HAYDN, Joseph

31st March 1732 – 31st May 1809

Haydn was taken into the choir at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna from 1740 to 1750. He then worked as a freelance musician. In 1759, he was made music director to Count Morzin; but he soon moved into service as Vice-Kapellmeister with one of the leading Hungarian families, becoming full Kapellmeister in 1766. In his early years Haydn mainly wrote instrumental music, including symphonies and other pieces for the twice-weekly concerts and the prince's Tafelmusik, and works for the instrument played by the prince, for which he composed around 125 trios in ten years. There were also cantatas and a bit of church music.

As opera became more and more popular around the mid-1770s, it became Haydn’s job to prepare the music, adapting or arranging it for the voices of the singers. The opera house burned down in 1779, but Haydn composed an opera for its reopening in 1781. By now, Haydn’s reputation had grown to become international, and now, his employer did not have exclusive rights to Haydn’s music. 

Throughout the 1780s, Haydn became more and more renowned for his composing. He composed piano sonatas, piano trios, symphonies and string quartets. All these showed an increase in originality and freedom of style as well as humour. Other works that carried Haydn's reputation beyond central Europe include concertos and notturnos. 

Haydn’s employer died in 1790; Haydn (unlike most of his musicians) was kept by his son but was free to live in Vienna and to travel. Haydn was invited to London, where he wrote operas and his last 12 symphonies. He also wrote a symphonie concertante, choral pieces, piano trios and piano sonatas. Haydn and his music were a huge success and greatly loved in England.

On his return to Vienna, Haydn composed six pieces, showing great diversity of style and seriousness of content, whilst keeping his vitality and fluency. Some had a more public manner, acknowledging the new use of string quartets at concerts. The most important work, however, is his oratorio The Creation in which his essentially simple-hearted joy in Man, Beast and Nature, and his gratitude to God for his creation of these things to our benefit, are made a part of universal experience by writing in a way that he had not used before. 

In 1809, Haydn died. But he has been known ever since as the father of string quartets and symphonies. Even though he didn’t invent them, he saw them go from their very beginning to a high level of sophistication. It was arguably these that laid the foundations for many of Beethoven’s great works. 

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