Facts about Haydn
Haydn once remarked that he had worked on The Creation so long because he wanted it to last.
Haydn's new intentions since both oratorios took him over a year to complete.
Their relationship, documented in Haydn's letters, was evidently intense but platonic.
The development of the sonata form into a subtle and flexible mode of musical expression, which became the dominant force in Classical musical thought, owed much to Haydn and those who followed his ideas.
One of Haydn's important innovations (adopted by Mozart and Beethoven) was to make the moment of transition the focus of tremendous creativity.
An older contemporary whose work Haydn acknowledged as an important influence was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
Haydn had a huge range of responsibilities, including composition, running the orchestra, playing chamber music for and with his patrons, and eventually the mounting of operatic productions.
In 1759 (1757 according to the New Grove Encyclopedia), Haydn received his first important position, that of Kapellmeister or music director for Count Karl von Morzin.
Haydn was hugely impressed with Mozart's work, and in various ways tried to help the younger composer.
During the nearly 30 years that Haydn worked in the Eszterhбzy household, he produced a flood of compositions, and his musical style became ever more developed.
In 1779, an important change in Haydn's contract permitted him to publish his compositions without prior authorization from his employer.
The return to Vienna in 1795 marked the last turning point in Haydn's career.
When the old Kapellmeister, Gregor Werner, died in 1766, Haydn was elevated to full Kapellmeister.
Musically, the visits to England generated some of Haydn's best-known works, including the Symphony No.
Haydn sometimes recycled their overtures as symphony movements, which helped him continue his career as a symphonist during this hectic decade.
Some of Haydn's works are referred to by opus numbers, but Hob or Hoboken numbers, after Anthony van Hoboken's 1957 classification, are also frequently used.
Haydn may have had one or more children with Luigia Polzelli, a singer in the Eszterhбzy establishment with whom he carried on a long-term love affair, and to whom he often wrote on his travels.
Haydn's settings of the Catholic Mass remain among his most performed works.
In 1802, Haydn found that an illness from which he had been suffering for some time had increased greatly in severity to the point that he became physically unable to compose.
Haydn's early works date from a period in which the compositional style of the High Baroque (seen in Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel) had gone out of fashion.
The only misstep in the venture was an opera, L'anima del filosofo, which Haydn was contracted to compose, and paid a substantial sum of money for.
In 1749, Haydn had matured physically to the point that he was no longer able to sing high choral parts.
Despite his increasing age, Haydn looked to the future, exclaiming once in a letter, "how much remains to be done in this glorious art!"
Some characteristic examples of Haydn's "rollicking" finale type are found in the Symphony No.
Haydn is often described as the "father" of the classical symphony and string quartet.
The change in Haydn's approach was important in the history of music, as other composers soon were following his lead.
Audiences flocked to Haydn's concerts, and he quickly achieved wealth and fame.
A life-long resident of Austria, Haydn spent most of his career as a Noble court musician for the wealthy Esterhazy family on their remote estate.
Life in the Franck household was not easy for Haydn, who later remembered being frequently hungry as well as constantly humiliated by the filthy state of his clothing.
Haydn was a devout Roman Catholic who often turned to his rosary when he had trouble composing, a practice that he usually found to be effective.
Perhaps this is why, more than any other composer, Haydn's music is known for its humor.
Haydn's work became central to what was later described as sonata form, and his work was central to taking the binary schematic of what was then called a "melodie."
Haydn passed his audition with Reutter, and soon moved off to Vienna, where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister, the last four in the company of his younger brother Michael Haydn.
A central characteristic of Haydn's music is the development of larger structures out of very short, simple musical motifs, usually devised from standard accompanying figures.
The letters express Haydn's sense of loneliness and melancholy at his long isolation at Eszterhбza.
Mozart joined in 1784 in the middle of writing those string quartets subsequently dedicated to his Masonic brother Haydn.
Like Franck before him, Reutter did not always make sure Haydn was properly fed.
An important element of the popular style was the frequent use of folk music or folk-like material, as discussed in the article 'Haydn and folk music'.
Bach in the field of the keyboard sonata, and J.C. Bach and Leopold Mozart in the symphony, Haydn was undoubtedly the strongest overall influence on musical style in this era.
Haydn was short in stature, perhaps as a result of having been underfed throughout most of his youth.
Haydn's musical practice formed the basis of much of what was to follow in the development of tonality and musical form.
The young Haydn greatly looked forward to performances before aristocratic audiences, where the singers sometimes had the opportunity to satisfy their hunger by devouring the refreshments.
Haydn was known among his contemporaries for his kindly, optimistic, and congenial personality.
Charles Rosen has argued that this assertion on Haydn's part was not just sales talk, but meant quite seriously.
Genzinger's premature death in 1793 was a blow to Haydn, and his Variations in F minor variations for piano, (Hob.
In 1790, Shelikhov hired Alexandr Baranov to manage his Alaskan fur enterprise.
Haydn's mother, the former Maria Koller, had previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau.
Haydn's many other musical jokes include the fake endings in the quartets Op.
Several important landmarks have been observed in the evolution of Haydn's musical style.
Haydn was also the principal exponent of the double variation form, known as variations on two alternating themes, which are often major and minor mode versions of each other.
Haydn's popular style can be heard in virtually all of his later work, including the twelve London symphonies, the late quartets and piano trios, and the two late oratorios.
Both are in the Haydnhaus in Vienna, a museum dedicated to the composer.
During the years 1782 to 1785, Mozart wrote a set of string quartets thought to be inspired by Haydn's Opus 33 series.
Following the climax of the "Sturm und Drang," Haydn returned to a lighter, more overtly entertaining style.
On completion he dedicated them to Haydn, a very unusual thing to do at a time when the recipients were usually aristocrats.
Despite the backbreaking workload, Haydn considered himself fortunate to have this position.
Haydn's parents were perceptive enough to notice that their son was musically talented and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain any serious musical training.
Joseph Haydn was the brother of Michael Haydn, himself a highly regarded composer, and Johann Evangelist Haydn, a tenor.
According to Haydn's later reminiscences, his childhood family was extremely musical, and frequently sang together and with their neighbors.
Haydn's fast movements tend to be rhythmically propulsive and often impart a great sense of energy, especially in the finales.
Several of the operas, such as Il Mondo della luna (The World of the Moon), were Haydn's own works which are seldom performed today.
Haydn thus went off with Franck to Hainburg (ten miles away) and never again lived with his parents.
Haydn died, aged 77, at the end of May 1809, shortly after an attack on Vienna by the French army under Napoleon.
Instead of using stock devices to make the transition, Haydn would often find inventive ways to make the move between two expected keys.
Haydn took care to deploy this material in appropriate locations, such as the endings of sonata expositions or the opening themes of finales.
Haydn also composed the last nine in his long series of string quartets, including the Emperor, Sunrise, and Fifths quartets.
The Emperor and his court continued to rule as figureheads, while the shoguns maintained political control of the nation.
Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 in the village of Rohrau, Austria near the Hungarian border.
Haydn's early slow movements are usually not too slow in tempo, nor relaxed and reflective.
In 1790, 97 percent of the population in Connecticut were classified as "rural."
Around 1781, Haydn established a friendship with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose work he had already been influencing by example for many years.
Haydn actually considered becoming an English citizen and settling permanently, as composers such as George Frideric Handel had before him, but decided on a different course.
All but one of the portraits show Haydn wearing the grey powdered wig fashionable for men in the eighteenth century, and from the one exception we learn that Haydn was bald in adulthood.
Haydn was able to learn a great deal by osmosis simply by serving as a professional musician there.