Haydn about 1770, composing at his clavier, in the palace at Eszterháza.
At Maria Anna’s invitation the house was overrun with numberless priests, who were liberally entertained at the Haydn residence and given orders for innumerable masses, which were straightway charged to the composer’s account. She could never forget that her husband had originally preferred her younger sister and she was violently jealous of the attraction he never failed to exercise on fascinating women. In his fluent Italian Haydn once remarked to the French violinist, Baillot, as he pointed out his wife’s picture: “E la mia moglie; m’ha ben fatta arrabiare!” (“That is my wife; she has often infuriated me!”). To an Italian singer, who held a firm place in his heart, Haydn spoke many years later of “my wife, that infernal beast”, who had plagued him with such malicious letters that he had to threaten he would never return to her. Geiringer believes that Haydn “must have felt a diabolical pleasure when he came across the following Lessing poem for which he composed a canon:
If in the whole wide world
But one mean wife there is,
How sad that each of us
Should think this one is his!”
Maria Anna Aloysia was further annoyed that her husband should have spent so much on various poor relations; in return, she gave considerable sums to the church. When in 1800 she died while taking a cure at Baden, Haydn seems to have received the news with complete indifference.
* * *
Haydn composed his first symphony for the household orchestra of Count Morzin. As a kind fate would have it one of the guests who listened to the work was Prince Paul Anton Eszterházy, of the powerful and enormously wealthy Hungarian family. He was charmed by the symphony and reflected what a priceless acquisition this young composer would be for his court at Eisenstadt. Here was a man reared in the grand tradition of the Eszterházys, always noted for their encouragement of music and other arts. Prince Paul, a talented composer in his own right, collected numberless pictorial masterworks, kept a small but trained orchestra and for years had employed a now aging conductor, Gregorius Joseph Werner.