Joseph Haydn: A Guide to His Life and Music

Franz Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer who made substantial contributions to both chamber music and orchestral music via forms like the string quartet, the piano trio, and the symphony. Along with his fellow Austrian Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the German-English composer George Friedrich Handel, Haydn is considered among the foremost composers of the Classical period in music.

While prolific, Hayden spent much of his career as the private music director for the wealthy Esterházy family and was based out of Eszterháza Castle, located in present-day Hungary. This often kept him from interfacing with the other leading composers of Classical era Europe, who largely congregated in Vienna, Paris, and London. Yet this isolation had an upside: It allowed Haydn to innovate and not fall prey to popular trends of the time period.

Franz Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, near the Hungarian border. He showed musical talent from a very young age and apprenticed with his relative, Johann Matthias Frankh, a choirmaster based in Hainburg.

• Early vocal work: Haydn excelled on the harpsichord, the violin, and as a singer. His singing voice won him a job as a choirboy at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where he studied under Johann Georg Reutter. When puberty changed Haydn's voice, he lost his place in the choir. He began seeking freelance work in Vienna.
• Education: In 1752, he found work as valet—accompanist for the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, whom he considered his most impactful teacher. He also studied the great composers of the era, including Johann Joseph Fux and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
• Aristocratic patronage: Work as a freelancer proved inconsistent and hardly lucrative, so Haydn began seeking work with wealthy aristocrats who could afford a music director for their estate. He found one in Count Morzin, who hired him as Kapellmeister (an in-house music director). The count employed a small orchestra at his home in Unterlukawitz, in the present-day Czech Republic. It was for this ensemble that Haydn composed his first symphonies.
• Work with the Esterházy family: When Count Morzin encountered financial difficulties, Haydn moved on to the Esterházy family, which would employ him for most of his professional life. Haydn worked out of various estates, most notably Schloss Esterházy (in present-day Eisenstadt, Austria) and Esterháza (in the Hungarian countryside), and was tasked with composing, leading the orchestra, playing chamber music, arranging church music, and producing operas.
• Baryton compositions: Around 1765, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy learned the baryton, a fairly obscure instrument similar to the bass viol that features a set of sympathetic strings. To please his patron, Haydn wrote roughly 200 works for baryton. Later, Prince Nikolaus grew interested in opera and built a substantial opera theater. Haydn led the prince's new opera company as a conductor, director, and composer of new works.
• Publishing: In 1779, Haydn renegotiated his contract with the Esterházy family, who now allowed him to privately publish his work. By contracting with publishers in Austria, France, and England, Haydn got his work in front of new audiences and received commissions, including six symphonies (1785–1786) performed in Paris and a Spanish commission for The Seven Last Words of Christ (1786).
• Popularity in England: When Haydn's chief patron Nikolaus Esterházy died, Haydn began leaving the estate more often to seek new commissions. He did particularly well in London, where he worked with the German violinist and impresario Johann Peter Salomon. Works from this era include the Rider Quartet, the "Gypsy Rondo" piano trio, the Surprise Symphony, the Military Symphony, the Drumroll Symphony, and the London Symphony.
• Famous acquaintances: In 1790, Haydn met a young Ludwig van Beethoven in Bonn, Germany. Over the next several years, Haydn taught Beethoven on and off in Vienna and Eisenstadt. In Vienna, Haydn was also the acquaintance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a fellow giant of Austrian music.
• Later works: Haydn remained in the Esterházy family’s employment, but he spent much of his final years in Vienna. During this period, he composed two of his most renowned oratorios: The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801). Other works from the era included his final volume of string quartets (which featured the Fifths, Emperor, and Sunrise), the Trumpet Concerto, and “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser,” now the national anthem of modern-day Germany.

Haydn's last major work was the sixth mass for the Esterházys, the Harmoniemesse, composed in 1802. By the time of his death in 1809, Haydn had played a major role in defining the Classical style of music—setting it apart from the Baroque style that preceded it and the Romantic style that would follow.

Haydn, along with Mozart and Handel, was considered the most significant composer of Europe's Classical period. The characteristics of his music include:

• Development of key musical forms: Haydn is sometimes called "the father of the symphony" and "the father of the string quartet." Although he did not invent either of these forms, he helped shape them into a format that would be used for centuries. Among other things, he helped establish the modern sonata form and injected that into his symphonies and string quartets.
• Upbeat, major key works: Haydn spent most of his career working for nobility, and his patrons tended to respond to upbeat music. There were exceptions, like the slow movements from string quartets in Opus 76 and the minuet from Symphony No. 98, but more common were jaunty tempos in his Symphony No. 94 and Symphony No. 95 in C minor, which ends in a triumphant final movement in C major.
• Sturm und Drang: Around 1771, Haydn went through a period known as Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress"), which aligned with a German literary movement. In the style of the movement, these works were rather emotive by Haydn's standards. They include the "Trauer" Symphony No. 44, "Farewell" Symphony No. 45, the Piano Sonata in C minor (Hob. XVI/20, L. 33), and the six "Sun" Quartets Op. 20.

Haydn was a prolific composer, both for the Esterházy family and in his independent commissions. Notable Haydn works include:

1. 1. Missa brevis in F major: A choral mass that is thought to be Haydn's first authenticated composition. Compared to other composers, Haydn was not known for church music, yet it did play a role in his early development.
2. 2. Cello Concerto No. 2: A notable composition for Prince Nikolaus's Esterházy orchestra. Its third and final movement is a notable rondo (labeled Rondo Allegro).
3. 3. "Surprise" Symphony No. 94: This symphony in G major is famous for its unexpected fortissimo chord in measure 16 of its second movement.
4. 4. "Drumroll" Symphony No. 103: Known for its namesake, a fortissimo drum roll, that dominates the opening Allegro movement.
5. 5. "London" Symphony No. 104: Known as the London Symphony in England and the Salomon Symphony in the Germanic world (to honor the German impresario who arranged for Haydn to tour London), this was Haydn's final symphony and a high point of his later works.

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