Joseph Haydn; Servant And Master — Part 3

* * * It should not be imagined that the various operas of Haydn have anything like the vitality, the dramatic life or the quality of “theatre” we find in the stage works of Mozart.

The greater part were composed for the play-house at Eszterháza and in certain cases for marionettes.

Sometimes they were slender comedies, on the “Singspiel” order, sometimes masques, intermezzi, scenic cantatas.

Possibly the two operas which in modern times have experienced most frequent revival are the comedy, “Lo Speziale” (“The Apothecary”) and “Il Mondo della Luna” (“The World of the Moon”).

His life at Eszterháza had the advantage of preserving Haydn from the intrigues and jealousies that ran riot in Vienna and from which even a Mozart had to suffer so bitterly.

Yet without traveling far from Eisenstadt Haydn was now rapidly becoming widely famous.

One of the first countries where he gained glory in distinguished circles was Spain.

In 1779 his music was already becoming a subject of high-flown poetic praise.

In 1781 King Charles III sent the composer a gold snuffbox.

The secretary of the Spanish Legation went to Eszterháza in person to convey his sovereign’s esteem to Haydn, whose princely employer must have swelled with pride at such a lofty distinction so ceremoniously conferred upon his “servant”.

The composer, Luigi Boccherini, a protégé of the Spanish king’s brother, strove so successfully to imitate Haydn’s style that someone called him “Haydn’s wife”.

Perhaps the most important Spanish honor of all came from a canon of Cadiz for a work called “The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross”.

Let us cite Haydn’s own words which preface the score published by Breitkopf und Härtel in 1801: “About 1786 I was requested to compose instrumental music in ‘The Seven Last Words.

’ It was customary at the Cathedral of Cadiz to produce an oratorio every year during Lent, the effect of the performance being not a little enhanced by the following circumstances.

The walls, windows, and pillars of the church were hung with black cloth, and only one large lamp hanging from the center of the roof broke the solemn obscurity.

At midday the doors were closed and the ceremony began.

After a short service the bishop ascended the pulpit, pronounced the first of the seven words and delivered a discourse thereon.

This ended, he left the pulpit and prostrated himself before the altar.

The pause was filled by music.

The bishop then in like manner pronounced the second word, then the third, and so on, the orchestra following on the conclusion of each discourse.

My composition was subject to these conditions, and it was no easy matter to compose seven adagios to last ten minutes each, and succeed one another without fatiguing the listeners; indeed, I found it quite impossible to confine myself within the appointed limits.

” Haydn looked upon the composition as one of his most important and, as a matter of fact, it widely exercised a profound impression.

It was even performed in the United States in 1793. When it came to paying Haydn for his work the Spanish ecclesiast presented the composer with a large sum of money concealed in an enormous chocolate cake!

The “Seven Last Words” were, in the course of years, done by a string quartet, by an orchestra, as an oratorio.

Today the work is hard to listen to with patience, impressive as it once seemed.

A series of adagios, one much like the other, it has precisely the effect that the composer at first feared: the various movements as they succeed one another end by sorely “fatiguing the hearers”.

France and England, in their turn, presently developed unmistakable signs of Haydn worship, which progressed increasingly.

In Italy the composer steadily won favor.

The Philharmonic Society of Modena made him a member as early as 1780. Ferdinand IV, of Naples, a few years later ordered concertos for an instrument called the lira organizzata.

The king wanted Haydn to visit Italy; the composer would have loved to do so, but could not leave Eszterháza.

Frederick William II, of Prussia, who played the cello, sent Haydn a superb and costly diamond ring.

We are told that he put on the ring whenever he began an important work because “when he forgot to do so no ideas occurred to him”.

He also received a costly ring from his pupil, the Russian Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna, whom he taught in 1782 in Vienna and for whom he composed numerous songs more than twenty years later.

Then, in 1781, Haydn informed the Viennese publisher, Artaria, that “Monsieur Le Gros, director of the Concerts Spirituels in Paris, wrote me a great many nice things about my ‘Stabat Mater’ which had been given there four times with great applause....

They made me an offer to engrave all my future works on very advantageous terms.

” In 1784 a Paris society, the Concerts de la Loge Olympique (patronized by French royalty, and where audiences were required to pass a kind of examination before they were admitted to its functions) commissioned Haydn to write six symphonies for them, to which solicitation we owe the composer’s great series of “Paris” Symphonies.

Not only did French publishers now make profitable proposals to Haydn; in Luigi Cherubini, meanwhile, he had one of his most impassioned advocates in Paris.

Haydn could probably have gone to England and become associated with the musical life of that country much sooner than he did.

When in 1783 the Professional Concerts were founded in London an attempt was made to secure him to take over their direction.

The composer, not feeling that Prince Eszterházy would have given his consent, had to refuse and the English public contented itself with listening to a Haydn symphony as the opening offering of the series.

By that time Haydn’s music was so well known and stood so high in British favor that his works had gained a preponderant place in the musical life of the country.

The Prince of Wales, an excellent cellist, caused Haydn’s quartets to be performed continually at the palace musicales.

And invitations to come to England poured upon Haydn from every corner of the Island Kingdom.

For all that, he remained as simple and unspoiled as ever.

He never forgot his humble origin.

To Griesinger he once said: “I have had intercourse with emperors, kings and many a great personage, and have been told by them quite a few flattering things.

For all that, I do not care to be on intimate terms with such persons and prefer to keep to people of my own station.

” In Vienna the number of Haydn’s intimates steadily increased.

As the years of his sojourn at Eszterháza passed pleasantly, but monotonously, the composer strove increasingly to widen his Viennese circle of friends.

He was able to accomplish this without unusual effort.

The publisher, Artaria, who had close business connections with Haydn, was only one of the master’s cronies.

Then, of course, there were Mozart and his friends Michael Kelly, Stephen and Nancy Storace, the merchant Michael Puchberg (who immortalized himself by lending Mozart money).

And Haydn, following the suggestion of Mozart and Puchberg, became a Freemason and joined the lodge Zur wahren Eintracht.

But in some ways the closest friends of Haydn’s in Vienna were Peter L. von Genzinger and his wife, Marianne.

Von Genzinger had long been Prince Eszterházy’s doctor.

Both he and his wife were to the highest degree cultured and musical—Frau von Genzinger, for that matter, was an uncommonly gifted pianist and singer.

Haydn was so welcome a guest in that hospitable dwelling that, among other things, his hostess never tired of preparing for him his favorite dishes.

The only drop of bitterness the lovely Genzinger home brought him was the poignant contrast it sometimes furnished to the growing monotony of Eszterháza, to which place he returned with a pang.

“Well here I sit in my wilderness, like some poor orphan, almost without human society, melancholy, dwelling on the memory of past glorious days”, he wrote to Marianne von Genzinger, in 1790, after he had mournfully returned to Eszterháza.

His letters to Marianne have a freedom and a spontaneity not to be found in Haydn’s usually stilted correspondence.

As time passed it became fairly evident that Haydn deeply, if hopelessly, loved her.

To be sure, he wrote that “she need be under no uneasiness ...

for my friendship and esteem for you (warm as they are) can never become reprehensible since I have always in my mind my respect for your elevated virtues, which not only I, but all who know you must reverence....

Oh, that I could be with you, dear lady, even for a quarter of an hour, to pour forth all my sorrows, and to receive comfort from you!

Well, as God pleases!

This time will also pass away and the day return when I shall again have the inexpressible pleasure of being seated beside you at the pianoforte, hearing Mozart’s masterpieces, and kissing your hands from gratitude for so much pleasure.

” Between the lines it is possible to read that for all his honors and distinctions Haydn was not growing happier at Eszterháza as the years elapsed.

By 1790 we find him writing: “I am doomed to stay at home.

It is indeed sad always to be a slave.

” He was growing restive amid all this Eszterházy luxury.

He had his orchestra, his palatial little theatre, the unending festivities at Eszterháza; he had Luigia Polzelli and he had little occasion to bother about the “Infernal Beast”, who, though she still walked the earth, scarcely existed for him.

But it irked him that he could not accept those invitations to visit foreign countries which were piling in upon him.

The truth, as Dr. Geiringer keenly observes, was that “Haydn had outgrown Eszterháza....

Even his attachment to his beloved prince had somewhat diminished.

Haydn, now a man of nearly 60, like a person of half his age, craved for a change, new tasks, new experiences.

With the sure instinct of genius he felt that the immense creative forces still slumbering in him could be released only by a cleancut break with the way of life that for nearly 30 years had been dear to him.

” * * * At the psychological moment destiny came to Haydn’s aid somewhat as, decades later, it invariably came to Wagner’s. In the fall of 1790, Prince Nicholas the Magnificent died suddenly.

His successor, Prince Anton Eszterházy, who was unmusical and otherwise unlike his father, instantly dismissed the orchestra, retaining only Haydn, Tomasini and a few others to take care of the church music.

He did not, indeed, discharge Haydn and even paid him well to keep him nominally in his employ.

But he gave the master leave to travel wherever he wanted.

Instantly Haydn dashed to Vienna, where fate took charge of his interests once more.

A relative of the Eszterházys wanted him for another princely post at Pressburg; the king of Naples repeated his earlier invitation to Italy.

Then, while the composer deliberated, a stranger burst into his room with the words: “My name is Salomon.

I have come from London to fetch you; we shall conclude our accord tomorrow.

” Haydn was bowled over and almost before he realized the truth, Johann Peter Salomon, of Bonn, superintended everything.

Haydn was to be paid 300 pounds for an opera, 300 more for six new symphonies, 200 for the copyrights, 200 for twenty smaller pieces, 200 more for a benefit concert in London.

He had, then and there, to consider whether it was to be Pressburg, Italy or England.

One reason he decided against Italy was because he appreciated that he was not a born opera composer, like Mozart.

But though Haydn spoke Italian and knew not a word of English (besides which the Channel crossing worried him), he decided—most fortunately as it proved—on England.

For one thing, he realized that England was at that time a leader in the orchestral field; in the second place Haydn was surfeited with nobility and the courts of princes.

And he longed for the personal freedom which England assured him.

So London it should be!

His friends—among them Mozart—were frightened.

“Oh, Papa, you have had no education for the wide world, and you speak so few languages,” protested Wolfgang.

“But my language is understood all over the world,” gently replied Haydn.

Just the same, he found parting from Mozart harder than from any of his other friends.

And when they took leave of one another the younger man exclaimed prophetically: “I am afraid, Papa, this will be our last farewell.

” Mozart’s death was one of the sorest blows Haydn ever suffered, and the pain of it actually sharpened with the passing of time.

Ten days before Christmas, 1790, Haydn set out on his journey with Salomon.

They took ship at Calais, January 1, 1791, at 7:30 A. M.

(“after attending early Mass”).

As he wrote Marianne von Genzinger, he was “very well, although somewhat thinner, owing to fatigue, irregular sleep, and eating and drinking so many things”.

In spite of a choppy sea he stood the crossing admirably, probably because “I remained on deck during the whole passage, in order to gaze my fill at that huge monster, the ocean.

” Only once or twice was he “seized with slight alarm and a little indisposition likewise”.

Yet he arrived at Dover “without being actually sick”, even if most of the passengers did “look like ghosts.

” Doubtless he recalled with amusement his boyish attempts to portray a storm at sea on the harpsichord in the days of Kurz-Bernardon!

Haydn’s first impressions of London were overwhelming.

He was as struck and delighted with the size and grandeur of the British metropolis, its crowds, its teeming traffic and the “strangeness” of English life as was even the worldlier Mendelssohn, several decades later.

Nevertheless, he was not a little frightened and found the street noise “unbearable”.

He had not a little trouble with the language and was much confused about the right thing to do when people drank his health.

He wrote to Frau von Genzinger that he was trying to learn English by taking morning walks alone in the woods “with his English grammar.

” Salomon did not spare him any of the customary social engagements and amenities.

Before he had been in London three weeks he was invited to a court ball and welcomed by the Prince of Wales, who, so Haydn decided, was “the handsomest man on God’s earth”.

The Prince (the future George IV) “wore diamonds worth 80,000 pounds.

” Haydn eventually managed to secure a recipe for the Prince’s brand of punch; it called for “one bottle of champagne, one of burgundy, one of rum, ten lemons, two oranges and a pound and a half of sugar.

” On March 11, 1791, occurred Haydn’s first concert in the Hanover Square Rooms.

The function in every respect exceeded the composer’s fondest hopes.

Its outstanding feature was the D major Symphony (No. 93).

The orchestra surpassed both numerically and otherwise the one Haydn had commanded at Eszterháza.

The master conducted from a harpsichord, as had always been his custom.

The concertmaster was the worthy Salomon, who played on a superb Stradivarius.

Dr. Burney spoke of “a degree of enthusiasm such as almost amounted to frenzy.

” The Adagio of the symphony had to be repeated.

The _Morning Chronicle_ wrote: “We cannot suppress our very anxious hope that the first musical genius of the age may be induced by our liberal welcome to take up his residence in England.

” It was a wish which speedily spread.

Even the King pressed the composer to make his home there and when, with the best grace in the world Haydn assured him his Continental obligations would not permit him to do so, the monarch was more or less offended.

One reason the master gave for his refusal was that “he could not leave his wife”—though the “Infernal Beast” was probably farthest from his thoughts!

What really stood in the way of a permanent English residence was the fear of the tremendous drain on his creative powers his popularity might entail.

He was, indeed, on the threshold of his greatest achievements and he was strong and healthy.

All the same he was not growing younger.

And he knew what the strain of being incessantly lionized would do in the long run.

For the time being, however, British adulation only had the effect of making Haydn more splendidly productive than ever.

The twelve Salomon symphonies (six composed for Haydn’s first visit to London, the remaining set written for his second a few years later) are indisputably Haydn’s greatest symphonic creations.

Let us mention a few of them: There is the so-called “Military” Symphony (Haydn’s symphonies are more easily distinguished by their sometimes fanciful titles, than by keys or opus numbers); the “Clock”, with its Andante, marked by a persistent tick-tock rhythm; the symphony “With the Kettledrum Roll”; the “Surprise”, with its folk-like melody and its title derived from a wholly unexpected fortissimo (which Haydn believed would “wake up the old ladies”) following a placid folk-like phase—yet actually more of a “surprise” from the astonishing harmonies heard just before the close of the variation movement.

The London Symphonies, together with “The Creation” and “The Seasons” as well as certain of the great string quartets, parts of which so astoundingly foreshadow the idiom of the Romantic period, are, in reality, the summits of Haydn’s inspiration.

It is a question if his genius would have unfolded itself so magnificently without the stimulus which came to the master from his two visits to England.

In July, 1791, he was invited to the Oxford Commemoration to receive from the University the honorary degree of Doctor of Music.

The occasion proved to be a love feast.

Three concerts were given in Haydn’s honor, at one of which he conducted his G major Symphony (No. 92), written several years earlier, but henceforth called the “Oxford” Symphony.

As his “exercise” he wrote for the University a three part crab canon, “Thy Voice, O Harmony is Divine”.

For three days he went about in “cherry and cream-colored silk”.

“I wish my friends in Vienna could have seen me”, he wrote, remarking in his diary “I had to pay one and a half guineas for the bell peals at Oxford when I received the Doctor’s degree, and half a guinea for hiring the gown.

The journey cost six guineas.

” By no means a cheap honor!

At the same time it is worth-while mentioning a statement of his to Dies, his biographer: “I owe much, I might say everything in England to the Doctor’s degree; for thanks to it I met the first men and was admitted to the most important houses.

” One of Haydn’s greatest and most fruitful experiences in London was his attendance in 1791 at a huge Handel Commemoration in Westminster Abbey.

It was a prodigious affair with more than a thousand participants.

Handel’s masterpieces may not have been intimately familiar to Haydn, though the Baron Van Swieten in Vienna made a cult both of Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach.

In Westminster Abbey, however, with such a gigantic array of performers and a public brought up in the reverence of Handel’s masterpieces the effect of a creation like “Messiah” was no less than shattering on Haydn.

When he heard the “Hallelujah” chorus he burst into tears with the exclamation “Handel is the master of us all!

” And it seems to have been the impact of Handel which moved him to contemplate an oratorio of his own.

The outcome of this Handelian experience and of the great British tradition of massive choruses became, in due time, “The Creation” and “The Seasons.

” Haydn was immensely busy in England but he was thoroughly enjoying himself.

He was entertained for five entire weeks at the home of a rich banker who lived in the country and who asked Haydn to give music lessons to his daughters, yet tactfully left the composer as much alone as he wished to be.

So he was able to rest a little from the noise of London.

Another time he went by boat from Westminster Bridge to Richmond and had dinner on a lovely island in the Thames; or he went to a dance at the home of the Lord Mayor of London, leaving when he found the room too hot and the music too bad; then he remained for three days at a castle where the Duke of York and his bride were spending their honeymoon.

“Oh, my dear good lady”, he exclaimed in a letter to Marianne von Genzinger, “how sweet is some degree of liberty!

I had a kind prince, but was obliged at times to be dependent on base souls.

I often sighed for release and now I have it in some measure.

I am quite sensible of this benefit, though my mind is burdened with more work.

The consciousness of being no longer a servant sweetens all my toil.

” At a concert given in York House, where Haydn played, Salomon led an orchestra and the King and Queen were present, the composer was formally presented by the Prince of Wales to George III.

The monarch talked for some time to the former “servant” of the Eszterházys and said, among other things, “Dr. Haydn, you have written a good deal.

” Whereupon Haydn answered: “Yes, Sire, a great deal more than is good.

” The King had the last word, however, and replied: “Oh, no; the world contradicts you.

” There can be no question, however, that on both his visits to England Haydn was called upon to subject his creative powers to a terrific strain.

The strangest part of it was that the artist, whose years were now accumulating, seemed actually to be making up for the slow development of his genius in his young manhood.

Not only were the works he produced greater and greater, but his assimilation of great and new musical influences was progressing steadily.

Apart from his other English activities there was no end of sight-seeing to be done, complicated with a considerable amount of teaching.

At the end of the music season the “worn out” master, went to Vauxhall Gardens, was delighted with the place where, among other things the music was “fairly good” and where “coffee and milk cost nothing”.

However, he did have a few twinges of the “English rheumatism” and almost submitted to an operation for his nose polypus—though when they tied him to a chair and prepared to operate he “kicked and screamed so vigorously”, that the surgeon and his assistants had to give it up.

Not even a Haydn escaped intrigues and baseless slander.

A rival concert organization, unable to win him away from Salomon launched rumors that the composer was showing signs of exhaustion and then sought to play off against Haydn the aging master’s devoted pupil, Ignaz Pleyel.

Another thing he seems not to have managed avoiding was a love affair.

“There were certainly quite a few innocent friendships with beautiful women”, relates Dr. Geiringer, “but they did not prevent the inflammable master from enjoying a more significant romance as well”.

Strangely enough, we know about it only from the letters of the lady in question, which Haydn carefully copied because, presumably, she wanted her correspondence back!

So far as we have this interchange it is quite one-sided and none of Haydn’s letters to her remain.

The lady in the case was a widow, a Mrs. Schroeter.

Dr. Burney referred to her as “a young lady of considerable fortune”.

Later, Haydn spoke of her to Dies, as “an English widow in London who loved me.

Though 60 years old, she was still lovely and amiable, and in all likelihood I should have married her if I had been single.

” Like Marianne von Genzinger, Mrs. Schroeter was musical and did copyist work for the composer.

Actually, she seems to have been much younger than Haydn’s estimate.

Here are a few extracts from the letters he received from her in London: “...

Pray inform me how you do, and let me know my Dear Love: When will you dine with me?

I shall be truly happy to see you to dinner, either tomorrow or Tuesday....

I am truly anxious and impatient to see you and I wish to have as much of your company as possible; indeed my dear Haydn I feel for you the fondest and tenderest affection the human heart is capable of, and I ever am with the firmest attachment my Dear Love, most Sincerely, Faithfully and most affectionately Yours...

”.

Another time, the devoted Mrs. Schroeter is concerned about his health: “I am told you was (sic!

) at your Study’s yesterday; indeed, my D. L.

, I am afraid it will hurt you....

I almost tremble for your health.

Let me prevail on you my much loved Haydn not to keep to your study’s so long at one time.

My dear love if you could know how precious your welfare is to me, I flatter myself you wou’d endeavor to preserve it, for my sake as well as your own.

” Another time: “...

I hope to hear you are quite well, shall be happy to see you at dinner and if you can come at three o’clock it would give me great pleasure, as I should be particularly glad to see you my Dear before the rest of our friends come.

” All the same, Haydn amid his numberless duties, found time to write to Luigia Polzelli, who was now in Italy.

She was not a little jealous and the composer found it wise to placate her with extravagantly ardent letters and money.

He would have been happy to see her son, Pietro, in London but he was much less anxious to have Luigia.

Meantime, the “Infernal Beast” again stirred up trouble by sending notes to her detested rival hinting at Haydn’s infidelities!

Let us herewith end the story of Luigia.

Haydn had once promised to marry her when he should be free.

When, at long last Maria Anna Apollonia died in 1800, the Polzelli chose to remind him of his promise.

But he solved the difficulty by giving her black on white, his solemn word to marry “no one else” and he also promised her a substantial pension for the rest of her life.

Having pocketed that “promise” Luigia promptly married an Italian singer!

Her son, Pietro, died in 1796. Haydn sincerely mourned him but turned his attention to another pupil of his, Sigismund Neukomm.

The wanderer came back to Vienna in midsummer, 1792. After the exhilaration of the first English trip the return to Vienna, for all his honors and distinctions, was chilling.

No one seemed to care greatly.

Moreover, there was one irreplaceable loss; Mozart was no more; and early in 1793 another blow struck Haydn—Marianne von Genzinger died at 38. Here was a calamity in its way rivaling the tragedy of Mozart.

Haydn’s resilient nature recovered even from the death of Marianne.

But a certain sweetness departed with her and never returned.

Singularly enough, there entered into his musical life about this time a force one might assume would have fortified him to bear the burden of his poignant losses.

Beethoven arrived in Vienna from Bonn bearing the following message from Count Waldstein: “Dear Beethoven, you are traveling to Vienna in fulfillment of your long-cherished wish.

The tutelary genius of Mozart is still weeping and bewailing the death of her favorite.

With the inexhaustible Haydn she has found refuge, but no occupation, and now she is waiting to leave him and associate herself with someone else.

Labor assiduously and receive Mozart’s spirit from the hands of Haydn.

”