* * *
Prince Eszterházy, in 1779, engaged an Italian violinist, Antonio Polzelli, and his wife, Luigia, a mezzo-soprano. Polzelli was a sickly man and not particularly competent. Still less was Luigia, who needed much help from Haydn to fit her for minor musical duties. What moved the Prince to pick this misfit pair for his establishment is a problem. They were not a happy couple, scarcely more than were Haydn and his “Infernal Beast”! Luigia was nineteen, lively, graceful—an adorable type of Italian beauty. The Prince soon decided that the imported couple represented a needless expense, though the two were pathetically underpaid. But this time Haydn was resolute. The Polzellis must stay in Eszterháza under any conditions! Eszterházy, being a man of the world, realized that in certain things an irreplaceable orchestral conductor must be allowed his way, whatever the conventions.
Luigia was attracted to Haydn as were numerous other women whose path he crossed. He himself often admitted it could not have been for his beauty. Dr. Geiringer says that we know “practically nothing about Luigia.” At any rate Haydn never made any secret of his love for her or she for him—not, at any rate, till much later, when new interests entered his life. At Eszterháza the affair was an open secret. Doubtless they would have married. But the invalid Antonio and the venomous Maria Anna Aloysia settled that. There are no letters extant dealing with those first years of their love. But in 1791 he wrote Luigia: “I love you as on the first day, and I am always sad when I cannot do more for you. But be patient, perhaps the day will arrive when I can show you how much I love you.” When Antonio Polzelli died, not very long afterwards, Haydn wrote Luigia: “Perhaps the time will come, for which we have so often wished when two pairs of eyes will be closed. One is shut already but what of the other? Well, be it as God wills.” Luigia had two sons, the first born in 1777, the second six years later, in Eszterháza. Haydn was devoted to both, and gossip insisted he was the father of the younger. He taught the two boys music and, irrespective of the question of paternity, he made no distinction between them. Singularly enough, “the Infernal Beast” who abominated Luigia, showed herself exceptionally kind to Pietro Polzelli when he visited her in 1792.
* * *
About 1781 Haydn established a friendship which was to grow increasingly profound and more influential. He made the acquaintance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who had come from Salzburg to settle at last in Vienna. The sympathy was mutual, though the two masters were in many ways the absolute reverse of each other. Mozart was from his childhood a genuine virtuoso, such as Haydn had never pretended to be. Neither had Haydn matured artistically with anything like the speed of the sensitive and mercurial genius from Salzburg, nor possessed anything like the universality of the latter’s gifts. Be these things as they may, the pair seemed to have come into the world to complement one another. Their friendship is one of the most beautiful and productive the history of music affords. “Haydn was fascinated by Mozart’s quicksilver personality, while Mozart enjoyed the sense of security that Haydn’s steadfastness and warmth of feeling gave him.” And it was as if the two kindled brighter artistic sparks in their respective souls. The two played chamber music together whenever Haydn made a trip to Vienna. When Leopold Mozart visited his son, in 1785, Wolfgang, Haydn and several friends performed some of Mozart’s new quartets for Father Mozart. It was on this occasion that Haydn made to Leopold the oft-quoted remark: “I tell you before God and as an honest man that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by reputation. He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.” Wolfgang was delighted, but declared at the same time that it was only from Haydn that he had learned how to write string quartets. And the half-dozen he issued in 1785 and dedicated with moving phrases to his “beloved friend Haydn” are doubtless among the finest he composed. On the other hand, Mozart never permitted a derogatory word to be said in his presence about Haydn. And when the Bohemian composer and pianist, Leopold Kozeluch, once said to Mozart on hearing a boldly dissonant passage in a Haydn quartet: “I would never have written that,” Mozart instantly retorted: “Nor would I! And do you know why? Because neither you nor I would have had so excellent an idea.... Sir, even if they melted us both together, there would still not be stuff enough to make a Haydn.” When some years later Haydn was asked his opinion about a debated passage in “Don Giovanni” he answered with finality: “I cannot settle this dispute, but this I know: Mozart is the greatest composer that the world now possesses!” And hearing an argument about the harmony in the beginning of Mozart’s C major Quartet Haydn put a stop to the controversy then and there by saying: “If Mozart wrote it so he must have had good reason for it.” And when someone in Prague invited Haydn to write an opera for that city he declined on the ground—among other things—that he “would be taking a big risk, for scarcely any man could stand comparison with the great Mozart. Oh, if I could only explain to every musical friend ... the inimitable art of Mozart, its depth, the greatness of its emotion, and its unique musical conception, as I myself feel and understand it, nations would then vie with each other to possess so great a jewel.... Prague ought to strive not merely to retain this precious man, but also to remunerate him; for without this support the history of any great genius is sad indeed. It enrages me to think that the unparalleled Mozart has not yet been engaged by some imperial or royal court. Do forgive this outburst but I love that man too much.”
* * *
It should not be imagined that the various operas of Haydn have anything like the vitality, the dramatic life or the quality of “theatre” we find in the stage works of Mozart. The greater part were composed for the play-house at Eszterháza and in certain cases for marionettes. Sometimes they were slender comedies, on the “Singspiel” order, sometimes masques, intermezzi, scenic cantatas. Possibly the two operas which in modern times have experienced most frequent revival are the comedy, “Lo Speziale” (“The Apothecary”) and “Il Mondo della Luna” (“The World of the Moon”).
His life at Eszterháza had the advantage of preserving Haydn from the intrigues and jealousies that ran riot in Vienna and from which even a Mozart had to suffer so bitterly. Yet without traveling far from Eisenstadt Haydn was now rapidly becoming widely famous. One of the first countries where he gained glory in distinguished circles was Spain. In 1779 his music was already becoming a subject of high-flown poetic praise. In 1781 King Charles III sent the composer a gold snuffbox. The secretary of the Spanish Legation went to Eszterháza in person to convey his sovereign’s esteem to Haydn, whose princely employer must have swelled with pride at such a lofty distinction so ceremoniously conferred upon his “servant”. The composer, Luigi Boccherini, a protégé of the Spanish king’s brother, strove so successfully to imitate Haydn’s style that someone called him “Haydn’s wife”. Perhaps the most important Spanish honor of all came from a canon of Cadiz for a work called “The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross”. Let us cite Haydn’s own words which preface the score published by Breitkopf und Härtel in 1801:
“About 1786 I was requested to compose instrumental music in ‘The Seven Last Words.’ It was customary at the Cathedral of Cadiz to produce an oratorio every year during Lent, the effect of the performance being not a little enhanced by the following circumstances. The walls, windows, and pillars of the church were hung with black cloth, and only one large lamp hanging from the center of the roof broke the solemn obscurity. At midday the doors were closed and the ceremony began. After a short service the bishop ascended the pulpit, pronounced the first of the seven words and delivered a discourse thereon. This ended, he left the pulpit and prostrated himself before the altar. The pause was filled by music. The bishop then in like manner pronounced the second word, then the third, and so on, the orchestra following on the conclusion of each discourse. My composition was subject to these conditions, and it was no easy matter to compose seven adagios to last ten minutes each, and succeed one another without fatiguing the listeners; indeed, I found it quite impossible to confine myself within the appointed limits.”
Haydn looked upon the composition as one of his most important and, as a matter of fact, it widely exercised a profound impression. It was even performed in the United States in 1793. When it came to paying Haydn for his work the Spanish ecclesiast presented the composer with a large sum of money concealed in an enormous chocolate cake! The “Seven Last Words” were, in the course of years, done by a string quartet, by an orchestra, as an oratorio. Today the work is hard to listen to with patience, impressive as it once seemed. A series of adagios, one much like the other, it has precisely the effect that the composer at first feared: the various movements as they succeed one another end by sorely “fatiguing the hearers”.