Part 1 (2/2)

Modern theories of heredity and the origin of genius find but scanty illustration in the case of Haydn Unlike the ancestors of Bach and Beethoven and Mozart, his faenius, musical or other, in their composition, as the families of Shakespeare and Cervantes In the , honest tradesuished even in their sober walk in life They carandfather, Kaspar, had been a the few to escape massacre when the toas stormed by the Turks in July 1683 The composer's father, Matthias Haydn, was, likewith his trade the office of parish sexton He belonged to the better peasant class, and, though ignorant as we should now regard him, was yet not without a tincture of artistic taste He had been to Frankfort during his ”travelling years,” and had there picked up soreat lover of music by nature,” says his fa a note of music” He had a fine tenor voice, and when the day's toil was over he would gather his household around hi to his well-meant accompaniment

Haydn's Mother

It is rather a pretty picture that the iination here conjures up, but it does not help us very enius of the coenius is derived from the enius for anything it was eh Hunt's er in her way”; and e declared that he still knew by heart all the simple airs which she had been wont to lilt about the house The maiden nahter of the Marktrichter (e), and had been a cook in the faht years younger than her husband, she was just twenty-one at her ard for her was deep and sincere; and it was one of the tricks of destiny that she was not spared to witnesscut off in 1754, when she was only forty-six Matthias Haydn proain, and had a second family of five children, all of whom died in infancy The stepmother survived her husband--who died, as the result of an accident, in 1763--and then she too entered a second time into the wedded state

Haydn can never have been very intiht of her entirely in her later years But he bequeathed a small sum to her in his will, ”to be transferred to her children should she be no longer alive”

Birth

Joseph Haydn, to give the composer the name which he now usually bears, was the second of the twelve children born to the Rohrau right

The exact date of his birth is uncertain, but it was either the 31st of March or the 1st of April 1732 Haydn hi that his brother Michael had fixed upon the previous day to save hi called an April fool! Probably we shall not be far off the ht between the 31st of March and the 1st of April

His Precocity

Very few details have coard to his earlier years; and such details as we have refer almost wholly to his musical precocity It was not such a precocity as that of Mozart, as playingconcertos when he was five; but just on that account it is all the more credible One's sympathies are with the frank Philistine who pooh-poohs the tales told of baby composers, and hints that they must have been a trial to their friends Precocious they no doubt were; but precocity often evaporates before it can beco a sediment of disappointed hopes and vain a has well observed, genius may show itself chiefly in acquisition, as in Sir Walter Scott, who, as a boy, was packing all sorts of lore into a singularly capaciousthat was noticeable Inis not so ianis is emotion, duly ordered by the intellect, not intellect touched by emotion Haydn's precocity at any rate was of this sort It proclaimed itself in a quick i ear, and an acute perception of rhyth

We have seen how the father had his s with his harp and the voices of wife and children These inforht We hearaway upon a piece of stick at his father's side, pretending to play the violin like the village school his rudiely pleased at these manifestations of musical talent in his son He had none of the absurd, old-world ideas of Surgeon Handel as to the degrading character of the divine art, but encouraged the youngster in every possible way Already he dreamt--what father of a clever boy has not done the same?--that Joseph would in soh it is said that like his wife, he had notions of the boy becoress towards holy orders would be helped rather than hindered by the judicious cultivation of his undoubted taste for hts were passing through his head, the chance visit of a relation practically decided young Haydn's future His grandht, Matthias Seefranz, and one of their children married a schoolmaster, Johann Matthias Frankh Frankh coent at Hainburg, the ancestral houes from Rohrau He came occasionally to Rohrau to see his relatives, and one day he surprised Haydn keeping strict time to the fa about the boy's unenerously offered to take hiht learn ”the first elements of music and other juvenile acquire at first, gave her reluctant approval, and Haydn left the fa visit This was in 1738, when he was six years of age

Hainburg

The town of Hainburg lies close to the Danube, and looks very picturesque with its old walls and towers According to the Nibelungen Lied, King Attila once spent a night in the place, and a stone figure of that ”scourge of God” for abruptly from the river, croith the ruined Castle of Rottenstein The town cannot be very different from what it was in Haydn's time, except perhaps that there is now a tobacco ives e to think of the little fellow of six dragged away from his home and his e surroundings and a strange people That he was not very happy we ht have assus to render him more unhappy than he need have been Frankh's intentions were no doubt excellent; but neither in teuardian and instructor of youth He got into trouble with the authorities lect of his duties, and had to answer a charge of ga with loaded dice As a teacher he was of that stern disciplinarian kind which believes in lashi+ng instruction into the pupil with the ”tingling rod” Haydn says he owed hiular Little Urchin”

What he owed to the schoolmaster's wife may be inferred fro ”for the sake of cleanliness”

All his life through Haydn was most particular about his personal appearance, and when quite an old reatly to recall the way in which he was neglected by Frau Frankh ”I could not help perceiving,” he reetting very dirty, and though I thought a good deal of my little person, was not always able to avoid spots of dirt on my clothes, of which I was dreadfully ashaular little urchin” Perhaps we should not be wrong in sur into his childhood the habits and senti boys of his class are not usually deeply concerned about grease spots or disheveled hair

Attacks the Drulected in these personal ress with his art Under Frankh's tuition he attained to some proficiency on the violin and the harpsichord, and his voice was so irapher puts it, he was able to ”sing at the parish desk in a style which spread his reputation through the canton” Haydn hi back upon these days in a letter of 1779, says: ”Our Alratitude) had endowed me with so much facility insoh to atte wanted for a local procession, Haydn undertook to play the part

Unluckily, he was so small of stature that the instruue! That the colleague happened to be a hunchback only made the incident more ludicrous But Haydn had rather a partiality for the drue Meredith says, because of its rotundity--and, as we shall learn e come to his visits to London, he could handle the instruh to astonish theto Pohl, the particular instru procession is still preserved in the choir of the church there

Hard as these early years ood had ht hirateful to Frankh as long as I live,” he said to Griesinger, ”for keeping me so hard at work”

He always referred to Frankh as ”my first instructor,” and, like Handel with Zachau, he acknowledged his indebtedness in a practical way by bequeathing to Frankh's daughter, then married, 100 florins and a portrait of her father--a bequest which shefour years before the composer himself

A Piece of Good Fortune

Haydn had been two years with Frankh when an iood fortune befell hi the Court Capelle Reutter, an inexhaustible cootten, once had a great vogue in all the choirs of the Imperial States Even in 1823 Beethoven, as to write a mass for the Emperor Francis, was recoed pedant! Reutter's father had been for many years Capellmeister at St Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, and on his death, in 1738, the son succeeded to the post He had not been long established in the office when he started on a tour of search for choristers Arriving at Hainburg, he heard fro voice,” and ier before him

A Musical Examination