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Portrait by Thomas Hardy (1791)

Joseph Haydn

born: 31 March 1732

died: 31 May 1809

country: Austria

Most general histories of music emphasise Joseph Haydn’s achievements as a composer of instrumental works, a pioneer of the string quartet genre and the so-called ‘father of the symphony’. In short, he was one of the most versatile and influential composers of his age.

After early training as a choirboy at Vienna’s St Stephen’s Cathedral and a period as a freelance musician, Haydn became Kapellmeister to Count Morzin in Vienna and subsequently to the music-loving and wealthy Esterházy family at their magnificent but isolated estate at Eszterháza, the ‘Hungarian Versailles’. Here he wrote a vast number of solo instrumental and chamber pieces, masses, motets, concertos and symphonies, besides at least two dozen stage works. In old age Haydn fashioned several of his greatest works, the oratorios The Creation and The Seasons, his six Op 76 String Quartets and his so-called ‘London Symphonies’ prominent among them

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Haydn and Mozart

Relationship between the two composers

Portraits of Haydn (left) and Mozart (right)

The composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) and Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) were friends. Their relationship is not very well documented, but the evidence that they enjoyed each other's company is strong. Six string quartets by Mozart are dedicated to Haydn (K. 387, 421, 428, 458, 464, 465, the "Haydn" Quartets).

Background

Haydn was already a fairly well-known composer in Mozart's childhood. His six string quartets Opus 20 (1772), called the "Sun" Quartets from the drawing of the sun on the cover of the first edition, were widely circulated and are conjectured (for instance, by Charles Rosen) to have been the inspiration for the six early string quartets K. 168–173 the 17-year-old Mozart wrote during a 1773 visit to Vienna.^[a]

The two composers probably weren't able to meet until after Mozart's permanent relocation to Vienna in 1781. Haydn's presence was required most of the time at the palace of Eszterháza in Hungary some distance from Vien

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Joseph Haydn

composer

He loved the unconventional: Joseph Haydn’s love of experimentation did not – like Beethoven’s, for example – spring primarily from a desire for expression. Rather, it was based on the principle of questioning rules through original counter-designs. In 1799, the Leipzig [Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung] wrote about Haydn’s symphonies that “surprise cannot perhaps be driven any further in music”.

Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 in the Lower Austrian village of Rohrau near the Hungarian border. After two years with relatives in Hainburg an der Donau, where he learned “the musical basics along with other youthful necessities”, he was sent to Vienna. There, as a chorister of the Kantorei St Stephan, he received lessons in Latin, religion, mathematics and German as well as a comprehensive musical education – from “very good masters”, as he later said. At the age of 20, Haydn became pupil, valet and musical assistant to the famous Neapolitan opera composer Nicola Porpora, who he said gave him “the true fundamentals of composition”. After an appointment as kapellmeis