Gross 1

Steven Gross

Professor Colbert

MUL1010

4 November 2010

A Biography of Franz Joseph Haydn

The Australian musical arena has had much bearing on the earlier musical workers,

notably, Franz Joseph Haydn. He is one of the renowned and considered important figures in

classical music compositions for which he is credited. Much credit is attributable to him due to

his uniqueness in his period for which he created the string quartet and symphony forms. Having

spent the better part of his life in Australia, he took his time pursuing his musical career of which

he derived most satisfaction. His musical career was acquired while working as a court musician,

and this deterred him from frequently interacting with other musicians, specifically with his

contemporaries. This made his sharing and exchange of musical ideas quite limited, as a result;

he had to find his way to fulfill his dream as a musician and finally this made him very

innovative and thus made his work original. This research therefore aims at establishing the

musical life of Franz Joseph Haydn and his contributions to the musical arena in Australia and

more so to the entire globe.

Franz Joseph Haydn was born in a humble background on March 31, 1732 in Austria at

Rohrau, a place which is near the Hungary and Vienna border of Austria. He was born to a civil

servant farther and to a mother who was a cook. Both parents could neither read nor write music.

However, both parents used to enjoy music (Summerer 9). Haydn’s father had great passion for
 Gross 2

folk music and really used to enjoy the traditional folk music. He also was an experienced

musician in the same arena for which he had spent most of his time during his youth life. His

father spent most of his youth time playing music after teaching himself on how to play the harp

(Haydn 46). Despite his parents not undergoing any formal musical training before, they

encouraged and embraced musical expression in singing to their family members as well as their

neighbors. This eventually became an encouragement to him and from this time as he was

growing, he developed musical interest and talent.

Despite the musical talent noticed by his parents, he could not develop it within their

home setting for it was in a place where he could not formally get a good musical grounding.

Consequently, this became the turning point in his life and his parents thought of taking him to a

place where he could nurture his talent, preferably a different city (Haydn 55). Coincidentally, a

relative Franck Johann Matthias proposed this to his parents who accepted. Franck Matthias was

a choirmaster and a schoolmaster in Hainburg, Austria. As a result, Haydn was apprenticed to

Matthias who then trained him to be a professional musician. At six years of age, Haydn went to

live with Matthias, which led to his permanent separation from his parents. As a result, he started

experiencing a hard life due to poor care despite acquiring professional musical training (Zannos

6). After a short while, the people of Hainburg noticed his talents as a public performer

specifically with the harpsichord, choral singing and in playing violin.

Records also show that, Haydn had a very powerful and impressive voice and that, his

vocal performance of 1740 caught people’s attention as well as that of the Music director of St.

Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. He was then accepted in the director’s choir due to his

performance that galvanized and gladdened him. This then led to Haydn’s movement to Vienna

to be working there for the next nine years of his professional career development as a singer
 Gross 3

together with his younger brother Michael. Reutter, the music director, equally never took good

care of him and never provided him with much musical education as his relative Matthias

(Greene 12). However, the opportunity that Vienna presented to him was very positive since

Vienna was among the greatest capitals of music in Europe during then. As a result, he got the

opportunity to learn through interaction with great musicians while playing along with them;

marking another turning point of his musical professional prosperity.

By 1749, his voice could not sustain appropriate singing of the higher choral parts, which

led Haydn to be asked to leave the job (Haydn 56). Due to his dismissal, he was stranded with

joblessness. With nowhere to relocate himself, he had friends, who took him in. From there he

had to start another life altogether while finding a new bearing (Summerer 12). Haydn began a

new career of being a freelance musician. In this endeavor, he was not only specifically in music,

but also did other odd jobs such as, being music assistant to professional musicians for a period

of ten years. During this period, he had a chance to learn from these professionals’ compositions

as well as composition techniques, which he employed in writing a series of string quartets and

doing an opera (Richard 77).

As time progressed, by 1757, he was given the first rank in his music life as the music

director for Count Karl von Morzin. With passion, he took the responsibility, liked his work as a

director of the count’s small orchestra during then he planned and arranged things in order, and

wrote the first of his symphonies, which was highly liked by the orchestra performers (Greene

14). However, Karl von had financial difficulties, which later forced him to terminate all his

musical programmes (Haydn 47). All hope not lost, he endured the challenges until he finally

secured a stable job that he would maintain for the better part of his life.
 Gross 4

Haydn was employed as a music director in 1761 for the family of Esterhazy, the

Australian Empire aristocratic family (Zannos 45). In the empire’s family, he worked closely

with the then ageing music director who eventually died in 1766 when Haydn took full

responsibilities after his death. In the empires family, Haydn worked for close to thirty years

during which he produced so many musical works of his own, which granted him the opportunity

to develop a style of his own. As time progressed while in his job, his works begun to win him a

worldwide recognition as a great musician, in the same time span, he wrote many musical

publications as well as for his family. With the attention drawn on his works, he did much and

produced the famous symphonies of Paris, which he composed in the period between 1785 and

1786.

In addition, he did his first orchestral work called The Seven Last Words of Christ. Due

to the influences of Mozart for so many years, Haydn got into friendship with Mozart in 1781

(Richard 93). They then teamed up and started playing together. They got closer to one another

and could, at times play together in performances of string quartets. In so doing, Haydn could

sometimes be assisted by Mozart in compositions as well as in playing which immensely

influenced positively in his musical career. As a matter of fact, Mozart had to devote a set of

string quartets that was inspired by the Opus 33 series of Haydn to himself (Greene 21).

Haydn often traveled to London in the latter part of 18th century, which became a source

of his inspiration for most of his symphonies. In London, he wanted citizenship, but changed his

mind and went back to Vienna instead (Haydn 54). With the exposure and experience gathered

Haydn begun writing orchestral works and religious works amongst which included the six

masses for the emperor’s family and The Creation and The Season. During this time, he further

composed his last nine string quartets (Summerer 24).

 Gross 5

In addition to the symphonies and operas, Haydn also worked on marionette operettas,

cathedral masses, dance music, and chamber pieces. He was expected to have compositions on

these areas by the Empire’s music commission (Richard 133). He was also commissioned to be

composing on pieces used in entertaining the Empire and the Prince. While there, he was

supposed to do rehearsals as well as to conduct his own performances. Alongside, he was to

perform other composers’ works, coach the singers, and perform as organist, violinist when

needed, maintain the music library, and instruments collections (Haydn 66). As if that was not

enough, he was charged with the responsibility of settling disputes among others musicians

under him. He regarded his job as burdensome with lots of regrets however, he stood firm and

endured all the frustrations that it had and forged ahead. By his performance, Haydn’s position

was quite enviable as per the standards of the 18th century (Summerer 38).

Due to his renowned works and determination, one of the remarkable aspects regarding

his contract that ensued after1779 was the freedom that was granted to him to sell his music

compositions to the publishers as well as to accept commissions. As a consequence, much of his

work reached beyond the expected guests in 1780s to far wide audiences of Esterhaza this led to

his fame and popularity being widespread in the global face (Greene 43).

Haydn had two trips to England to perform in concerts in 1791-92 and 1794-95; these

were the occasions, which marked his greatest successes, they were attributable to his last

symphonies. In these concerts, he performed his famously Known songs as the "Salomon" or

"London" symphonies, other inclusions were some of his popular works including Drum Roll,

Clock, Military, London and Surprise. Haydn was known to be prolific in nearly all genres,

instrumental and vocals, secular and sacred. Some of his works were unknown beyond the

borders of Esterhaza, notably the one hundred and twenty five trios and other assorted pieces,
 Gross 6

which featured baryton, which is a hybrid of string instrument played by Prince Miklós (Richard

144).

It is worth noting that Most of Haydn's marionette operettas and 19 other operas were

written by him aiming at accommodating the talents which were possessed by the Esterhaza

Company and the tastes of his prince (Greene 24). He freely gave in to the superiority of one of

the operas of his juvenile friend Wolfgang Mozart. Most of his musical works were widely

circulated which made his influence and impact more profound. His 68 string quartets and 107

symphonies span his career, which proved as his ever-fresh approach of his mastery of

instrumentations as well as to thematic forms and materials. It is documented that, his 43 piano

trios as well as his 62 piano sonatas evidenced a growth from the easy elegance appropriate for

home music amateurs making to the public late works virtuosity (Haydn 67).

His productivity is far more comparable to his originality of work, which is inexhaustible.

Moreover, his ways of turning and modifying a simple tune or motive into unpredictable and

complex developments became an admiration to his contemporaries as being innovative. He had

the capacity to surprise people, which turned to his humorous effect, which became his style, as

is always the case with folkloric melodies. One writer described the special appeal, which his

music had as “popular artistry”; indeed, his balance of being bold and directness of experiment is

what explicitly transformed the musical expressions of the 18th century (Richard 156).

As nature has it, by 1802, Haydn’s life began deteriorating when he developed an illness

that could not allow him to continue with his works of composition and physical performance.

Despite his ill health, he continued to come up with new musical ideas. As time went by, toward

his final years, his friends and family members took good care of him as he was continually
 Gross 7

receiving visitors. Having been a pianist with the Mozart, he use to play piano to himself and to

derive the pleasure of his old times more particularly by playing the musical piece of Gotterhalte

Franz den Kaiser which he composed in Austria as an ode in 1797 (Haydn 75). This composition

was then adopted, and became the national anthem to Germany’s new republic and was

embraced as the Austrian national anthem melody. Haydn did all he could during his lifetime; his

demise came on May 31, 1809 at a time when Napoleon attacked Vienna (Richard 167).

Franz Joseph Haydn is therefore considered one of the most renowned and important

figures in classical music compositions. Much credit is attributable to him due to his uniqueness

in the period for which he created the string quartet and symphony forms. Having spent the

better part of his life in Austria, he took his time pursuing his musical career from which he

derived the most satisfaction. His musical career was acquired while working as a court

musician, who deterred him from frequently interacting with other musicians, specifically, with

his contemporaries. One of his biggest contributions to the musical arena was his complete

reinvention of both the string quartet as well as the symphony. As far as the symphony was

concerned, his were the first ones to be globally recognized as standardized orchestral repertoire;

with the famously known symphony being the “surprise” symphony. He is further credited for

his writing of the first string quartets that simultaneously perfected the form.
 Gross 8

Works Cited

Greene, Carol. Franz Joseph Haydn: Great Man of Music (Rookie Biography). Toronto:

Children’s Pr, 1994. Print.

Haydn, Franz Joseph. Franz Joseph Haydn's Divertimento with Variations for Harpsichord Four

Hands, Violin and Violin (Studies in the History and Interpretation of Music). Lewiston:

Edwin Mellen Pr, 2002. Print.

Richard, Young. Echoes from Calvary: Meditations on Franz Joseph Hayden's The Seven

Last Words of Christ. Pap/Com ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.,

2005. Print.

Summerer, Eric M. Franz Joseph Haydn (Primary Source Library of Famous Composers).

New York: Power Kids Press, 2006. Print.

Zannos, Susan. The Life and Times of Franz Joseph Haydn (Music makers: World's

Greatest Composers) (Masters of Music). Bear Delaware: Mitchell Lane Publishers,

2003. Print.

Word Count: 2176