Early life Joseph Haydn was born in
Rohrau, Austria, a village that at that time stood on the border with Hungary. His father was
Mathias Haydn, a
wheelwright who also served as "Marktrichter", or marketplace supervisor. Haydn's mother Maria, née Koller, had worked as a cook in the palace of
Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau. Neither parent could read music; however, Mathias was an enthusiastic
folk musician, who during the
journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the harp. According to Haydn's later reminiscences, his family was extremely musical, and they frequently sang together and with their neighbours. Haydn's parents had noticed that their son was musically gifted and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain serious musical training. It was for this reason that, around the time Haydn turned six, they accepted a proposal from their relative Johann Matthias Frankh, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in nearby
Hainburg, that Haydn be apprenticed to Frankh in his home to train as a musician. Haydn therefore went off with Frankh to Hainburg; he never again lived with his parents. Life in the Frankh household was not easy for Haydn, who later remembered being frequently hungry and humiliated by the filthy state of his clothing. However, he quickly profited from his musical training, and could soon play both
harpsichord and
violin; he also sang
treble parts in the church choir. . In the foreground is the Kapellhaus (demolished 1804), where Haydn lived as a chorister. There is reason to think that Haydn's singing impressed those who heard him, because in 1739 he was brought to the attention of
Georg Reutter the Younger, the director of music in
St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, who happened to be visiting Hainburg and was looking for new choirboys. Haydn passed his audition with Reutter, and after several months of further training moved to Vienna (1740), where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister. Haydn lived in the Kapellhaus next to the cathedral, along with Reutter, Reutter's family, and the other four choirboys, which after 1745 included his younger brother
Michael. The choirboys were instructed in Latin and other school subjects as well as voice, violin, and keyboard. Reutter was of little help to Haydn in the areas of
music theory and composition, giving him only two lessons in his entire time as a chorister. However, since St. Stephen's was one of the leading musical centres in Europe, Haydn learned a great deal simply by serving as a professional musician there. Like Frankh before him, Reutter did not always bother to make sure Haydn was properly fed. As he later told his biographer
Albert Christoph Dies, Haydn was motivated to sing well, in hopes of gaining more invitations to perform before aristocratic audiences, where the singers were usually served refreshments.
Struggles as a freelancer or visited By 1749, Haydn had matured physically to the point that he was no longer able to sing high choral parts. Empress
Maria Theresa herself complained to Reutter about his singing, calling it "crowing". One day, Haydn carried out a prank, snipping off the pigtail of a fellow chorister. This was enough for Reutter: Haydn was first
caned, then summarily dismissed and sent into the streets. He had the good fortune to be taken in by a friend, Johann Michael Spangler, who shared his family's crowded garret room with Haydn for a few months. Haydn immediately began his pursuit of a career as a freelance musician. Haydn struggled at first, working at many different jobs: as a music teacher, as a street serenader, and eventually, in 1752, as valet-accompanist for the Italian composer
Nicola Porpora, from whom he later said he learned "the true fundamentals of composition". He was also briefly in
Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz's employ, playing the
organ in the Bohemian Chancellery chapel at the
Judenplatz. While a chorister, Haydn had not received any systematic training in music theory and composition. As a remedy, he worked his way through the
counterpoint exercises in the text
Gradus ad Parnassum by
Johann Joseph Fux and carefully studied the work of
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whom he later acknowledged as an important influence. He said of C. P. E. Bach's first six keyboard sonatas, "I did not leave my clavier till I played them through, and whoever knows me thoroughly must discover that I owe a great deal to Emanuel Bach, that I understood him and have studied him with diligence." According to
Griesinger and Dies, in the 1750s Haydn studied an encyclopedic treatise by
Johann Mattheson, a German composer. , Czech Republic|leftAs his skills increased, Haydn began to acquire a public reputation, first as the composer of an opera,
Der krumme Teufel (The Limping Devil), written for the comic actor Joseph Felix von Kurz, whose stage name was "Bernardon". The work was premiered successfully in 1753, but was soon closed down by the censors due to "offensive remarks". Haydn also noticed, apparently without annoyance, that works he had simply given away were being published and sold in local music shops. Between 1754 and 1756 Haydn also worked freelance for the court in Vienna. He was among several musicians who were paid for services as supplementary musicians at balls given for the imperial children during carnival season, and as supplementary singers in the imperial chapel (the
Hofkapelle) in Lent and Holy Week. With the increase in his reputation, Haydn eventually obtained aristocratic patronage, crucial for the career of a composer in his day. Countess Thun, having seen one of Haydn's compositions, summoned him and engaged him as her singing and keyboard teacher. In 1756, Baron Carl Josef Fürnberg employed Haydn at his country estate,
Weinzierl, where the composer wrote his first string quartets. Their enthusiastic reception encouraged Haydn to write more. Fürnberg later recommended Haydn to
Count Morzin, who, in 1757, became his first full-time employer.
Years as Kapellmeister Haydn's job title under Count Morzin was
Kapellmeister, that is, music director. Like many aristocrats of the
Austrian Empire at the time, the Count kept his own small orchestra, which Haydn led and composed for. His salary was a respectable 200 florins a year, plus free board and lodging. The Count lived the typical aristocratic lifestyle: winters in fashionable Vienna, but in summer escaping the heat and dust of the city for the
ancestral estate in the country; this was at
Unterlukawitz, now in the Czech Republic. Haydn and his musicians served their employer wherever he happened to be living. For Count Morzin Haydn wrote his first symphonies (perhaps about 10–20; the number is unknown).
Philip Downs comments on these first symphonies: "the seeds of the future are there, his works already exhibit a richness and profusion of material, and a disciplined yet varied expression." the sister of Therese (b. 1733), with whom Haydn had previously been in love. Haydn and his wife had an unhappy marriage, from which the laws of the time permitted no escape. They produced no children, and both took lovers. Count Morzin soon suffered financial reverses that forced him to dismiss his musical establishment, but Haydn was quickly offered a similar job (1761) by Prince
Paul Anton, head of the immensely wealthy
Esterházy family. Haydn's job title was only Vice-Kapellmeister, but he was immediately placed in charge of most of the Esterházy musical establishment, with the old Kapellmeister
Gregor Werner retaining authority only for church music. When Werner died in 1766, Haydn was elevated to full Kapellmeister. As a "house officer" in the Esterházy establishment, Haydn wore
livery and followed the family as they moved among their various palaces, most importantly the family's ancestral seat
Schloss Esterházy in
Eisenstadt and later on
Esterháza, a grand new palace built in rural Hungary in the 1760s. Haydn had a huge range of responsibilities, including composition, running the orchestra, playing
chamber music for and with his patrons, and eventually the mounting of operatic productions. Despite this backbreaking workload, the job was in artistic terms a superb opportunity for Haydn. The Esterházy princes (Paul Anton, then from 1762 to 1790
Nikolaus I) were musical connoisseurs who appreciated his work and gave him daily access to his own small orchestra. During the nearly thirty years that Haydn worked at the Esterházy court, he produced a flood of compositions, and his musical style continued to develop. Much of Haydn's activity at the time followed the musical taste of his patron Prince Nikolaus. In about 1765, the prince obtained and began to learn to play the
baryton, an uncommon musical instrument similar to the bass
viol, but with a set of plucked
sympathetic strings. Haydn was commanded to provide music for the prince to play, and over the next ten years produced about 200 works for this instrument in various ensembles, the most notable of which are the 126
baryton trios. Around 1775, the prince abandoned the baryton and took up a new hobby: opera productions, previously a sporadic event for special occasions, became the focus of musical life at court, and the opera theatre the prince had built at Esterháza came to host a major season, with (per Jones) "a schedule that soon rivalled any private or public opera house in Europe." Haydn served as
de facto company director, recruiting and training the singers and preparing and leading the performances. He wrote
several of the operas performed and wrote substitution
arias to insert into the operas of other composers. 1779 was a watershed year for Haydn, as his contract was renegotiated: whereas previously all his compositions were the property of the Esterházy family, he now was permitted to write for others and sell his work to publishers. Haydn soon shifted his emphasis in composition to reflect this (fewer operas, and more quartets and symphonies) and he negotiated with multiple publishers, both Austrian and foreign. His new employment contract "acted as a catalyst in the next stage in Haydn's career, the achievement of international popularity. As Jones notes, by 1790, Haydn was in the paradoxical position ... of being Europe's leading composer, but someone who spent his time as a duty-bound Kapellmeister in a remote palace in the Hungarian countryside." The new publication campaign resulted in the composition of a great number of new string quartets (the six-quartet sets of Op.
33,
50, 54/55, and
64). Haydn also composed in response to commissions from abroad: the
Paris symphonies (1785–1786) and the original orchestral version of
The Seven Last Words of Christ (1786), a commission from
Cádiz, Spain., the palace built by Prince Nikolaus in rural Hungary, where Haydn spent much of his career The remoteness of Esterháza, which was farther from Vienna than Eisenstadt, led Haydn gradually to feel more isolated and lonely. He longed to visit Vienna because of his friendships there. Of these, a particularly important one was with
Maria Anna von Genzinger (1754–1793), the wife of Prince Nikolaus's personal physician in Vienna, who began a close, platonic relationship with the composer in 1789. Haydn wrote to Mrs. Genzinger often, expressing his loneliness at Esterháza and his happiness for the few occasions on which he was able to visit her in Vienna. Later on, Haydn wrote to her frequently from London. Her premature death in 1793 was a blow to Haydn, and his
F minor variations for piano, Hob. XVII:6, may have been written in response to her death. Another friend in Vienna was
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom
Haydn had met sometime around 1784. According to later testimony by
Michael Kelly and others, the two composers occasionally played in
string quartets with
Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (second violin) and
Johann Baptist Wanhal (cello) for small gatherings attended by
Giovanni Paisiello and
Giovanni Battista Casti. Impressed by Mozart's work, Haydn praised it unstintingly to others. Mozart returned the esteem in his
"Haydn" quartets. In 1785 Haydn was admitted to the same
Masonic lodge as Mozart, the "
Zur wahren Eintracht" in Vienna.
London journeys In 1790, Prince Nikolaus died and was succeeded as prince by his son
Anton. Following a trend of the time, Anton sought to economize by dismissing most of the court musicians. Haydn retained a nominal appointment with Anton, at a reduced salary of 400 florins, as well as a 1000-florin pension from Nikolaus. Since Anton had little need of Haydn's services, he was willing to let him travel, and the composer accepted a lucrative offer from
Johann Peter Salomon, a German violinist and
impresario, to visit England and conduct new symphonies with a large orchestra. The choice was a sensible one because Haydn was already a very popular composer there. Since the death of
Johann Christian Bach in 1782, Haydn's music had dominated the concert scene in London; per Jones, "hardly a concert did not feature a work by him". Haydn's work was widely distributed by publishers in London, including Forster (who had their own contract with Haydn) and Longman &
Broderip (who served as an agent in England for Haydn's Vienna publisher
Artaria). Efforts to bring Haydn to London had been made since 1782, though Haydn's loyalty to Prince Nikolaus had prevented him from accepting. After fond farewells from Mozart and other friends, Haydn departed from Vienna with Salomon on 15 December 1790, arriving in
Calais in time to cross the English Channel on New Year's Day of 1791. It was the first time that the 58-year-old composer had seen the sea. Arriving in London, Haydn stayed with Salomon in Great Pulteney Street (near
Piccadilly Circus) working in a borrowed studio at the
Broadwood piano firm nearby. It was the start of a very auspicious period for Haydn: both the 1791–1792 journey, along with a repeat visit in 1794–1795, were greatly successful. Audiences flocked to Haydn's concerts; he augmented his fame and made large profits, thus becoming financially secure.
Charles Burney reviewed the first concert thus: "Haydn himself presided at the piano-forte; and the sight of that renowned composer so electrified the audience, as to excite an attention and a pleasure superior to any that had ever been caused by instrumental music in England." Haydn made many new friends and, for a time, was involved in a romantic relationship with
Rebecca Schroeter. , principal venue of Haydn's performances in London Musically, Haydn's visits to England generated some of his best-known work, including the
Surprise,
Military,
Drumroll and
London symphonies; the
Rider quartet; and the
"Gypsy Rondo" piano trio. The great success of the overall enterprise does not mean that the journeys were free of trouble. Notably, his first project, the commissioned opera ''
L'anima del filosofo'' (The Soul of the Philosopher) was duly written during the early stages of the trip, but the opera's impresario
John Gallini was unable to obtain a licence to permit opera performances in the theatre he directed, the
King's Theatre. Haydn was well paid for the opera (£300) but much time was wasted. Thus only two new symphonies,
No. 95 and
No. 96 Miracle, could be premiered in the 12 concerts of Salomon's spring concert series in 1791. Another problem arose from the jealously competitive efforts of a senior, rival orchestra, the
Professional Concerts, who recruited Haydn's old pupil
Ignaz Pleyel as a rival visiting composer; the two composers, refusing to play along with the concocted rivalry, dined together and put each other's symphonies on their concert programs. The end of Salomon's series in June 1791 gave Haydn a rare period of relative leisure. He spent some of the time in the country (
Hertingfordbury), but also had time to travel, notably to Oxford, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the university. The symphony performed for the occasion,
No. 92 has since come to be known as the
Oxford Symphony, although it had been written two years before, in 1789. Four further new symphonies (Nos.
93,
94,
97 and
98) were performed in early 1792. Rosen writes of the
Oxford Symphony, "With this work and with Mozart's
Prague, the classical symphony finally attained the grandeur of the great public genres of the Baroque, oratorio and opera." in England in 1791|left While travelling to London in 1790, Haydn met the young
Ludwig van Beethoven in his native city of
Bonn. On Haydn's return, Beethoven came to Vienna and
was Haydn's pupil up until the second London journey. Haydn took Beethoven with him to
Eisenstadt for the summer, where Haydn had little to do, and taught Beethoven some
counterpoint. While in Vienna, Haydn purchased a house for himself and his wife in the suburbs and started remodelling it. He also arranged for the performance of some of his London symphonies in local concerts. By the time he arrived on his second journey to England (1794–1795), Haydn had become a familiar figure on the London concert scene. The 1794 season was dominated by Salomon's ensemble, as the Professional Concerts had abandoned their efforts. The concerts included the premieres of the 99th, 100th, and 101st symphonies. In 1795, Salomon had abandoned his own series, citing difficulty in obtaining "vocal performers of the first rank from abroad", and Haydn joined forces with the Opera Concerts, headed by the violinist
Giovanni Battista Viotti. The location of the concerts was shifted from the
Hanover Square Rooms, seating an audience of 500, to a new hall in the King's Theatre, seating 800. At these concerts were premiered Haydn's final three symphonies,
102,
103 ("Drumroll"), and
104 ("London"). The final benefit concert for Haydn ("Dr. Haydn's night"), at the end of the 1795 season, was a great success and was perhaps the peak of his English career. Haydn's biographer
Griesinger wrote that Haydn "considered the days spent in England the happiest of his life. He was everywhere appreciated there; it opened a new world to him".
Years of celebrity in Vienna , Haydn's most important patron Haydn returned to Vienna in 1795. Prince Anton had died, and his successor
Nikolaus II proposed that the Esterházy musical establishment be revived with Haydn serving again as Kapellmeister. Haydn took up the position on a part-time basis. He spent his summers with the Esterházys in Eisenstadt, and over the course of several years wrote six
masses for them including the
Lord Nelson mass in 1798. By this time Haydn had become a public figure in Vienna. He spent most of his time in his home, a large house in the suburb of Windmühle, and wrote works for public performance. In collaboration with his librettist and mentor
Gottfried van Swieten, and with funding from van Swieten's
Gesellschaft der Associierten, he composed his two great
oratorios,
The Creation (1798) and
The Seasons (1801). Both were enthusiastically received. Haydn frequently appeared before the public, often leading performances of
The Creation and
The Seasons for charity benefits, including
Tonkünstler-Societät programs with massed musical forces. He also composed instrumental music: the popular
Trumpet Concerto, and the last nine in his long series of string quartets, including the
Fifths,
Emperor, and
Sunrise. Directly inspired by hearing audiences sing
God Save the King in London, in 1797 Haydn wrote a patriotic "Emperor's Hymn" "", ("God Save Emperor Francis"). This achieved great success and became "the enduring emblem of Austrian identity right up to the First World War". The illness was especially hard for Haydn because the flow of fresh musical ideas continued unabated, although he could no longer work them out as compositions. His biographer Dies reported Haydn saying in 1806: The winding down of Haydn's career was gradual. The Esterházy family kept him on as Kapellmeister to the very end (much as they had with his predecessor Werner long before), but they appointed new staff to lead their musical establishment: Johann Michael Fuchs in 1802 as Vice-Kapellmeister and
Johann Nepomuk Hummel as Konzertmeister in 1804. Haydn's last summer in Eisenstadt was in 1803, and his last appearance before the public as a conductor was a charity performance of
The Seven Last Words on 26 December 1803. As debility set in, he made largely futile efforts at composition, attempting to revise a rediscovered
Missa brevis from his teenage years and complete his
final string quartet. The former project was abandoned for good in 1805, and the quartet was published with just two movements. Haydn was well cared for by his servants, and he received many visitors and public honours during his last years, but they could not have been very happy years for him. During his illness, Haydn often found solace by sitting at the piano and playing his "
Emperor's Hymn". A final triumph occurred on 27 March 1808 when a performance of
The Creation was organized in his honour. The very frail composer was brought into the hall on an armchair to the sound of trumpets and drums and was greeted by Beethoven,
Salieri (who led the performance) and by other musicians and members of the aristocracy. Haydn was both moved and exhausted by the experience and had to depart at intermission. in Eisenstadt, site of Haydn's tomb|left Haydn lived on for 14 more months. His final days were hardly serene, as in May 1809 the French army under
Napoleon launched an attack on Vienna and on 10 May bombarded his neighbourhood. According to Griesinger, "Four
case shots fell, rattling the windows and doors of his house. He called out in a loud voice to his alarmed and frightened people, 'Don't be afraid, children, where Haydn is, no harm can reach you!'. But the spirit was stronger than the flesh, for he had hardly uttered the brave words when his whole body began to tremble." More bombardments followed until the city fell to the French on 13 May. Haydn, was, however, deeply moved and appreciative when on 17 May a French cavalry officer named Sulémy came to pay his respects and sang, skillfully, an aria from
The Creation. On 26 May Haydn played his "Emperor's Hymn" with unusual gusto three times; the same evening he collapsed and was taken to what proved to be his deathbed. He died peacefully in his own home at 12:40 a.m. on 31 May 1809, aged 77. On 15 June, a memorial service was held in the
Schottenkirche at which Mozart's
Requiem was performed. Haydn's remains were interred in the local
Hundsturm cemetery until 1820 when they were moved to Eisenstadt by Prince Nikolaus. His head took a different journey;
it was stolen by
phrenologists shortly after burial, and the skull was reunited with the other remains only in 1954, now interred in a tomb in the north tower of the
Bergkirche. ==Character and appearance==