CHAPTER XX

“Papa” Haydn and Mozart—the Genius

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN 1732–1809

About the time in history when Franz Joseph Haydn was born, the world was very much upset. No one knew what to think or how. It was a time of battle and struggle as he was born in the midst of the Seven Years’ War and lived during the French Revolution. Everyone except for a few great persons felt bitter and discontented and doubt was everywhere. This seems to be the way wars and conflicts affect all peoples and it is why wars are so damaging.

Yet out of this mixture of feeling and thinking, the great classic period of music was created by such men as Bach and Haydn and Mozart and the finishing touches were put on it by Beethoven, the colossus.

Franz Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau (1732), a little town in Austria near Vienna. His father was a wheelwright and his mother was a very good cook. Beethoven’s mother, too, was a professional cook.

These simple parents, his brothers and sisters, measuring not a baker’s, but a wheelwright’s dozen, had an hour or two of music every evening after the hard day’s work, and Mathias, the father, played the harp and sang. It was during these evenings that little Joseph’s father noticed that at the age of six he was passionately fond of music.

One time at a festival the drummer failed to appear and there was no one who could play for the choristers who were to march through the town. His teacher, Frankh, called Joseph and showed him how to make the drum stroke and told him to practice it. When he was left by himself he found a meal tub, over which he stretched a cloth, put it on a stool and drummed with such vigor that the whole thing toppled over and he and his drum were covered with meal! But he learned to drum! And the people laughed when in this solemn church festival, the little six year old Joseph was seen drumming the big drum carried by a hunchback in front of him. The drums on which he played are still at Hainburg. But, we forget, we have not brought him from Rohrau!

Not long before J. M. Frankh, a relative, came to visit the Haydns, and it was decided that he should take Joseph to Hainburg to teach him. The excitement, of course, was great and little Joseph felt very important with all the hustle and bustle preparing for his departure. Little did Saperle (his nickname) realize what a hard master he was getting in Frankh, who only cared for the pay he received from Joseph’s father. Nevertheless he learned much and showed great talent while at Hainburg and one day a great thing happened. Reutter, the organist of St. Stephen’s in Vienna, visited Frankh and as they talked of music the conversation turned to the choir school which Reutter directed. Frankh sent for Joseph, a slight, dark haired, dark eyed little boy, and Reutter asked him to read a piece of music at sight. Joseph looked at it and said: “How can I, when my teacher couldn’t?” Yet, Joseph did sing it sweetly and he entered the choir school. Here his life was a misery, for Reutter was harsh and unsympathetic, but soon Joseph’s hard life in the choir school was over, for one very cold winter night, he felt a little frisky, as many a healthy lad does, and pulled off the wig of a man in the choir. Reutter, who had wanted an excuse to rid himself of Joseph, because his voice had begun to break, threw him out into the cold. Poor Saperle had no other place to go and wandered about all night, until he met his acquaintance Spangler, a tenor who was very poor and so had sympathy with Haydn. He took him home to live with him and his wife and child in his attic,—one small room with no comfort and no privacy. All this time young Haydn was forced to earn his daily bread by teaching as much as he could, playing for weddings, baptisms, funerals, festivals, dances and street serenadings. This street serenading was a sweet and pretty custom of the time.

One night Haydn and some other youths serenaded Kurz, a prominent comedian. Kurz, pleased by the music below his window, called to the lads: “Whose music is that?” “Joseph Haydn’s,” called back Haydn. “Who is he and where?” asked Kurz. “Down here, I am Haydn,” said Joseph. Kurz invited him upstairs and Haydn, at the age of seventeen, received a commission for a comic opera, which had two special performances.

All this time he mixed with the poor and laboring people, and their songs became his songs, and his heart was full of their frolics and their pains. He was of the people and was so filled with their humor that later he was called the father of humor in music.

Soon, in order to be alone, and to work in peace, he took a room in another attic, and bade good-bye to his very good friends. His room was cold in winter and let in the rains and snows, but it did have a spinet on which Haydn was allowed to play, and fortunately Metastasio the librettist lived in this house. Here Haydn studied the works of Karl Philip Emanuel Bach, Fuchs’ _Gradus ad Parnassum_ (Steps to Parnassus, Parnassus meaning the mountain upon which the Greek Muses lived and so comes to mean the home of learning). He practised too, during this time, on any instrument he could find and learned so much that he became the founder of the modern orchestra.

When Metastasio discovered that there was a hard working musician in his house he met him and then introduced him to Porpora the greatest Italian singing teacher in Vienna. Not long after meeting him, Porpora entrusted to his care Marianne Van Martines, his ten year old pupil, the future musical celebrity. At seventeen Marianne wrote a mass which was used at St. Michael’s Church and she became the favorite singer and player of Empress Maria Theresa. You see women even in those days composed and performed!

So began Haydn’s successes. Porpora engaged him as accompanist, and treated him half way between a valet and a musician, but Haydn’s sweet nature carried him through all unpleasantnesses and he was so anxious to learn and to earn his six ducats that he did not care if he did have to eat with the servants.

In 1751–2, he wrote his first mass, his first string quartet, and his first comic opera for Kurz, _The Crooked Devil_, the music of which has been lost. Soon after he met Gluck at the concerts of the Prince of Hildburghausen, where Haydn acted as accompanist; at the prince’s house too, he met Ditter von Dittersdorf, the violinist. The princes and nobles of these days did much for music for it was usually at their homes and under their guidance that the composers received opportunities to work.

Nevertheless, we see Haydn during these days slaving to make his daily bread, but with the money he made he bought books on music theory and held himself sternly down to hard work, morning, noon, and night.

In 1755 Baron von Fürnburg, a music amateur, who gave concerts at his home, asked him to compose for him, and he wrote eighteen quartets, six _scherzandi_ for wind instruments (the ancestors of his own symphonies), four string quartets, to be played by the village priest, himself, the steward, and the ’cellist Albrechtsberger.

All these pieces show how much happier he was since becoming part of the Baron’s staff, for they are merry and jolly, and filled with that humor which Haydn was the first to put into music.

Here, too, he met the cultivated Countess Thun, who was so interested in his struggle for success, and in the youth himself that she became his pupil. From this time on he began to earn more and to live more comfortably.

Everything seemed to be clearing up for him now. The Countess introduced him to Count Morzin, a Bohemian nobleman of great wealth, and in 1759 he became his musical director. His orchestra had eighteen members and here he wrote his first Symphony (the first of one hundred and twenty-five!)

All this time he kept up his teaching and very soon married the daughter of a wig-maker, who did not understand him and with whom he was very unhappy, but he lived with her like the good man he was until within a few years of his death.

HAYDN AND THE ESTERHAZYS

Soon after Haydn’s marriage, Count Morzin had to cut down expenses and dismissed his musical staff, but Prince Paul Anton Esterhazy engaged him and he lived with him thirty years under salary with all his expenses paid,—thus ended his struggles to make a living. He composed in comfort and had a few able musicians to play whatever he wrote. He had quiet, solitude and appreciation,—the need of all art workers.

From 1761 to 1790 in the Esterhazy home he wrote most of his immortal works,—six of his best symphonies; the oratorio _The Seven Words from the Cross_ (1785) which he himself thought was a masterpiece; six string quartets.

His orchestra here had six violins and violas, one violoncello, one double bass, one flute, two oboes, two bassoons and four horns,—seventeen in all; later he had twenty-two to twenty-four including trumpets, kettle-drums and from 1776–1778 the newest arrival, the clarinet.

His duties were to rehearse the orchestra daily, give music lessons, compose for the orchestra and instruct the singers engaged by the prince. Oh, yes! he had to tune his own harpsichord, on which he played when he led the orchestra.

Haydn led a beautiful life with the Esterhazy family. In the summer he hunted and fished, and in the winter, went off to Vienna to hear the orchestra and meet great personages attracted by the art, music and court life. But he had to keep on composing for the Esterhazys, who were constantly entertaining and there were many special occasions to be celebrated with Haydn’s lovely music.

It seems hard for us to realize that one family could play the compositions of one man continually, but we have rarely had so great a man to listen to!

HAYDN IN ENGLAND

In 1790 Haydn’s fame had spread abroad, especially to England. Salomon, a violinist and concert manager begged him to come to conduct twenty concerts with a new composition for each concert, for which he was to receive a fabulous sum. He gave his first concert February 25th, 1791. He was now about sixty years old and his popularity was so great that the Prince of Wales engaged him for twenty-six court concerts. He forgot to pay him, but later Parliament sent him one hundred guineas (about $500). Money at that time bought four or five times what it buys now, so Haydn went back to Austria, rich and famous and with a degree from Oxford. The English asked him many times to return and finally in 1794 he went again and was greeted with even more enthusiasm. Few composers in all the world have lived to see such triumphs as did the jovial, charming “Papa Haydn,” as his warm friend and pupil Mozart called him. But withal, Haydn was modest and unassuming and never hesitated to give his services in concerts for the poor or to give money to the sick.

Besides all the money he must have received, he had a generous pension from his friends, the Esterhazys, who demanded very little of his time. So now, with leisure, he could do his greatest works and at this period he wrote two oratorios, _The Creation_ and _The Seasons_. They were more than successful. Emil Naumann says this of _The Seasons_: “It is not until we come to Haydn that we witness the joys and sorrows of men and women of our own time and dwellers in our own land, the tiller of the soil, the wine-presser and shepherd, or homely figures like Simon the farmer, his daughter Anna and the peasant Lucas, in _The Seasons_.” Then he says of _The Creation_: “We move with him through the German spinning room, where the girls relate stories to the accompaniment of the musical hum of the spinning wheel, or we rove through woods to follow the chase. His whole heart is in nature. He loves to depict her in her many varying aspects, and at all seasons, and all is touched with a light, tender hand. His types are of home.... His delineation of nature is ever the same, fresh and loving, whether we look at _The Seasons_ or at _The Creation_.”

Haydn said of his English experience, “It is England which has made me famous in Germany.”

In 1797 he wrote _God Preserve the Emperor_ which became the Austrian National Hymn, and later put it in his quartet called the Kaiser Quartet. From this time on, nearly every nation honored him,—Russia, France, Sweden, England, Austria, Germany. And as Haydn was leaving for England, when Mozart said to him, “Papa, you are scarcely fitted for such an undertaking, mixing with the big world without the gift of language,” he replied, “Aye, but _my_ language is understood by the whole world.”

And this is the keynote of Haydn’s greatness, his music is and was understood by the whole world, so true and simple and melodious is it.

A GALA PERFORMANCE

One year before his death when he was seventy-six years of age, he was so feeble that he had to be carried to the concert hall where a great performance of _The Creation_ was given in his honor under the direction of Salieri, who later taught Beethoven. Princes and nobles and grand ladies did him homage and the ladies threw their beautiful cloaks over his couch to keep him warm, for it was a cold night in March, 1808. When that part of the oratorio came where they sing, “And there was light,” it is said that Haydn exclaimed, “Not I, but a power from above created that.”

He died on May 30th, 1809, from shock, it is said, caused by the booming of cannon near his house when the French besieged Vienna.

So passed this conscientious musician, whose belief is summed up in these sentences: “I know that God appointed me a task. I acknowledge it with thanks, and hope and believe I have done my duty and have been useful to the world. May others do likewise.”

HAYDN’S GIFT TO MUSIC

1. He made over the orchestra, he discovered that muted strings made a beautiful winning effect.

2. He and Mozart at about the same time, added the clarinet to the orchestra.

3. He was the first composer who brought humor, that difficult thing which is neither wit nor comicalness, to music, although others had brought fun and boisterousness.

4. He was the first to use the individual tone color of each instrument, so, rightly he has been called the father of the modern orchestra.

5. He developed sonata-form in the sonata itself, the quartet, concerto and symphony. He was one of the first to establish two themes instead of one in the movements of sonata-forms. This was a great innovation and made the sonata a far more living thing and gave the composers who followed him a richer field to carry out musical design and human feeling.

6. He wrote about 1,407 works! 157 symphonies of which 18 are masterpieces, 83 string quartets, 66 piano sonatas, 5 oratorios, 42 German and English songs, 336 Scotch songs, 40 canons, 13 part songs for three and four voices, 5 German marionette operas written for the Esterhazy theatre, 14 Italian operas, 163 pieces for the baryton (viola da bordona), a favorite instrument of one of the Esterhazy princes, 47 divertimenti and trios, 15 concertos for different instruments, 15 masses, 5 other sacred works, 400 single minuets and waltzes. (Emil Naumann.)

7. Among his larger vocal works with orchestra are: _Alcide_ (1762), _Philemon and Baucis_, _entre acte_ music for King Lear an