Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 6, No. 6 (1932-03)

102 The Phonograph Monthly Review Franz Joseph Haydn By R. D. DARRELL 0 ,N the night of March 31st-April 1st, two hundred years ago, a son was born to a poor Austrian couple, Matthias and Maria Anna (Roller) Haydn, wagon-maker and former cook to the gentry of Robrau, a small town near the Hungarian border. The family was musical: the father sang and played harp accompaniments by ear. “Sepperl” as Franz Joseph was nicknamed, became a choir-boy, and on the change of his voice drifted naturally into the wandering, semi- vagabond life of a music student of those days. The goal of every music student was a post of Kapellmeister in the court or home of some nobleman. The path was not strewn with roses, for the luckless apprentice had to sandwich his studies as best he might among his duties as valet, accompanist, coypist and boy of all work. Even when he had obtained the coveted title, he was little more than a servant, obliged to wear livery, eat with the staff, and attend to odd jobs as well as to compose appropriate music for the multitudinous festivals and private concerts. Haydn’s natural good-humor and even temper enabled him to bear the discomforts of his profession philosophically, and he la- bored indefatigably over the new composi- tions, in “neat and clean” copies, that were incessantly demanded of him. For some thir- ty years he was assistant and full-fledged Kapellmeister to the Esterhazy family, whose head during most of this period was Prince Nicholas “the Magnificent,” himself something of a musician, a soloist on the now obsolete barytone for which instrument Hay- dn wrote nearly two hundred compositions. Haydn’s private life was as prosaic as his career. Proposing to the younger daughter of a Viennese wigmaker, he was induced by the father to take the hand of the eldest in- stead, a shrewish individual, he soon dis- covered, who valued his musical scores only for their convenience for use as curl-papers. He had one romance, but it was as luckless as his marriage. The object of his affections was also married, and years later when both were freed by the death of their spouses and Haydn had signed a formidable document to the effect that he would marry no one but Loisa Polzelli, she casually deserted him to marry a singer by the name of Franchi. In music he found the only outlet for his talents and abundant spirit. His fame assumed modest proportions. He became the friend of Mozart and other musical notables of the time. He annexed pupils, among them an uncouth, strong-tempered young man by the name of Beethoven. But for the death of Prince Nicholas and the breaking up of his orchestra Haydn would probably have remained in the service of the Esterhazy’s until his death. But thrown on his own again with a mod- est pension from the Esterhazy family, Hay- dn began to reconsider some of the invita- tions he had received and declined to visit foreign parts. An English musician and con- cert manager, utilizing what we would now call high pressure salesmanship, visited him one day and announced simply, “I am Salo- mon, of London, and have come to fetch you. We will agree on the job tomorrow.” Haydn was vastly amused by the word “job,” and finding the terms of the contract too attrac- tive to refuse, set out with some reluctance and trepidation for England. His concerts there were something in the nature of a counter-attraction to the series of one of his former pupils, Ignaz Pleyel, but they were successful, and Haydn en- joyed the dubious honors of a sensational celebrity. A year of concerts and forced composition left him exhausted, but after less than two years after he had returned to Vienna, he was again prevailed upon to visit London. During his two visits there he wrote no less than 768 pages of music, but his earnings, some 24000 gulden in Austrian money were enough to enable him to live in reasonable comfort for the rest of his life. He died in 1809, during the Napoleonic occu- pation of Vienna. The simple story of a simple soul, like his compatriots, Schubert and Bruckner, undis- tinguished save in his music. The two hun- dredth anniversary of his birth will be the occasion for much lip service to his eminence, but we may expect no festivals such as at- tended the centennials of Beethoven and Schubert, no large-scale publication of me- morial recordings.