Haydn could probably have gone to England and become associated with the musical life of that country much sooner than he did. When in 1783 the Professional Concerts were founded in London an attempt was made to secure him to take over their direction. The composer, not feeling that Prince Eszterházy would have given his consent, had to refuse and the English public contented itself with listening to a Haydn symphony as the opening offering of the series. By that time Haydn’s music was so well known and stood so high in British favor that his works had gained a preponderant place in the musical life of the country. The Prince of Wales, an excellent cellist, caused Haydn’s quartets to be performed continually at the palace musicales. And invitations to come to England poured upon Haydn from every corner of the Island Kingdom. For all that, he remained as simple and unspoiled as ever. He never forgot his humble origin. To Griesinger he once said: “I have had intercourse with emperors, kings and many a great personage, and have been told by them quite a few flattering things. For all that, I do not care to be on intimate terms with such persons and prefer to keep to people of my own station.”
In Vienna the number of Haydn’s intimates steadily increased. As the years of his sojourn at Eszterháza passed pleasantly, but monotonously, the composer strove increasingly to widen his Viennese circle of friends. He was able to accomplish this without unusual effort. The publisher, Artaria, who had close business connections with Haydn, was only one of the master’s cronies. Then, of course, there were Mozart and his friends Michael Kelly, Stephen and Nancy Storace, the merchant Michael Puchberg (who immortalized himself by lending Mozart money). And Haydn, following the suggestion of Mozart and Puchberg, became a Freemason and joined the lodge Zur wahren Eintracht. But in some ways the closest friends of Haydn’s in Vienna were Peter L. von Genzinger and his wife, Marianne. Von Genzinger had long been Prince Eszterházy’s doctor. Both he and his wife were to the highest degree cultured and musical—Frau von Genzinger, for that matter, was an uncommonly gifted pianist and singer. Haydn was so welcome a guest in that hospitable dwelling that, among other things, his hostess never tired of preparing for him his favorite dishes. The only drop of bitterness the lovely Genzinger home brought him was the poignant contrast it sometimes furnished to the growing monotony of Eszterháza, to which place he returned with a pang. “Well here I sit in my wilderness, like some poor orphan, almost without human society, melancholy, dwelling on the memory of past glorious days”, he wrote to Marianne von Genzinger, in 1790, after he had mournfully returned to Eszterháza. His letters to Marianne have a freedom and a spontaneity not to be found in Haydn’s usually stilted correspondence. As time passed it became fairly evident that Haydn deeply, if hopelessly, loved her. To be sure, he wrote that “she need be under no uneasiness ... for my friendship and esteem for you (warm as they are) can never become reprehensible since I have always in my mind my respect for your elevated virtues, which not only I, but all who know you must reverence.... Oh, that I could be with you, dear lady, even for a quarter of an hour, to pour forth all my sorrows, and to receive comfort from you! Well, as God pleases! This time will also pass away and the day return when I shall again have the inexpressible pleasure of being seated beside you at the pianoforte, hearing Mozart’s masterpieces, and kissing your hands from gratitude for so much pleasure.”
Between the lines it is possible to read that for all his honors and distinctions Haydn was not growing happier at Eszterháza as the years elapsed. By 1790 we find him writing: “I am doomed to stay at home. It is indeed sad always to be a slave.” He was growing restive amid all this Eszterházy luxury. He had his orchestra, his palatial little theatre, the unending festivities at Eszterháza; he had Luigia Polzelli and he had little occasion to bother about the “Infernal Beast”, who, though she still walked the earth, scarcely existed for him. But it irked him that he could not accept those invitations to visit foreign countries which were piling in upon him. The truth, as Dr. Geiringer keenly observes, was that “Haydn had outgrown Eszterháza.... Even his attachment to his beloved prince had somewhat diminished. Haydn, now a man of nearly 60, like a person of half his age, craved for a change, new tasks, new experiences. With the sure instinct of genius he felt that the immense creative forces still slumbering in him could be released only by a cleancut break with the way of life that for nearly 30 years had been dear to him.”
* * *
At the psychological moment destiny came to Haydn’s aid somewhat as, decades later, it invariably came to Wagner’s. In the fall of 1790, Prince Nicholas the Magnificent died suddenly. His successor, Prince Anton Eszterházy, who was unmusical and otherwise unlike his father, instantly dismissed the orchestra, retaining only Haydn, Tomasini and a few others to take care of the church music. He did not, indeed, discharge Haydn and even paid him well to keep him nominally in his employ. But he gave the master leave to travel wherever he wanted. Instantly Haydn dashed to Vienna, where fate took charge of his interests once more. A relative of the Eszterházys wanted him for another princely post at Pressburg; the king of Naples repeated his earlier invitation to Italy. Then, while the composer deliberated, a stranger burst into his room with the words: “My name is Salomon. I have come from London to fetch you; we shall conclude our accord tomorrow.” Haydn was bowled over and almost before he realized the truth, Johann Peter Salomon, of Bonn, superintended everything. Haydn was to be paid 300 pounds for an opera, 300 more for six new symphonies, 200 for the copyrights, 200 for twenty smaller pieces, 200 more for a benefit concert in London. He had, then and there, to consider whether it was to be Pressburg, Italy or England. One reason he decided against Italy was because he appreciated that he was not a born opera composer, like Mozart. But though Haydn spoke Italian and knew not a word of English (besides which the Channel crossing worried him), he decided—most fortunately as it proved—on England. For one thing, he realized that England was at that time a leader in the orchestral field; in the second place Haydn was surfeited with nobility and the courts of princes. And he longed for the personal freedom which England assured him. So London it should be! His friends—among them Mozart—were frightened. “Oh, Papa, you have had no education for the wide world, and you speak so few languages,” protested Wolfgang. “But my language is understood all over the world,” gently replied Haydn. Just the same, he found parting from Mozart harder than from any of his other friends. And when they took leave of one another the younger man exclaimed prophetically: “I am afraid, Papa, this will be our last farewell.” Mozart’s death was one of the sorest blows Haydn ever suffered, and the pain of it actually sharpened with the passing of time.
Ten days before Christmas, 1790, Haydn set out on his journey with Salomon. They took ship at Calais, January 1, 1791, at 7:30 A.M. (“after attending early Mass”). As he wrote Marianne von Genzinger, he was “very well, although somewhat thinner, owing to fatigue, irregular sleep, and eating and drinking so many things”. In spite of a choppy sea he stood the crossing admirably, probably because “I remained on deck during the whole passage, in order to gaze my fill at that huge monster, the ocean.” Only once or twice was he “seized with slight alarm and a little indisposition likewise”. Yet he arrived at Dover “without being actually sick”, even if most of the passengers did “look like ghosts.” Doubtless he recalled with amusement his boyish attempts to portray a storm at sea on the harpsichord in the days of Kurz-Bernardon!
Haydn’s first impressions of London were overwhelming. He was as struck and delighted with the size and grandeur of the British metropolis, its crowds, its teeming traffic and the “strangeness” of English life as was even the worldlier Mendelssohn, several decades later. Nevertheless, he was not a little frightened and found the street noise “unbearable”. He had not a little trouble with the language and was much confused about the right thing to do when people drank his health. He wrote to Frau von Genzinger that he was trying to learn English by taking morning walks alone in the woods “with his English grammar.” Salomon did not spare him any of the customary social engagements and amenities. Before he had been in London three weeks he was invited to a court ball and welcomed by the Prince of Wales, who, so Haydn decided, was “the handsomest man on God’s earth”. The Prince (the future George IV) “wore diamonds worth 80,000 pounds.” Haydn eventually managed to secure a recipe for the Prince’s brand of punch; it called for “one bottle of champagne, one of burgundy, one of rum, ten lemons, two oranges and a pound and a half of sugar.”
On March 11, 1791, occurred Haydn’s first concert in the Hanover Square Rooms. The function in every respect exceeded the composer’s fondest hopes. Its outstanding feature was the D major Symphony (No. 93). The orchestra surpassed both numerically and otherwise the one Haydn had commanded at Eszterháza. The master conducted from a harpsichord, as had always been his custom. The concertmaster was the worthy Salomon, who played on a superb Stradivarius. Dr. Burney spoke of “a degree of enthusiasm such as almost amounted to frenzy.” The Adagio of the symphony had to be repeated. The Morning Chronicle wrote: “We cannot suppress our very anxious hope that the first musical genius of the age may be induced by our liberal welcome to take up his residence in England.” It was a wish which speedily spread. Even the King pressed the composer to make his home there and when, with the best grace in the world Haydn assured him his Continental obligations would not permit him to do so, the monarch was more or less offended. One reason the master gave for his refusal was that “he could not leave his wife”—though the “Infernal Beast” was probably farthest from his thoughts! What really stood in the way of a permanent English residence was the fear of the tremendous drain on his creative powers his popularity might entail. He was, indeed, on the threshold of his greatest achievements and he was strong and healthy. All the same he was not growing younger. And he knew what the strain of being incessantly lionized would do in the long run.
For the time being, however, British adulation only had the effect of making Haydn more splendidly productive than ever. The twelve Salomon symphonies (six composed for Haydn’s first visit to London, the remaining set written for his second a few years later) are indisputably Haydn’s greatest symphonic creations. Let us mention a few of them: There is the so-called “Military” Symphony (Haydn’s symphonies are more easily distinguished by their sometimes fanciful titles, than by keys or opus numbers); the “Clock”, with its Andante, marked by a persistent tick-tock rhythm; the symphony “With the Kettledrum Roll”; the “Surprise”, with its folk-like melody and its title derived from a wholly unexpected fortissimo (which Haydn believed would “wake up the old ladies”) following a placid folk-like phase—yet actually more of a “surprise” from the astonishing harmonies heard just before the close of the variation movement.
The London Symphonies, together with “The Creation” and “The Seasons” as well as certain of the great string quartets, parts of which so astoundingly foreshadow the idiom of the Romantic period, are, in reality, the summits of Haydn’s inspiration. It is a question if his genius would have unfolded itself so magnificently without the stimulus which came to the master from his two visits to England. In July, 1791, he was invited to the Oxford Commemoration to receive from the University the honorary degree of Doctor of Music. The occasion proved to be a love feast. Three concerts were given in Haydn’s honor, at one of which he conducted his G major Symphony (No. 92), written several years earlier, but henceforth called the “Oxford” Symphony. As his “exercise” he wrote for the University a three part crab canon, “Thy Voice, O Harmony is Divine”. For three days he went about in “cherry and cream-colored silk”. “I wish my friends in Vienna could have seen me”, he wrote, remarking in his diary “I had to pay one and a half guineas for the bell peals at Oxford when I received the Doctor’s degree, and half a guinea for hiring the gown. The journey cost six guineas.” By no means a cheap honor! At the same time it is worth-while mentioning a statement of his to Dies, his biographer: “I owe much, I might say everything in England to the Doctor’s degree; for thanks to it I met the first men and was admitted to the most important houses.”
One of Haydn’s greatest and most fruitful experiences in London was his attendance in 1791 at a huge Handel Commemoration in Westminster Abbey. It was a prodigious affair with more than a thousand participants. Handel’s masterpieces may not have been intimately familiar to Haydn, though the Baron Van Swieten in Vienna made a cult both of Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach. In Westminster Abbey, however, with such a gigantic array of performers and a public brought up in the reverence of Handel’s masterpieces the effect of a creation like “Messiah” was no less than shattering on Haydn. When he heard the “Hallelujah” chorus he burst into tears with the exclamation “Handel is the master of us all!” And it seems to have been the impact of Handel which moved him to contemplate an oratorio of his own. The outcome of this Handelian experience and of the great British tradition of massive choruses became, in due time, “The Creation” and “The Seasons.”
Haydn was immensely busy in England but he was thoroughly enjoying himself. He was entertained for five entire weeks at the home of a rich banker who lived in the country and who asked Haydn to give music lessons to his daughters, yet tactfully left the composer as much alone as he wished to be. So he was able to rest a little from the noise of London. Another time he went by boat from Westminster Bridge to Richmond and had dinner on a lovely island in the Thames; or he went to a dance at the home of the Lord Mayor of London, leaving when he found the room too hot and the music too bad; then he remained for three days at a castle where the Duke of York and his bride were spending their honeymoon. “Oh, my dear good lady”, he exclaimed in a letter to Marianne von Genzinger, “how sweet is some degree of liberty! I had a kind prince, but was obliged at times to be dependent on base souls. I often sighed for release and now I have it in some measure. I am quite sensible of this benefit, though my mind is burdened with more work. The consciousness of being no longer a servant sweetens all my toil.”
At a concert given in York House, where Haydn played, Salomon led an orchestra and the King and Queen were present, the composer was formally presented by the Prince of Wales to George III. The monarch talked for some time to the former “servant” of the Eszterházys and said, among other things, “Dr. Haydn, you have written a good deal.” Whereupon Haydn answered: “Yes, Sire, a great deal more than is good.” The King had the last word, however, and replied: “Oh, no; the world contradicts you.” There can be no question, however, that on both his visits to England Haydn was called upon to subject his creative powers to a terrific strain. The strangest part of it was that the artist, whose years were now accumulating, seemed actually to be making up for the slow development of his genius in his young manhood. Not only were the works he produced greater and greater, but his assimilation of great and new musical influences was progressing steadily.
Apart from his other English activities there was no end of sight-seeing to be done, complicated with a considerable amount of teaching. At the end of the music season the “worn out” master, went to Vauxhall Gardens, was delighted with the place where, among other things the music was “fairly good” and where “coffee and milk cost nothing”. However, he did have a few twinges of the “English rheumatism” and almost submitted to an operation for his nose polypus—though when they tied him to a chair and prepared to operate he “kicked and screamed so vigorously”, that the surgeon and his assistants had to give it up.
Not even a Haydn escaped intrigues and baseless slander. A rival concert organization, unable to win him away from Salomon launched rumors that the composer was showing signs of exhaustion and then sought to play off against Haydn the aging master’s devoted pupil, Ignaz Pleyel. Another thing he seems not to have managed avoiding was a love affair. “There were certainly quite a few innocent friendships with beautiful women”, relates Dr. Geiringer, “but they did not prevent the inflammable master from enjoying a more significant romance as well”. Strangely enough, we know about it only from the letters of the lady in question, which Haydn carefully copied because, presumably, she wanted her correspondence back! So far as we have this interchange it is quite one-sided and none of Haydn’s letters to her remain. The lady in the case was a widow, a Mrs. Schroeter. Dr. Burney referred to her as “a young lady of considerable fortune”. Later, Haydn spoke of her to Dies, as “an English widow in London who loved me. Though 60 years old, she was still lovely and amiable, and in all likelihood I should have married her if I had been single.” Like Marianne von Genzinger, Mrs. Schroeter was musical and did copyist work for the composer. Actually, she seems to have been much younger than Haydn’s estimate. Here are a few extracts from the letters he received from her in London: “... Pray inform me how you do, and let me know my Dear Love: When will you dine with me? I shall be truly happy to see you to dinner, either tomorrow or Tuesday.... I am truly anxious and impatient to see you and I wish to have as much of your company as possible; indeed my dear Haydn I feel for you the fondest and tenderest affection the human heart is capable of, and I ever am with the firmest attachment my Dear Love, most Sincerely, Faithfully and most affectionately Yours...”. Another time, the devoted Mrs. Schroeter is concerned about his health: “I am told you was (sic!) at your Study’s yesterday; indeed, my D.L., I am afraid it will hurt you.... I almost tremble for your health. Let me prevail on you my much loved Haydn not to keep to your study’s so long at one time. My dear love if you could know how precious your welfare is to me, I flatter myself you wou’d endeavor to preserve it, for my sake as well as your own.” Another time: “... I hope to hear you are quite well, shall be happy to see you at dinner and if you can come at three o’clock it would give me great pleasure, as I should be particularly glad to see you my Dear before the rest of our friends come.”
All the same, Haydn amid his numberless duties, found time to write to Luigia Polzelli, who was now in Italy. She was not a little jealous and the composer found it wise to placate her with extravagantly ardent letters and money. He would have been happy to see her son, Pietro, in London but he was much less anxious to have Luigia. Meantime, the “Infernal Beast” again stirred up trouble by sending notes to her detested rival hinting at Haydn’s infidelities!
Let us herewith end the story of Luigia. Haydn had once promised to marry her when he should be free. When, at long last Maria Anna Apollonia died in 1800, the Polzelli chose to remind him of his promise. But he solved the difficulty by giving her black on white, his solemn word to marry “no one else” and he also promised her a substantial pension for the rest of her life. Having pocketed that “promise” Luigia promptly married an Italian singer! Her son, Pietro, died in 1796. Haydn sincerely mourned him but turned his attention to another pupil of his, Sigismund Neukomm.
The wanderer came back to Vienna in midsummer, 1792. After the exhilaration of the first English trip the return to Vienna, for all his honors and distinctions, was chilling. No one seemed to care greatly. Moreover, there was one irreplaceable loss; Mozart was no more; and early in 1793 another blow struck Haydn—Marianne von Genzinger died at 38. Here was a calamity in its way rivaling the tragedy of Mozart. Haydn’s resilient nature recovered even from the death of Marianne. But a certain sweetness departed with her and never returned. Singularly enough, there entered into his musical life about this time a force one might assume would have fortified him to bear the burden of his poignant losses. Beethoven arrived in Vienna from Bonn bearing the following message from Count Waldstein: “Dear Beethoven, you are traveling to Vienna in fulfillment of your long-cherished wish. The tutelary genius of Mozart is still weeping and bewailing the death of her favorite. With the inexhaustible Haydn she has found refuge, but no occupation, and now she is waiting to leave him and associate herself with someone else. Labor assiduously and receive Mozart’s spirit from the hands of Haydn.”
* * *
Haydn was the wrong teacher for Beethoven and Beethoven the wrong pupil for Haydn. The young man’s relations with the old master were kind and friendly (Beethoven, according to his diaries, treated Haydn to “chocolate twenty-two times” and to “coffee six times”). But there was a spiritual gulf between them of which they both became aware. Haydn, indeed, foreshadowed musical romanticism, yet he did not, like his new pupil, arrogantly identify himself with it. Beethoven had none of that soul of a servitor which Haydn had acquired through his long career; so it was not without reason that the teacher used to allude to the hot-headed pupil as “the Grand Mogul”. Moreover, Beethoven wanted to be instructed in counterpoint the hard way; and he was greatly irritated when Haydn did not carefully correct his technical exercises. Therefore, though the relationship remained outwardly amicable and the lessons went on, Beethoven changed teachers. He placed himself in the hands of the composer, Johann Schenk, and of the contrapuntist, Johann Albrechtsberger. As Schenk had told Beethoven in looking over some of his technical work, Haydn was now too busy composing great masterworks to be occupied by the needs of a particularly obstreperous student.
In 1794 Haydn started out a second time for London, but this time not in Salomon’s company. Yet as he did not wish to make the journey unattended he decided on one of his young friends for an escort—Polzelli, Beethoven or some other. His usual luck attended him when he picked Johann Elssler, whose father had copied music at Eszterháza. Johann was Haydn’s godson and in the fullness of time he became the father of the famous dancer, Fanny Elssler. He idolized Haydn, served him hand and foot, was secretary, copyist and the first to assist Haydn in cataloguing his works. On this English visit Haydn traveled rather more extensively than the first time. He went to the Isle of Wight, to Southampton, to Waverly Abbey, to Winchester. He went to Hampton Court, which reminded him of Eszterháza. He heard “miserable trash” at the Haymarket Theatre and even worse at Sadler’s Wells. In Bath he met a Miss Brown, “an amiable discreet person”, who had the additional advantage of “a beautiful mother”; he saw the grave of “Turk, a faithful dog and not a man”; and he composed music to a poem by the conductor of the Bath Harmonic Society, “What Art Expresses”.
In August, 1795, Haydn was back in Vienna, and although the heart-breaks of the previous return were spared him he found plenty of new organizational labor awaiting him at Eszterháza, where a new prince, Nicholas II, a grandson of “The Magnificent” now held sway. His artistic tastes, though pronounced, did not run primarily in the directions of music. He gave Cherubini a gorgeous and costly ring, he liked the music of Reutter and Michael Haydn more than that of the great Eszterházy Capellmeister, and then insulted Beethoven with a stupid remark about the latter’s C major Mass. He even criticised Haydn’s management of some detail at an orchestral rehearsal, whereupon the now thoroughly irascible master turned on his patron with a wrathy: “Your Highness, it is my job to decide this!” He felt now that a Doctor of Music at Oxford should be addressed more respectfully than simply as “Haydn”.
* * *
In London the composer once said: “I want to write a work which will give permanent fame to my name in the world.” After his numberless symphonies, his masses, his clavier works, his vast store of chamber music, his concertos, his operatic miscellany, his songs and arias—after all these what could remain? England had given him one unrivaled experience from which he could nourish his genius—the mighty Handel Commemoration, in Westminster Abbey. Haydn had experimented in countless forms, but one. That was the oratorio and in this he could undertake new flights.
Where should he find a subject? Some say that a musical friend of Haydn’s answered the master by opening a Bible standing handy and exclaiming: “There! Take that and begin at the beginning!” Others maintain that Salomon gave him a libretto which one Lidley had pieced together from Milton’s “Paradise Lost” for Handel. Dr. Geiringer believes that both accounts may be true. At all events, Haydn returned to Vienna with the text. It was, however, in English, which Haydn understood imperfectly. It was necessary, consequently, to find an accomplished translator. As usual, good fortune attended him. Gottfried van Swieten, a literatteur, prefect of the Vienna Royal Library, friend of Mozart, worshipper of Handel and Bach, who thought highly of Haydn, was wealthy even if despotic, yet still after a fashion musical—this man was able to furnish Haydn what he required. Nay, more, “he got together a group of twelve music-loving noblemen and each guaranteed a contribution to defray the expenses of performance and pay an honorarium to the composer.” And Haydn set jubilantly and, withal, reverently to work. He “spent much time over it, because he intended it to last a long time.”
The labor gave him extraordinary happiness. It answered his inmost wants. Here he could give the freest possible rein to all that inborn optimism of his nature. Always profoundly religious, as free from doubt and skepticism as a child, his reverence was as sincere as it was sunny. Here he walked, literally, “hand in hand with his God”. There came to the surface, moreover, all those springs of folk-song influence which were either remembered or subconsciously wrought into the fabric of his being. And he was now working on a newer and larger scale than hitherto. “Never was I so devout as when composing ‘The Creation’” he afterwards said. “I knelt down every day and prayed to God to strengthen me in my work.” If his inspiration ever threatened to grow sluggish “I rose from the pianoforte and began to say my rosary”. This cure, he insisted, never failed.
The curious aspect of “The Creation” is that, though composed to a German translation of the English text, it is one of those rare masterpieces which actually sound better in a translation than in the original. The answer to this springs probably from the circumstance that “The Creation” is, in point of fact, an Anglo-Saxon heritage. An examination of numerous details of its setting and declamation make it clear that, almost subconsciously, Haydn has set and accompanied the English words in more subtly revealing fashion than the German. Similarly, Haydn achieved in the whole work that effect at which he was aiming. Writing to her daughter, the Princess Eleanore Liechtenstein said of the oratorio, “One has to shed tears about the greatness, the majesty, the goodness of God. The soul is uplifted. One cannot but love and admire.”
The first performance of “The Creation” was given at the palace of Prince Schwarzenberg in Vienna on April 29, 1798. Only invited guests attended this and the second performance, though the mobs outside were so great that extra detachments of police had to be summoned. Haydn conducted, not from a keyboard, but in the modern way, with a baton. The rendering was superb, the audience enraptured. Haydn himself said later: “One moment I was as cold as ice, the next I seemed on fire. More than once I was afraid I should have a stroke.” “The Creation” promptly spread over the world. In England it “was to prove so unfailing an attraction that proceeds from it, mostly given to charitable institutions, by far surpassed even the receipts from the London benefit concerts that once had seemed so extraordinary to Haydn”. In Paris Bonaparte was on his way to hear a performance of it when a bomb exploded in the street through which he was passing, narrowly missing his carriage. In America it took root in short order.
The score deserves, in reality, a much more detailed scrutiny than can be given here. The introduction, the “Representation of Chaos”, does not receive the attention it actually merits. There is a warmth of color to the writing, particularly to the woodwind, which is something new in Haydn. And the closing bars of the amazing page are the more startling because they provide a foretaste of one of the most striking passages in Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”. It may be mentioned, in passing, that this is by no means the only time when Haydn affords an amazing Wagnerian presage.
The great and even more celebrated moment in the opening choral number of the oratorio is the passage “Let there be Light and there was Light”. From a thin, gray C minor we are suddenly overwhelmed with a sudden and mighty C major chord—an unmistakable sunburst in tone. In all music this tremendous moment has not its like unless it be a similar episode—also a sunrise and by curiously related means—at the opening of Richard Strauss’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra”. From the very first this moment in “The Creation” overpowered the listeners and after a century and a half it has lost not a vestige of its glory. At his last appearance in a concert hall, Haydn, only a few weeks from his end, was taken to a performance of his work. At this episode the old master pointed upwards with the words “Not from me—from there, above, comes everything!”
The strain of unending toil was beginning to tell on Haydn, though the amazing aspect of it is that these latest works of his do not betray the slightest diminution of freshness or inventive powers. Yet on June 12, 1799, he wrote to Breitkopf und Härtel a letter which deserves attention: “My business unhappily expands with my advancing years, and it almost seems as if, with the decrease of my mental powers, my inclination and impulse to work increase. Oh God! how much yet remains to be done in this splendid art, even by a man like myself! The world, indeed, daily pays me many compliments, even on the fervor of my latest works; but no one can believe the strain and effort it costs me to produce them, inasmuch as time after time my feeble memory and the unstrung state of my nerves so completely crush me to earth, that I fall into the most melancholy condition. For days afterwards I am incapable of formulating one single idea, till at length my heart is revived by providence, and I seat myself at the piano and begin once more to hammer away at it. Then all goes well again, God be praised. I only wish and hope that the critics may not handle my ‘Creation’ with too great severity and be too hard on it. They may possibly find the musical orthography faulty in various passages, and perhaps other things also, which for so many years I have been accustomed to consider as minor points, but the genuine connoisseur will see the real cause as readily as I do, and willingly ignore such stumbling blocks. This, however, is entirely entre nous; or I might be accused of conceit and arrogance, from which, however, my Heavenly Father has preserved me all my life long.”
Haydn had still a prodigious amount of work before him. Chief of all was another full length oratorio, “The Seasons”, based on James Thomson’s didactic poem. Here again the Baron Van Swieten edited and translated, though he made use of several German poems in addition to Thomson’s (of which he altered the “unhappy” ending). The composer worked for three years on “The Seasons”, not completing it till 1801. It seems to have tested his powers sorely. It was no less optimistic a document than “The Creation”, but by and large an outspoken Nature piece (conceived in Rousseau’s “Back to Nature” philosophy), yet with only transient religious undertones and without the genuinely Biblical quality of “The Creation”. Still, the truly amazing part of “The Seasons” is its incessant vitality, the charm of its pictorial aspect and the unending freshness of its inspiration. All the same, the magnificent work made unmistakable inroads on Haydn’s vitality. He paid for its success with his health and was in the habit of saying, from now on, “‘The Seasons’ has given me the death blow!” Actually, he had suffered a physical breakdown of a sort shortly after one of the productions of “The Creation”. He had to take to his bed and, intermittently, the flow of his inspiration threatened to halt. But invariably he would recover, both physically and mentally. He revised his earlier “Seven Last Words” as an oratorio; he arranged 250 Scotch folksongs for the Edinburgh publisher, George Thomson; the number of his string quartets increased. Performances of “The Creation” multiplied everywhere. Honors poured in upon him from all quarters. He was warmly invited to come to Paris and his old pupil, Pleyel, was dispatched to fetch him. Fortunately, Haydn spared himself the exertions of such a trip. Still, France struck a medal in his honor, which gave the master no end of pleasure; and he received the warmest expressions of affection from the inhabitants of the little Baltic island of Rügen, where a performance of “The Creation” was given. He even strove to be his own publisher and sought subscriptions for the score of the oratorio. His friends rallied magnificently to his aid—the English royal family, the Empress of Austria, the innumerable friends from his native country and from Britain (England as much as Austria now claimed him as one of her very own!). Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton visited Eszterháza and it is said that for two days the Lady “would not budge from Haydn’s side”, while Nelson gave him a gold watch in exchange for the master’s pen!
The great composition of this later period of Haydn’s life is beyond dispute his patriotic anthem, “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser”—the Austrian hymn, as, through thick and thin, it has remained. That, too, was indirectly a product of his English experiences! He had always been stirred in London by “God Save the King” and it became his ambition to provide something similar for his own nation. The great melody that resulted bears a distinct resemblance to a Croatian folksong of the Eisenstadt region, “Zalostna zarucnica”, which certain musicologists maintain served as the inspiration for Haydn’s melody, though the derivation has not been definitely established. But others than Austrians have made the song their own. The Germans, for instance, consorted it to a poem by Hoffmann von Fallersleben and thereby it became “Deutschland über alles”; the English-speaking nations put it to churchly uses and made of it the hymn “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken”.
While he was still engaged in exacting creative work he set a schedule for himself which he appears to have followed rigorously. A daily plan of activities (written by Elssler, Dr. Geiringer surmises) furnishes a picture of “Herr von Haydn’s” routine. He was living in a house he had bought in the “Gumpendorfer” district of Vienna. We read that “in the summertime he rose at 6.30 A.M. First he shaved, which he did for himself up to his 73rd year, and then he completed dressing. If a pupil were present, he had to play his lesson on the piano to Herr von Haydn, while the master dressed. All mistakes were promptly corrected and a new task was then set. This occupied an hour and a half. At 8 o’clock sharp, breakfast had to be on the table, and immediately after breakfast Haydn sat down at the piano improvising and drafting sketches of some composition. From 8 o’clock to 11.30 his time was taken up in this way. At 11.30 calls were received or made, or he went for a walk until 1.30. The hour from 2 to 3 was reserved for dinner, after which Haydn immediately did some little work in the house or resumed his musical occupations. He scored the morning’s sketches, devoting three to four hours to this. At 8 P.M. Haydn usually went out and at 9 he came home and sat down to write a score or he took a book and read until 10 P.M. At that time he had supper, which consisted of bread and wine. Haydn made a rule of eating nothing but bread and wine at night and infringed it only on sundry occasions when he was invited to supper. He liked gay conversation and some merry entertainment at the table. At 11.30 he went to bed, in his old age even later. Wintertime made no difference to the schedule, except that Haydn got up half an hour later.”
* * *
But despite this pleasant and comfortable routine Haydn was now beginning to age rapidly. On December 26, 1803, he conducted for the last time and, characteristically, for a hospital fund, the work he directed being the “Seven Last Words”. He wrote two movements of a string quartet, but by 1806, he had given up all idea of finishing it and, as a conclusion, added a few bars of a song he had written in the past few years, “Der Greis”, which begins “Hin ist alle meine Kraft, alt und schwach bin ich” (“Gone is all my strength, old and weak am I”). Friends and admirers in ever increasing numbers sought him out to pay their respects. There came Cherubini, the Abbé Vogler, the violinist Baillot, Pleyel, members of the Weber family, Mme. Bigot—a friend of Beethoven and afterwards one of the piano teachers of Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn; Hummel, the widow of Mozart, the Princess Eszterházy, the actor, Iffland.
In 1805 a rumor gained currency that Haydn had died. The world was shocked. Cherubini even composed a cantata on Haydn’s passing; Kreutzer a violin concerto based on themes from Haydn’s works, while in Paris a special memorial concert was arranged and Mozart’s Requiem was to be given. Suddenly there came a letter from the master saying that “he was still of this base world.” And he thanked his French admirers for their well-meant gestures adding “had I only known of it in time, I would have traveled to Paris to conduct the Requiem myself!” Johann Wenzel Tomaschek told how Haydn greeted any visitor who might drop in: “He sat in an armchair, very much dressed up. A powdered wig with sidelocks, a white neckband with a bold buckle, a white richly embroidered waistcoat of heavy silk, in the midst of which shone a splendid jabot, a dress of fine coffee-colored cloth with embroidered cuffs, black silk breeches, white silk hose, shoes with large silver buckles curved over the instep, and on a little table next to him a pair of white kid gloves made up his attire.”
He made one last public appearance. It was at a performance of “The Creation” given at the Vienna University in celebration of the master’s 76th birthday. About the only person of prominence not present was Prince Eszterházy; but he at least sent his carriage to bring the master to the concert! At the hall were assembled not alone the high nobility but all the most distinguished musicians of the capital, among them Beethoven, Salieri, Hummel, Gyrowetz. Salieri conducted. The concertmaster was Franz Clement, for whom Beethoven wrote his violin concerto. The French ambassador, seeing Haydn wearing the gold medal of the Parisian Concerts des Amateurs, exclaimed: “This medal is not enough; you should receive all the medals that France can distribute!” The Princess Eszterházy not only sat next to the master but wrapped her own shawl about him. It was on this occasion that Haydn made his historic remark when the audience burst into applause at the sublime passage “And there was Light.” As the concert progressed he became visibly excited and it was thought advisable to take him home. As Haydn left the auditorium Beethoven knelt down before him and reverently kissed his hand and brow. Before the old man finally vanished from view he turned one last time and lifted his hand in blessing on the assemblage.
* * *
By the spring of 1809 the Napoleonic wars were again devastating Austria. The bombardment of the western suburbs of Vienna brought the battle uncomfortably close to Haydn’s home. Nevertheless, the master refused to leave and when a bomb fell close to the Gumpendorfer house the old man reassured his frightened servants with the words: “Children, don’t be frightened; where Haydn is, nothing can happen to you!” But the continuous noise and excitement shook the invalid’s nerves so severely that he took to his bed and left it only once. This was to be carried to his piano, there to play three times in succession and with the deepest possible feeling his own Austrian hymn, as if to defy those hostile powers unwilling to let him die in peace. On the same day, however, he was visited by a French officer, Clément Sulémy, who called to pay his respects to the composer of “The Creation” and who, before he left, sat down at the piano and sang the aria “In Native Worth” “in so manly and so sublime a style, with so much truth of expression and musical sentiment” that Haydn embraced him and said he had never heard the air delivered in so masterly a fashion. Sulémy fell in battle the same day, a fact which the composer, fortunately, never learned.
But his strength was now quite gone. He could only whisper to those about him: “Children, be comforted, I am well.” Then he lapsed into unconsciousness and shortly after midnight, May 31, 1809, he passed. Napoleon saw to it that a military guard of honor was stationed at his door. At his obsequies not only the cultural world of Vienna but also the highest French military officials were present. And Mozart’s Requiem was sung.
* * *
The story cannot be ended without an allusion to its macabre epilogue. Haydn was laid to rest in the Hundsturm Cemetery. But soon afterwards Prince Eszterházy received permission to reinter the master in Eisenstadt. There were lengthy delays, however, and in 1814 Sigismund Neukomm was shocked to find the tomb in a state of dilapidation. He placed on it a marble slab with Haydn’s favorite quotation from Horace, “Non omnis moriar” (“I shall not wholly die”), set as a five part canon. Six years later the Duke of Cambridge remarked to Prince Eszterházy “How fortunate was the man who employed this Haydn in his lifetime and now possesses his mortal remains!” The Prince said nothing, but experienced a sharp twinge of conscience. So he gave orders for the exhumation and the reburial in the Eisenstadt Bergkirche, where Haydn had conducted a number of his masses. When the coffin was opened the officials were appalled to find a body without a head! It developed that a certain Carl Rosenbaum, once a secretary to Prince Eszterházy, and a penitentiary official, one Johann Peter, had bribed the Viennese gravedigger, to steal the skull which they wanted for phrenological experiments. Peter had made an elaborately decorated box (with windows and a satin cushion) for the gruesome relic. The outraged Prince sent the police to Peter, who, meantime had given the skull to Rosenbaum. The police were quite as unsuccessful at the Rosenbaum house, for the singer, Therese Gassmann Rosenbaum, promptly hid the skull in her mattress and went to bed, pretending illness. The hideous farce went a step further, when Rosenbaum, expecting a bribe, substituted the head of some unidentified old man. When Rosenbaum died he left Haydn’s skull to Peter, obligating him to bequeath it to the museum of the Society of the Friends of Music, in Vienna, where it was preserved since 1895.
It was reported that the Nazis, after the Austrian Anschluss in 1938, proposed to bury the head in Haydn’s coffin at Eisenstadt. Whether they carried out this plan is not known to the present writer.
COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS
by
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK
COLUMBIA RECORDS
Under the Direction of Bruno Walter
- Barber—Symphony No. 1, Op. 9
- Beethoven—Concerto for Violin, Cello, Piano and Orchestra in C major (with J. Corigliano, L. Rose and W. Hendl)—LP
- Beethoven—Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) (with Rudolf Serkin, piano)—LP
- Beethoven—Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra (with Joseph Szigeti)—LP
- Beethoven—Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21—LP
- Beethoven—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”)—LP
- Beethoven—Symphony No. 5 in C minor—LP
- Beethoven—Symphony No. 8 in F major—LP
- Beethoven—Symphony No. 9 in D minor (“Choral”) (with Elena Nikolaidi, contralto and Raoul Jobin, tenor)—LP
- Brahms—Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir)—LP
- Dvorak—Slavonic Dance No. 1
- Dvorak—Symphony No. 4 in G major—LP
- Mahler—Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano)—LP
- Mahler—Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor
- Mendelssohn—Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP
- Mendelssohn—Scherzo (from Midsummer Night’s Dream)
- Mozart—Cosi fan Tutti—Overture
- Mozart—Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”), K. 551—LP
- Schubert—Symphony No. 7 in C major—LP
- Schumann, R.—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Rhenish”)—LP
- Smetana—The Moldau (“Vltava”)—LP
- Strauss, J.—Emperor Waltz
Under the Direction of Leopold Stokowski
- Copland—Billy the Kid (2 parts)
- Griffes—“The White Peacock”, Op. 7, No. 1—LP 7″
- Ippolitow—“In the Village” from Caucassian Sketches (W. Lincer and M. Nazzi, soloists)
- Khachaturian—“Masquerade Suite”—LP
- Messiaen—“L’Ascension”—LP
- Sibelius—“Maiden with the Roses”—LP
- Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32—LP
- Tschaikowsky—Overture Fantasy—Romeo and Juliet—LP
- Vaughan-Williams—Greensleeves
- Vaughan-Williams—Symphony No. 6 in E minor—LP
- Wagner—Die Walkure—Wotan Farewell and Magic Fire Music (Act III—Scene 3)
- Wagner—Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and Siegfried’s Funeral March—(“Die Götterdämmerung”)—LP
Under the Direction of Efrem Kurtz
- Chopin—Les Sylphides—LP
- Glinka—Mazurka—“Life of the Czar”—LP 7″
- Grieg—Concerto in A minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 16 (with Oscar Levant, piano)—LP
- Herold—Zampa—Overture
- Kabalevsky—“The Comedians”, Op. 26—LP
- Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite No. 1—LP
- Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite No. 2—LP
- Lecoq—Mme. Angot Suite—LP
- Prokofieff—March, Op. 99—LP
- Rimsky-Korsakov—The Flight of the Bumble Bee—LP 7″
- Shostakovich—Polka No. 3, “The Age of Gold”—LP 7″
- Shostakovich—Symphony No. 9—LP
- Shostakovich—Valse from “Les Monts D’Or”—LP
- Villa-Lobos—Uirapurú—LP
- Wieniawski—Concerto No. 2 in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 22 (with Isaac Stern, violin)—LP
Under the Direction of Charles Münch
- D’Indy—Symphony on a French Mountain Air for Orchestra and Piano—LP
- Milhaud—Suite Francaise—LP
- Mozart—Concerto No. 21 for Piano and Orchestra in C major—LP
- Saint-Saens—Symphony in C minor, No. 3 for Orchestra, Organ and Piano, Op. 78—LP
Under the Direction of Artur Rodzinski
- Bizet—Carmen—Entr’acte (Prelude to Act III)
- Bizet—Symphony in C major—LP
- Brahms—Symphony No. 1 in C minor—LP
- Brahms—Symphony No. 2 in D major—LP
- Copland—A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator)—LP
- Enesco—Roumanian Rhapsody—A major, No. 1—LP
- Gershwin—An American in Paris—LP
- Gould—“Spirituals” for Orchestra—LP
- Ibert—“Escales” (Port of Call)—LP
- Liszt—Mephisto Waltz—LP
- Moussorgsky—Gopack (The Fair at Sorotchinski)—LP
- Moussorgsky-Ravel—Pictures at an Exhibition—LP
- Prokofieff—Symphony No. 5—LP
- Rachmaninoff—Concerto No. 2 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra (with Gyorgy Sandor, piano)
- Rachmaninoff—Symphony No. 2 in E minor
- Saint-Saens—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4 in C minor (with Robert Casadesus)—LP
- Sibelius—Symphony No. 4 in A minor
- Tschaikowsky—Nutcracker Suite—LP
- Tschaikowsky—Suite “Mozartiana”—LP
- Tschaikowsky—Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathetique”)—LP
- Wagner—Lohengrin—Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III—Scene 2)—(with Helen Traubel, soprano and Kurt Baum, tenor)—LP
- Wagner—Lohengrin—Elsa’s Dream (Act I, Scene 2) (with Helen Traubel, soprano)
- Wagner—Siegfried Idyll—LP
- Wagner—Tristan und Isolde—Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano)
- Wagner—Die Walkure—Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Herbert Janssen, baritone)—LP
- Wagner—Die Walkure—Duet (Act I, Scene 3) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Emery Darcy, tenor)—LP
- Wolf-Ferrari—“Secret of Suzanne”, Overture
Under the Direction of Igor Stravinsky
- Stravinsky—Firebird Suite—LP
- Stravinsky—Fireworks (Feu d’Artifice)—LP
- Stravinsky—Four Norwegian Moods
- Stravinsky—Le Sacre du Printemps (The Consecration of the Spring)—LP
- Stravinsky—Scenes de Ballet—LP
- Stravinsky—Suite from “Petrouchka”—LP
- Stravinsky—Symphony in Three Movements—LP
Under the Direction of John Barbirolli
- Bach-Barbirolli—Sheep May Safely Graze (from the “Birthday Cantata”)—LP
- Berlioz—Roman Carnival Overture
- Brahms—Symphony No. 2, in D major
- Brahms—Academic Festival Overture—LP
- Bruch—Concerto No. 1, in G minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP
- Debussy—First Rhapsody for Clarinet (with Benny Goodman, clarinet)
- Debussy—Petite Suite: Ballet
- Mozart—Concerto in B-flat major (with Robert Casadesus, piano)
- Mozart—Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183
- Ravel—La Valse
- Rimsky-Korsakov—Capriccio Espagnol
- Sibelius—Symphony No. 1, in E minor
- Sibelius—Symphony No. 2, in D major
- Smetana—The Bartered Bride—Overture
- Tschaikowsky—Theme and Variations (from Suite No. 3 in G)—LP
Under the Direction of Sir Thomas Beecham
- Mendelssohn—Symphony No. 4, in A major (“Italian”)
- Sibelius—Melisande (from “Pelleas and Melisande”)
- Sibelius—Symphony No. 7 in C major—LP
- Tschaikowsky—Capriccio Italien
Under the Direction of Andre Kostelanetz
- Gershwin—Concerto in F (with Oscar Levant)—LP
Under the Direction of Dimitri Mitropoulos
- Khachaturian—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (with Oscar Levant, piano)—LP
- LP—Also available on Long Playing Microgroove Recordings as well as on the conventional Columbia Masterworks.
VICTOR RECORDS
Under the Direction of Arturo Toscanini
- Beethoven—Symphony No. 7 in A major
- Brahms—Variations on a Theme by Haydn
- Dukas—The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
- Gluck—Orfeo ed Euridice—Dance of the Spirits
- Haydn—Symphony No. 4 in D major (The Clock)
- Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo
- Mozart—Symphony in D major (K. 385)
- Rossini—Barber of Seville—Overture
- Rossini—Semiramide—Overture
- Rossini—Italians in Algiers—Overture
- Verdi—Traviata—Preludes to Acts I and II
- Wagner—Excerpts—Lohengrin—Die Götterdämmerung—Siegfried Idyll
Under the Direction of John Barbirolli
- Debussy—Iberia (Images, Set 3, No. 2)
- Purcell—Suite for Strings with four Horns, Two Flutes, English Horn
- Respighi—Fountains of Rome
- Respighi—Old Dances and Airs (Special recording for members of the Philharmonic Symphony League of New York)
- Schubert—Symphony No. 4 in C minor (Tragic)
- Schumann—Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor (with Yehudi Menuhin, violin)
- Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini—Fantasia
Under the Direction of Willem Mengelberg
- J. C. Bach—Arr. Stein—Sinfonia in B-flat major
- J. S. Bach—Arr. Mahler—Air for G string (from Suite for Orchestra)
- Beethoven—Egmont Overture
- Handel—Alcina Suite
- Mendelssohn—War March of the Priests (from Athalia)
- Meyerbeer—Prophete—Coronation March
- Saint-Saens—Rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel)
- Schelling—Victory Ball
- Wagner—Flying Dutchman—Overture
- Wagner—Siegfried—Forest Murmurs (Waldweben)