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Joseph Haydn: Works
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At the age of 8 Joseph Haydn was sent to Vienna as a choirboy at St. Stephen's Cathedral. Until 1750 he studied violin and various keyboard instruments. It was at that time that he started to compose his first work.
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Haydn wasn't actually supposed to write this opera. His task was to produce Pietro's Guglielmi's Orlando for an impending visit of the Grand Duke Paul of Russia to Prince Esterhazy, Haydn's patron. Perform a ten-year-old work for the crown prince of all the Russias? Never! Haydn wrote a new work from the same libretto. (The Grand Duke was a no-show.)
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Haydn had worked scarcely a year when the prince died on March 18, 1762. If Haydn was once again plunged into uncertainty about his future, his fears would have been dispelled quickly, for Nikolaus, brother and successor to Paul Anton, possessed an appetite for music that was, if anything, even keener than his predecessor's. Haydn's original contract stipulated that he report to the prince in the morning and again in the afternoon to see if music making was wanted. This arrangement probably continued with Nikolaus, whose evenings were given over to theater and music theater. Daily music making often meant accompanying the prince in divertimentos for his favored instrument, the baryton, typically in concert with viola and cello (Haydn created a repertory of at least 126 such works in the years 1765-76); it sometimes meant playing solo keyboard works. Twice a week, orchestral "academies" were held; for these Haydn could probably count on assembling, before 1776, two oboes, two horns, one bassoon, and nine strings (disposed 3-3-1-1-1), with himself the leader; trumpets and drums were added on festive occasions.
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In these oratorios Haydn came as close as he was ever to come to matching Mozart's sense of dramatic action articulated through music. Neither oratorio is truly a stage work, but both have strong elements of the dramatic and the pictorial, and at times have musicodramatic moments of the highest order. Among these is the entire first part of The Creation, beginning with a representation of "Chaos" as orchestral introduction, and then narrating the creation of the world. After the first recitative the chorus enters sotto voce with the words "And the spirit of God moved upon the waters; and God said, 'Let there be light."' The arrival of the chorus at a fortissimo climax on the word "light" electrified the audiences of Haydn's time, and at his last appearance in public before his death in Vienna on May 31, 1809, at a performance of The Creation in 1808 given as a tribute to him, he rose at this point and attributed, in effect, all his creative ability to divine power.
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Haydn was in his 60s when his wife died, and he wasn't as strong as he was before. In this way, he couldn't work on music very much. Austria and France were fighting a war, and The Creation was very famous now. Haydn was watching through his window. A French soldier stopped by and sang a small part of The Creation. They embraced each other and each knew that music was much more important than winning a war.
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In addition to orchestral and chamber music Haydn composed a number of Latin masses, including six of exceptional merit composed for the name day of his patroness Princess Maria Hermenegildis Esterhazy in the years 1796-1802. One of these, the D minor, was named the ‘Nelson’ Mass after it had been performed in Nelson's presence in 1800. Haydn's principal non-liturgical works are the oratorios Die Schöpfung (1798), based on Paradise Lost, and Die Jahreszeiten (1801), based on James Thomson's The Seasons. The German libretto for each of these works was prepared by Baron G. van Swieten.
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