By the spring of 1809 the Napoleonic wars were again devastating Austria. The bombardment of the western suburbs of Vienna brought the battle uncomfortably close to Haydn’s home. Nevertheless, the master refused to leave and when a bomb fell close to the Gumpendorfer house the old man reassured his frightened servants with the words: “Children, don’t be frightened; where Haydn is, nothing can happen to you!” But the continuous noise and excitement shook the invalid’s nerves so severely that he took to his bed and left it only once. This was to be carried to his piano, there to play three times in succession and with the deepest possible feeling his own Austrian hymn, as if to defy those hostile powers unwilling to let him die in peace. On the same day, however, he was visited by a French officer, Clément Sulémy, who called to pay his respects to the composer of “The Creation” and who, before he left, sat down at the piano and sang the aria “In Native Worth” “in so manly and so sublime a style, with so much truth of expression and musical sentiment” that Haydn embraced him and said he had never heard the air delivered in so masterly a fashion. Sulémy fell in battle the same day, a fact which the composer, fortunately, never learned.
But his strength was now quite gone. He could only whisper to those about him: “Children, be comforted, I am well.” Then he lapsed into unconsciousness and shortly after midnight, May 31, 1809, he passed. Napoleon saw to it that a military guard of honor was stationed at his door. At his obsequies not only the cultural world of Vienna but also the highest French military officials were present. And Mozart’s Requiem was sung.
* * *
The story cannot be ended without an allusion to its macabre epilogue. Haydn was laid to rest in the Hundsturm Cemetery. But soon afterwards Prince Eszterházy received permission to reinter the master in Eisenstadt. There were lengthy delays, however, and in 1814 Sigismund Neukomm was shocked to find the tomb in a state of dilapidation. He placed on it a marble slab with Haydn’s favorite quotation from Horace, “Non omnis moriar” (“I shall not wholly die”), set as a five part canon. Six years later the Duke of Cambridge remarked to Prince Eszterházy “How fortunate was the man who employed this Haydn in his lifetime and now possesses his mortal remains!” The Prince said nothing, but experienced a sharp twinge of conscience. So he gave orders for the exhumation and the reburial in the Eisenstadt Bergkirche, where Haydn had conducted a number of his masses. When the coffin was opened the officials were appalled to find a body without a head! It developed that a certain Carl Rosenbaum, once a secretary to Prince Eszterházy, and a penitentiary official, one Johann Peter, had bribed the Viennese gravedigger, to steal the skull which they wanted for phrenological experiments. Peter had made an elaborately decorated box (with windows and a satin cushion) for the gruesome relic. The outraged Prince sent the police to Peter, who, meantime had given the skull to Rosenbaum. The police were quite as unsuccessful at the Rosenbaum house, for the singer, Therese Gassmann Rosenbaum, promptly hid the skull in her mattress and went to bed, pretending illness. The hideous farce went a step further, when Rosenbaum, expecting a bribe, substituted the head of some unidentified old man. When Rosenbaum died he left Haydn’s skull to Peter, obligating him to bequeath it to the museum of the Society of the Friends of Music, in Vienna, where it was preserved since 1895.
It was reported that the Nazis, after the Austrian Anschluss in 1938, proposed to bury the head in Haydn’s coffin at Eisenstadt. Whether they carried out this plan is not known to the present writer.
COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS
by
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK
COLUMBIA RECORDS
Under the Direction of Bruno Walter
Barber—Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 Beethoven—Concerto for Violin, Cello, Piano and Orchestra in C major (with J. Corigliano, L. Rose and W. Hendl)—LP Beethoven—Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) (with Rudolf Serkin, piano)—LP Beethoven—Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra (with Joseph Szigeti)—LP Beethoven—Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21—LP Beethoven—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”)—LP Beethoven—Symphony No. 5 in C minor—LP Beethoven—Symphony No. 8 in F major—LP Beethoven—Symphony No. 9 in D minor (“Choral”) (with Elena Nikolaidi, contralto and Raoul Jobin, tenor)—LP Brahms—Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir)—LP Dvorak—Slavonic Dance No. 1 Dvorak—Symphony No. 4 in G major—LP Mahler—Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano)—LP Mahler—Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor Mendelssohn—Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP Mendelssohn—Scherzo (from Midsummer Night’s Dream) Mozart—Cosi fan Tutti—Overture Mozart—Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”), K. 551—LP Schubert—Symphony No. 7 in C major—LP Schumann, R.—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Rhenish”)—LP Smetana—The Moldau (“Vltava”)—LP Strauss, J.—Emperor Waltz