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HAYDN
HAYDN J. CUTHBERT HADDEN CHAPTER I
BIRTH--ANCESTRY--EARLY YEARS
Introductory--Rohrau--A Poor Home--Genealogy--Haydn's Parents--
His Birth--His Precocity--Informal Music-making--His First
Teacher--Hainburg--"A Regular Little Urchin"--Attacks the Drum--
A Piece of Good Luck--A Musical Examination--Goes to Vienna--Choir
School of St Stephen's--A House of Suffering--Lessons at the
Cathedral--A Sixteen-Part Mass--Juvenile Escapades--"Sang like a
Crow"--Dismissed from the Choir.
Haydn's position alike in music and in musical biography is
almost unique. With the doubtful exception of Sebastian Bach no
composer of the first rank ever enjoyed a more tranquil career.
Bach was not once outside his native Germany; Haydn left Austria
only to make those visits to England which had so important an
influence on the later manifestations of his genius: His was a
long sane sound and on the whole fortunate existence. For
many years he was poor and obscure but if he had his time of
trial he never experienced a time of failure. With practical
wisdom he conquered the Fates and became eminent. A hard
struggling youth merged into an easy middle-age and late years
found him in comfortable circumstances with a solid reputation
as an artist and a solid retiring-allowance from a princely
patron whose house he had served for the better part of his
working career. Like Goethe and Wordsworth he lived out all his
life. He was no Marcellus shown for one brief moment and
"withdrawn before his springtime had brought forth the fruits of
summer." His great contemporary Mozart cut off while yet his
light was crescent is known to posterity only by the products of
his early manhood. Haydn's sun set at the end of a long day
crowning his career with a golden splendour whose effulgence
still brightens the ever-widening realm of music.
Voltaire once said of Dante that his reputation was becoming
greater and greater because no one ever read him. Haydn's
reputation is not of that kind. It is true that he may not appeal
to what has been called the "fevered modern soul" but there is
an old-world charm about him which is specially grateful in our
bustling nerve-destroying bilious age. He is still known as
"Papa Haydn" and the name to use Carlyle's phrase is
"significant of much." In the history of the art his position is
of the first importance. He was the father of instrumental music.
He laid the foundations of the modern symphony and sonata and
established the basis of the modern orchestra. Without him
artistically speaking Beethoven would have been impossible. He
seems to us now a figure of a very remote past so great have
been the changes in the world of music since he lived. But his
name will always be read in the golden book of classical music;
and whatever the evolutionary processes of the art may bring the
time can hardly come when he will be forgotten his works
unheard.
Rohrau
Franz Joseph Haydn was born at the little market-town of Rohrau
near Prugg on the confines of Austria and Hungary some
two-and-a-half hours' railway journey from Vienna. The Leitha
which flows along the frontier of Lower Austria and Hungary on
its way to the Danube runs near and the district
[Figure: Haydn's birth-house at Rohrau]
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