Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn (, ; 31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period.

He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio.

His contributions to musical form have led him to be called "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String quartet".

Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their Eszterháza Castle.

Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original".

Yet his music circulated widely, and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe.

He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a tutor of Beethoven, and the elder brother of composer Michael Haydn.

Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, a village that at that time stood on the border with Hungary.

His father was Mathias Haydn, a wheelwright who also served as "Marktrichter", or marketplace supervisor.

Haydn's mother Maria, née Koller, had previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau.

Neither parent could read music; however, Mathias was an enthusiastic folk musician, who during the journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the harp.

According to Haydn's later reminiscences, his family was extremely musical, and they frequently sang together and with their neighbours.

Haydn's parents had noticed that their son was musically gifted and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain serious musical training.

It was for this reason that, around the time Haydn turned six, they accepted a proposal from their relative Johann Matthias Frankh, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, that Haydn be apprenticed to Frankh in his home to train as a musician.

Haydn therefore went off with Frankh to Hainburg and he never again lived with his parents.

Life in the Frankh household was not easy for Haydn, who later remembered being frequently hungry and humiliated by the filthy state of his clothing.

He began his musical training there, and could soon play both harpsichord and violin.

He also sang treble parts in the church choir.

There is reason to think that Haydn's singing impressed those who heard him, because in 1739 he was brought to the attention of Georg Reutter the Younger, the director of music in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, who happened to be visiting Hainburg and was looking for new choirboys.

Haydn passed his audition with Reutter, and after several months of further training moved to Vienna (1740), where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister.

It is also popularly believed that Haydn sang at the funeral of Antonio Vivaldi in 1741.

Haydn lived in the Kapellhaus next to the cathedral, along with Reutter, Reutter's family, and the other four choirboys, which after 1745 included his younger brother Michael.

The choirboys were instructed in Latin and other school subjects as well as voice, violin, and keyboard.

Reutter was of little help to Haydn in the areas of music theory and composition, giving him only two lessons in his entire time as chorister.

However, since St. Stephen's was one of the leading musical centres in Europe, Haydn learned a great deal simply by serving as a professional musician there.

Like Frankh before him, Reutter did not always bother to make sure Haydn was properly fed.

As he later told his biographer Albert Christoph Dies, Haydn was motivated to sing well, in hopes of gaining more invitations to perform before aristocratic audiences, where the singers were usually served refreshments.

By 1749, Haydn had matured physically to the point that he was no longer able to sing high choral parts.

Empress Maria Theresa herself complained to Reutter about his singing, calling it "crowing".

One day, Haydn carried out a prank, snipping off the pigtail of a fellow chorister.

This was enough for Reutter: Haydn was first caned, then summarily dismissed and sent into the streets.

He had the good fortune to be taken in by a friend, Johann Michael Spangler, who shared his family's crowded garret room with Haydn for a few months.

Haydn immediately began his pursuit of a career as a freelance musician.

According to Griesinger and Dies, in the 1750s Haydn studied an encyclopedic treatise by Johann Mattheson, a German composer.

As his skills increased, Haydn began to acquire a public reputation, first as the composer of an opera, Der krumme Teufel, "The Limping Devil", written for the comic actor Joseph Felix von Kurz, whose stage name was "Bernardon".

Haydn struggled at first, working at many different jobs: as a music teacher, as a street serenader, and eventually, in 1752, as valet-accompanist for the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, from whom he later said he learned "the true fundamentals of composition".

He was also briefly in Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz's employ, playing the organ in the Bohemian Chancellery chapel at the Judenplatz.

While a chorister, Haydn had not received any systematic training in music theory and composition.

As a remedy, he worked his way through the counterpoint exercises in the text Gradus ad Parnassum by Johann Joseph Fux and carefully studied the work of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whom he later acknowledged as an important influence.

He said of CPE Bach's first six keyboard sonatas, "I did not leave my clavier till I played them through, and whoever knows me thoroughly must discover that I owe a great deal to Emanuel Bach, that I understood him and have studied him with diligence."