Haydn | Page 4

PREFACE

The authority for Haydn's life is the biography begun by the late Dr
Pohl, and completed after his death by E.V. Mandyczewski. To this
work, as yet untranslated, every subsequent writer is necessarily
indebted, and the present volume, which I may fairly claim to be the
fullest life of Haydn that has so far appeared in English, is largely
based upon Pohl. I am also under obligations to Miss Pauline D.
Townsend, the author of the monograph in the "Great Musicians" series.
For the rest, I trust I have acquainted myself with all the more
important references made to Haydn in contemporary records and in
the writings of those who knew him. Finally, I have endeavoured to tell
the story of his career simply and directly, to give a clear picture of the
man, and to discuss the composer without trenching on the ground of
the formalist.
J.C.H.
EDINBURGH, September 1902.

HAYDN

CHAPTER I
BIRTH--ANCESTRY--EARLY YEARS
Introductory--Rohrau--A Poor Home--Genealogy--Haydn's Parents--
His Birth--His Precocity--Informal Music-making--His First
Teacher--Hainburg--"A Regular Little Urchin"--Attacks the Drum-- A
Piece of Good Luck--A Musical Examination--Goes to Vienna--Choir
School of St Stephen's--A House of Suffering--Lessons at the
Cathedral--A Sixteen-Part Mass--Juvenile Escapades--"Sang like a
Crow"--Dismissed from the Choir.
Haydn's position, alike in music and in musical biography, is almost
unique. With the doubtful exception of Sebastian Bach, no composer of

the first rank ever enjoyed a more tranquil career. Bach was not once
outside his native Germany; Haydn left Austria only to make those
visits to England which had so important an influence on the later
manifestations of his genius: His was a long, sane, sound, and on the
whole, fortunate existence. For many years he was poor and obscure,
but if he had his time of trial, he never experienced a time of failure.
With practical wisdom he conquered the Fates and became eminent. A
hard, struggling youth merged into an easy middle-age, and late years
found him in comfortable circumstances, with a solid reputation as an
artist, and a solid retiring-allowance from a princely patron, whose
house he had served for the better part of his working career. Like
Goethe and Wordsworth, he lived out all his life. He was no Marcellus,
shown for one brief moment and "withdrawn before his springtime had
brought forth the fruits of summer." His great contemporary, Mozart,
cut off while yet his light was crescent, is known to posterity only by
the products of his early manhood. Haydn's sun set at the end of a long
day, crowning his career with a golden splendour whose effulgence still
brightens the ever-widening realm of music.
Voltaire once said of Dante that his reputation was becoming greater
and greater because no one ever read him. Haydn's reputation is not of
that kind. It is true that he may not appeal to what has been called the
"fevered modern soul," but there is an old-world charm about him
which is specially grateful in our bustling, nerve-destroying, bilious age.
He is still known as "Papa Haydn," and the name, to use Carlyle's
phrase, is "significant of much." In the history of the art his position is
of the first importance. He was the father of instrumental music. He
laid the foundations of the modern symphony and sonata, and
established the basis of the modern orchestra. Without him, artistically
speaking, Beethoven would have been impossible. He seems to us now
a figure of a very remote past, so great have been the changes in the
world of music since he lived. But his name will always be read in the
golden book of classical music; and whatever the evolutionary
processes of the art may bring, the time can hardly come when he will
be forgotten, his works unheard.
Rohrau

Franz Joseph Haydn was born at the little market-town of Rohrau, near
Prugg, on the confines of Austria and Hungary, some two-and-a-half
hours' railway journey from Vienna. The Leitha, which flows along the
frontier of Lower Austria and Hungary on its way to the Danube, runs
near, and the district
[Figure: Haydn's birth-house at Rohrau]
is flat and marshy. The house in which the composer was born had
been built by his father. Situated at the end of the market-place, it was
in frequent danger from inundation; and although it stood in Haydn's
time with nothing worse befalling it than a flooding now and again, it
has twice since been swept away, first in 1813, fours years after
Haydn's death, and again in 1833. It was carefully rebuilt on each
occasion, and still stands for the curious to see--a low-roofed cottage,
very much as it was when the composer of "The Creation" first began
to be "that various thing called man." A fire unhappily did some
damage to the building in 1899. But excepting that the