Joseph Haydn; Servant And Master — Part 2

* * * Joseph, for all his ambition and diligence, may yet have tasted a drop of bitterness when he reflected how his brother, Michael, seemed still to outstrip him; and when their mother died in 1754 she must have gone to her grave persuaded that the truer musician of the Haydn family was Michael who, at 17, was writing masses of exceptional quality.

Joseph was, indeed, gradually gaining admission into noble circles.

The Countess Thun, for one, was so pleased by some of his sonatas that she asked to make his acquaintance.

Then, when he confronted her face to face, she decided that this homely and badly-dressed individual, could hardly be anything but an impostor.

Little by little the unfavorable impression wore off and in due course the distinguished and extremely musical lady was taking clavier and singing lessons from the man she had mistaken for a hopeless booby.

Through her family Haydn met the very musical Karl Joseph von Fürnberg, who had a steward, a pastor and still another friend, all very proficient players.

And it was for Fürnberg and his intimates that Haydn wrote his first string quartets.

He was as industrious as ever.

Carpani said: “At daybreak he took the part of the first violin at the Church of the Fathers of the Order of Mercy; thence he repaired to the chapel of Count Haugwitz, where he played the organ;

at a later hour he sang the tenor part at St. Stephen’s; and lastly, having been on foot all day, he passed a part of the night at the harpsichord.

” Then, in 1759, Fürnberg brought him to the attention of the Bohemian Count Ferdinand Maximilian von Morzin, who promptly engaged him as music director and _Kammerkompositor_.

Socially, financially and otherwise Haydn had made a great step up the ladder, from which he was destined never again to descend.

One of Haydn’s duties at Count Morzin’s was to accompany the Countess Morzin when she chose to sing, which was frequently.

Once, according to Griesinger, the lady was trying over some songs with Haydn when her scarf became loose, exposing her bosom.

Instantly, Haydn stopped playing.

The lady, irritated, asked the reason.

“But, your Highness, who would not lose his head over this?

” he replied.

This was only one of the occasions he began to develop an eye for feminine beauty.

He was now maturing, physically, and his fortunes were improving.

This conjunction of circumstances made him conclude that the time was ripe for him to marry.

It turned out to be one of the most unfortunate inspirations of his life.

Not that Haydn would have failed to make a good husband, but for the reason that it was his fate to pick the worst possible wife.

He gave lessons to the two daughters of a Viennese hairdresser named Keller.

It was not long before the composer fell in love with the younger girl, whose name was Therese.

But Therese was afflicted with something of a religious mania and, about 1760, she entered a convent, as Sister Josepha.

The hair-dresser, though a religious man, wanted to keep the promising young musician in the family, and before long he prevailed upon him to consider his other daughter.

The latter, Maria Anna Aloysia Apollonia, offered the vilest imaginable combination of qualities.

She was hopelessly unmusical, poisonously jealous, bigoted, ill-favored, slatternly, a bad housekeeper and, as such women frequently are, outrageously extravagant.

Haydn got nothing he had bargained for—neither affection, home comforts nor children.

So little regard did Maria Anna Aloysia have for her husband’s musical eminence that she cheerfully used his manuscripts for curl papers or else to line pie plates and cake pans.

Furthermore, said Haydn, “my wife was unable to bear children and for this reason I was less indifferent to the attractions of other women” (Griesinger).

Some have claimed that this Xantippe actually loved her husband, on the grounds that she obstinately refused to give up a certain picture of him.

Dr. Geiringer says the composer was so little deluded by this seeming show of affection that he insisted his wife prized the portrait so highly only because a lover of hers had painted it.

[Illustration: Haydn about 1770, composing at his clavier, in the palace at Eszterháza.

] At Maria Anna’s invitation the house was overrun with numberless priests, who were liberally entertained at the Haydn residence and given orders for innumerable masses, which were straightway charged to the composer’s account.

She could never forget that her husband had originally preferred her younger sister and she was violently jealous of the attraction he never failed to exercise on fascinating women.

In his fluent Italian Haydn once remarked to the French violinist, Baillot, as he pointed out his wife’s picture: “E la mia moglie; m’ha ben fatta arrabiare!

” (“That is my wife; she has often infuriated me!

”).

To an Italian singer, who held a firm place in his heart, Haydn spoke many years later of “my wife, that infernal beast”, who had plagued him with such malicious letters that he had to threaten he would never return to her.

Geiringer believes that Haydn “must have felt a diabolical pleasure when he came across the following Lessing poem for which he composed a canon: _If in the whole wide world But one mean wife there is, How sad that each of us Should think this one is his!

_” Maria Anna Aloysia was further annoyed that her husband should have spent so much on various poor relations; in return, she gave considerable sums to the church.

When in 1800 she died while taking a cure at Baden, Haydn seems to have received the news with complete indifference.

* * * Haydn composed his first symphony for the household orchestra of Count Morzin.

As a kind fate would have it one of the guests who listened to the work was Prince Paul Anton Eszterházy, of the powerful and enormously wealthy Hungarian family.

He was charmed by the symphony and reflected what a priceless acquisition this young composer would be for his court at Eisenstadt.

Here was a man reared in the grand tradition of the Eszterházys, always noted for their encouragement of music and other arts.

Prince Paul, a talented composer in his own right, collected numberless pictorial masterworks, kept a small but trained orchestra and for years had employed a now aging conductor, Gregorius Joseph Werner.

It was only a short time after Paul Eszterházy had visited the Morzins that the last-named noble found himself in monetary straits.

Among the first luxuries sacrificed were the expensive orchestra and its conductor.

But instantly Haydn found a safer haven.

Prince Eszterházy, remembering the composer and conductor of the enchanting symphony, acted at the first news of the Morzin débacle to secure him for himself.

Haydn, offered the post of assistant conductor, accepted with delight.

* * * On May 1, 1761, Haydn received a contract, of great length and elaborate detail, which is too extensive to reproduce in all its particulars.

Here, however, are a few of its specifications: “Joseph Heyden shall be considered and treated as a member of the household.

Therefore his Serene Highness is graciously pleased to place confidence in his conducting himself as becomes an honorable officer of a princely house.

He must be temperate, not showing himself overbearing toward his musicians, but mild and lenient, straightforward and composed.

It is especially to be observed that when the orchestra shall be summoned to perform before company, the Vice-Capellmeister and all the musicians shall appear in uniform, and the said Joseph Heyden shall take care that he and all the members of his orchestra follow the instructions given and appear in white stockings, white linen, powdered and with either a queue or a tie-wig....

“The said Vice-Capellmeister shall be under obligation to compose such music as his Serene Highness may command, and neither to communicate such compositions to any other person, nor to allow them to be copied, but he shall retain them for the absolute use of his Highness, and not compose for any other person without the knowledge and permission of his Highness....

“The said Joseph Heyden shall appear daily in the antechamber before and after midday, and inquire whether his Highness is pleased to order a performance of the orchestra....

The said Vice-Capellmeister shall take careful charge of all music and musical instruments, and be responsible for any injury that may occur to them from carelessness or neglect....

The said Joseph Heyden shall be obliged to instruct the female vocalists, in order that they may not forget in the country what they have been taught with much trouble and expense in Vienna; and since the Vice-Capellmeister is proficient on various instruments he shall take care himself to practice on all that he is acquainted with....

A yearly salary of 400 florins to be received in quarterly payments is hereby bestowed by his Serene Highness upon the said Vice-Capellmeister.

In addition, the said Joseph Heyden shall board at the officers’ table, or receive half a gulden per day in lieu thereof.

“His Serene Highness undertakes to keep Joseph Heyden in his service for at least three years; and should he be satisfied with him, he may look forward to being appointed Capellmeister....

” * * * Eisenstadt was to be Haydn’s home for the next thirty years, and in the service of the Eszterházys he was to do much—though by no means all—of his greater work.

The palace of Eszterháza was a modest place when the composer first joined the Eszterházy staff compared with the gorgeous domain it became not very long afterwards.

Haydn was, if you will, a servant.

He wrote music to order and went, properly attired, at certain times of day, to receive the prince’s directions.

Dr. Geiringer says: “To await the commands of so exalted a personage as Prince Eszterházy was not humiliating for a man who had only recently risen from the depths of poverty.

” Even the fact of having to wear livery did not irk him.

We are told that old Mathias Haydn (who died in 1765) still lived “to experience the joy of seeing his son in the princely blue uniform braided with gold.

” Prince Paul Eszterházy was gathered to his fathers in 1762. Haydn became the servitor of an Eszterházy who artistically was greatly the superior of Paul Anton.

This one was Prince Nicholas, surnamed “the Magnificent”, because of his love of splendor and the wealth which enabled him to indulge his most luxurious tastes.

He now undertook to erect a palace which rivaled Versailles and which, in fact, was a glorified imitation of the French model.

Eszterháza became a vast dream palace compared to the one where Haydn had first assumed his new post.

It is impossible to give here even the faintest idea of the splendor and sumptuousness of this “Hungarian Versailles”.

An opera house and a theatre for puppet shows formed part of this superlative show-place; and concert rooms suited whatever kind of musical performances might be commanded by the prince.

When distinguished guests arrived the brilliancy of the festivities arranged for their enjoyment knew no limits.

The Empress Maria Theresia visited the Eszterházy estate in 1773 and a special booklet published in Vienna gives an account of the festivities on that occasion, which reads like something out of the Arabian Nights.

One of the musical works performed was Haydn’s little lyric comedy, “L’infedeltà delusa”.

The Empress was so delighted that she is said to have remarked: “If I want to enjoy good opera, I go to Eszterháza.

” On the same evening there was a superb masked ball, following which, in the Chinese Pavilion, the orchestra, in brilliant uniforms, played a number of pieces under Haydn’s leadership, one of them the conductor’s new “Maria Theresia” Symphony.

The ball continued all night, though the Empress—understandably enough—had retired.

Next day she heard another Haydn opera (for marionettes), “Philemon and Baucis”, which Maria Theresia enjoyed so much that she had the whole production sent to Vienna for her entertainment.

Haydn received the usual snuff-box filled with gold pieces.

He, in return, presented the imperial lady with three grouse he had shot down; the Empress “graciously accepted them” and took them home for dinner!

But all this is anticipating.

When Haydn settled at Eszterháza he found at his disposal a competent orchestra, but one much smaller and less capable than it soon became.

The newcomer, though the aged and desiccated Gregorius Joseph Werner remained nominally chief Capellmeister and railed at Haydn as “a mere fop” and a “scribbler of songs”, lost no time reorganizing his forces, yet very tactfully and without ruffling any feelings.

He infused new blood into the personnel, by acquiring a number of young and greatly talented players.

One of these was a youthful violinist, Luigi Tomasini, whom Prince Paul Anton had found in Italy and taken to Eszterháza as his valet, and whom Haydn instantly secured for his orchestra and treated as a brother.

Still another was a cellist of uncommon gifts, Joseph Weigl.

Haydn obtained the musical results he wanted, but always with the discretion of a born diplomat.

Never had he to fight his “superiors”, after the manner of such stormy petrels as Bach, Handel, Beethoven.

His musicians (he always referred to them as his “children”) idolized him and, because they respected him, strove to satisfy his demands, which were by no means slight.

His duties were staggeringly heavy.

Dr. Geiringer recounts that, on one occasion, the exhausted Haydn became so sleepy while writing a horn concerto that he “mixed up the staves for oboe and violin, and noted in the score as an excuse ‘written while asleep.

’” * * * It was not long before the musicians fell into the habit of calling their conductor “Papa Haydn”, on account of his solicitude for their well-being and his musical knowledge which they recognized as remarkable.

But nothing could be more misleading than the age-old convention of using “Papa Haydn” as a nickname for this master as if to imply that he was an artist of outworn, discredited sympathies and of unprogressive attitude.

The antique “Papa Haydn” idea was neatly scuttled on one occasion by Anton Rubinstein—of all people!

When someone of his acquaintance alluded contemptuously to “Papa Haydn” the great pianist retorted: “Let me assure you that long after I have become ‘great-grandfather Rubinstein’ he will still continue to be ‘Papa Haydn’.

” Yet Haydn at the time of which we speak was still some distance from the master who created the greater symphonies and chamber music, the finest clavier sonatas and certain other memorable keyboard works, let alone the six most inspired masses and the two oratorios (“The Creation” and “The Seasons”), the ripest fruits of his old age.

If physically Haydn developed late, the same is true of his creative genius.

Musically and otherwise it appeared for some time as if his brother, Michael, would surpass him; and if Joseph had died soon after entering the Eszterházy service it may be seriously questioned if the world would have felt it had been deprived of an irreplaceable master.

* * * In more ways than one the sumptuous palace of Eszterháza was the best possible home for Haydn’s art.

Prince Eszterházy, great as were his demands on Haydn, did his art a service by allowing him to experiment and thus “forcing him to become original”.

He would hardly have become “original” in the way he did had he been obliged to earn his bread wandering about Vienna, for he was differently constituted than, let us say, such an unmistakably Viennese soul as Schubert.

Haydn’s early masters (let us rather say “models”) were not men of imposing creative dimension.

Johann Sebastian Bach died while Haydn was still a youth, his work had gone out of fashion and was unobtainable in Vienna for years to come.

But the influence of Philipp Emanuel Bach was vastly stronger at the time than that of his father and Haydn, as we have seen, felt its impact.

Guido Adler, for one, names as Haydn’s early masters minor composers like Georg Reutter, Georg Christoph Wagenseil and Georg Matthias Monn.

There is evidence that he knew the music of Ignaz Holzbauer, Johann Stamitz and the Sammartini brothers.

Basically more important for Haydn’s early style was the changed taste which pervaded the musical world, supplanting the intricate polyphonic style by homophony and the decorative pleasings of the so-called _style galant_.

It was some time before he can be said to have earned the title of “father of the symphony” (or, in the deepest sense, of the sonata or the string quartet).

The early symphonies of Haydn seem much closer to the concerto grosso of the Baroque period than to the later “Paris” and “London” symphonies.

The musical form which occupied Haydn perhaps most of all was the string quartet, of which as many as 83 were enumerated in a catalogue of his works Haydn prepared in 1805. “We do not know the exact number of Haydn’s string quartets,” declares Karl Geiringer, who also adds “the composer was in his early twenties when he wrote his first quartet and he had passed his 70th birthday before he began to work on his last.

” * * * In 1766 Gregorius Werner died and Haydn was officially appointed Capellmeister of the Eszterházy orchestra.

He had by now brought the ensemble to a high state of perfection.

Besides the cellist Weigl (who later joined the Vienna court orchestra) Haydn could boast, in addition to “brother Luigi” Tomasini, as concertmaster, the fine cellists, Franz Xaver Marteau and Anton Kraft.

Prince Eszterházy, who paid even higher salaries than the imperial court at Vienna, could have his pick and choice of any artist he wanted.

The schedule at Eszterháza called for two opera performances a week, two weekly concerts and, in Prince Nicholas’ private salon, plenty of chamber music.

The prince greatly enjoyed playing the baryton, a now obsolete form of viola da gamba.

It was uncommonly difficult and the Prince enjoyed it all the more for that reason.

Haydn had his work cut out for him supplying his employer with new music for the instrument.

Once he thought he would give Prince Nicholas pleasure by learning to play the baryton himself and declared he was ready to play it for his Serene Highness.

This time he had miscalculated—his Highness returned no more than a glacial stare!

Nicholas, moreover, insisted he must have _all_ the most difficult passages in anything Haydn might write for him.

The cellist, Kraft, was once given a particularly easy part in a baryton duet to perform with the prince, who cut short any possible argument with the words: “It is no credit to you to play better than I do; it is your duty.

” The normal schedule of the artists was, of course, far heavier and more complicated, when distinguished visitors arrived for longer or shorter sojourns.

Under the circumstances, neither Haydn nor anyone else, had a chance to be bored at Eszterháza.

Now and then, however, these birds in a golden cage longed for a little freedom.

Haydn himself once wrote in a letter: “I never can obtain leave, even to go to Vienna for twenty-four hours.

It is scarcely credible, and yet the refusal is always couched in such polite terms as to render it utterly impossible for me to urge my request.

” This is the place to speak of the so-called “Farewell Symphony”, a piece of music with a definite purpose (if not exclusively an artistic one) in which Haydn got the better of his prince.

In 1772 Nicholas ruled that none of the musicians might bring his wife or children to Eszterháza.

In only three cases was an exception made.

Prince Nicholas, having paid his musicians an extra fifty florins to provide for the families they were not permitted to visit, considered that he had no further obligations.

Finally, the players who had to pass the greater part of the year without seeing their wives, rebelled.

In Griesinger’s words: “The affectionate husbands appealed to Haydn to help them.

Haydn decided to write a symphony in which one instrument after the other ceases to play.

The work was executed as soon as an occasion presented itself, and each player was instructed to put out his candle when his part was ended, seize his music and leave with his instrument tucked under his arm.

The prince instantly understood the meaning of pantomime and the next day he gave the order to leave Eszterháza.

” All the same, the advantages of Haydn’s life at Eszterháza, even when it threatened to grow dull, were inestimable.

He once told Griesinger: “My prince was always satisfied with my works.

Not only did I have the encouragement of constant approval, but as conductor of an orchestra I could make experiments, observe what produced an effect and what weakened it, and was thus in a position to improve, to alter, make additions or omissions, and be as bold as I pleased.

I was cut off from the world; there was no one to confuse or torment me....

” * * * Prince Eszterházy, in 1779, engaged an Italian violinist, Antonio Polzelli, and his wife, Luigia, a mezzo-soprano.

Polzelli was a sickly man and not particularly competent.

Still less was Luigia, who needed much help from Haydn to fit her for minor musical duties.

What moved the Prince to pick this misfit pair for his establishment is a problem.

They were not a happy couple, scarcely more than were Haydn and his “Infernal Beast”!

Luigia was nineteen, lively, graceful—an adorable type of Italian beauty.

The Prince soon decided that the imported couple represented a needless expense, though the two were pathetically underpaid.

But this time Haydn was resolute.

The Polzellis must stay in Eszterháza under _any_ conditions!

Eszterházy, being a man of the world, realized that in certain things an irreplaceable orchestral conductor must be allowed his way, whatever the conventions.

Luigia was attracted to Haydn as were numerous other women whose path he crossed.

He himself often admitted it could not have been for his beauty.

Dr. Geiringer says that we know “practically nothing about Luigia.

” At any rate Haydn never made any secret of his love for her or she for him—not, at any rate, till much later, when new interests entered his life.

At Eszterháza the affair was an open secret.

Doubtless they would have married.

But the invalid Antonio and the venomous Maria Anna Aloysia settled that.

There are no letters extant dealing with those first years of their love.

But in 1791 he wrote Luigia: “I love you as on the first day, and I am always sad when I cannot do more for you.

But be patient, perhaps the day will arrive when I can show you how much I love you.

” When Antonio Polzelli died, not very long afterwards, Haydn wrote Luigia: “Perhaps the time will come, for which we have so often wished when two pairs of eyes will be closed.

One is shut already but what of the other?

Well, be it as God wills.

” Luigia had two sons, the first born in 1777, the second six years later, in Eszterháza.

Haydn was devoted to both, and gossip insisted he was the father of the younger.

He taught the two boys music and, irrespective of the question of paternity, he made no distinction between them.

Singularly enough, “the Infernal Beast” who abominated Luigia, showed herself exceptionally kind to Pietro Polzelli when he visited her in 1792. * * * About 1781 Haydn established a friendship which was to grow increasingly profound and more influential.

He made the acquaintance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who had come from Salzburg to settle at last in Vienna.

The sympathy was mutual, though the two masters were in many ways the absolute reverse of each other.

Mozart was from his childhood a genuine virtuoso, such as Haydn had never pretended to be.

Neither had Haydn matured artistically with anything like the speed of the sensitive and mercurial genius from Salzburg, nor possessed anything like the universality of the latter’s gifts.

Be these things as they may, the pair seemed to have come into the world to complement one another.

Their friendship is one of the most beautiful and productive the history of music affords.

“Haydn was fascinated by Mozart’s quicksilver personality, while Mozart enjoyed the sense of security that Haydn’s steadfastness and warmth of feeling gave him.

” And it was as if the two kindled brighter artistic sparks in their respective souls.

The two played chamber music together whenever Haydn made a trip to Vienna.

When Leopold Mozart visited his son, in 1785, Wolfgang, Haydn and several friends performed some of Mozart’s new quartets for Father Mozart.

It was on this occasion that Haydn made to Leopold the oft-quoted remark: “I tell you before God and as an honest man that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by reputation.

He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.

” Wolfgang was delighted, but declared at the same time that it was only from Haydn that he had learned how to write string quartets.

And the half-dozen he issued in 1785 and dedicated with moving phrases to his “beloved friend Haydn” are doubtless among the finest he composed.

On the other hand, Mozart never permitted a derogatory word to be said in his presence about Haydn.

And when the Bohemian composer and pianist, Leopold Kozeluch, once said to Mozart on hearing a boldly dissonant passage in a Haydn quartet: “I would never have written that,” Mozart instantly retorted: “Nor would I!

And do you know why?

Because neither you nor I would have had so excellent an idea....

Sir, even if they melted us both together, there would still not be stuff enough to make a Haydn.

” When some years later Haydn was asked his opinion about a debated passage in “Don Giovanni” he answered with finality: “I cannot settle this dispute, but this I know: Mozart is the greatest composer that the world now possesses!

” And hearing an argument about the harmony in the beginning of Mozart’s C major Quartet Haydn put a stop to the controversy then and there by saying: “If Mozart wrote it so he must have had good reason for it.

” And when someone in Prague invited Haydn to write an opera for that city he declined on the ground—among other things—that he “would be taking a big risk, for scarcely any man could stand comparison with the great Mozart.

Oh, if I could only explain to every musical friend ...

the inimitable art of Mozart, its depth, the greatness of its emotion, and its unique musical conception, as I myself feel and understand it, nations would then vie with each other to possess so great a jewel....

Prague ought to strive not merely to retain this precious man, but also to remunerate him; for without this support the history of any great genius is sad indeed.

It enrages me to think that the unparalleled Mozart has not yet been engaged by some imperial or royal court.

Do forgive this outburst but I love that man too much.

”