His family were of the people, his father being a master wheelwright at Rohrau, a small Austrian village on the borders of Lower Austria and Hungary and his mother having been employed as a cook in the castle of Count Harrach, the principal lord of the district. Joseph Haydn was born on March 31, 1732 the second child of his parents; and as ten brothers and sisters afterward came into the world, it can easily be understood that his lot was not a very luxurious one. His parents were simple, honest people of the laboring class, very ignorant, but, like most German peasants, with a certain love for and facility in music, not quite so common in this country. Haydn's father had a good voice, and could sing well, accompanying himself on the harp, though he did not know a single note of written music. Then there was the village schoolmaster, who could actually play the violin, and whom little Joseph watched with wondering eyes, extracting those marvellously sweet sounds from his wooden instrument, until, with the child's spirit of imitation, as his parents sang their "Volkslieder," the little fellow, perched on a stone bench, gravely handled two pieces of wood of his own as if they were bow and fiddle, keeping exact time, and flourishing the bow in the approved fashion of the schoolmaster. From this very little incident came an important change in his life; for a relation, Johann Mathias Frankh, of Hainburg, happened to be present on one occasion, and, thinking he saw an aptitude for music in the boy, offered to take him into his own school at Hainburg, where accordingly young Haydn went at the age of six years.
There he remained for two years, making rapid progress in singing and in playing all sorts of instruments, among others the clavier, violin, organ, and drum. He said afterward, with the unaffected piety, far removed from cant, that was characteristic of him: "Almighty God, to whom I render thanks for all his unnumbered mercies, gave me such facility in music that, by the time I was six years old, I stood up like a man and sang masses in the church choir, and could play a little on the clavier and violin." Of Frankh, a very strict, but thorough and most painstaking teacher, he also said afterward: "I shall be grateful to that man as long as I live for keeping me so hard at work, though I used to get more flogging than food;" and in Haydn's will he remembered Frankh's family, leaving his daughter a sum of money and a portrait of Frankh himself, "my first instructor in music."
For some years he seems to have lived a miserable, struggling life, giving lessons, playing the organ in churches, and studying when and where he could. He had a few pupils at the moderate remuneration of two florins a month, and he had contrived to obtain possession of an old worm-eaten clavier, on which he used diligently to practise in the garret in the Kohlmarkt, where he lived. A pitiable description is given of the lodging he then occupied. It was on the sixth story, in a room without stove or window. In winter his breath froze on his thin coverlet, and the water, that in the morning he had to fetch himself from the spring for washing, was frequently changed into a lump of ice before his arrival in that elevated region. Life was indeed hard; but he was constantly at work, and, having made a precious "find" on an old bookstall one day of Fux's "Gradus ad Parnassum," in a very dilapidated condition, but very cheap, he was ardently preparing himself for the life—he now vowed should be his—of a composer.
About this time Haydn received a commission from Felix Kurz, a comic actor of the Stadt-Theatre, to put a farce of his, "Der neue krumme Teufel," to music. This farce, of which the words still remain, though the music has been lost, was very successful, and was played in Vienna, Prague, Berlin, and a number of other towns. The well-known story of Haydn's "Tempest Music" is connected with this. In one part of this piece a terrible storm was supposed to be raging, and the accompanying music must of course be suitably descriptive; but the difficulty was that Haydn had never seen the sea: therefore had not the slightest notion of what a storm at sea was like. Kurz tries to describe the waves running mountains high, the pitching and tossing, the roll of thunder, and the howling of the wind; and Haydn produces all sorts of ugly, jerky, and noisy music, but none of it is in the remotest degree like a storm at sea, or anywhere else. At last, after Kurz had become hoarse with his nautical disquisitions, and Haydn's fingers were tired of scrambling all over the piano, the little musician in a rage crashed his hands down on the two extremes of the instrument, exclaiming: "Let's have done with this tempest!"
"Why, that's it; that's the very thing!" shouted the clown, jumping up and embracing him; and with this crash and a run of semitones to the centre of the piano this troublesome tempest was most satisfactorily represented.
When, many years afterward, Haydn was crossing the Straits of Dover to England, amid his sufferings he could not help laughing at the ludicrous recollections of this early experience of his.
Things still went on improving, and Haydn, who was always lucky in the patrons he secured (at least according to the notion about patrons that then prevailed), was invited to the country-house of Herr von Fürnberg, a wealthy amateur, to stay there and compose quartettes for him—a style of music for which von Fürnberg had an especial liking. To his prompting it is that we owe the lovely series of quartettes which Haydn wrote—still as fresh and full of serene beauty as when first tried over by the virtuosi of Weinzirl. The next piece of good fortune was Haydn's appointment as director of the band and composer to Count Ferdinand Morzin at Lukaver near Pilsen; and here, in 1759, his first symphony was written. His salary was very small, only 200 florins a year (or £20), with board and lodgings; but on the strength of it he unfortunately determined on the serious step of embarking in matrimony. A barber, named Keller, is said to have been very kind to him in the days of his poverty, and out of gratitude Haydn gave music-lessons to his daughters. One of them, the youngest, was very pretty, and Haydn fell in love with her. But she became a nun; and the father then prevailed upon Haydn to marry the elder one, who was three years older than he—a sour-tempered, bigoted, and abominably selfish woman, who contributed little to the happiness of his life, and was always bringing priests and friars to the house and worrying her good-tempered husband to compose masses and other church music for these men.
Count Morzin was compelled to give up his band in 1761; but Haydn did not remain long without employment, as Prince Esterhazy, who had heard his symphonies at Morzin's house, engaged him to assist Werner, his Capellmeister. As director of Prince Esterhazy's band, Haydn was fated to remain for many years living at Esterház, the prince's country-seat, composing there nearly all his operas and songs, and many of his symphonies.
In 1785 Haydn received a commission which showed the wide reputation he had then gained. The Chapter of Cadiz Cathedral requested him to write some instrumental music for performance on Good Friday. "The Seven Words of our Saviour on the Cross" was in consequence written by him.
Several invitations had been sent from England for Haydn to pay a visit there; but it was only after Prince Esterhazy was dead that he was prevailed on by Salomon to cross the sea. A characteristic conversation between him and Mozart—which took place before he undertook this, in those days, really formidable journey—is recorded.