France and England, in their turn, presently developed unmistakable signs of Haydn worship, which progressed increasingly. In Italy the composer steadily won favor. The Philharmonic Society of Modena made him a member as early as 1780. Ferdinand IV, of Naples, a few years later ordered concertos for an instrument called the lira organizzata. The king wanted Haydn to visit Italy; the composer would have loved to do so, but could not leave Eszterháza. Frederick William II, of Prussia, who played the cello, sent Haydn a superb and costly diamond ring. We are told that he put on the ring whenever he began an important work because “when he forgot to do so no ideas occurred to him”. He also received a costly ring from his pupil, the Russian Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna, whom he taught in 1782 in Vienna and for whom he composed numerous songs more than twenty years later. Then, in 1781, Haydn informed the Viennese publisher, Artaria, that “Monsieur Le Gros, director of the Concerts Spirituels in Paris, wrote me a great many nice things about my ‘Stabat Mater’ which had been given there four times with great applause.... They made me an offer to engrave all my future works on very advantageous terms.” In 1784 a Paris society, the Concerts de la Loge Olympique (patronized by French royalty, and where audiences were required to pass a kind of examination before they were admitted to its functions) commissioned Haydn to write six symphonies for them, to which solicitation we owe the composer’s great series of “Paris” Symphonies. Not only did French publishers now make profitable proposals to Haydn; in Luigi Cherubini, meanwhile, he had one of his most impassioned advocates in Paris.
Haydn could probably have gone to England and become associated with the musical life of that country much sooner than he did. When in 1783 the Professional Concerts were founded in London an attempt was made to secure him to take over their direction. The composer, not feeling that Prince Eszterházy would have given his consent, had to refuse and the English public contented itself with listening to a Haydn symphony as the opening offering of the series. By that time Haydn’s music was so well known and stood so high in British favor that his works had gained a preponderant place in the musical life of the country. The Prince of Wales, an excellent cellist, caused Haydn’s quartets to be performed continually at the palace musicales. And invitations to come to England poured upon Haydn from every corner of the Island Kingdom. For all that, he remained as simple and unspoiled as ever. He never forgot his humble origin. To Griesinger he once said: “I have had intercourse with emperors, kings and many a great personage, and have been told by them quite a few flattering things. For all that, I do not care to be on intimate terms with such persons and prefer to keep to people of my own station.”
In Vienna the number of Haydn’s intimates steadily increased. As the years of his sojourn at Eszterháza passed pleasantly, but monotonously, the composer strove increasingly to widen his Viennese circle of friends. He was able to accomplish this without unusual effort. The publisher, Artaria, who had close business connections with Haydn, was only one of the master’s cronies. Then, of course, there were Mozart and his friends Michael Kelly, Stephen and Nancy Storace, the merchant Michael Puchberg (who immortalized himself by lending Mozart money). And Haydn, following the suggestion of Mozart and Puchberg, became a Freemason and joined the lodge Zur wahren Eintracht. But in some ways the closest friends of Haydn’s in Vienna were Peter L. von Genzinger and his wife, Marianne. Von Genzinger had long been Prince Eszterházy’s doctor. Both he and his wife were to the highest degree cultured and musical—Frau von Genzinger, for that matter, was an uncommonly gifted pianist and singer. Haydn was so welcome a guest in that hospitable dwelling that, among other things, his hostess never tired of preparing for him his favorite dishes. The only drop of bitterness the lovely Genzinger home brought him was the poignant contrast it sometimes furnished to the growing monotony of Eszterháza, to which place he returned with a pang. “Well here I sit in my wilderness, like some poor orphan, almost without human society, melancholy, dwelling on the memory of past glorious days”, he wrote to Marianne von Genzinger, in 1790, after he had mournfully returned to Eszterháza. His letters to Marianne have a freedom and a spontaneity not to be found in Haydn’s usually stilted correspondence. As time passed it became fairly evident that Haydn deeply, if hopelessly, loved her. To be sure, he wrote that “she need be under no uneasiness ... for my friendship and esteem for you (warm as they are) can never become reprehensible since I have always in my mind my respect for your elevated virtues, which not only I, but all who know you must reverence.... Oh, that I could be with you, dear lady, even for a quarter of an hour, to pour forth all my sorrows, and to receive comfort from you! Well, as God pleases! This time will also pass away and the day return when I shall again have the inexpressible pleasure of being seated beside you at the pianoforte, hearing Mozart’s masterpieces, and kissing your hands from gratitude for so much pleasure.”
Between the lines it is possible to read that for all his honors and distinctions Haydn was not growing happier at Eszterháza as the years elapsed. By 1790 we find him writing: “I am doomed to stay at home. It is indeed sad always to be a slave.” He was growing restive amid all this Eszterházy luxury. He had his orchestra, his palatial little theatre, the unending festivities at Eszterháza; he had Luigia Polzelli and he had little occasion to bother about the “Infernal Beast”, who, though she still walked the earth, scarcely existed for him. But it irked him that he could not accept those invitations to visit foreign countries which were piling in upon him. The truth, as Dr. Geiringer keenly observes, was that “Haydn had outgrown Eszterháza.... Even his attachment to his beloved prince had somewhat diminished. Haydn, now a man of nearly 60, like a person of half his age, craved for a change, new tasks, new experiences. With the sure instinct of genius he felt that the immense creative forces still slumbering in him could be released only by a cleancut break with the way of life that for nearly 30 years had been dear to him.”
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At the psychological moment destiny came to Haydn’s aid somewhat as, decades later, it invariably came to Wagner’s. In the fall of 1790, Prince Nicholas the Magnificent died suddenly. His successor, Prince Anton Eszterházy, who was unmusical and otherwise unlike his father, instantly dismissed the orchestra, retaining only Haydn, Tomasini and a few others to take care of the church music. He did not, indeed, discharge Haydn and even paid him well to keep him nominally in his employ. But he gave the master leave to travel wherever he wanted. Instantly Haydn dashed to Vienna, where fate took charge of his interests once more. A relative of the Eszterházys wanted him for another princely post at Pressburg; the king of Naples repeated his earlier invitation to Italy. Then, while the composer deliberated, a stranger burst into his room with the words: “My name is Salomon. I have come from London to fetch you; we shall conclude our accord tomorrow.” Haydn was bowled over and almost before he realized the truth, Johann Peter Salomon, of Bonn, superintended everything. Haydn was to be paid 300 pounds for an opera, 300 more for six new symphonies, 200 for the copyrights, 200 for twenty smaller pieces, 200 more for a benefit concert in London. He had, then and there, to consider whether it was to be Pressburg, Italy or England. One reason he decided against Italy was because he appreciated that he was not a born opera composer, like Mozart. But though Haydn spoke Italian and knew not a word of English (besides which the Channel crossing worried him), he decided—most fortunately as it proved—on England. For one thing, he realized that England was at that time a leader in the orchestral field; in the second place Haydn was surfeited with nobility and the courts of princes. And he longed for the personal freedom which England assured him. So London it should be! His friends—among them Mozart—were frightened. “Oh, Papa, you have had no education for the wide world, and you speak so few languages,” protested Wolfgang. “But my language is understood all over the world,” gently replied Haydn. Just the same, he found parting from Mozart harder than from any of his other friends. And when they took leave of one another the younger man exclaimed prophetically: “I am afraid, Papa, this will be our last farewell.” Mozart’s death was one of the sorest blows Haydn ever suffered, and the pain of it actually sharpened with the passing of time.
Ten days before Christmas, 1790, Haydn set out on his journey with Salomon. They took ship at Calais, January 1, 1791, at 7:30 A.M. (“after attending early Mass”). As he wrote Marianne von Genzinger, he was “very well, although somewhat thinner, owing to fatigue, irregular sleep, and eating and drinking so many things”. In spite of a choppy sea he stood the crossing admirably, probably because “I remained on deck during the whole passage, in order to gaze my fill at that huge monster, the ocean.” Only once or twice was he “seized with slight alarm and a little indisposition likewise”. Yet he arrived at Dover “without being actually sick”, even if most of the passengers did “look like ghosts.” Doubtless he recalled with amusement his boyish attempts to portray a storm at sea on the harpsichord in the days of Kurz-Bernardon!
Haydn’s first impressions of London were overwhelming. He was as struck and delighted with the size and grandeur of the British metropolis, its crowds, its teeming traffic and the “strangeness” of English life as was even the worldlier Mendelssohn, several decades later. Nevertheless, he was not a little frightened and found the street noise “unbearable”. He had not a little trouble with the language and was much confused about the right thing to do when people drank his health. He wrote to Frau von Genzinger that he was trying to learn English by taking morning walks alone in the woods “with his English grammar.” Salomon did not spare him any of the customary social engagements and amenities. Before he had been in London three weeks he was invited to a court ball and welcomed by the Prince of Wales, who, so Haydn decided, was “the handsomest man on God’s earth”. The Prince (the future George IV) “wore diamonds worth 80,000 pounds.” Haydn eventually managed to secure a recipe for the Prince’s brand of punch; it called for “one bottle of champagne, one of burgundy, one of rum, ten lemons, two oranges and a pound and a half of sugar.”
On March 11, 1791, occurred Haydn’s first concert in the Hanover Square Rooms. The function in every respect exceeded the composer’s fondest hopes. Its outstanding feature was the D major Symphony (No. 93). The orchestra surpassed both numerically and otherwise the one Haydn had commanded at Eszterháza. The master conducted from a harpsichord, as had always been his custom. The concertmaster was the worthy Salomon, who played on a superb Stradivarius. Dr. Burney spoke of “a degree of enthusiasm such as almost amounted to frenzy.” The Adagio of the symphony had to be repeated. The Morning Chronicle wrote: “We cannot suppress our very anxious hope that the first musical genius of the age may be induced by our liberal welcome to take up his residence in England.” It was a wish which speedily spread. Even the King pressed the composer to make his home there and when, with the best grace in the world Haydn assured him his Continental obligations would not permit him to do so, the monarch was more or less offended. One reason the master gave for his refusal was that “he could not leave his wife”—though the “Infernal Beast” was probably farthest from his thoughts! What really stood in the way of a permanent English residence was the fear of the tremendous drain on his creative powers his popularity might entail. He was, indeed, on the threshold of his greatest achievements and he was strong and healthy. All the same he was not growing younger. And he knew what the strain of being incessantly lionized would do in the long run.
For the time being, however, British adulation only had the effect of making Haydn more splendidly productive than ever. The twelve Salomon symphonies (six composed for Haydn’s first visit to London, the remaining set written for his second a few years later) are indisputably Haydn’s greatest symphonic creations. Let us mention a few of them: There is the so-called “Military” Symphony (Haydn’s symphonies are more easily distinguished by their sometimes fanciful titles, than by keys or opus numbers); the “Clock”, with its Andante, marked by a persistent tick-tock rhythm; the symphony “With the Kettledrum Roll”; the “Surprise”, with its folk-like melody and its title derived from a wholly unexpected fortissimo (which Haydn believed would “wake up the old ladies”) following a placid folk-like phase—yet actually more of a “surprise” from the astonishing harmonies heard just before the close of the variation movement.