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Franz Joseph Haydn: Composers
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Franz Joseph Haydn (he never used the Franz) (March 31, 1732 - May 31, 1809) was a leading composer of the high classical period, second only to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was the brother of Michael Haydn, a composer, and Johann Evangelist Haydn, a tenor singer.
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In his last years, Franz Joseph Haydn created his masterpiece, oratorio The Creation. The Austrian classical composer expressed his vision of the creation, as told in the Holy Bible and John Milton's poem Paradise Lost.
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For each of these two English tours, Haydn composed six symphonies, the final twelve symphonies he would ever write. At the very end of the series stands his Symphony no. 104. Its first performance, at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket on May 4, 1795, was an immense success. "I made 4000 Gulden on this evening," the composer observed to his diary. "Such a thing," he continued, "is possible only in England." But it was more than a fiscal success.
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Haydn's complete works listed in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians run to 40 pages of small print, only a fraction of which are generally known. Yet his position as one of the all-time greats has never been seriously disputed. Perhaps he will simply remain one of those composers who, like Schumann and Mendelssohn, has countless admirers, but only a select band of truly devoted followers. Jean Ingres, the great French neoclassical painter, was in no doubt about Haydn's importance: "Whoever studies music, let his daily bread be Haydn. Beethoven, indeed, is admirable, he is incomparable, but he has not the same usefulness as Haydn. He is not a necessity."
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Around 1781 Haydn established a friendship with Mozart, whose work he had already been influencing by example for many years. According to later testimony by Stephen Storace, the two composers occasionally played in string quartets together. Haydn was hugely impressed with Mozart's work, and in various ways tried to help the younger composer. During the years 1782 to 1785, Mozart wrote a set of string quartets thought to be inspired by Haydn's Opus 33 series. On completion he dedicated them to Haydn, a very unusual thing to do at a time when dedicatees were usually aristocrats. The extremely close 'brotherly' Mozart-Haydn connection may be an expression of Freemasonic sympathies as well: Mozart and Haydn were members of the same Masonic lodge.
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* Josef Haydn's younger brother Michael Haydn (1737-1806) became a choirboy at St. Stephen's in Vienna, like his older brother and was dismissed when his voice broke. He became Kapellmeister to the Bishop of Grosswardein (then in Hungary, now in Oradea, Romania), and later Konzertmeister to the Archbishop of Salzburg. He remained in Salzburg for the rest of his life, becoming organist at the Dreifaltigkeitskirche and then succeeding Mozart as organist at Salzburg Cathedral. Michael Haydn wrote some less memorable chamber music and symphonies. However, in his lifetime he was considered a better composer of church music than his brother Josef, being a master of the old a capella style.
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