Joseph Haydn: Servant and Master

HERBERT F. PEYSER
Written for and dedicated to the RADIO MEMBERS of THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY of NEW YORK
Copyright 1950 THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY of NEW YORK 113 West 57th Street New York 19. N. Y.
Haydn at 33, in the gold embroidered uniform of the Eszterházys.
In this sketchy and unpretentious booklet the reader must not expect to find any thoroughgoing or penetrating discussion of Haydn’s works or, for that matter, more than a hasty and superficial account of his career. Haydn wrote an appalling quantity of music, some of which has to this day not been finally catalogued. In a pamphlet of this brief and unoriginal sort the reader will look in vain for anything more than the titles of a handful of compositions. About the vast number of symphonies, the magnificent string quartets, the clavier works, the songs there can here be no question. Nor can one do more than allude to a few of the stage pieces though these operas, composed for the most part for the festivities arranged by the Eszterházy princes, do not pretend to fill a role in the history of the lyric drama comparable to those of Mozart or even to the intermezzi and the buffas of the 18th Century Italians or the Singspiele of men like Dittorsdorf and Hiller. Neither is there room to consider the technical advancements achieved by Haydn in the sonata or symphonic form. Yet, even a rapid glance through the following pages will, none the less, make it clear that Haydn, barring a few hardships in his youth, lived an extraordinarily fortunate life and had abundant reason for the optimism which marked every step of his progress. Not even Mendelssohn was so unendingly lucky, whether in his spiritual constitution or in his year by year experiences. That Haydn was a master by the grace of Heaven and a servant only by the artificial conventions of a temporary social order must become clear to anyone who follows his amazing development in the biography of Pohl and Botstiber, or the briefer but no less deeply perceptive accounts of a scholar like Dr. Karl Geiringer, on whose writings and analyses the present little account is chiefly based.