C. S.

II
JOSEPH HAYDN

The boundaries of Hungary, the home of one of the most musical peoples of the world, lies only about thirty miles from Vienna. Here, it is said, in every two houses will be found three violins and a lute. Men and women sing at their work; children are reared in poverty and song. In such a community, in the village of Rohrau, near the border line between Austria and Hungary, lived Matthias Haydn, wagoner and parish sexton, with Elizabeth, his wife. They were simple peasant people, probably partly Croatian in blood, with rather more intelligence than their neighbors. After his work was done Matthias played the harp and Elizabeth sang, gathering the children about her to share in the simple recreation. Franz Joseph, the second of these children, born March 31, 1732, gave signs of special musical intelligence, marking the time and following his mother in a sweet, childish voice at a very early age. When he was six he was put in the care of a relative named Frankh, living in Hainburg, for instruction in violin and harpsichord playing, and in singing. Frankh seems to have been pretty rough with the youngster, but his instruction must have been good as far as it went, for two years later he was noticed by Reutter, chapel master at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, and allowed to enter the choir school.

Reutter was considered a great musician in his day—he was ennobled in 1740—but he did not distinguish himself by kind treatment of little Joseph, who was poorly clad, half starved, and indifferently taught. The boy, however, seems, even at this early age, to have had a definite idea of what he wanted, and doggedly pursued his own path. He got what instruction he could from the masters of the school, purchased two heavy and difficult works on thoroughbass and counterpoint, spent play hours in practice on his clavier, and filled reams of paper with notes. He afterwards said that he remembered having two lessons from von Reutter in ten years. When he was seventeen years old his voice broke, and, being of no further service to the chapel master, he was turned out of the school on a trivial pretext.

The period that followed was one that even the sweet-natured man must sometimes have wished to forget. He was without money or friends—or at least so he thought—and it is said he spent the night after leaving school in wandering about the streets of the city. Unknown to himself, however, the little singer at the cathedral had made friends, and with one of the humbler of these he found a temporary home. Another good Viennese lent him one hundred and fifty florins—a debt which Haydn not only soon paid, but remembered for sixty years, as an item in his will shows. He soon got a few pupils, played the violin at wedding festivals and the like, and kept himself steadily at the study of composition. He obtained the clavier sonatas of Emanuel Bach and mastered their style so thoroughly that the composer afterward sent him word that he alone had fully mastered his writings and learned to use them.

At twenty Haydn wrote his first mass, and at about the same time received a considerable sum for composing the music to a comic opera. He exchanged his cold attic for a more comfortable loft which happened to be in the same house in which the great Metastasio lived. The poet was impressed by Haydn’s gifts and obtained for him the position of music master in an important Spanish family, resident in Vienna.

In this way, step by step, the fortunes of the young enthusiast improved. He made acquaintances among musical folk, and occasionally found himself in the company of men who had mounted much higher on the professional ladder than himself. One of these was Porpora, already successful and of international fame. Porpora was at that time singing master in the household of Correr, the Venetian ambassador at Vienna, and he proposed that Haydn should act as his accompanist and incidentally profit by so close an acquaintance with his ‘method.’ Thus Haydn was included in the ambassador’s suite when they went to the baths of Mannersdorf, on the border of Hungary. At the soirées and entertainments of the grandees at Mannersdorf Haydn met some of the well-known musicians of the time—Bonno, Wagenseil, Gluck, and Ditters—becoming warmly attached to the last-named. His progress in learning Porpora’s method, however, was not so satisfactory. The mighty man had no time for the obscure one; the difficulty was obvious. But Haydn, as always, knew what he wanted and did not hesitate to make himself useful to Porpora in order to get the instruction he needed. He was young and had no false pride about being fag to a great man for a purpose. His good-natured services won the master over; and so Haydn was brought into direct connection with the great exponent of Italian methods and ideas.

In 1755 he wrote his first quartet, being encouraged by a wealthy amateur, von Fürnberg, who, at his country home, had frequent performances of chamber music. Haydn visited Fürnberg and became so interested in the composition of chamber music that he produced eighteen quartets during that and the following year. About this time he became acquainted with the Count and Countess Thun, cultivated and enthusiastic amateurs, whose names are remembered also in connection with Mozart, Gluck, and Beethoven. Haydn instructed the Countess Thun both in harpsichord playing and in singing, and was well paid for his services.

The same Fürnberg that drew the attention of Haydn to the composition of string quartets also recommended him to his first patron, Count Morzin, for the position of chapel master and composer at his private estate in Bohemia, near Pilsen. It was there, in 1759, that Haydn wrote his first symphony. He received a salary of about one hundred dollars a year, with board and lodging. With this munificent income he decided to marry, even though the rules of his patron permitted no married men in his employ.

Haydn’s choice had settled on the youngest daughter of a wig-maker of Vienna named Keller; but the girl, for some unknown reason, decided to take the veil. In his determination not to lose so promising a young man, the wig-maker persuaded the lover to take the eldest daughter, Maria Anna, instead of the lost one. The marriage was in every way unfortunate. Maria Anna was a heartless scold, selfish and extravagant, who, as her husband said, cared not a straw whether he was an artist or a shoemaker. Haydn soon gave up all attempts to live with her, though he supplied her with a competence. She lived for forty years after their marriage, and shortly before she died wrote to Haydn, then in London, for a considerable sum of money with which to buy a small house, ‘as it was a very suitable place for a widow.’ For once Haydn refused both the direct and the implied request, neither sending her the money nor making her a widow. He outlived her, in fact, by nine years, purchased the house himself after his last visit to London and spent there the remainder of his life.