Haydn’s influence upon the public during his second visit to London is observed even in still higher degree. Salomon, indeed, said, though somewhat figuratively, yet openly, to “proud England,” that these Haydn concerts were not without their influence upon the public interests, since they had created a permanent taste for music. In the spring of 1795, Haydn saw the royal pair several times. The first time it was at the house of the young and musical Duchess of York, whom the Prince of Wales had introduced to him. The Hanoverian George III. was already prepossessed in Handel’s favor. Philip Emanuel Bach writes of him in 1786: “The funniest of all is the gracious precautions that are taken to preserve Handel’s youthful works with the utmost care.” But on this evening, when only Haydn’s works were played by the royal orchestra, under Salomon’s direction, and of course, excellently, he showed great interest in them also. “Dr. Haydn,” said he, “you have written much.” “Yes, Sire, more than is good.” “Certainly not; the world disputes that.” The King then presented him to the Queen, and said he knew that Haydn had once been a good singer and he would like to hear some of his songs. “Your Majesty, my voice is now only so large,” said Haydn, pointing to the joint of his little finger. The King smiled, and Haydn sang his song, “Ich bin der Verliebteste.” Two days afterward, there was a similar entertainment at the residence of the Prince of Wales, who required his presence very often.
He related to Griesinger that upon that occasion he directed twenty-six musicians, and the orchestra often had to wait several hours until the Prince rose from the table. As there was no compensation for all this trouble, when Parliament settled up the bills of the Prince, he sent in an account of one hundred guineas, which was promptly paid. Haydn was not very well pleased about the matter, although upon the occasion of his first acquaintance in 1791, he had written that the Prince loved music exceedingly, had very much feeling, but very little money, and that he desired his good will more than any self-interest. Still he had, as his will shows, many poor relatives, who had claims upon him, and was it right that he should lose at the hands of the princely son of the richest land in the world, upon whom he had bestowed such faithful artistic services? While yet in London he met with a bitter proof of what he was to endure on account of these relatives. He was compelled to immediately settle the debt of a married nephew, who was the major-domo of the Esterhazy family, and we see by his will that these relatives had squandered more than six thousand florins of his through his great kindness. His remarkable goodness was as much an obligation in his estimation, as nobility or genius in others, and he never allowed any possible means of practicing it to escape without some good cause.
He was repeatedly invited to the Queen’s concerts, and was also presented by her with the manuscript of Handel’s “Savior at the Cross.” As Germans, both she and the King were eager to keep him in England. “I will give you a residence at Windsor for the summer,” said the Queen, “and then” with a roguish glance at the King, “we can some times have tete-a-tete music.” “O, I am not jealous of Haydn,” said the King, “he is a good and noble German.” “To maintain that reputation is my highest ambition,” quickly exclaimed Haydn. After repeated efforts to persuade him, he replied that he was bound by gratitude to the house of his Prince, and that he could not always remain away from his fatherland and his wife. The King begged him to let the latter come. “She never crosses the Danube, still less the sea,” replied Haydn. He remained inflexible on this point, and he believed that it was on this account that he received no gift from the King, and that no further interest was manifested in him by the court. The real and deeper reason for his decision we have already learned.
The concerts of the year 1795 were laid out upon a more magnificent scale than before, as political events upon the continent had disturbed the interest in them in various ways. Haydn, Martini, Clementi, and the most distinguished players and singers from all countries—London had never witnessed more brilliant concert-schemes. Haydn opened the second part of every concert with a symphony. The Oracle says of one of these: “It shows the fancy and style of Haydn in forms that are not at the command of any other genius.” After he gave his benefit concert, May 4, 1795, upon which occasion the Military Symphony and the Symphony in D major, the last of the twelve London series, were played, he wrote in his diary: “The hall was filled with a select company. They were extremely pleased and so was I. I made this evening four thousand florins. It is only in England one can make so much.” These pleasant experiences gave him the idea of writing a work of the style which was very popular and greatly esteemed in England—the oratorio. He had begun one such with English text, which was unfinished, however, because he could not express himself with sufficient feeling in that language.
He was the recipient of many gifts at this time, among them a cocoanut cup with a silver standard from Clementi; a silver dish, a foot in width, from the well-known Tattersall, for his help in the work of improving the English church music; and even nine years later, the influences of his London visit were apparent in a gift sent to him of six pairs of woolen stockings, upon which were embroidered six themes of his music, like the Andante from the drum symphony, the “Emperor’s Hymn,” etc. He was the first, since Handel’s time, who had universally and permanently succeeded with his music in London, and had impressed his listeners with an earnest and realizing sense of the real meaning of music. He was the first, for when Mozart, and afterward Beethoven, were known in London, a new dynasty began. Now Haydn ruled as firmly as Handel had previously. He had established his pre-eminence by the immense number of works of all kinds he had written. Griesinger gives a list in his own catalogue comprising in all seven hundred and sixty-eight pages, among which, besides the opera of “Orpheus” and the twelve London symphonies, whose subjects are given in the volume, “Haydn in London,” there are six quartets, eleven sonatas, and countless songs, dances and marches—indeed, there is no end to them. The work that made his sway absolute was “The Creation,” the text of which had been given to him by Salomon while still in London, where he had acquired “much credit in vocal music,” and the crowning close, so to speak, of his London visit was made at home.
In August, 1795, Haydn returned to Vienna by way of Hamburg and Dresden, as the French held possession of the Rhine. This time his journey had been very profitable. His second visit had added an equal amount to the twelve thousand florins made in his first, and he also retained his publisher’s royalties in England as well as in Germany and Paris. He could now contemplate his old age without any apprehensions since he had a certainty to live upon, though a modest one. “Haydn often insisted that he first became famous in Germany after he had been in England,” says Griesinger. The value of his works was recognized, but that public homage, which surpassing talent usually enjoys, first came to him in old age, and for this reason now we call him “our immortal Haydn.” On the 18th of December, 1795, he gave a concert again in Vienna with his new compositions, but this time for his own personal profit. Three new symphonies were played. He was overwhelmed with attentions and his receipts were more than a thousand guldens. Beethoven assisted in this concert, a proof of the good feeling existing at this time between teacher and scholar.
One day the Baron Van Swieten, who is well known in connection with the time of Beethoven and Mozart, and whom he had known for twenty years or more, said to him: “We must now have an oratorio from you also, dear Haydn.” “He assisted me at times with a couple of ducats and sent me also an easy traveling carriage on my second journey to England,” says Haydn. The Emperor’s librarian, Van Swieten, was secretary of an aristocratic society, whose associates illustrated the real meaning of that term, as they comprised the entire musical nobility of Europe—Esterhazy, Lobkowitz, Kinsky, Lichnowsky, Schwartzenberg, Auersperg, Trautmannsdorf and others. They had been accustomed for years to bring out large vocal works in the beautiful library-hall of the imperial city. Handel was the chosen favorite, and Mozart had arranged for these concerts the “Acis and Galatea,” “Ode to St. Cecilia,” “Alexander’s Feast” and “The Messiah.” They did not possess or they did not yet know anything of this style in Germany, for Sebastian Bach had not been discovered in Vienna. Haydn’s “Ruckkehr des Tobias,” like Mozart’s “Davidde penitente,” was written in a style which belonged to the opera, and the “Requiem” was already at hand and had been performed, but they were the only things of their class. On the other hand the “Zauberfloete” had drawn thousands to the theater, year in and year out. Why could they not hear this characteristic pure German music in the concert-hall? In this work there was, so to speak, a specimen of the “Creation” with animals, beings and the Paradise on every hand, in which the loving pair, Pamina and Tamino, are solemnly tested. How much more varied appear the life-pictures in Lidley’s “Creation”—a poem which Haydn had placed in Van Swieten’s hands! The society, without doubt upon Swieten’s suggestion, guaranteed the sum of five hundred ducats and the latter made the translation of the English text. Three years later the most popular of all oratorios, “The Creation,” was completed.
Meanwhile, with the exception of the Mass, which was the product of the war-time of 1796, in which the Agnus Dei commences with kettle-drums as if one heard the enemy already coming in the distance, an artistic event occurred which, if not reaching the limits of musical art as such, yet in the most beautiful manner fulfilled its lofty mission of welding together the conceptions and feelings of all times and peoples, and directing them to a high mission—it was the composition of “God Save the Emperor Francis.”
This song has its origin in the revolutionary agitations of the year (1796), brought over from France, which determined the Imperial High Chancellor, Count Saurau, to have a national song written which should display “before all the world the true devotion of the Austrian people to their good and upright father of his country, and to arouse in the hearts of all good Austrians that noble national pride which was essential to the energetic accomplishment of all the beneficial measures of the sovereign.” He then applied to our immortal countryman, Haydn, whom he regarded as the only one competent to write something like the English “God Save the King.” In reality this minister aroused the noblest German popular spirit, and established it in a beautiful setting, far exceeding his restricted purpose at the outset. Haydn himself had already arranged the English national hymn in London. More than once, upon the occasion of public festivals, it had afforded him the opportunity of learning in the most convincing manner the strong attachment of the English to their royal house, the embodiment of their State. He had also preserved his own devotion to his Fatherland through many a sharp test. His long continued stay in a foreign land had only served to fully convince him what his Austrian home and Germany were to him. Above all, the music represents not merely his own most original utterance of the people, and he, who had already learned the Lied in the childhood of the people itself, had been the first to introduce it in a becoming and all-joyous manner in the art of music.
Thus his full heart was in this composition, and the commission came to him, as it were, direct from his Emperor. Far more than “God Save the King,” this Emperor’s Hymn is an outburst of universal popular feeling. The “Heil dir im Siegerkranz,” or any special Fatherland-song, could not be the German people’s hymn, and the “Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles” has only become so, because it was set to Haydn’s melody, which accounts for its speedy and universal adoption as the people’s hymn. The German people realize in it the spirit of their own life, in its very essence, as closely as music can express it. In reality, there is no people’s hymn richer, or, we might say, more satisfying in feeling, than this. The “God Save the King,” so fine in itself, of which Beethoven said he must sometime show the English what a blessing they had in its melody, appears poor and thin in contrast with such fullness of melodic rhythm and manifold modulation. In the second verse the melody produces with most beautiful effect that mysterious exaltation which enthralls us when in accord with the grandest impulses of the people, and the responsive portion of the second part—the climax of the whole—carries this exalted feeling, as it were, upon the waves of thousands and thousands of voices to the very dome of Eternity. The construction of the melody is a masterpiece of the first order. Never has a grander or more solid development been accomplished in music with such simple material. “God Save the Emperor Francis,” as a worldly choral, stands by the side of “Eine feste Burg.” It reveals the simplest and most popular, but at the same time in the most graphic manner, the characteristic mental nature of our people, and in like manner has compressed it within the narrowest compass, just as music for centuries has been the depository of the purest and holiest feelings of the Germans. Had Haydn written nothing but this song, all the centuries of the German people’s life would know and mention his name. We shall yet hear how much he esteemed the song himself. Not long afterward he revealed his musical “blessing” in the variations upon its theme in one of his best known works, the so-called “Kaiser Quartet.”