LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Franz Joseph Haydn: Princes
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Count Joseph Erdödy commissioned them in 1796. They were composed in 1796 and 1797, and published in 1799. This quartet is known principally in England and America by the nickname "Sunrise"- suggested by the opening of the first movement, a violin melody soaring above sustained chords formed by the other three voices. In its four movements, this quartet embraces a seemingly wide variety of music. The first movement is in classical sonata form. The second movement, one of Haydn’s slowest adagios, is in three-quarter time (but no dancing here) and grows plant-like out of the opening five note motif.
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Haydn's duties as Kapellmeister to the Esterházy family involved the provision of church music, as well as music for entertainment. The Mass settings composed for the younger Prince Nikolaus include the well known Nelson Mass, celebrating the English admiral's victory at the Battle of the Nile. Between 1796 and 1802 Haydn wrote seven Masses, all with popular German nicknames, "Heiligmesse", "Paukenmesse", "Coronation Mass", "Theresienmesse", "Schöpfungsmesse" and "Harmoniemesse
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Haydn remained productive nearly to the end of his life. Yet the principal role that he played in these last years was neither that of composer nor that of Kapellmeister. He had become, most importantly, Vienna's grand old man of music: an inspiration to younger generations, a man internationally revered even by unmusical souls. In May 1809, when Napoleon's armies captured the city of Vienna after an intense bombardment, Napoleon himself ordered that an honor guard be placed outside the home where the master composer lay on his death bed. Haydn passed away May 31, 1809, at the age of seventy-seven. At his memorial service two weeks later, Mozart's Requiem was sung in Vienna's Schottenkirche.
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In 1790, Prince Nikolaus died and was succeeded by a thoroughly unmusical prince who dismissed the entire musical establishment and put Haydn on a pension. Freed of his obligations, Haydn was able to accept a lucrative offer from Johann Peter Salomon, a German impresario, to visit England and conduct new symphonies with a large orchestra.
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The development of sonata form into a subtle and flexible mode of musical expression, which became the dominant force in Classical musical thought, owed most to Haydn and those who followed his ideas. His sense of formal inventiveness ... lead him to integrate the fugue into the classical style and to enrich the rondo form with more cohesive tonal logic, (see sonata rondo form). Haydn was also the principal exponent of the double variation form, that is variations on two alternating themes, which are often major and minor mode versions of each other.
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