Part 1 (1/2)

Haydn

by J Cuthbert Hadden

PREFACE

The authority for Haydn's life is the biography begun by the late Dr Pohl, and completed after his death by EV Mandyczewski To this work, as yet untranslated, every subsequent writer is necessarily indebted, and the present volume, which I may fairly claim to be the fullest life of Haydn that has so far appeared in English, is largely based upon Pohl I aations to Miss Pauline D Townsend, the author of the raph in the ”Great Musicians” series For the rest, I trust I have acquainted myself with all the more important references s of those who knew him Finally, I have endeavoured to tell the story of his career siive a clear picture of the round of the formalist

JCH

EDINBURGH, September 1902

HAYDN

CHAPTER I BIRTH--ANCESTRY--EARLY YEARS

Introductory--Rohrau--A Poor Hoy--Haydn's Parents--His Birth--His Precocity--Inforular Little Urchin”--Attacks the Drum--A Piece of Good Luck--A Musical Examination--Goes to Vienna--Choir School of St Stephen's--A House of Suffering--Lessons at the Cathedral--A Sixteen-Part Mass--Juvenile Escapades--”Sang like a Crow”--Dismissed from the Choir

Haydn's position, alike in raphy, is almost unique With the doubtful exception of Sebastian Bach, no composer of the first rank ever enjoyed a more tranquil career Bach was not once outside his native Gerland which had so ienius: His was a long, sane, sound, and on the whole, fortunate existence For many years he was poor and obscure, but if he had his time of trial, he never experienced a time of failure

With practical wisdoling youth e, and late years found him in comfortable circumstances, with a solid reputation as an artist, and a solid retiring-allowance from a princely patron, whose house he had served for the better part of his working career Like Goethe and Wordsworth, he lived out all his life He was no Marcellus, shown for one brief ht forth the fruits of sureat conteht was crescent, is known to posterity only by the products of his earlyhis career with a golden splendour whose effulgence still brightens the ever-widening realm of music

Voltaire once said of Dante that his reputation was becoreater because no one ever read him Haydn's reputation is not of that kind It is true that he may not appeal to what has been called the ”fevered modern soul,” but there is an old-world char, nerve-destroying, bilious age He is still known as ”Papa Haydn,” and the nanificant of much” In the history of the art his position is of the first importance He was the father of instrumental music He laid the foundations of the modern symphony and sonata, and established the basis of the , Beethoven would have been iure of a very rees in the world of music since he lived But his naolden book of classical music; and whatever the evolutionary processes of the art otten, his works unheard

Rohrau

Franz Joseph Haydn was born at the little , on the confines of Austria and Hungary, some two-and-a-half hours' railway journey fro the frontier of Lower Austria and Hungary on its way to the Danube, runs near, and the district

[Figure: Haydn's birth-house at Rohrau]

is flat and marshy The house in which the composer was born had been built by his father Situated at the end of the er froh it stood in Haydn's tiain, it has twice since been swept away, first in 1813, fours years after Haydn's death, and again in 1833 It was carefully rebuilt on each occasion, and still stands for the curious to see--a low-roofed cottage, very an to be ”that various thing calledin 1899 But excepting that the picturesque thatched roof has given place to a covering of less inflammable e to the road, just as it did of yore

Our illustration shows it exactly as it is to-day [See an interesting account of a visit to the cottage after the fire, in The Musical Times for July 1899] Schindler relates that when Beethoven, shortly before his death, was shown a print of the cottage, sent to hireat a man should have been born in so poor a home!” Beethoven's relations with Haydn, as we shall see later on, were at one time somewhat strained; but the years had softened his asperity, and this indirect tribute to his brother cos that the biographer of the greater genius would willingly forget

A Poor Home

It was indeed a poor home into which Haydn had been born; but tenderness, piety, thrift and orderliness were there, and probably the happiest part of his career was that which he spent in the tiny, dihted rooms within sound of Leitha's waters

In later life, when his name had been inscribed on the roll of fah strange years,”

with a kind of reat and acclaimed by the devotees of his art, he never felt ashain On the contrary, he boasted of it He was proud, as he said, of having ”” He does not seem to have been often at Rohrau after he was launched into the world, a stripling not yet in his teens But he retained a fond memory of his birthplace When in 1795 he was invited to inspect a rounds of Castle Rohrau, he knelt down on the threshold of the old horound his feet had trod in the far-away days of youth When he cahts went back to Rohrau, and one of his bequests provided for two of its poorest orphans

Genealogy