Page 132 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Figure 7.9
Portrait of Joseph Haydn
(c. 1762–1763) wearing a wig and the blue livery of the Esterházy court
When the choir director of Saint Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna happened to be scouting for talent in the provinces, he heard the boy soprano Haydn sing and brought him back to the capital. Here Haydn remained as a choirboy, studying the rudiments of composition and learning to play the violin and keyboard. After nearly ten years of service, his voice broke and he was abruptly dismissed. For most of the 1750s, Haydn eked out a “wretch- ed existence,” as he called it, much like a freelance musician or aspir- ing actress might in New York City today. But in 1761, Haydn’s years of struggle ended when he was engaged as director of music for the court of
Prince Nikolaus Esterházy (1714–1790).
The Esterházy were wealthy aristocrats who wintered in Vienna
and summered on their extensive landholdings to the southeast (see Figure 7.8). At the family’s magnificent court at Esterháza (see Figure 7.10), Prince Nikolaus ruled much like a benevolent dictator. But the prince was an autocrat with a fondness for music, maintaining an orchestra, a chapel for singing religious works, and a theater for opera. As was typical of the period, the musician Haydn was considered a servant of his prince and even wore the garb of the domestic help, as can be seen in his portrait. As a condition of his appointment in 1761, Haydn signed a contract stipulating that all the music he composed belonged not
to him, but to his aristocratic master.
For a period of nearly thirty years, Haydn served Niko-
laus Esterházy at his remote court on what is today the bor- der of Austria and Hungary. Here he composed symphonies, operas, and string trios in which the prince himself participated. A London newspaper, The Gaze-
teer, perhaps exaggerated Haydn’s isolation when it wrote in 1785:
“There is something very distressing [that] this wonderful man, who is the Shakespeare of music, and the triumph of the age in which we live, is doomed to reside in the court of a miserable German [Austrian] prince, who is at once incapable of rewarding him, and unworthy of the honour. . . . Would it not be an achievement equal to a pil- grimage, for some aspiring youths to rescue him from his fortune and trans- plant him to Great Britain, the country for which his music seems to be made?”
Figure 7.10
The palace of the Esterházy family southeast of Vienna, where Joseph Haydn lived until 1790. The elements of Neoclassical architectural style include the triangular pediment over the entry- way, the columns, and the Ionic capitals atop the flat columns. <
110 chapter seven introduction to the classical style: haydn and mozart
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