His compositions from this decade signal creative renewal in every genre, songs and piano trios included. The London symphonies were ecstatically received and Haydn found himself feted as the “Shakespeare of music”. Sailing from Calais to England on New Year’s Day 1791 was symbolic: the visit would spell a new lease of life and artistic freedom. Advance publicity hailed the arrival of Europe’s “most celebrated composer”. After Nicholas’s death, his son Anton reduced Haydn’s duties, which allowed the composer to accept an invitation to London from impresario JP Salomon and a commission for symphonies. By 1790, it was not just the music that travelled. The Seven Last Words of Christ was written for Cádiz’s Oratorio della Santa Cueva, its far-ranging keys and final movement’s depiction of the earthquake after the crucifixion remarkably daring. Haydn acquired a name for himself in circles well beyond Esterházy, and Nicholas valued him: on learning that Luigia Polzelli, a singer in his employ he had been about to dismiss, was the composer’s lover – almost certainly the father of her second son, Antonio – the prince kept her on.īy the 1780s, Haydn’s contract permitted him outside commissions. Il Mondo della Luna, setting Goldoni’s comedy about a bogus astronomer, inaugurated a new season in 1776, while Haydn himself was proud of La Fedeltà Premiata, with its elements of both serious and comic opera. For a newly constructed opera house, Haydn also composed operas. For the court’s 25-strong orchestra Haydn wrote symphonies – the Trauersymphonie is Haydn in heart-on-sleeve dramatic mode – and concertos, the Cello Concerto in C among them. Music-making at Esterháza could be intimate, as in the baryton trios (Nicholas was obsessed with this soon-to-be-obsolete stringed instrument), or celebratory, as in name-day cantatas or masses. Photograph: DEA/A Dagli Orti/De Agostini/Getty Images Nicholas built a summer palace, at Esterháza, out in the sticks near Ferto over the border in Hungary, and while Haydn never lost touch with Vienna, he wrote that being so remote had forced him to be original.Ī 19th century painting imagining Haydn playing in a string quartet. Haydn was given full rein as kapellmeister when the extravagant Nicholas succeeded his older brother the following year. But the job of a lifetime came in 1761, when prince Paul Esterházy – super-wealthy, music-loving – appointed him vice kapellmeister at the Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt. Improving prospects saw him wed Maria Anna Keller, sadly not a marriage made in heaven. Now getting commissions in the city’s aristocratic circles, Haydn began writing symphonies in the service of Count Morzin. Working briefly as valet-accompanist to the composer Nicola Porpora (singing teacher of the famous castrato Farinelli), he was introduced to many of Vienna’s cultural movers and shakers, among them imperial court poet Metastasio and composers Hasse and Gluck. He became a freelance musician – singing, playing, teaching – extending his sketchy education by diligent study of counterpoint and theory. This experience of the last throes of baroque music stood him in good stead: Haydn would later say he learned most by listening. At barely six, Joseph’s gifts saw him uprooted to become a choirboy in Hainburg, then talent-spotted for St Stephen’s cathedral choir in Vienna. He was born in Rohrau in 1732 his father was a wheelwright, his mother a cook, and his younger brother Michael would also be a composer. Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto is a favourite processional, while the slow movement of his Surprise Symphony – where a gentle theme is punctuated by a startling fortissimo chord – is one of the first tunes taught in children’s music lessons. It’s also the hymn Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken. Haydn also used the tune in his String Quartet Op 76 No 3, thus the “Emperor” Quartet. Deutschlandlied, the German national anthem – and Austria’s before that – was originally Haydn’s patriotic anthem written for Emperor Francis II, Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser.
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