honorary godchild: ‘I rejoice very much that my handsome and good Mother Susana has changed her state … I wish from all my heart, that my Dear Mother may at my arrival next year present me a fine little Brother or Sister’; with ‘my dear’ Nancy Storace and ‘my very dearest’ Nanette Bayer (a ‘great genius’ of a pianist, employed by Count Apponyi) and many others. His observations in the London Notebooks reveal an active interest in every aspect of social life and culture, ‘high’ and ‘low’ alike. He was interested in literature, art and philosophy and gladly circulated and corresponded with intellectuals and freemasons, albeit without pretensions to being an intellectual himself.

Haydn’s character was marked by a duality between earnestness and humour. F.S. Silverstolpe, who saw much of him during the composition of The Creation, reported:

I discovered in Haydn as it were two physiognomies. One was penetrating and serious, when he talked about anything sublime, and the mere word ‘sublime’ was enough to excite his feelings to visible animation. In the next moment this air of exaltation was chased away as fast as lightning by his usual mood, and he became jovial with a force that was visible in his features and even passed into drollery. The latter was his usual physiognomy; the former had to be induced.

The many anecdotes about Haydn’s youthful propensity to practical joking, however implausible individually, must collectively reflect some reality. Griesinger found that ‘a guileless roguery, or what the British call humour, was one of Haydn’s outstanding characteristics’. But he was also a devout Catholic: he inscribed most of his autographs ‘In nomine Domini’ at the head and ‘Laus Deo’ at the end, and composed major works in honour of the Virgin, including the Stabat mater, the Salve regina in G minor, and the Missa Cellensis and ‘Great Organ Mass’. His most important instrumental work of the 1780s was arguably the Seven Last Words. He identified personally with The Creation and the religious portions of The Seasons and came to think of the former in overtly moralistic terms, as he wrote in 1801:

The [story of the] Creation has always been considered the sublimest and most awe-inspiring image for mankind. To accompany this great work with appropriate music could certainly have no other result than to heighten these sacred emotions in the listener’s heart, and to make him highly receptive to the goodness and omnipotence of the Creator.

Haydn’s personality was more complex than has usually been thought. His marriage was unhappy, and he was often lonely and at times melancholy. In May 1790 he wrote to Mme Genzinger: ‘I beg Your Grace not to shy away from comforting me by your pleasant letters, for they cheer me up in my isolation, and are highly necessary for my heart, which is often very deeply hurt’. Nor was it only a question of his physical and social isolation at Eszterháza; from London he wrote to Polzelli of his ‘melanconia’ in much the same terms.

His modesty, genuine though it was, had distinct limits. He took pride in his works, notably including his vocal music; he wrote to Artaria in October 1781:

My lieder, through their variety, naturalness, and beautiful and grateful melodies, will perhaps surpass all others … Now something from Paris: Mr leGros … wrote me all sorts of nice things about my Stabat mater, which was given … to the greatest applause … They were surprised that I was so extraordinarily successful in vocal music; but I wasn’t surprised at all, for they haven’t heard anything yet. If they could only hear … my most recent opera La fedeltà premiata! I assure [you] that nothing comparable has yet been heard in Paris, and perhaps not even in Vienna.

Haydn prized his status as an original (see §7); he bluntly rejected the notion that Sammartini might have been an influence on his early string quartets, adding (to Griesinger) that he acknowledged only C.P.E. Bach as a model. He was sensitive to criticism: he resented north Germans’ rejection of his stylistic mixture (which seemed to them a breach of decorum), was jealous of Joseph II’s patronage of inferior composers such as Leopold Hofmann (whose ‘Gassenlieder’ in particular he intended to surpass), and railed against those who pointed out technical flaws such as parallel 5ths in his late music. He took pains to forestall potential criticism of the similar beginnings of the sonatas hXVI:36/ii and 39/i by printing a prefatory note asserting that he had done this deliberately, ‘in order to show different methods of realization’. After Mozart’s death he willingly accepted the role of greatest living composer; in London he actively defended his ‘rank’ against Pleyel’s challenge. Despite his grateful dependence on Swieten for librettos and patronage by the Associirten, behind Swieten’s back he gibed that his symphonies were ‘as stiff as the man himself’ and ridiculed the libretto of The Seasons. His despair at no longer being able to compose after 1802 was doubtless fuelled in part by resentment at Beethoven’s success in pushing forward into new domains of music – domains that he believed would have lain open to him if only his health had not failed.

Although Haydn often protested his devotion to the Esterházy princes, ‘in whose service I wish to live and die’ (1776), and praised Nicolaus for providing the conditions under which his art could develop, his attitude towards the court was never subservient and over time became increasingly ambivalent. He did not hesitate to assert his interests and those of his musicians against the court administration: these interventions were usually successful (including, for example, re-engaging Polzelli and her husband and keeping them on the payroll for ten years). The relationship between Nicolaus and Haydn was not merely that of prince and employee: their playing baryton trios together (Haydn presumably on the viola) was by definition intimate music-making, and according to Framery the composer had to restore the prince from attacks of depression (Haydn himself described this in March 1790, admittedly during Nicolaus’s bereavement). After 1780 he became increasingly independent of the court both compositionally and financially, and he hated having to abandon the artistic and social pleasures of Vienna for distant Eszterháza. After Nicolaus’s death he was de facto a free artist. In a letter of September 1791 to Mme Genzinger his ambivalence is palpable:

This little bit of freedom, how sweet it tastes! I had a good prince, but at times I was forced to be dependent on base souls. I often sighed for release; now I have it in some measure … Even though I am burdened with more work, the knowledge that I am not bound to service makes ample amends for all my toil. And yet, dear though this freedom is to me, I long to be in Prince Esterházy’s service on my return, if only for the sake of my poor family. However, I doubt that this longing can be satisfied, in that my prince … absolutely demands my immediate return, which however I cannot comply with, owing to a new contract I have entered into here.

Indeed, London won out. Yet in 1795 he was glad to become Kapellmeister again – although only on condition of minimal duties.

As regards money, Haydn was so self-interested as to shock both certain high-minded contemporaries (Joseph Martin Kraus, Friedrich Rochlitz) and many later authorities. Whereas until 1749 he presumably suffered nothing worse than ordinary schoolboy privations, during his early freelance years he lived in poverty, an experience he was determined never to repeat. He always attempted to maximize his income, whether by negotiating the right to sell his music outside the Esterházy court, driving hard bargains with publishers or selling his works three and four times over; he regularly engaged in ‘sharp practice’ and occasionally in outright fraud. When crossed in business relations, he reacted angrily. At times his protestations of straitened circumstances were mendacious (as when denying Polzelli’s requests for money), or perhaps self-deceptive. Yet Haydn was generous. He supported his brother Johann for decades and bequeathed substantial sums to relatives, servants and those who had supported him in his youth, and took pride in the large sums generated for charity by performances of his oratorios.

Haydn’s appearance is known from various descriptions and from many paintings and busts. He was not handsome; he was ‘small in stature, but sturdily and strongly built. His forehead was broad and well modelled, his skin brownish, his eyes lively and fiery, his other features full and strongly marked, and his whole physiognomy and bearing bespoke prudence and a quiet gravity’ (Griesinger); but he also had an overlarge nose, exacerbated by his long-term polyp, and was pock-marked (Dies). Of the many contemporary images only a few avoid idealizing their subject. From about 1768 there is a portrait by Grundmann, the Esterházy court painter, showing the young and self-assertive Kapellmeister in uniform. More conventional in both facial features and the pose at the keyboard are the various images based on a lost painting of uncertain date by Guttenbrunn (fig.2; Haydn’s wife and Griesinger claimed that it was a good likeness) and the engraving by Mansfield (1781) published by Artaria. There is a good miniature from about 1788. From London we have formal portraits by Hoppner and Hardy, of which the former has the more personality; still more is conveyed in the drawing by George Dance (in two versions), which Haydn claimed was the best likeness of himself. Several sculptures survive from the last Vienna years, including two busts by Grassi; there is also a deathmask, taken by Elssler.

7. Style, aesthetics, compositional method.

Haydn’s style was understood in his own day as unique. He famously commented to Griesinger:

My prince was satisfied with all my works; I received approval. As head of an orchestra I could try things out, observe what creates a [good] effect and what weakens it, and thus revise, make additions or cuts, take risks. I was cut off from the world, nobody in my vicinity could upset my self-confidence or annoy me, and so I had no choice but to become original.

By ‘original’ he seems to have meant that he belonged to no school and acknowledged few if any models. However, in late 18th-century aesthetics originality also implied genius, a link emphasized among others by Kant.

In many ways Haydn’s style can be understood as analogous to the duality in his personality between earnestness and humour. He said as much when referring to his method of composition: ‘I sat down [at the keyboard] and began to fantasize, according to whether my mood was sad or happy, serious or trifling’. Of course, in his music these qualities are not unmediated binary opposites but poles of a continuum. Admittedly, since about 1800 wit has been the better understood pole. Johann Karl Friedrich Triest wrote (1801) of his ‘unmistakable manner’: ‘what the English call “humour”, for which the German Laune does not quite provide an exact equivalent’. Haydn’s ‘unique’ or ‘inimitable’ Laune was a frequent motif in contemporary criticism. Most of the familiar nicknames for his works respond to features that listeners have taken as humorous; e.g. the ‘Surprise’ Symphony or the ‘Joke’ Quartet op.33 no.2. In other cases the wit is on a higher plane, e.g. the ‘ticking’ accompaniment in the slow movement of the ‘Clock’ Symphony, no.101. The crucial point, however, is that Haydn’s popular style is not a simple projection of his personality, but his compositional ‘persona’ or ‘musical personality’, deliberately assumed for complex artistic purposes. Indeed ‘wit’ signifies intelligence as well as humour: his inexhaustible rhythmic and motivic inventiveness, the conversational air of many quartet movements, his formal ambiguity and caprice, his brilliant and at times disquieting play with beginnings that are endings and the reverse (the ‘Joke’ Quartet ending has stimulated half a dozen learned exegeses). Often Haydn’s wit shades into irony, as was recognized by his contemporaries: ‘Haydn might perhaps be compared, in respect to the fruitfulness of his imagination, with our Jean Paul [Richter] (omitting, obviously, his chaotic design; transparent representation (lucidus ordo) is not the least of Haydn’s virtues); or, in respect to his humour, his original wit (vis comica) with Lor. Sterne’ (Triest). In fact, his irony goes beyond wit: a passage may be deceptive in character or function (the D major interlude in the first movement of the ‘Farewell’ Symphony sounds like a minuet out of context, but it is not a minuet and plays a crucial tonal and psychological role), or a movement may systematically subvert listeners’ expectations until (or even past) the end (the finale of the Quartet op.54 no.2). Like Beethoven, Haydn often seems to problematize music rather than merely to compose it (the tonal ambiguity at the beginning of op.33 no.1).

Earnestness and depth of feeling are equally important to Haydn’s art. These qualities were less appreciated in the 19th and early 20th centuries, owing in part to the absence of his vocal music and much of his earlier instrumental music from the standard repertory, in part to a lack of sympathy for his extra-musical and ethical concerns during the age of absolute music. But Griesinger reported: ‘Haydn said that instead of so many quartets, sonatas and symphonies he should have composed more vocal music, for he could have become one of the leading opera composers’. Until about 1800 vocal music was as responsible for his reputation as instrumental; Gerber wrote in 1790: ‘around the year 1780 he attained the highest level of excellence and fame through his church and theatre works’. Like all 18th-century composers, Haydn believed that the primary purpose of a composition was to move the listener, and that the chief basis of this effect was song. He was an excellent tenor in the chamber (if not the theatre). He insisted to Griesinger that a prerequisite for good music was ‘fluent melody’, and he ‘criticized the fact that now so many musicians compose who have never learnt how to sing: “Singing must almost be reckoned one of the lost arts; instead of song, people allow the instruments to dominate”.

This emphasis on feeling also applies to instrumental music – even sprightly allegros and minuets – and throughout Haydn’s career. Much of his early music is earnest, at times even harsh; see the keyboard Trio hXV:f1, the String Trio hV:3, the slow movement of the String Quartet op.2 no.4, Symphony no.22 and much else, to say nothing of vocal works such as the Stabat mater and the Salve regina in G minor. Many of his keyboard works are affective in an intimate way: he wrote to Mme Genzinger regarding the Adagio of Sonata no.49: ‘It means a great deal, which I will analyse for you when I have the chance’. His orchestral music ‘signified’ as well: the slow introductions to the London symphonies are implicit invocations of the sublime, and this topic became overt in the Chaos–Light sequence in The Creation and elsewhere in his late sacred vocal music. Many works that were later taken as humorous he did not intend as such, for example the ‘Farewell’ Symphony. Similarly, even at his wittiest or most programmatic he never abandons tonal and formal coherence.

The duality between earnestness and wit is analogous to the 18th-century distinctions between connoisseurs (‘Kenner’) and amateurs (‘Liebhaber’), and between traditional or learned and modern or galant style. These dualities characterize many of Haydn’s works, groups of works and even entire periods. In his pre-Esterházy instrumental music, genre was a primary determinant of style: modest, unpretentious divertimentos, quartets and keyboard concertinos etc. stand seemingly opposed to larger-scale symphonies, string trios and keyboard trios. The three op.20 quartets with fugal finales project, in order of composition, severe tradition (no.5), the galant (no.6) and a studied mixture of both (no.2); yet these monuments to high art originated precisely in the middle of his baryton-trio decade. In the late 1770s most of his symphonies were unambiguously intended as entertainment, but no.70 is selfconsciously learned. In 1785–90 he composed some 45 weighty symphonies, quartets and piano works, but also lyre concertos and notturnos, flute trios and other light works. Of course, the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘entertainment’ cannot be simplistically correlated with differences in artistic quality. Haydn’s early string quartets are arguably his most polished pre-Esterházy works; the baryton trios and lyre notturnos are finely wrought compositions, as rewarding in their way as the raw expressionism of the ‘Sturm und Drang’. These stylistic dualities are found even in his late sacred vocal music and long hindered its appreciation. His quotation of the buffa-like contredanse from no.32 of The Creation in the Schöpfungsmesse so offended the empress that she insisted that he alter it in performances at the Habsburg court, many of her high-minded contemporaries took offence at the ‘Tändeleien’ (trifling) and dance-like triple metres in his late masses, and as recently as the 1970s noted authorities still wrote of the ‘triviality’ of the Kyrie of the Missa in tempore belli. Now, however, their stylistic heterodoxy seems as gloriously uplifting as that of Die Zauberflöte.

Haydn usually juxtaposes or contrasts stylistic dualities rather than synthesize them. Perhaps he approaches synthesis most closely when an ostensibly artless or humorous theme later changes in character (e.g. Symphony no.103, minuet) or is subjected to elaborate contrapuntal development; the latter is especially characteristic of finales (e.g. Symphony no.99; Beethoven twice copied out the development section). In general, Haydn’s art is based on the traditional principle of variety within unity. ‘Once I had seized upon an idea’, he said to Griesinger, ‘my whole endeavour was to develop and sustain it in keeping with the rules of the art’. A Haydn movement works out a single basic idea; the ‘second theme’ of his sonata forms is often a variant of the opening theme. Often this part of the exposition forswears thematic statements altogether, in favour of unstable developmental passages (his ‘expansion section’); stability is restored only in the position of the usual closing theme. To be sure, that working out usually entails many contrasting treatments and effects (Haydn: ‘light and shade’, i.e. chiaroscuro): the second theme usually differs in treatment, and the recapitulation brings fresh developments; in his double-variation slow movements the alternating major and minor themes are usually variants of each other. Thus both novelty and continuity are maintained from beginning to end.

In one respect, however, Haydn deliberately courted a union of opposites: his ‘popular’ style that simultaneously addressed the connoisseur. ‘If one wanted to describe the character of Haydn’s compositions in just two words, they would be … artful popularity or popular (easily comprehensible, effective) artfulness’ (Triest). No other composer – not even C.P.E. Bach or Mozart – had Haydn’s gift of writing ostensibly simple or folklike tunes of wide appeal, and broadly humorous sallies, that concealed (or developed into) the highest art. Indeed these aspects of his style intensified in his London and late Vienna years, along with the complexity of his music and its fascination for connoisseurs. One of the best early comments on Haydn’s music was Gerber’s: he ‘possessed the great art of appearing familiar in his themes’ (emphasis added): that is, their popular character is neither merely given nor a direct reflection of his personality, but the result of calculated artistic shaping. This becomes obvious when he employs folk tunes, as in the Andante of Symphony no.103 and the finale of no.104: the piquant raised fourth-degree of the one, the horn pedal of the other, are not quoted, but adapted to the character of a grand symphony. Haydn’s ‘pretension … to a simplicity that appears to come from Nature itself is no mask but the true claim of a style whose command over the whole range of technique is so great that it can ingenuously afford to disdain the outward appearance of high art’ (Rosen, I1971).

Many aspects of Haydn’s music can be appreciated only by ignoring the concept of ‘Classical style’. These include lean orchestration (Haydn: ‘no superfluous ornaments, nothing overdone, no deafening accompaniments’), in which the planes of sound do not compactly blend but remain distinct, nervous bass lines, constant motivic-thematic development and a rhythmic vitality and unpredictability that can become almost manic, as in the finales of many late string quartets and piano trios. Many Haydn movements are progressive in form, continually developing (e.g. the first movements of Symphonies nos.92 and 103); on a still larger scale, many works exhibit tendencies towards through-composition or ‘cyclic’ organization; a few are as tightly integrated as any work of Beethoven (e.g. the ‘Farewell’ Symphony and no.46; the string quartets op.20 no.2, op.54 no.2 and op.74 no.3; Piano Sonata no.30).

Open in new tab

11. Title-page of Haydn’s ‘Erdődy’ Quartets op.76 (Vienna: Artaria, 1799)

Haydn was also a master of rhetoric. This is a matter not only of musical ‘topoi’ and rhetorical ‘figures’ but also of contrasts in register, gestures, implications of genre and the rhythms of destabilization and recovery, especially as these play out over the course of an entire movement. Referential associations are common in his instrumental music, especially symphonies (nos.6–8, 22, 26, 30–31, 44–5, 49, 60, 64, 73, 100); they invoke serious human and cultural issues, including religious belief, war, pastoral, the times of day, longing for home, ethnic identity and the hunt. Haydn told Griesinger and Dies that he ‘often portrayed moral characters in his symphonies’ and that one early Adagio presented ‘a dialogue between God and a foolish sinner’ (unidentified; perhaps from no.7, 22 or 26). In his vocal music Haydn (like Handel) was a brilliant and enthusiastic word-painter. This trait is but one aspect of his musical imagery in general: in addition to rhetorical figures and ‘topoi’ it comprises key associations (e.g. E♭ with the hereafter), semantic associations (e.g. the flute with the pastoral) and musical conceptualizations (e.g. long notes on ‘E-wigkeit’ in The Creation or ‘ae-ter-num’ in the late Te Deum).

Like all 18th-century composers, Haydn composed for his audiences (which term includes his performers). He calculated Piano Sonata no.49 expressly for Mme Genzinger; in his piano works of 1794–6 he systematically differentiated between a difficult, extroverted style for Therese Jansen and a less demanding, intimate one for Rebecca Schroeter. Regarding the Piano Trio hXV:13 he wrote to Artaria: ‘I send you herewith the third trio, which I have rewritten with variations, to suit your taste’ – i.e. Artaria’s estimate of the taste of Haydn’s market. When he went to London, his music for public performance became grander and more brilliant. He disliked having to compose without knowing his audience, as he wrote regarding Applausus: ‘If I have perhaps not divined the taste of [the musicians], I am not to be blamed for this; neither the persons nor the place are known to me, and the fact that they were concealed from me truly made my work distasteful’.

‘I was never a hasty writer, and always composed with deliberation and diligence’, Haydn told Griesinger. His method encompassed three stages: ‘phantasieren’ at the keyboard in order to find a viable idea (see above), ‘komponieren’ (working out the musical substance, both at the keyboard and by means of shorthand drafts, usually on one or two staves) and ‘setzen’ (writing the full score). Sketching was a regular procedure: although drafts survive for only a modest proportion of his music, they comprise works in all genres and all types of musical context (including recitatives). A draft for the finale of Symphony no.99 confirms Griesinger’s description of his use of numbered cross-references to organize a series of passages originally written down in a different order. His surviving autographs by and large are fair copies, which exhibit few corrections and alterations.

8. Sacred vocal music.

Vocal music constitutes fully half of Haydn’s output. Both his first and last completed compositions were mass settings, and he cultivated sacred vocal music extensively throughout his career except during the later 1780s, when elaborate church music was inhibited by the Josephinian reforms, and the first half of the 1790s in London.

The Missa brevis in F (hXXII:1) is apparently his earliest surviving composition; on rediscovering it in old age he pronounced himself pleased by ‘the melody and a certain youthful fire’ (Dies), which are enhanced by resourceful contrasts between the two solo sopranos and the chorus. The remaining masses fall into two groups of six each: nos.2, 4–8 (1766–82; no.3 is probably spurious) and nos.9–14 (1796–1802); except where noted they are of medium length (30 to 40 minutes). The former are notably heterogeneous. The huge and impressive Missa Cellensis in C (begun 1766) is of the solenne type (often miscalled ‘cantata mass’); each of the five main sections is subdivided into numerous complete and independent movements. These include choruses both festive and ominous, elaborate arias, ariosos, ensembles and four massive concluding fugues. The Kyrie and certain arias are traditional in style, while the remainder is distinctly modern; the fugues are powerfully expressive despite their contrapuntal fireworks, especially the overwhelming ‘Et vitam venturi’, which functions not merely as a concluding highpoint but as the through-composed goal of the entire Credo. The Missa ‘Sunt bona mixta malis’ (1768) survives only in an autograph fragment transmitting the Kyrie and the first part of the Gloria; it is not known whether Haydn completed the work, and the import of ‘mixed good and bad’ (from a classical proverb) remains obscure. It is set for chorus and organ continuo in stile antico; strict fugal expositions alternate with free counterpoint and occasional homophonic passages. The ‘Great Organ Mass’ in E♭ (c1768–9) is more personal in tone: the dark english horns contrast with exuberant treble obbligato organ parts in the Kyrie, Benedictus and Dona nobis pacem. The Missa Sancti Nicolai (1772) is often described as ‘pastoral’, owing to its key of G major and the lilting 6/4 rhythm of the Kyrie (which returns for the Dona nobis pacem), although the Crucifixus and Agnus Dei are serious indeed. In the mid-1770s followed the ‘Little Organ Mass’ in B♭, a quiet, almost pietistically fervent missa brevis. The ‘Mariazellermesse’ in C (1782) resembles the Missa Cellensis in key, scoring and purpose, although it is more compact and more closely allied with sonata style.

Notwithstanding their semi-private function for the Esterházy court, Haydn’s six late masses are consummate masterworks that exhibit no trace of provinciality or the ‘occasional’. He exploits the complementary functions of soloists and chorus with inexhaustible freedom and telling effect; owing to his London experience the orchestra plays a newly prominent role. Four are in B♭, perhaps because b♭″ was Haydn’s usual highest pitch for choral sopranos (he employed the same key for the final choruses of Parts 2–3 of The Creation and Part 1 of The Seasons). The other two are the only ones for which he provided descriptive titles: the Missa in tempore belli (‘Mass in Time of War’, 1796) in C features the bright, trumpet-dominated sound typical of masses in this key; the Missa in angustiis (‘Mass in [times of] Distress’, later nicknamed ‘Nelson Mass’, 1798) in D minor and major is scored for a dark orchestra comprising only trumpets and timpani, strings and organ. Both invoke the travails of the Napoleonic wars. The Agnus Dei of the former includes threatening timpani motifs and harsh trumpet fanfares, while the Benedictus of the latter culminates in another harsh fanfare passage ‘out of context’; both influenced the Agnus Dei in Beethoven’s Missa solemnis. On the other hand, except for the sombre Kyrie and Benedictus of the ‘Nelson Mass’, both are otherwise firmly optimistic; the ending of the latter is downright jaunty.

Although Haydn’s late masses indubitably reflect the experience of the London symphonies, their symphonic character has been exaggerated. Even in the Kyrie, which usually consists of a slow introduction and a fast main movement, the latter freely combines fugato and sonata style in a distinctly unsymphonic way. The Gloria and Credo are divided into several movements, fast–slow–fast with the slow middle movement(s) in contrasting keys and featuring the soloists (e.g. the ‘Qui tollis’ of the Missa in tempore belli, a bass aria with solo cello in A major; or the ‘Et incarnatus’ of the Heiligmesse, based on Haydn’s canon Gott im Herzen); they usually conclude with a fugue on a brief subject, which often enters attacca and always leads to a homophonic coda. The Sanctus often adopts the ‘majesty’ topic, admixed with mysterious passages; it leads directly into the brief ‘Pleni sunt coeli – Osanna’, which may or may not return following the Benedictus. The latter is a long movement and an emotional highpoint; it usually features the soloists and is in, or based on, sonata form. The Agnus Dei opens with an initial slow section, either threatening in the minor or serenely confident in a remote major key; it leads to a half-cadence and thence to the fast ‘Dona nobis pacem’, usually a free combination of fugato and homophony, leading (again) to a homophonic wind-up.

The other liturgical works date primarily from the first half of Haydn’s career; their original destinations and purposes are almost entirely unknown. According to liturgical function they comprise offertories (hXXIIIa), Marian antiphons (hXXIIIb), hymns (hXXIIIc) and pastorellas (hXXIIId; Haydn called them ‘cantilenas’). They vary widely in style and scale, from the massive, dark, traditional Stabat mater (hXX^bis, 1767) to the tender devotion of the Lauda Sion hymn complexes; from the festive jubilation of the choral Te Deum settings with trumpets and drums in C to the stylized folk idiom of the pastorellas for solo voices and strings. Even subgenres exhibit marked contrasts: the Lauda Sion hymns from the 1750s (hXXIIIc:5) are all in C, Vivace 3/4, while those from the later 1760s (hXXIIIc:4) are in a tonally interesting set of four different keys and alternate Andante 3/4 with Largo alla breve. Similarly, the Salve regina in E (hXXIIIb:1, 1756) features ornate italianate writing for the solo soprano, whereas that in G minor (hXXIIIb:2, 1771) is expressively brooding, with no trace of vocal ornamentation. Of the three late works, the offertory Non nobis, Domine in D minor (hXXIIIa:1, ?1780s) is an a cappella work reminiscent of the Missa ‘Sunt bona mixta malis’, while the six ‘English psalms’ of 1794 (hXXIII, Nachtrag), Haydn’s only Protestant church music, adumbrate the elevated but plain style of ‘The heavens are telling’ in The Creation. The late Te Deum ‘for the empress’ (hXXIIIc:2, ?1800), for chorus and very large orchestra, is an ABA construction of great power and terseness; it whirls through the very long text in little more than eight minutes, while still finding time for a double fugue and an immense climax at the end.

Haydn’s oratorios comprise Il ritorno di Tobia, his revision of Friebert’s arrangement of the Seven Last Words, The Creation and The Seasons. The libretto of Tobia (by a brother of Boccherini) narrates the story of the blind Tobit from the Apocrypha; Haydn fashioned a magnificent late example of Austrian-Italian vocal music, comprising chiefly long bravura arias, along with three choruses; most of the recitatives are accompagnati of emotional intensity. In 1784 he revived the oratorio, shortening many of the arias, adding two magnificent new choruses and supplementing the instrumentation. The Seven Last Words, a success during Haydn’s lifetime and beyond, is less popular today, in part because it is not a full-length work, in part owing to the succession of eight consecutive adagios which, paradoxically, seem more monotonous than in the orchestral version. Its most striking movement is the bleak, newly composed introduction to the second part, scored for wind alone and set in A minor, a key Haydn hardly ever used.

The Creation is Haydn’s most loved work today, as it was in his lifetime. Part 1 treats the First to Fourth Days (the creation of light, land and sea, plant life, heavenly bodies), Part 2 the Fifth and Sixth (animals, birds, fish, man and woman); each Day comprises recitative on prose from Genesis, a commentary set as an aria or ensemble, another recitative and a choral hymn of praise. Part 3 abandons the Bible; it amounts to a cantata devoted to Adam and Eve and to further praise of heaven. The optimistic tone is enhanced by the increasing brilliance and complexity of the choruses as the work proceeds; they reflect Haydn’s experience of Handel in England. Also reminiscent of Handel (not that Haydn needed the stimulus) are the many word- and scene-paintings, of which the most striking include the emergence of the oceans and mountains (‘Rolling in foaming billows’), the sunrise and moonrise, the birds of ‘On mighty pens’ and the teeming low strings of ‘Be fruitful all’; though often taken as humorous, these conceits are essential to the Enlightenment optimism of the work. The famous ‘Representation Chaos’ (or ‘Idea of Chaos’: Vorstellung implies both meanings) is not literally chaotic but paradoxical: beginning in C minor mystery, it initiates a larger process which points beyond itself, and acquires meaning only with the choral climax on ‘And there was light!’ in C major. The remainder of Part 1 takes place, as it were, during the reverberation of this event; its triumphant concluding chorus ‘The heavens are telling’ is again in C. By contrast, the final sections dealing with ourselves shift to the ‘human’ key of B♭ and its subdominant E♭. Although Part 3 opens in a radiant, astonishingly remote E major for the Garden of Eden, it soon reverts to F and C for the gigantic ‘Lobgesang’ and, via E♭ for Adam’s and Eve’s lovemaking in earthy Singspiel style, to B♭ for the final choral fugue.

The libretto of The Seasons presents scenes of nature and country life; the narrator-function is personified as the moralizing peasants Simon, Jane and Lucas. The scenic aspects stimulated Haydn to his best efforts: the storms of late winter, the farmer sowing his seed to the tune of the Andante of the ‘Surprise’ Symphony, a sunrise that outdoes that in The Creation, the thick C minor fogs of early winter, and the multi-movement depiction of summer heat, first languid, then oppressive, finally exploding in Haydn’s greatest storm. Among the genre scenes those for the chorus are unsurpassed, notably at the end of Autumn: first the hunt, from sighting to chase to kill to celebration (the horns quote numerous actual hunting calls, and join the trombones and strings in double grace notes for the baying of the hounds), and cast in progressive tonality from D to E♭; then the drinking chorus in C, with increasingly uncertain harmonizations of a prominent high note for the raising of glasses, a dance in 6/8 leading to an inebriated fugue and a breathless wind-up that may have inspired the end of Verdi’s Falstaff. Other important choruses are pastoral (‘Komm, holder Lenz’) and religious: ‘Ewiger, mächtiger, gütiger Gott’ at the end of Spring, Haydn’s most massive chorus (itself run on from the preceding trio, the two movements as a whole in ‘progressive tonality’); and the concluding ‘Dann bricht der grosse Morgen an’, in which we enter heaven in a blaze of C major glory, resolving the C minor of the beginning of Winter. Notwithstanding its less exalted subject, The Seasons is compositionally more virtuoso than The Creation and offers greater variety of tone: Haydn’s pastoral is one of the final glories of a tradition that is more than ‘high’ enough.

In Haydn’s sacred vocal music the aesthetics of through-composition is a matter not only of cyclic integration, but of doctrine and devotion. Many of these works are organized around the conceptual image of salvation, at once personal and communal, achieved at or near the end: a musical realization of the desire for a state of grace. This is especially clear in a relatively brief work such as the Salve regina in G minor, where the astonishing vocal entry on an augmented sixth chord is not really resolved until the end, when Haydn ‘hears’ the supplicants’ prayer by turning to the major. Particularly in his late sacred music such concepts are wedded to the sublime: not only in the Creation of Light, which expresses that which is otherwise unthinkable – the origins of the universe and of history – but also in the choruses that conclude each part of The Creation, ‘Spring’ and ‘Winter’ in The Seasons and many movements of the late masses.

9. Secular vocal music.

Haydn’s stage works comprise 13 Italian operas, four Italian comedies (with spoken dialogue rather than recitative), five or six German Singspiele and incidental music for plays, of which only Symphony no.60, ‘Il distratto’, survives; almost all were composed for the Esterházy court. Those predating 1766 are lost, except for fragments of the festa teatrale Acide (1762, revised 1773) and of the commedia Marchese (1762–3). His three operas from the late 1760s become increasingly long and complex. The two-act intermezzo La canterina (1766) has wonderful comic scenes centring on the jealous singing teacher Don Pelagio and his charge Gasparina (who ‘overreacts’ to being thrown out of his house with a distraught aria in C minor); each act ends with a quartet. Lo speziale (1768), in three acts, is called a dramma giocoso and is based on a libretto of this type by Goldoni, but the Esterházy version eliminates the two parti serie. It has many new features, including a ‘Turkish’ aria with ‘exotic’ key-relations and rhythms and a graphic portrayal of the effects of the apothecary’s remedies for constipation. The concluding trio and quartet of the first and second acts, respectively, include real dramatic action. The three-act Le pescatrici (1769–70), also based on Goldoni, is a true dramma giocoso including the ‘serious’ Prince Lindoro and Eurilda, an heiress to a principality who has been raised as a simple fisherwoman; their music is in ‘high’ style, and Eurilda (in distinction to the eponymous fisherwomen) takes no part in the comic ensembles. It has more ensembles, in proportion to its total length, than any other Haydn opera, although the majority are ‘choruses’ in primarily homophonic style. Among the latter is the Act 3 ‘Soavi zeffiri’, whose E major tonality and depiction of sea breezes resemble Mozart’s ‘Placido è il mar’ in Idomeneo and ‘Soave sia il vento’ in Così fan tutte.

After a pause, in 1773 Haydn composed L’infedeltà delusa, a ‘burletta per musica’ in two acts based on a libretto by the ‘reforming’ librettist Marco Coltellini. For the last time there are no serious characters; the opera portrays an idealized peasant life (with much lampooning of the nobility) and the characters are concerned only to set their mismatched affections aright. From the same year comes the German Philemon und Baucis, originally a marionette opera but surviving only in an adaptation for the stage. The moralizing plot is based on the old theme of the god or king who is spiritually renewed by the incorruptible virtue of simple peasants; musically it is similar to L’infedeltà, with the addition of impressive D minor music in the overture and a thunderstorm chorus preceding Jupiter’s arrival.

Most of Haydn’s remaining operas for Eszterháza are in three acts and are drammi giocosi or other subgenres that mix comic and serious characters. In 1775 he composed L’incontro improvviso on a libretto adapted from Gluck’s La rencontre imprévue; it is a harem-rescue plot set in the orient, as in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, although many incidents lack sufficient motivation. The heroine Rezia and her rescuer Prince Ali are the serious characters, while lower-class characters provide broad ‘exotic’ humour. In a subplot Rezia uses her confidantes Balkis and Dardane to test Ali’s fidelity (the gender-reversal is noteworthy); their Act 1 trio in the harem, with three sopranos sharing chromatic lines full of suspensions, is an invocation of timeless pleasure. In 1777 followed Il mondo della luna, based on Goldoni’s popular libretto; the hero Ecclitico dupes the elderly Buonafede into supposing he has travelled to the moon (staged as an exotic, luxurious kingdom) and eventually into assenting to Ecclitico’s marriage to his daughter Clarice (and two other marriages for good measure). The keys C and E♭ symbolize Earth and Moon respectively, the representation of the journey in the Act 1 finale being particularly magical, as is the Act 3 duet for the two principals. La vera costanza (1778–9, revised 1785), on a libretto by Francesco Puttini previously set by Anfossi, is Haydn’s fullest exploration of the ‘sentimental’ subgenre of opera buffa. Rosina, secretly married to the half-mad Count Errico, lives incognito in a fishing-village. Eventually the Count and many other characters discover her, leading to repeated painful tests of her virtue and fortitude; in despair she flees to the country, where the final reconciliation takes place. The music is glorious and the characterizations surprisingly credible, with Rosina reaching heights of genuine emotion. The finales to Acts 1 and 2 are now (and largely remain) as long and complex as those in Mozart’s operas.

A change of pace is represented by L’isola disabitata (1779), a relatively brief azione teatrale on a libretto by Metastasio, with all the recitatives orchestrally accompanied, and quite short, primarily lyrical arias without much coloratura. Next came La fedeltà premiata (1780), a dramma pastorale giocoso by G.B. Lorenzi, previously set by Cimarosa as L’infedeltà fedele; given the contrived plot-spring of the annual sacrifice of two lovers to appease an offended sea monster, the action and motivations are plausible. The number of arias in serious style is relatively high, with a climax in Celia’s great scena in Act 2; the finale in Act 1 is Haydn’s longest (822 bars). Orlando paladino (1782) is a dramma eroicomico with a libretto by Nunziato Porta based on Badini. Its subject is Orlando’s madness (deriving ultimately from Ariosto’s Orlando furioso), which Haydn portrays in remarkable scenes of mixed accompanied recitative and aria; the long scenes for Angelica and the feckless Medoro are musical highlights as well, as are the comic numbers for Orlando’s squire Pasquale. Armida (1783) is a dramma eroico based on the Armida-Rinaldo action from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata. It is primarily seria in style, with long stretches of action set in freely alternating accompanied recitatives and set pieces; the long magic forest scene of Act 3 is particularly successful. L’anima del filosofo, ossia Orfeo ed Euridice (1791), an opera seria in four acts composed in London to a libretto by Badini, was not produced. Notwithstanding numerous bravura arias, its style resembles that of Haydn’s late instrumental works more closely than do his earlier operas; in Act 2 the extended scenes of Eurydice’s death and Orpheus’s discovery of her body are deeply affecting. It also includes numerous choruses, which contribute to the action; he uses males for the Furies and females for the Bacchae, the latter bringing the work to a tragic end in D minor.

During his career Haydn’s operatic palette expanded both generically, from straight buffa or seria to various mixed types (reflecting the repertory as a whole), and compositionally, with longer individual numbers, interpenetration of accompanied recitative and set piece, and increased size and scope of the finale (except in seria). Notwithstanding his own high opinion of his operas (see §6), they were largely forgotten until the second half of the 20th century, when editions and recordings as well as stagings made them widely available. Their recent reception has been mixed. The music is beyond praise: the brilliance of Haydn’s tonal and formal construction and his rhythmic verve go without saying; masterly too are his vivid characterization in arias, expressive strength in accompanied recitatives and fascinating orchestral effects; he often composes ‘against the grain’ of the genre or libretto to dramatic purpose. For these reasons (as well as their ready availability), they have attracted much analytical and critical attention. On the other hand, although the librettos represent major types and their thematic orientation is often strong, they often exhibit weaknesses of plausibility, motivation or dramaturgy; even Haydn’s music cannot always overcome these faults, nor did he always exploit the dramatic implications of his librettos. For example, when deceptions are revealed in the Act 2 finales of Lo speziale and Il mondo della luna, the musical character does not change until later, when the people deceived (Sempronio, Buonafede) give vent to outbursts of rage; and Eurydice’s second death remains anticlimactic (although here the libretto is also at fault). However, negative criticism has also been coloured by insufficient understanding of generic norms of the period 1760–80 (such as the dominance of aria over ensemble and ‘seamless’ action, and the relative brevity of the third act), and by inappropriate comparisons with Gluck and late Mozart instead of with Gassmann, Anfossi or Cimarosa. In appropriate stagings with good singers, Haydn’s operas are effective and moving in the theatre.

The festive Italian cantatas honouring Prince Nicolaus (hXXIVa:1–5, c1762–7) begin with a long orchestral ritornello leading to an accompanied recitative announcing the cause for celebration, followed by arias and duets and concluding with a chorus. The very long solo numbers are unusually virtuoso and richly orchestrated (in an aria from Qual dubbio ormai, no.4, Haydn wrote himself an elaborate obbligato harpsichord part). The celebratory cantata Applausus (hXXIVa:6, 1768) on an allegorical Latin text is stylistically similar, although it is longer and musically more concentrated, and as appropriate to its elevated text has been said to adumbrate the sublime. An important late chorus is The Storm (hXXIVa:8, 1792); as in so many works of this type, minor-mode fury is followed by ‘calm’ in the major.

Three late solo cantatas for soprano are of great significance. Miseri noi (hXXIVa:7, by 1786) was composed for an unknown occasion and singer (possibly Nancy Storace); the middle section, a Largo in G minor, is particularly impressive. Arianna a Naxos (hXXVIb:2, ?1789) was perhaps composed for Bianca Sacchetti in Venice; in the passionate recitatives the piano presents the lion’s share of the musical material, while the voice declaims the text dramatically. Ariadne’s mixed hope and despair are vividly portrayed; in her final aria a long, slow, formal paragraph in F major leads to a wild rage aria in F minor, of which the final chord, for piano alone, is astonishingly F major. Berenice, che fai (hXXIVa:10, 1795), on a text from Metastasio’s Antigono, is public music for a virtuoso and hence more difficult and extroverted. The recitatives feature what is arguably Haydn’s most extreme use of remote and enharmonic modulations; further, the two arias are in ‘opposed’ keys (E major and F minor), while the orchestration is as brilliant as that of the last London symphonies.

Haydn’s 47 songs (hXXVIa) comprise 24 German lieder (nos.1–24, 1781–4), 14 English songs (nos.25–36, 41–2, 1794–5, of which nos.25–36 were published as ‘Canzonettas’) and miscellaneous German lieder. The lieder of 1781–4 stand in close chronological and stylistic proximity to the op.33 quartets. Although they have seemed simple to many commentators – they are relatively short and strophic, with the piano right hand largely doubling the voice – they are varied in mood and exhibit subtle rhythmic and formal construction, often brilliantly realizing implications of the text; the 1784 set includes more deeply felt items. The English canzonettas contain many striking effects and are in many cases through-composed; see the remarkable off-tonic vocal entry of She never told her love, with its climax on ‘smiling with grief’, or the controlled passion of O Tuneful Voice: the poem invokes Mrs Hunter’s sorrow at Haydn’s departure, the music his farewell to her and to England. A special case is the ‘Emperor’s Hymn’ (see §5), with its fusion of elevated hymn and ‘folk’ styles. The 13 partsongs (mehrstimmige Gesänge; hXXVc, 1796–9) with keyboard accompaniment adumbrate the characteristic 19th-century Viennese genre of social music for vocal ensemble. Haydn said of them that they were composed ‘con amore in happy times and without commission’ (Griesinger); as far as we know they (and his canons) are his only works of which this is true. They are among his wittiest, most beautiful and most touching creations, with an inimitable air of casual sophistication and a brilliant combination of comic and serious topics and styles; their fusion of easy intelligibility and wit with the highest art and their ravishing part-writing almost suggest string quartets for voices.

10. Orchestral music.

Although Haydn’s sobriquet ‘father of the symphony’ is not literally true, in a deeper sense it is apt: there is no other genre in Western music for which the output of a single composer is at once so vast in extent (106 works: hI:1–104, 107–8), so historically important and of such high artistic quality. His pre-Esterházy symphonies (most composed for Count Morzin) comprise nos.1, 37 and 18 (the earliest); 2, 4–5, 10–11, 17, 19–20, 25, 27, 32, 107; and possibly 3 and 15. All are scored for two oboes, two horns and strings except for no.32 (with trumpets) and perhaps nos.27 and 37 (in which the parts for horns and oboes respectively may not be original); the majority are in three movements, fast–slow–fast. The distinction between a relatively weighty first movement and a faster finale is already present; the interior movement for strings alone is only moderately slow (Andante) and ‘light’ in style. Only nos.3 and 20 exhibit the later standard four-movement pattern; in nos.32 and 37 the minuet precedes the slow movement (found also in nos.108, 44, 68). In nos.5 in A and 11 in E♭ (the only ones in keys this distant from C), the slow movement comes first and is a weighty Adagio, producing the sequence slow–fast–minuet–fast with all four movements in the tonic (found also in nos.21–2, 34, 49). These early symphonies combine Italian and Austrian, light and serious, traditional and up-to-date features. Notwithstanding their limited outward dimensions, they are masterful; many exhibit considerable thematic integration (no.15) or manipulate generic norms to artistic effect (the opening movements of nos.15 and 25 are unusual in form, in ways that relate to the character and ordering of the succeeding movements); in no.3 the finale combines fugue and sonata form.

Haydn’s years as Esterházy vice-Kapellmeister (1761–5) were his most productive as a symphony composer, with about 25 works (nos.6–9, 12–16, 21–4, 28–31, 33–4, 36, 39–40, 72, 108(B)); nos.35, 38 and 58–9 from about 1766–7 are similar. They exhibit great variety of style, subject matter and orchestral treatment, although the common notion that they constituted a distinctly ‘experimental’ phase is untenable. Their stylistic élan and virtuoso brilliance are attributable to the splendour of the court and the professional players now at Haydn’s disposal. One finds works for connoisseurs (nos.6–8, 13, 21–2, 31), others that seek to entertain (nos.9, 16, 33, 36, 72, 108) and still others that combine both stances (nos.34, 39–40). A few present an apotheosis of the chamber symphony: at ease, yet refined and profound (nos. 28–9, 35). Extra-musical aspects are present not only in the Matin–Midi–Soir trilogy (see §3(i)) but also nos.30 (‘Alleluja’), 31 (‘Hornsignal’), and perhaps 22 (‘The Philosopher’) and 59 (‘Fire’, a modern nickname deriving from its supposed origin as incidental music). Although a few symphonies are still in three movements (nos.9, 12, 16, 30), four is now the norm. Concertante scoring is prominent not only in nos.6–8 but in nos.9, 13, 14, 16, 31, 36, 72 and 108; a special effect found in this period alone is the use of four horns rather than the usual two (nos.13, 31, 39, 72).

Haydn’s symphonies of the years around 1770 (nos.26, 41–9, 52, 65) are widely described as exemplifying his Sturm und Drang style; those of 1773–4 (nos.50, 51, 54–7, 60, 64), while less extreme, have many points of contact with it. The most commonly cited feature is the minor mode – of Haydn’s ten symphonies in the minor, six fall between 1765 and 1772 – although most works remain in the major, and most of the novel stylistic features are independent of mode. These include remote keys (no.45, ‘Farewell’, in F♯ minor and major, and no.46 in B major), rhythmic and harmonic complexities, expansion of outward dimensions and harmonic range, rhythmic instability, extremes of dynamics and register, greater technical difficulty, increased use of counterpoint (e.g. in the canonic minuet of no.44, ‘Mourning’), musical ideas that seem dynamically potential rather than self-contained, and contrast within themes instead of merely between them. The slow movements and finales become more nearly comparable to the first movements in size and weight; in the former the violins play con sordino and the tempo is usually slowed to Adagio. No.26 (‘Lamentatione’) has religious associations and no.49 (‘La passione’) may have as well. The programmatic nos.45–6 (they seem to be a pair) are integrated in a through-composed, end-orientated manner not seen again until Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

From about 1775 (in some respects 1773) to 1781 Haydn again changed his orientation. Symphonies nos.53, 61–3, 66–71 and 73–5 are primarily in a light, even popular style (only no.70 is an exception), perhaps reflecting his resumption of operatic composition in 1773; indeed nos.53, 62, 63 and 73 include adaptations of stage-music (see §3(iii)), as had nos.50 (1773) and 60 (1774) before them. This stylistic turn has been interpreted as a kind of relaxation, or even as an outright selling out, but it is better understood as representing the distinct artistic stance of entertainment. They are easy (as Haydn was to say of nos.76–8), but superbly crafted, and abound in striking and beautiful passages, not to mention witty and eccentric ones: works of comic genius that approach the buffa stage. The slow movements exhibit new formal and stylistic options (the hymn-like no.61, the exquisitely ‘popular’ theme in no.53, the play of comic and serious in no.68, the ethereal dream in no.62), while the finales adumbrate rondo and hybrid forms. Slow introductions become important about 1779 and begin to create tangible links to the allegros (nos.53, 71 and 73).

During the 1780s Haydn’s style changed again, as he began to sell his symphonies abroad, in ‘opus’ format (see §3(iv) above). Although in many respects nos.76–81 (1782–4) are still ‘easy’, they include superb movements such as the opening Vivace of no.81 and the finales of nos.77 (with its contrapuntal development) and 80 (with its cross-rhythm theme). In nos.78 and 80 Haydn returns to the minor, although from no.80 on he usually ends such movements in the major, and places the entire finale in the major as well. The Paris symphonies (nos.82–7) are the grandest he had yet composed. Nos.87, 83 and 85 (1785) already have a new esprit, a combination of learned and popular style, consistency of musical argument and depth of feeling; see the slow movements of nos.83 and 87 and the outer movements of no.85 (the opening Vivace is particularly graceful and harmoniously constructed). In nos.82 and 86 (1786) the trumpets and drums lend added brilliance and the outer movements are on a still larger scale; the Capriccio of no.86 is one of Haydn’s most original slow movements. All these features characterize nos.88 and 90–92 as well (no.89 falls off somewhat). Nos.88 and 92 are the best-known: the former boasts concentrated, in part contrapuntal, outer movements, while the gorgeous Largo theme is set off by entries of the trumpets and drums (withheld from the first movement for this purpose); the latter features an unusually close integration of slow introduction and Allegro, a beautiful Adagio, rhythmically intricate trio and Haydn’s sprightliest and wittiest finale to date.

Haydn’s London symphonies (nos.93–104) crown his career as a symphonic composer. Not only do they outdo the Paris symphonies stylistically, but he produced them in person for rapturous audiences; this interaction stimulated him to ever bolder and more original conceptions. Nos.95–6 (1791) most nearly resemble the preceding symphonies, although no.95 in C minor has a gripping opening movement dominated by a striking unison motto, an ominously terse minuet and a brilliant sonata-fugal finale in C major (possibly influenced by the finale of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’). Those given in 1792 (nos.93–4, 97–8) respond to Haydn’s public: in no.94 the famous outburst in the Andante is actually the least remarkable ‘surprise’; the opening Vivace reaches new heights of tonal wit and expansive brilliance, and the concluding sonata-rondo is the first to exhibit the blend of rhythmic vitality, playful surprise, larger scale and underlying cogency of argument that distinguish Haydn’s London finales. These last features are found in nos.97–8 as well, along with a new romanticism in the opening movement of no.97 (the breathtaking diminished 7th chord in bar 2, which returns at several key points, and the remote flat-side modulations in the recapitulation); in no.98 Haydn composed an extended fortepiano obbligato for himself in the coda of the finale.

The last six symphonies are even more brilliant (clarinets are added, except in no.102); Haydn’s determination to conquer new territory with each work is palpable. No.99 in E♭ is his most elaborate symphonic essay in remote tonal relations; it also features a particularly warm slow movement (in G major), with extensive wind writing (much commented on at the time). No.101 (‘Clock’) has by far the longest minuet and trio Haydn ever composed and a particularly brilliant rondo finale. No.100 (‘Military’) rapidly became his most popular, owing to the slow movement based on a romance (from the lyre concerto hVIIh:3), overlaid by massive percussion outbursts that audiences found deliciously terrifying. No.102 is the least ‘characteristic’ of these six, yet one of the greatest; its most remarkable movement is the Adagio (identical in musical substance to that in the F♯ minor Piano Trio hXV:26), in which the exposition is repeated in order to vary the instrumentation, with muted trumpets and drums. No.103 (‘Drumroll’) offers Haydn’s most telling invocation of the sublime in instrumental music, by means of an astonishing double annunciation: first the ‘intrada’ fortissimo drum roll, then the mysterious bass theme (resembling the ‘Dies irae’), which dominates the Allegro as well and, even more astonishingly, interrupts the recapitulation near the end. No.104 begins with a massive dotted motif on the 5th D–A, which some commentators describe as dominating the entire symphony; the first movement is one of Haydn’s freest and the finale has greater relative weight than that in any other of the London symphonies.

Besides the symphonies Haydn’s orchestral music comprises the six early Scherzandi (hII:33–8), a few miscellaneous symphonic movements, overtures and instrumental numbers from operas and oratorios, incidental music, more than 100 minuets (many lost), of which the most important are the magnificent minuets and German dances hIX:11–12 (1792), and four late marches. He also composed numerous concertos, both for melody instruments (many of them lost) and for keyboard. Of the former, the most important are two virtuoso early Esterházy works: the Violin Concerto in C (hVIIa:1) and the massive Cello Concerto in C (hVIIb:1), and two late works: the Concertante (hI:105, 1792) and the Trumpet Concerto (1796), composed for Anton Weidinger’s ‘keyed’ trumpet (a forerunner of the valve trumpet). The six concertos for two lire organizzate (hVIIh:1–5; the sixth is lost), commissioned by the King of Naples in 1786, represent a special case; restricted to the keys of C, G and F and by the technical limitations of the instruments, they are Haydn’s shortest and most modest concertos, though delightful in every way.

Haydn’s three earliest keyboard concertos (1756 to c1761) were probably composed for organ, although they were more widely disseminated as harpsichord works; hXVIII:1 in C (?1756) is his earliest surviving large-scale instrumental composition, while no.3 in F is an unusual double concerto for organ or harpsichord and violin. Later came nos.4 in F (probably c1770) and 5 in G (probably the early 1770s), both for harpsichord, and no.11, the Piano Concerto in D (c1783–4), Haydn’s only popular work in this genre. A distinct subgenre comprises the early concertinos (hXIV:11–13, XVIII:F2), not easily distinguished from a group of similar, probably soloistic divertimentos (hXIV:3, 4, 7–10); all are tiny works for harpsichord, violins and bass, mainly in C. Although finely crafted, his keyboard concertos are less original and less popular than his symphonies, perhaps in part because he favours the middle register (except in no.11), eschews both overt and technical display and cantabile writing (except in slow movements), and includes many sequential passages. (These features reflect a particular stylistic orientation, not limitations on Haydn’s imagination or his prowess as a performer. The old canard that he was a mediocre keyboard player has long been laid to rest; his statement to Griesinger that ‘I was no mean keyboard player and singer’ was clearly an understatement, for he continued, ‘I could also perform a concerto on the violin’.)

11. Chamber music without keyboard.

Haydn’s chamber music centres on his 68 string quartets, a genre of which he was more nearly the literal ‘father’ than the symphony. (The traditional figure of 83 included the spurious op.3, three genuine early works that are not quartets, op.1 no.5 and op.2 nos.3 and 5, and the Seven Last Words, but omitted the early hII:6, ‘op.0’.) His earlier quartets were composed in three discrete groups separated by long pauses: the ten early works for Baron Fürnberg (in the mid- to late 1750s), opp.9, 17 and 20 (in the years around 1770) and op.33 (1781). Each group offers a different solution to the technical and aesthetic aspects of the genre while cumulatively enlarging the resources of quartet style. The Fürnberg quartets already take the soloistic ensemble for granted, including solo cello without continuo. They belong to the larger class of ensemble divertimentos, with which they share small outward dimensions, prevailing light tone (except in slow movements) and a five-movement pattern, usually fast–minuet–slow–minuet–fast. Even on this small scale, high and subtle art abounds: witness the rhythmic vitality, instrumental dialogue and controlled form of the first movement of op.1 no.1 in B♭; the wide-ranging development and free recapitulation in the first movement of op.2 no.4 in F, and the pathos in its slow movement; and the consummate mastery of op.2 nos.1–2.

Opp.9, 17 and 20 established the four-movement form with two outer fast movements, a slow movement and a minuet (although in this period the minuet usually precedes the slow movement). They also – op.20 in particular – established the larger dimensions, higher aesthetic pretensions and greater emotional range that were to characterize the genre from this point onwards. They are important exemplars of Haydn’s Sturm und Drang manner: four works are in the minor (op.9 no.4, op.17 no.4, op.20 nos.3 and 5); and nos.2, 5 and 6 from op.20 include fugal finales. Op.20 no.2 exhibits a new degree of cyclic integration with its ‘luxuriantly’ scored opening movement (Tovey, N1929–30), its minor-mode Capriccio slow movement which runs on, attacca, to the minuet (which itself mixes major and minor), and the combined light-serious character of the fugue. Op.17 no.5 and op.20 also expand the resources of quartet texture, as in the opening of op.20 no.2, where the cello has the melody, a violin takes the inner part and the viola executes the bass.

In op.33 these extremes are replaced by smaller outward dimensions, a more intimate tone, fewer extremes of expression, subtlety of instrumentation, wit (as in the ‘Joke’ finale of no.2 in E♭) and a newly popular style (e.g. in no.3 in C, the second group of the first movement, the trio and the finale). Haydn now prefers homophonic, periodic themes rather than irregularly shaped or contrapuntal ones; as a corollary, the phrase rhythm is infinitely variable. The slow movements and finales favour ABA and rondo forms rather than sonata form. However, these works are anything other than light or innocent: no.1 in B minor is serious throughout (the understated power of its ambiguous tonal opening has never been surpassed), as are the slow movements of nos.2 and 5. Op.33 has been taken as marking Haydn’s achievement of ‘thematische Arbeit’ (the flexible exchange of musical functions and development of the motivic material by all the parts within a primarily homophonic texture); although drastically oversimplified, this notion has had great historiographical influence. These quartets’ play with the conventions of genre and musical procedure is of unprecedented sophistication; in thus being ‘music about music’, these quartets were arguably the first modern works.

The appearance of op.33 was the first major event in what was to become the crucial decade for the Viennese string quartet, as Mozart and many other composers joined Haydn in cultivating the genre. Indeed, all the elements of Classical quartet style as it has usually been understood first appeared together in Mozart’s set dedicated to Haydn (1782–5). He responded in opp.50, 54/55 and 64 by combining the serious tone and large scale of op.20 with the ‘popular’ aspects and lightly worn learning of op.33. The minuet now almost invariably appears in third position; the slow movements, in ABA, variation or double variation form are more melodic than those in op.33; the finales, usually in sonata or sonata rondo form, are weightier. Haydn’s art is no longer always subtle; the opening of op.50 no.1 in B♭, with its softly pulsating solo cello pedal followed by the dissonant entry of the upper strings high above, is an overt stroke of genius, whose implications he draws out throughout the movement.

Haydn’s quartets of the 1790s adopt a demonstratively ‘public’ style (often miscalled ‘orchestral’), usually attributed to his experience in London (op.71/74 was composed for his second visit there); the fireworks for Salomon in the exposition of op.74 no.1 in C are an obvious example of this new style. Without losing his grip on the essentials of quartet style or his sovereign mastery of form, he expands the dimensions still further, incorporating more original themes (the octave leaps in the first movement of op.71 no.2), bolder contrasts, distantly related keys (from G minor to E major in op.74 no.3) etc. Opp.76–7, composed back in Vienna, carry this process still further, to the point of becoming extroverted and at times almost eccentric: see the first movements of op.76 no.2 in D minor, with its obsessive 5ths, and of op.76 no.3 in C, with its exuberant ensemble writing and the gypsy episode in the development, or the almost reckless finales of nos.2, 5 and 6 and op.77. He experimented as well with the organization of the cycle: op.76 nos.1 and 3, though in the major, have finales in the minor (reverting to the major at the end), while nos.5–6 begin with non-sonata movements in moderate tempo (but a fast concluding section), so that the weight of the form rests on their unusual slow movements (the Largo in F♯ of no.5, the tonally wandering Fantasia of no.6).

In his earlier years especially, Haydn composed extensively in other chamber genres. His surviving authenticated ensemble divertimentos (hII) consist of one string quintet (no.2), numerous mixed works including three in nine parts (nos.9, 17 and 20), one each in eight and seven (nos.16 and 8), two sextets for strings and two horns (nos.21–2) and two more for melody instruments (nos.1, 11), as well as at least five works for wind, four sextets (nos.3, 7, 15 and 23) and a tiny piece for two clarinets and two horns (no.14). Most of them exhibit the same five-movement cyclic pattern as the early string quartets, with the difference that contrasts in instrumentation become a basis of style, for example in reduced scorings in trios and slow movements or extended soloistic passages. Although some of the mixed works (nos.1–2, 9, 11 and 20) are among the earliest and are on average the least compelling, the slightly later nos.8, 16–17, and 21–2 are on the same high level as the quartets. The wind band works seem to date from about 1760–61; they are even smaller in scale but unfailingly masterful.

By contrast, the 21 authenticated string trios (hV:1–21, by 1765) are works for connoisseurs in ‘high’ style, difficult for player and listener alike, in a wide range of keys (three in E, one in B, two even in B minor). All are scored for two violins and (presumably) cello except no.8 (violin and viola) and are thus related to the trio sonata tradition, although the first violin dominates more than it participates in dialogue. They are in three movements (except no.7, in two), with a bewildering variety of cyclic patterns; many begin with a slow movement and most include a minuet. The 126 baryton trios (hXI; c1762–75) are similar in that they are music for a (particular) connoisseur and always in three movements with a minuet (except no.97 with seven: ‘fatto per la felicissima nascita di S.Al.S. Prencipe Estorhazi’). Although the baryton takes the leading role, they include much dialogue and ‘thematische Arbeit’; three late works (nos.97, 101 and 114) include fugues. They are intimate music, modest rather than ambitious, with a narrow range of keys (dictated by the baryton’s technical limitations); Haydn’s ability to fashion genuine art within such restricted conditions is remarkable.

In the middle and late 1770s Haydn’s production of chamber music fell off markedly. One last group of baryton works comprises the important octets hX:1–6 (mid-1770s); they are richer in scoring and on a larger scale than the trios. The six violin-viola duets (hVI:1–6) are likewise from the mid-1770s; the violin dominates and the style seems somewhat old-fashioned. The six string trios from the early 1780s (hIV:6–11) and the four flute trios from London (hIV:1–4, 1794–5) are amateurs’ music, with small dimensions, simple textures and restriction to two or three movements. By contrast, the eight lyre notturnos for the King of Naples (hII:25–32, 1788–90), of unfailing charm and true ‘chamber’ disposition, offer a wonderful synthesis of play and art.

12. Keyboard music.

Haydn’s keyboard works comprise solo sonatas (hXVI), trios (hXV) and quartet-divertimentos (hXIV). In 18th-century thought and practice these constituted a single, loosely defined genre, destined primarily for private performance and orientated on the topic of sentiment, seen as the natural expressive mode for music performed solely or primarily by an individual at the keyboard; indeed Haydn often adopted a selfconsciously improvisatory style, especially after 1780. During the 1760s these keyboard works were apparently composed for the harpsichord. The first clear (albeit indirect) evidence of composition for the fortepiano (or possibly clavichord) is found in the highly expressive Sonata no.20 (1771), with mannered dynamic marks. Nevertheless, most works from the 1770s may have been conceived for the harpsichord or neutrally for both instruments. Beginning in the early 1780s, and decisively from the late 1780s on, Haydn composed for the fortepiano. Many of his keyboard works were composed for ladies, whether students in his early years, the Auenbrugger sisters around 1780, or intimates such as Mme Genzinger, Mrs Schroeter and Therese Jansen. The majority are in three movements: either fast–slow–fast, or a fast movement, slow movement and minuet in various permutations. Two-movement works are also common, often slow–fast; numerous slow movements in penultimate position are run on, attacca, to the finale. Even in the 1780s and 90s many works end with an outwardly modest movement such as a Tempo di menuetto, a set of variations or a simple rondo. Neither the two- and three- movement cyclic patterns nor the modest finales were ‘conservative’ or ‘immature’, as has been claimed; they are as finely wrought as quartet finales and exemplify the prevailing generic orientation of intimacy.

Haydn’s early keyboard works are both serious and galant. The trios hXV:f1 in F minor and 1 in G minor and the Sonata no.2 in B♭ (with its astonishing Largo) are more intellectually difficult and stylistically uncompromising than all the early quartets and most of the early symphonies; many works are small and unpretentious and were presumably written for students and amateurs. At least 12 weighty connoisseurs’ sonatas originated in the late 1760s and early 1770s, including nos.19, 20, 45, 46 and seven lost works. Two sets in mixed style followed, nos.21–6 (1773) and 27–32 (1774–6); they include serious works such as the boldly formed nos.22 in E and 26 in A, the passionate no.32 in B minor and the through-composed no.30 in A, as well as numerous lighter works, especially in the 1774–6 set. In 1780 followed Haydn’s first publication with Artaria, the heterogeneous nos.35–9 and 20, including the ‘easy’ no.35 in C, the virtuoso no.37 in D and the serious no.36 in C♯ minor. The three modestly scaled sonatas nos.40–42 (published 1784) are miracles of popular appeal allied with high art, especially no.40 in G. Except for no.51 in D, for Mrs Schroeter, Haydn’s last five sonatas eschew any pretence of modesty. In the late 1780s he composed no.48 in C, with a fantasy-like slow variation movement and a dashing sonata-rondo finale, and the intimate no.49 in E♭ for Mme Genzinger; its brilliant first movement has an unusually long coda and the ABA Adagio is richly expressive, with continual variations of the theme. From London come two virtuoso sonatas for Jansen: nos.50 in C and 52 in E♭. The former features a remarkable first movement which, though in sonata form, is based on continual variation of a basic motif; the latter is on the largest scale throughout and features a slow movement in the remote key of E major (a tonal relation adumbrated in the development of the first movement and wittily ‘cancelled’ at the beginning of the finale).

Of Haydn’s few keyboard works outside the sonatas, the most important are two capriccios – Acht Sauschneider müssen sein in G (hXVII:1, 1765), a variation rondo with an immense tonal range, and hXVII:4 in C (1789), another tonally wide-ranging work with elements of sonata-rondo form, perhaps stimulated by a Fantasia from C.P.E. Bach’s sixth collection of Clavier-Sonaten … für Kenner und Liebhaber (1787) – and the F minor Variations for piano hXVII:6 (1793), arguably Haydn’s most original and concentrated double-variation movement, with a coda (added in revision) of Beethovenian power.

Haydn’s piano trios have been undervalued, in part because of the great distance between their original generic identity and today’s conceptions. 18th-century keyboard trios (like violin sonatas) were understood as ‘accompanied sonatas’: the keyboard dominates, the cello mainly doubles the left hand of the piano in a pitch-class sense, and even the violin is generally more accompanimental than soloistic, although it often receives sustained melodies in second themes, slow movements, minuet trios and rondo episodes. Nevertheless the strings are essential, for integration of the texture, tone colour and rhythmic definition. The effort to hear Haydn’s 27 late piano trios (hXV:5–31, 1784–96) with 18th-century ears is worth making: after the quartets they comprise his largest and greatest corpus of chamber music. No.12 in E minor (1788–9) has an opening movement of astonishing seriousness with vast expansions towards the end, while the beautiful siciliano slow movement and the ebullient rondo finale are both in E major. No.14 in A♭ (1789–90) includes his first slow movement in a remote key (E major, or ♭VI, adumbrated by B major in the development of the first movement). From London, nos.24–6 (1794–5), dedicated to Schroeter, include no.25 (with the famous ‘Gypsy Rondo’) and no.26 in the special key of F♯ minor: following a concentrated and brooding Allegro and a gorgeous Adagio in F♯ major (identical in substance with the Adagio of Symphony no.102), the minuet-finale is anything other than anticlimactic. It begins dissonantly on a dominant 9th and this instability is maintained throughout: there is no tonic cadence until the very last bar of the A section, just before the double bar, and in the reprise even this cadence is deceptive, leading to a substantial coda. Rosen praises its ‘intimate gravity … a melancholy so intense it is indistinguishable from the tragic’, while Landon conjectures that the work may represent Haydn’s farewell to Mrs Schroeter (the key is suggestive). By contrast, nos.27 in C and 29 in E♭ (1795–6), dedicated to Jansen, are difficult and extroverted; no.29 is particularly original in construction, and both have rollicking finales that outdo any earlier ones.

13. Haydn’s career.

Haydn’s career never stimulated a paradigmatic narrative comparable to that of Beethoven’s three periods. To be sure, decisive breaks occurred in 1761 (his move to the Esterházy court), 1790 (to London) and 1795 (back to Vienna); the periods 1750–61, 1791–5 and 1795–1802 are distinctive regarding both the conditions of his life and his compositional activity. However, the first and last of these are brief in proportion to his career as a whole and cannot bear the weight that ‘early’ and ‘late’ do in Beethoven’s case. Furthermore, in any such reading Haydn’s 30 years at the Esterházy court remain a long, uninterpreted ‘middle’. Its only major dividing-points that affected both his life circumstances and his compositional orientation were 1766, when he became full Kapellmeister, 1776, when he became responsible for the court opera, and 1779, when he negotiated his independence as composer of instrumental music. Hence except for 1761–5 the Esterházy years seem best understood in terms of a series of overlapping phases, each defined by different criteria (see §3).

In the 20th century too much was made of the supposedly evolutionary aspects of Haydn’s career, in part because of its association with the notion of the rise of ‘Classical style’ (see Classical). This led to a threefold periodization after all, but one modelled mechanically on the traditional interpretation of artists’ careers: apprentice – journeyman – master. In Haydn’s case this took the form: immaturity/composition within existing style – experimentation/searching for a new style – maturity/‘Classical style’; the last was assumed to be his overriding stylistic ‘goal’, which he finally ‘achieved’. The oldest and most persistent of these interpretations associated Classical style with thematische Arbeit and the string quartets op.33 of 1781. Another proposed a double progression: towards a first highpoint with his Sturm und Drang manner around 1768–72, and a second one with the Paris symphonies and the Seven Last Words of 1785–6. These notions are not facts, however, but constructions, placed in the service of stylistic narratives of the ‘per ardua ad astra’ type, more ideologically focussed and psychologically reassuring than explanatory. To be sure, other things equal, a later work of Haydn will be more complex and concentrated than an earlier one; indeed his music often became ‘more so’ within a single genre over a few brief years; for example the string quartets opp.9, 17 and 20 or the London symphonies. And he certainly experimented compositionally, as is clear from his own account of ‘becoming original’. But even his earliest music was never in any intrinsic sense immature, and he continued to experiment, successfully, throughout his career. From about 1755 on, Haydn’s music was technically masterful, generically appropriate and rhetorically convincing; every one of his works is best appreciated today in terms of these three modes of understanding, applied in concert.

Works