Life of Haydn

by Ludwig Nohl

Thus, from every point of view, Joseph Haydn stands before us an original, well defined personality, passing, as his life-long bearing shows us, from an artificial and unnatural time in every way, to a period of the renewed free assertion of individuality and its involuntary expression of feeling. He tells us with the utmost naivete, that it was not composition but inclination and enthusiasm that had been his inspiration. “Haydn always sketched out his works at the piano,” says Griesinger. “I seated myself and began to compose,” says Haydn, “whatever my mood suggested, sad or joyous, earnest or trifling. As soon as I seized upon an idea, I used my utmost efforts to develop and hold it fast in conformity with every rule of the art. The reason why so many composers fail is that they string fragments together. They break off almost as soon as they have commenced, and nothing is left to make an impression upon the heart.” He always wrote, impelled by inspiration, but at first only the outlines of the whole. That it was this poetico-musical impulse that urged him on, is shown by the following anecdote:

“About the year 1770, Haydn was prostrated with a burning fever, and his physician had expressly forbidden him to do any musical work during his convalescence,” says Griesinger. “His wife shortly afterward went to church one day, leaving strict instructions with the servant about the doctor’s orders. Scarcely had she gone, when he sent the servant away upon some errand, and hurriedly rushed to the piano. At the very first touch the idea of a whole sonata presented itself in his mind, and the first part was finished while his wife was at church. When he heard her coming back he quickly threw himself into bed again and composed the rest of the sonata there. Mozart and Beethoven certainly did not at first need the piano in composing, and it is by no means certain that Haydn also did not find that first movement in bed. In any case, the anecdote shows the simple, artistic, involuntary power that moved him.”

From the same source also proceeded the vital personal impulse of his joyous expression, and the individual physiognomy of the themes and motives in his compositions. His melody throughout reminds one of the aria, not in the affected rococo style of Louis Fourteenth’s time, but based upon grammatical declamation; and it is only a certain regularly recurring pattern of the melody that makes us feel it belongs to the very time in which he was living. The separate parts of the sonata-form were infused with a stronger vitality by this virile humor and elevated and refined feeling. In this connection Griesinger’s remark is specially pertinent. “This humor is extremely striking in his compositions, and this is specially characteristic of his Allegros and Finales, which playfully keep the listener alternating from what has the appearance of seriousness to the highest style of humor, until it reaches unrestrained joyousness.” Dies calls it “popular and refined, but in the highest sense, original musical wit.” This musical frolicsomeness opened in reality a new and richly profitable province for art. It aroused a spirit which had hitherto slumbered, and from Mozart and Beethoven, even to Schumann and Wagner, we find this simplest soul-voice and these wonderfully expressive tones, ravishing and at the same time sorrowful in their nature, springing up; for the basis of this voice is the involuntary but deep feeling for human life, sorrowing with its sorrow, merry with its folly, and always intimately associated with all human actions.

Haydn himself attributes to this state of mind many features of his Adagios as well as of his Minuets and Finales. The increasing intellectual progress brought in time “ideas which swept through his mind and which he strove to express in the language of tones.” He himself told Griesinger that in his symphonies he often pictured “moral attributes.” In one of the oldest the prominent idea was that God spoke to a hardened sinner, beseeching him to repent, but the careless sinner gave no heed to the admonition. A symphony of the year 1767 is called “The Philosopher;” a divertimento, “The Beloved Schoolmaster;” and another work of a later period, “The Distracted One.”

An anecdote of the year 1772 shows us a characteristic illustration of this artistic life-work. After the year 1766 the Prince made a summer-residence of the castle at Esterhaz, on the Neusiedler-See, where he remained fully half the year, accompanied by the best of his musicians. “I was at that time young and lively, and consequently not any better off than the others,” said Haydn with a laugh, especially in reference to the longing of his musicians to go home to their wives and children. “The Prince must have known of their very natural home-sickness for some time, and the ludicrous appearance they presented when he announced to them that he had suddenly decided to remain there two months longer, amused him very much,” says Dies. The order plunged the young men into despair. They besieged the Capellmeister, and no one sympathized with them more than Haydn. Should he present a petition? That would only expose them to laughter. He put a multitude of similar questions to himself, but without answer. What did he do? Not many evenings after, the Prince was surprised in a very extraordinary manner. Right in the midst of some passionate music one instrument ceased, the player noiselessly folded up his music, put out his light and went away. Soon a second finished and went off also; a third and fourth followed, all extinguishing their lights and taking their instruments away. The orchestra grew smaller and more indistinct. The Prince and all present sat in silent wonder. Finally the last but one extinguished his light, and then Haydn took his and went also. Only the first violinist remained. Haydn had purposely selected this one, as his playing was very pleasing to the Prince and therefore he would be constrained to wait to the end. The end came. The last light was extinguished and even Tomasini disappeared. Then the Prince arose and said, “If all go, we may as well go too.” The players meanwhile had collected in the ante-room, and the Prince said smiling, “Haydn, the gentlemen have my consent to go to-morrow.” It was the composition which afterward became well known under the name of “The Surprise Symphony.”

In like manner Haydn through his music, so to speak, could reduce his ideas and emotions to practical reality. The Chapter of the Cathedral at Cadiz desired some music for Good Friday which should follow at the end of and complete the interpretation of the Seven Words of the Savior on the Cross, after they had been spoken and explained by the priest. Haydn himself says in a letter to London, that any text of the nature of the Seven Words can only be expressed by instrumental music; that it made the deepest impression upon his mind; and that he justly esteemed it as one of his best works. It was performed twice at a later period in London under his own direction. In the Finale he has an earthquake effect, which was called for the third time at his own benefit concert there, and is the precursor of the imagery of “The Creation.” The work as a whole is of decidedly characteristic quality. This was in the year 1780 and that Haydn was selected for the work, shows not only how far his fame had extended at that time, but above all, that his artistic ability to invest instrumental music with the gift of language was unmistakably recognized. Thus the master’s art was firmly established abroad, and he did not have to wait long before grander themes of larger proportions were tendered him.

We close with a selection of characteristic expressions made by Haydn in these earlier years of his work, about his art and artistic progress, most of which are to be found in the “Musical Letters.”

In the year 1776, he says in that autobiography which was requested of him for a “Learned National Society” in Vienna, that in chamber-music he has had the good fortune to please almost all people except the Berliners. His only wonder was that “these judicious Berlin gentlemen” kept no medium in their criticisms, at one time elevating him to the stars, and at another “burying him seventy fathoms deep in the earth,” and this without any good reason. But he knew the source of all these attacks upon his artistic work.

The Vienna Pensions Verein for artists’ widows which to-day bears the name of Haydn, and for which he had written the oratorio “The Return of Tobias,” stipulated as a condition of his admission to membership, that besides the above work, he should bind himself to furnish some composition every year for the benefit of the Society, and in case of failure to do so should be dismissed. Haydn at once demanded his deposit back, and addressed them in the following manner: “Dear friends, I am a man of too much feeling to constantly expose myself to the risk of being cashiered. The free arts and the beautiful science of composition can endure no fetters upon their handiwork. Heart and soul must be free!”

This was in the year 1779. It marks the full development of his artistic consciousness. He was more and more convinced of the lofty mission of an art which has its source in such creations. In the year 1781, he expressed the wish to have the opinion of the Councilor Von Greiner, one of the most distinguished connoisseurs in Vienna, often mentioned in Mozart’s biographies, with regard to the expression of his songs, and assures his publisher, Artaria, that for variety, beauty and simplicity, they excel any other he has written. The French admired exceedingly the pleasing melody of his “Stabat Mater,” work of that kind not having been heard in Paris, and very rarely indeed in Vienna. This is all the more remarkable, as Gluck at that time had already written and brought out his great dramatic works collectively. Some of his songs had been “wretchedly” set to music by the Vienna Capellmeister Hoffmann, Haydn goes on to relate, and as this swaggerer believed that he alone had scaled Parnassus, and sought to crush Haydn down in certain circles of the great world, he had set the same songs to show this pretended great world the difference. “They are only songs, but not Hoffmannish street-songs, without ideas, expression, and above all, melody,” he closes. We can no longer doubt from this that he would not suffer his creations to be despoiled of their spiritually-poetic nature. He would not allow his songs to be sung by any one until he himself had brought them out in the concert-room. “The master must maintain his rights by his own presence and correct performance,” says he. It is this distinctive nature and form of modern music which is fully revealed for the first time in Mozart and Beethoven, and music which has been created by the intellect can only be properly judged by the intellect.