Books: Haydn

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His Industry

The world has seen many an instance of genius without industry,
as of industry without genius. In Haydn the two were happily
wedded. He was always an early riser, and long after his student
days were over he worked steadily from sixteen to eighteen hours
a day. He lived strictly by a self-imposed routine, and was so
little addicted to what Scott called "bed-gown and slipper
tricks," that he never sat down to work or received a visitor
until he was fully dressed. He had none of Wagner's luxurious
tastes or Balzac's affectations in regard to a special attire for
work, but when engaged on his more important compositions he
always wore the ring given him by the King of Prussia. In Haydn's
case there are no incredible tales of dashing off scores in the
twinkling of an eye. That he produced so much must be attributed
to his habit of devoting all his leisure to composition. He was
not a rapid worker if we compare him with Handel and Mozart. He
never put down anything till he was "quite sure it was the right
thing"--a habit of mind indicated by his neat and uniform
handwriting [His notes had such little heads and slender tails
that he used, very properly, to call them his, flies' legs."-
Bombet, p. 97.]--and he assures us: "I never was a quick writer,
and always composed with care and deliberation. That alone," he
added, "is the way to compose works that will last, and a real
connoisseur can see at a glance whether a score has been written
in undue haste or not." He is quoted as saying that "genius is
always prolific." However the saying may be interpreted, there
does not seem to have been about him anything of what has been
called the irregular dishabille of composers, "the natural result
of the habit of genius of watching for an inspiration, and
encouraging it to take possession of the whole being when it
comes."

Habits of Composition

His practice was to sketch out his ideas roughly in the morning,
and elaborate them in the afternoon, taking pains to preserve
unity in idea and form. "That is where so many young composers
fail," he said in reference to the latter point. "They string
together a number of fragments; they break off almost as soon as
they have begun, and so at the end the listener carries off no
definite impression. "The importance of melody he specially
emphasized. "It is the air which is the charm of music," he
remarked, "and it is that which is most difficult to produce. The
invention of a fine melody is the work of genius." In another
place he says: "In vocal composition, the art of producing
beautiful melody may now almost be considered as lost; and when a
composer is so fortunate as to throw forth a passage that is
really melodious, he is sure, if he be not sensible of its
excellence, to overwhelm and destroy it by the fullness and
superfluity of his instrumental parts." [Compare Mozart's words
as addressed to Michael Kelly: "Melody is the essence of music. I
should liken one who invents melodies to a noble racehorse, and a
mere contrapuntist to a hired post-hack."]

He is stated to have always composed with the aid of the
pianoforte or harpsichord; and indeed we find him writing to
Artaria in 1788 to say that he has been obliged to buy a new
instrument "that I might compose your clavier sonatas
particularly well." This habit of working out ideas with the
assistance of the piano has been condemned by most theorists as
being likely to lead to fragmentariness. With Haydn at any rate
the result was entirely satisfactory, for, as Sir Hubert Parry
points out, the neatness and compactness of his works is perfect.
It is very likely, as Sir Hubert says, that most modern composers
have used the pianoforte a good deal--not so much to help them to
find out their ideas, as to test the details and intensify their
musical sensibility by the excitant sounds, the actual sensual
impression of which is, of course, an essential element in all
music. The composer can always hear such things in his mind, but
obviously the music in such an abstract form can never have quite
as much effect upon him as when the sounds really strike upon his
ear. [See "Studies of Great Composers, by C. Hubert Parry, p.
109.]

No Pedant

Like all the really great composers, Haydn was no pedant in the
matter of theoretical formulae, though he admitted that the rigid
rules of harmony should rarely be violated, and "never without
the compensation of some inspired effect." When he was asked
according to what rule he had introduced a certain progression,
he replied "The rules are all my very obedient humble servants."
With the quint-hunters and other faddists who would place their
shackles on the wrists of genius, he had as little patience as
Beethoven, who, when told that all the authorities forbade the
consecutive fifths in his C Minor Quartet, thundered out: "Well,
I allow them." Somebody once questioned him about an apparently
unwarranted passage in the introduction to Mozart's Quartet in C
Major. "If Mozart has written it, be sure he had good reasons for
doing so," was the conclusive reply. That fine old smoke-dried
pedant, Albrechtsberger, declared against consecutive fourths in
strict composition, and said so to Haydn. "What is the good of
such rules?" demanded Haydn. "Art is free and must not be
fettered by mechanical regulations. The cultivated ear must
decide, and I believe myself as capable as anyone of making laws
in this respect. Such trifling is absurd; I wish instead that
someone would try to compose a really new minuet." To Dies he
remarked further: "Supposing an idea struck me as good and
thoroughly satisfactory both to the ear and the heart, I would
far rather pass over some slight grammatical error than sacrifice
what seemed to me beautiful to any mere pedantic trifling." These
were sensible views. Practice must always precede theory. When we
find a great composer infringing some rule of the old text-books,
there is, to say the least, a strong presumption, not that the
composer is wrong, but that the rule needs modifying. The great
composer goes first and invents new effects: it is the business
of the theorist not to cavil at every novelty, but to follow
modestly behind and make his rules conform to the practice of the
master. [footnote: Compare Professor Prout's Treatise on
Harmony.]

Thus much about Haydn the man. Let us now turn to Haydn the
composer and his position in the history of music.

CHAPTER X

HAYDN: THE COMPOSER

The Father of Instrumental Music--The Quartets--The Symphonies--
The Salomon Set--The Sonatas--Church Music--Songs--Operas--
Orchestration--General Style--Conclusion.

The Father of Instrumental Music

Haydn has been called "the father of instrumental music," and
although rigid critics may dispute his full right to that title,
on broad grounds he must be allowed to have sufficiently earned
it. He was practically the creator of more than one of our modern
forms, and there was hardly a department of instrumental music in
which he did not make his influence felt. This was emphatically
the case with the sonata, the symphony and the string quartet.
The latter he brought to its first perfection. Before his time
this particular form of chamber music was long neglected, and for
a very simple reason. Composers looked upon it as being too
slight in texture for the display of their genius. That, as has
often been demonstrated, was because they had not mastered the
art of "writing a four-part harmony with occasional transitions
into the pure polyphonic style--a method of writing which is
indispensable to quartet composition--and also because they did
not yet understand the scope and value of each individual
instrument."

The Quartet

It would be too much to say that even Haydn fully realized the
capacities of each of his four instruments. Indeed, his quartet
writing is often bald and uninteresting. But at least he did
write in four-part harmony, and it is certainly to him that we
owe the installation of the quartet as a distinct species of
chamber music. "It is not often," says Otto Jahn, the biographer
of Mozart, "that a composer hits so exactly upon the form suited
to his conceptions; the quartet was Haydn's natural mode of
expressing his feelings." This is placing the Haydn quartet in a
very high position among the products of its creator. But its
artistic value and importance cannot well be over-estimated. Even
Mozart, who set a noble seal upon the form, admitted that it was
from Haydn he had first learned the true way to compose quartets;
and there have been enthusiasts who regarded the Haydn quartet
with even more veneration than the Haydn symphony. No fewer than
seventy-seven quartets are ascribed to him. Needless to say, they
differ considerably as regards their style and treatment, for the
first was written so early as 1755, while the last belongs to his
later years. But they are all characterized by the same
combination of manly earnestness, rich invention and mirthful
spirit. The form is concise and symmetrical, the part-writing is
clear and well-balanced, and a "sunny sweetness" is the
prevailing mood. As a discerning critic has remarked, there is
nothing in the shape of instrumental music much pleasanter and
easier to listen to than one of Haydn's quartets. The best of
them hold their places in the concert-rooms of today, and they
seem likely to live as long as there are people to appreciate
clear and logical composition which attempts nothing beyond
"organized simplicity" [See W. J. Henderson's How Music
Developed, p. 191: London, 1899]. In this department, as Goethe
said, he may be superseded, but he can never be surpassed.

The Symphony

For the symphony Haydn did no less than for the quartet. The
symphony, in his young days, was not precisely the kind of work
which now bears the name. It was generally written for a small
band, and consisted of four parts for strings and four for wind
instruments. It was meant to serve no higher purpose, as a rule,
than to be played in the houses of nobles; and on that account it
was neither elaborated as to length nor complicated as to
development. So long as it was agreeable and likely to please the
aristocratic ear, the end of the composer was thought to be
attained.

Haydn, as we know, began his symphonic work under Count Morzin.
The circumstances were not such as to encourage him to "rise to
any pitch of real greatness or depth of meaning"; and although he
was able to build on a somewhat grander scale when he went to
Eisenstadt, it was still a little comfortable coterie that he
understood himself to be writing for rather than for the musical
world at large. Nevertheless, he aimed at constant improvement,
and although he had no definite object in view, he "raised the
standard of symphony--writing far beyond any point which had been
attained before."

"His predecessors," to quote Sir Hubert Parry, "had always
written rather carelessly and hastily for the band, and hardly
ever tried to get refined and original effects from the use of
their instruments, but he naturally applied his mind more
earnestly to the matter in hand, and found out new ways of
contrasting and combining the tones of different members of his
orchestra, and getting a fuller and richer effect out of the mass
of them when they were all playing. In the actual style of the
music, too, he made great advances, and in his hands symphonies
became by degrees more vigorous, and, at the same time, more
really musical."

But the narrow limits of the Esterhazy audience and the numbing
routine of the performances were against his rising to the top
heights of his genius.

The Salomon Set

It was only when he came to write for the English public that he
showed what he could really do with the matter of the symphony.
In comparison with the twelve symphonies which he wrote for
Salomon, the other, and especially the earlier works are of
practically no account. They are interesting, of course, as
marking stages in the growth of the symphony and in the
development of the composer's genius. But regarded in themselves,
as absolute and individual entities, they are not for a moment to
be placed by the side of the later compositions. These, so far as
his instrumental music is concerned, are the crowning glory of
his life work. They are the ripe fruits of his long experience
working upon the example of Mozart, and mark to the full all
those qualities of natural geniality, humour, vigour and
simple-heartedness, which are the leading characteristics of his
style.

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

The Sonata

Haydn's sonatas show the same advance in form as his symphonies
and quartets. The older specimens of the sonata, as seen in the
works of Biber, Kuhnau, Mattheson and others, contain little more
than the germs of the modern sonata. Haydn, building on Emanuel
Bach, fixed the present form, improving so largely upon the
earlier, that we could pass from his sonatas directly to those of
Beethoven without the intervention of Mozart's as a connecting
link. Beethoven's sonatas were certainly more influenced by
Haydn's than by Mozart's. Haydn's masterpieces in this kind, like
those of Mozart and Beethoven, astonish by their order,
regularity, fluency, harmony and roundness; and by their splendid
development into full and complete growth out of the sometimes
apparently unimportant germs. [Footnote: See Ernst Pauer's
Musical Forms.] Naturally his sonatas are not all masterpieces.
Of the thirty-five, some are old-fashioned and some are quite
second-rate. But, like the symphonies, they are all of historical
value as showing the development not only of the form but of the
composer's powers. One of the number is peculiar in having four
movements; another is equally peculiar--to Haydn at least--in
having only two movements. Probably in the case of the latter the
curtailment was due to practical rather than to artistic reasons.
Like Beethoven, with the two-movement sonata in C minor, Haydn
may not have had time for a third! In several of the sonatas the
part-writing strikes one as being somewhat poor and meagre; in
others there is, to the modern ear, a surfeiting indulgence in
those turns, arpeggios and other ornaments which were inseparable
from the nature of the harpsichord, with its thin tones and want
of sustaining power. If Haydn had lived to write for the richer
and more sustained sounds of the modern pianoforte, his genius
would no doubt have responded to the increased demands made upon
it, though we may doubt whether it was multiplex enough or
intellectual enough to satisfy the deeper needs of our time. As
it is, the changes which have been made in sonata form since his
day are merely changes of detail. To him is due the fixity of the
form. [See "The Pianoforte Sonata," by J. S. Shedlock: London,
1895. Mr. Shedlock, by selecting for analysis some of the most
characteristic sonatas, shows Haydn in his three stages of
apprenticeship, mastery and maturity.]

Church Music

Of his masses and Church music generally it is difficult to speak
critically without seeming unfair. We have seen how he explained
what must be called the almost secular style of these works. But
while it is true that Haydn's masses have kept their place in the
Catholic churches of Germany and elsewhere, it is impossible, to
Englishmen, at any rate, not to feel a certain incongruity, a
lack of that dignity and solemnity, that religious "sense," which
makes our own Church music so impressive. We must not blame him
for this. He escaped the influences which made Bach and Handel
great in religious music--the influences of Protestantism, not to
say Puritanism. The Church to which he belonged was no longer
guided in its music by the principles of Palestrina. On the
contrary; it was tainted by secular and operatic influences; and
although Haydn felt himself to be thoroughly in earnest it was
rather the ornamental and decorate side of religion that he
expressed in his lively music. He might, perhaps, have written in
a more serious, lofty strain had he been brought under the noble
traditions which glorified the sacred choral works of the earlier
masters just named. In any case, his Church music has nothing of
the historical value of his instrumental music. It is marked by
many sterling and admirable qualities, but the progress of the
art would not have been materially affected if it had never come
into existence.

Songs

As a song-writer Haydn was only moderately successful, perhaps
because, having himself but a slight acquaintance with
literature, he left the selection of the words to others, with,
in many cases, unfortunate results. The form does not seem to
have been a favourite with him, for his first songs were not
produced until so late as 1780. Some of the later compositions
have, however, survived; and one or two of the canzonets, such as
"My mother bids me bind my hair" and "She never told her love,"
are admirable. The three-part and the four-part songs, as well as
the canons, of which he thought very highly himself, are also
excellent, and still charm after the lapse of so many years.

Operas

On the subject of his operas little need be added to what has
already been said. Strictly speaking, he never had a chance of
showing what he could do with opera on a grand scale. He had to
write for a small stage and a small audience, and in so far he
was probably successful. Pohl thinks that if his project of
visiting Italy had been fulfilled and his faculties been
stimulated in this direction by fresh scenes and a larger
horizon, we might have gained "some fine operas." It is doubtful;
Haydn lacked the true dramatic instinct. His placid, easy-going,
contented nature could never have allowed him to rise to great
heights of dramatic force. He was not built on a heroic mould;
the meaning of tragedy was unknown to him.

Orchestration

Regarding his orchestration a small treatise might be written.
The terms which best describe it are, perhaps, refinement and
brilliancy. Much of his success in this department must, of
course, be attributed to his long and intimate association with
the Esterhazy band. In 1766, six years after his appointment,
this band numbered seventeen instruments--six violins and viola,
one violoncello, one double bass, one flute, two oboes, two
bassoons and four horns. It was subsequently enlarged to twenty-
two and twenty-four, including trumpets and kettledrums on
special occasions. From 1776 to 1778 there were also clarinets.
This gradual extension of resources may be taken as roughly
symbolizing Haydn's own advances in the matter of orchestral
development. When he wrote his first symphony in 1759 he employed
first and second violins, violas, basses, two oboes and two
horns; in his last symphony, written in 1795, he had at his
command "the whole symphonic orchestra as it had stood when
Beethoven took up the work of orchestral development." Between
these two points Mozart had lived and died, leaving Haydn his
actual debtor so far as regards the increased importance of the
orchestra. It has been said that he learnt from Mozart the use of
the clarinet, and this is probably true, notwithstanding the fact
that he had employed a couple of clarinets in his first mass,
written in 1751 or 1752. Both composers used clarinets rarely,
but Haydn certainly did not reveal the real capacity of the
instrument or establish its position in the orchestra as Mozart
did.

From his first works onwards, he proceeded along the true
symphonic path, and an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes, two
clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, drums, and the
usual strings fairly represents the result of his contributions
to its development up to the first successful experiments of
Mozart. The names of Mozart and Haydn ought in reality to be
coupled together as the progenitors of the modern orchestral
colouring. But the superiority must be allowed to attach to
Haydn, inasmuch as his colouring is the more expansive and
decided. Some of his works, even of the later period, show great
reticence in scoring, but, on the other hand, as in "The
Creation," he knew when to draw upon the full resources of the
orchestra. It has been pointed out as worthy of remark that he
was not sufficiently trustful of his instrumental army to leave
it without the weak support of the harpsichord, at which
instrument he frequently sat during the performance of his
symphonies, and played with the orchestra, with extremely bad
effect. [Compare "The Orchestra and Orchestral Music," by W, J.
Henderson: London, 1901.] In this, however, he merely followed
the custom of his day.

General Style

Of Haydn's general style as a composer it is hardly necessary to
speak. To say that a composition is "Haydnish" is to express in
one word what is well understood by all intelligent amateurs.
Haydn's music is like his character--clear, straightforward,
fresh and winning, without the slightest trace of affectation or
morbidity. Its perfect transparency, its firmness of design, its
fluency of instrumental language, the beauty and inexhaustible
invention of its melody, its studied moderation, its child-like
cheerfulness--these are some of the qualities which mark the
style of this most genial of all the great composers.

That he was not deep, that he does not speak a message of the
inner life to the latter-day individual, who, in the Ossianic
phrase, likes to indulge in "the luxury of grief," must, of
course, be admitted. The definite embodiment of feeling which we
find in Beethoven is not to be found in him. It was not in his
nature. "My music," says Schubert, "is the production of my
genius and my misery." Haydn, like Mendelssohn, was never more
than temporarily miserable. But in music the gospel of despair
seldom wants its preachers. Today it is Tschaikowsky; tomorrow it
will be another. Haydn meant to make the world happy, not to tear
it with agony. "I know," he said, "that God has bestowed a talent
upon me, and I thank Him for it. I think I have done my duty, and
been of use in my generation by my works. Let others do the
same."

APPENDIX A: HAYDN'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

The following draft of Haydn's will is copied from Lady Wallace's
Letters of Distinguished Musicians (London, 1867), where it was
published in full for the first time. The much-corrected original
is in the Court Library at Vienna. Dies says: "Six weeks before
his death, in April 1809, he read over his will to his servants
in the presence of witnesses, and asked them whether they were
satisfied with his provisions or not. The good people were quite
taken by surprise at the kindness of their master's heart, seeing
themselves thus provided for in time to come, and they thanked
him with tears in their eyes." The extracts given by Dies vary in
some particulars from the following, because Haydn's final
testamentary dispositions were made at a later date. But, as Lady
Wallace says, it is not the legal but the moral aspect of the
affair that interests us. Here we see epitomized all the goodness
and beauty of Haydn's character. The document runs as follows:

FLORINS.

1. For holy masses,......................................12
2. To the Norman School,.................................5
3. To the Poorhouse,.....................................5
4. To the executor of my will............................200
And also the small portrait of Grassi.
5. To the pastor,........................................10
6. Expenses of my funeral, first-class,..................200
7. To my dear brother Michael, in Salzburg,..............4000
8. To my brother Johann, in Eisenstadt,..................4000
9. To my sister in Rohrau (erased, and written
underneath): "God have mercy on her soul! To the
three children of my sister,".........................2000
10. To the workwoman in Esterhazy, Anna Maria Moser,
nee Frohlichin,.......................................500
11. To the workwoman in Rohrau, Elisabeth, nee Bohme,.....500
12. To the two workwomen there (erased, and replaced
by: "To the shoemaker, Anna Loder, in Vienna"),.......200
Should she presume to make any written claims, I
declare them to be null and void, having already
paid for her and her profligate husband, Joseph
Lungmayer, more than 6000 gulden.
13. To the shoemaker in Garhaus, Theresa Hammer,...........500
14. To her son, the blacksmith, Matthias Frohlich,.........500
15.&16. To the eldest child of my deceased sister,
Anna Wimmer, and her husband, at Meolo, in Hungary,....500
17. To her married daughter at Kaposwar,...................100
18. To the other three children (erased),..................300
19. To the married Dusse, nee Scheeger,....................300
20. To her imbecile brother, Joseph (erased),..............100
21. To her brother, Karl Scheeger, silversmith, and his
wife,..................................................900
22. To the son of Frau von Koller,.........................300
23. To his son (erased),...................................100
24. To the sister of my late wife (erased).
25. To my servant, Johann Elssler,.........................2500
Also one year's wages, likewise a coat, waistcoat
and a pair of trousers. [According to Griesinger,
Haydn bequeathed a capital of 6000 florins to this
faithful servant and copyist.]
26. To Rosalia Weber, formerly in my service,..............300
(She has a written certificate of this from me.)
27. To my present maid-servant, Anna Kremnitzer,...........1000
And a year's wages in addition. Also, her bed and
bedding and two pairs of linen sheets; also, four
chairs, a table, a chest of drawers, the watch,
the clock and the picture of the Blessed Virgin in
her room, a flat-iron, kitchen utensils and crockery,
one water-pail, and other trifles.
28. To my housekeeper, Theresia Meyer,.....................500
And one year's wages,...............................20
29. To my old gardener, Michel,............................24
30. To the Prince's Choir for my obsequies, to share
alike (erased),.....................................100
31. To the priest (erased),................................12
32. To the pastor in Eisenstadt for a solemn mass,.........5
33. To his clerk,..........................................2
34. To the beneficiary,....................................2
35. To Pastor von Nollendorf,..............................2
36. To Pastor von St Georg,................................2
37. To the sexton (erased from 33),........................1
38. To the organ-bellows' blower,..........................1
39. To the singer, Babett,.................................50
40. To my cousin, the saddler's wife, in Eisenstadt,.......50
To her daughter,.......................................300
41. To Mesdemoiselles Anna and Josepha Dillin,.............100
42. To the blind daughter of Herr Graus, leader of
the choir in Eisenstadt (erased),......................100
43. To the four sisters Sommerfeld, daughters of
the wigmaker in Presburg,..............................200
44. To Nannerl, daughter of Herr Weissgerb, my
neighbour (erased),....................................50
45. To Herr Art, merchant in the Kleine Steingasse,........50
46. To the pastor in Rohrau,...............................12
47. To the schoolmaster in Rohrau,.........................6
48. To the school children,................................3
49. To Herr Wamerl, formerly with Count v. Harrach,........50
50. To his present cashier,................................50
51. To Count v. Harrach for the purpose of defraying
the bequests Nos. 51 and 52, I bequeath an
obligation of 6000 florins at 5 per cent., the
interest to be disposed of as follows:

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