Vienna--The Forlorn Ex-Chorister--A Good Samaritan--Haydn Enskied--Street Serenades--Joins a Pilgrim Party--An Unconditional Loan--"Attic" Studies--An Early Composition-- Metastasio--A Noble Pupil--Porpora--Menial Duties--Emanuel Bach-Haydn his Disciple--Violin Studies--Attempts at "Programme" Music--First Opera--An Aristocratic Appointment--Taken for an Impostor--A Count's Capellmeister--Falls in Love--Marries-- His Wife.
Vienna
The Vienna into which Haydn was thus cast, a friendless and forlorn youth of seventeen, was not materially different from the Vienna of to-day. While the composer was still living, one who had made his acquaintance wrote of the city: "Represent to yourself an assemblage of palaces and very neat houses, inhabited by the most opulent families of one of the greatest monarchies in Europe--by the only noblemen to whom that title may still be with justice applied. The women here are attractive; a brilliant complexion adorns an elegant form; the natural but sometimes languishing and tiresome air of the ladies of the north of Germany is mingled with a little coquetry and address, the effect of the presence of a numerous Court...In a word, pleasure has taken possession of every heart." This was written when Haydn was old and famous; it might have been written when his name was yet unknown.
Vienna was essentially a city of pleasure--a city inhabited by "a proud and wealthy nobility, a prosperous middle class, and a silent, if not contented, lower class." In 1768, Leopold Mozart, the father of the composer, declared that the Viennese public had no love of anything serious or sensible; "they cannot even understand it, and their theatres furnish abundant proof that nothing but utter trash, such as dances, burlesques, harlequinades, ghost tricks, and devils' antics will go down with them." There is, no doubt, a touch of exaggeration in all this, but it is sufficiently near the truth to let us understand the kind of attention which the disgraced chorister of St Stephen's was likely to receive from the musical world of Vienna. It was Vienna, we may recall, which dumped Mozart into a pauper's grave, and omitted even to mark the spot.
The Forlorn Ex-Chorister
Young Haydn, then, was wandering, weary and perplexed, through its streets, with threadbare clothes on his back and nothing in his purse. There was absolutely no one to whom he could think of turning. He might, indeed, have taken the road to Rohrau and been sure of a warm welcome from his humble parents there. But there were good reasons why he should not make himself a burden on them; and, moreover, he probably feared that at home he would run some risk of being tempted to abandon his cherished profession. Frau Haydn had not yet given up the hope of seeing her boy made a priest, and though we have no definite information that Haydn himself felt a decided aversion to taking orders, it is evident that he was disinclined to hazard the danger of domestic pressure. He had now finally made up his mind that he would be a composer; but he saw clearly enough that, for the present, he must work, and work, too, not for fame, but for bread.
A Good Samaritan
Musing on these things while still parading the streets, tired and hungry, he met one Spangler, a tenor singer of his acquaintance, who earned a pittance at the Church of St Michael. Spangler was a poor man--but it is ever the poor who are most helpful to each other--and, taking pity on the dejected outcast, he invited Haydn to share his garret rooms along with his wife and child. It is regrettable that nothing more is known of this good Samaritan--one of those obscure benefactors who go through the world doing little acts of kindness, never perhaps even suspecting how far-reaching will be the results. He must have died before Haydn, otherwise his name would certainly have appeared in his will.
Haydn Enskied
Haydn Enskied 1750. He has been commiserated on the garret-- needlessly, to be sure. Garrets are famous, in literary annals at any rate; and is it not Leigh Hunt who reminds us that the top story is healthier than the basement? The poor poet in Pope, who lay high in Drury Lane, "lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane," found profit, doubtless, in his "neighbourhood with the stars." However that may be, there, in Spangler's attic, was Haydn enskied, eager for work--work of any kind, so long as it had fellowship with music and brought him the bare means of subsistence.
"Scanning his whole horizon
In quest of what he could clap eyes on,"
he sought any and every means of making money. He tried to get teaching, with what success has not been recorded. He sang in choirs, played at balls and weddings and baptisms, made "arrangements" for anybody who would employ him, and in short drudged very much as Wagner did at the outset of his tempestuous career.
Street Serenades
He even took part in street serenades by playing the violin. This last was not a very dignified occupation; but it is important to remember that serenading in Vienna was not the lover's business of Italy and Spain, where the singer is accompanied by guitar or mandoline. It was a much more serious entertainment. It dated from the seventeenth century, if we are to trust Praetorius, and consisted of solos and concerted vocal music in various forms, accompanied sometimes by full orchestra and sometimes by wind instruments alone. Great composers occasionally honoured their patrons and friends with the serenade; and composers who hoped to be great found it advantageous as a means of gaining a hearing for their works. It proved of some real service to Haydn later on, but in the meantime it does not appear to have swelled his lean purse. With all his industry he fell into the direst straits now and again, and was more than once driven into wild projects by sheer stress of hunger.
Joins a Pilgrim Party
One curious story is told of a journey to Mariazell, in Styria. This picturesquely-situated village has been for many years the most frequented shrine in Austria. To-day it is said to be visited by something like 100,000 pilgrims every year. The object of adoration is the miraculous image of the Madonna and Child, twenty inches high, carved in lime-wood, which was presented to the Mother Church of Mariazell in 1157 by a Benedictine priest. Haydn was a devout Catholic, and not improbably knew all about Mariazell and its Madonna. At any rate, he joined a company of pilgrims, and on arrival presented himself to the local choirmaster for admission, showing the official some of his compositions, and telling of his eight years' training at St Stephen's. The choirmaster was not impressed. "I have had enough of lazy rascals from Vienna," said he. "Be off!" But Haydn, after coming so far, was not to be dismissed so unceremoniously. He smuggled himself into the choir, pleaded with the solo singer of the day to be allowed to act as his deputy, and, when this was refused, snatched the music from the singer's hand, and took up the solo at the right moment with such success that "all the choir held their breath to listen." At the close of the service the choirmaster sent for him, and, apologizing for his previous rude behaviour, invited him to his house for the day. The invitation extended to a week, and Haydn returned to Vienna with money enough--the result of a subscription among the choir--to serve his immediate needs.
An Unconditional Loan
But it would have been strange if, in a musical city like Vienna, a youth of Haydn's gifts had been allowed to starve. Slowly but surely he made his way, and people who could help began to hear of him. The most notable of his benefactors at this time was a worthy tradesman named Buchholz, who made him an unconditional loan of 150 florins. An echo of this unexpected favour is heard long years after in the composer's will, where we read: "To Fraulein Anna Buchholz, 100 florins, inasmuch as in my youth her grandfather lent me 150 florins when I greatly needed them, which, however, I repaid fifty years ago."
"Attic" Studies
One hundred and fifty florins was no great sum assuredly, but at this time it was a small fortune to Haydn. He was able to do a good many things with it. First of all, he took a lodging for himself--another attic! Spangler had been very kind, but he could not give the young musician the privacy needed for study. It chanced that there was a room vacant, "nigh to the gods and the clouds," in the old Michaelerhaus in the Kohlmarkt, and Haydn rented it. It was not a very comfortable room--just big enough to allow the poor composer to turn about. It was dimly lighted. It "contained no stove, and the roof was in such bad repair that the rain and the snow made unceremonious entry and drenched the young artist in his bed. In winter the water in his jug froze so hard during the night that he had to go and draw direct from the well." For neighbours he had successively a journeyman printer, a footman and a cook. These were not likely to respect his desire for quiet, but the mere fact of his having a room all to himself made him oblivious of external annoyances. As he expressed it, he was "too happy to envy the lot of kings." He had his old, wormeaten spinet, and his health and his good spirits; and although he was still poor and unknown, he was "making himself all the time," like Sir Walter Scott in Liddesdale.
An Early Composition
Needless to say, he was composing a great deal. Much of his manuscript was, of course, torn up or consigned to the flames, but one piece of work survived. This was his first Mass in F (No. 11 in Novello's edition), erroneously dated by some writers 1742. It shows signs of immaturity and inexperience, but when Haydn in his old age came upon the long-forgotten score he was so far from being displeased with it that he rearranged the music, inserting additional wind parts. One biographer sees in this procedure "a striking testimony to the genius of the lad of eighteen." We need not read it in that way. It rather shows a natural human tenderness for his first work, a weakness, some might call it, but even so, more pardonable than the weakness--well illustrated by some later instances--of hunting out early productions and publishing them without a touch of revision.
Metastasio
It was presumably by mere chance that in that same rickety Michaelerhaus there lived at this date not only the future composer of "The Creation," but the Scribe of the eighteenth century, the poet and opera librettist, Metastasio. Born in 1698, the son of humble parents, this distinguished writer had, like Haydn, suffered from "the eternal want of pence." A precocious boy, he had improvised verses and recited them on the street, and fame came to him only after long and weary years of waiting. In 1729 he was appointed Court poet to the theatre at Vienna, for which he wrote several of his best pieces, and when he made Haydn's acquaintance his reputation was high throughout the whole of Europe. Naturally, he did not live so near the clouds as Haydn--his rooms were on the third story--but he heard somehow of the friendless, penniless youth in the attic, and immediately resolved to do what he could to further his interests. This, as events proved, was by no means inconsiderable.
A Noble Pupil
Metastasio had been entrusted with the education of Marianne von Martinez, the daughter of a Spanish gentleman who was Master of the Ceremonies to the Apostolic Nuncio. The young lady required a musicmaster, and the poet engaged Haydn to teach her the harpsichord, in return for which service he was to receive free board. Fraulein Martinez became something of a musical celebrity. When she was only seventeen she had a mass performed at St Michael's Church, Vienna. She was a favourite of the Empress Maria Theresa, and is extolled by Burney--who speaks of her "marvelous accuracy" in the writing of English--as a singer and a player, almost as highly as Gluck's niece. Her name finds a place in the biographies of Mozart, who, at her musical receptions, used to take part with her in duets of her own composition. Several of her manuscripts are still in the possession of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Something of her musical distinction ought certainly to be attributed to Haydn, who gave her daily lessons for three years, during which time he was comfortably housed with the family.
Porpora
It was through Metastasio, too, that he was introduced to Niccolo Porpora, the famous singing-master who taught the great Farinelli, and whose name is sufficiently familiar from its connection with an undertaking set on foot by Handel's enemies in London. Porpora seems at this time to have ruled Vienna as a sort of musical director and privileged censor, to have been, in fact, what Rossini was for many years in Paris. He was giving lessons to the mistress of Correr, the Venetian ambassador--a "rare musical enthusiast"--and he employed Haydn to act as accompanist during the lessons.
Menial Duties
We get a curious insight into the social conditions of the musicians of this time in the bearing of Haydn towards Porpora and his pupil. That Haydn should become the instructor of Fraulein Martinez in no way compromised his dignity; nor can any reasonable objection be raised against his filling the post of, accompanist to the ambassador's mistress. But what shall be said of his being transported to the ambassador's summer quarters at Mannersdorf, and doing duty there for six ducats a month and his board--at the servants' table? The reverend author of Music and Morals answers by reminding us that in those days musicians were not the confidential advisers of kings like Wagner, rich banker's sons like Meyerbeer, private gentlemen like Mendelssohn, and members of the Imperial Parliament like Verdi. They were "poor devils" like Haydn. Porpora was a great man, no doubt, in his own metier. But it is surely odd to hear of Haydn acting the part of very humble servant to the singing-master; blackening his boots and trimming his wig, and brushing his coat, and running his errands, and playing his accompaniments! Let us, however, remember Haydn's position and circumstances. He was a poor man. He had never received any regular tuition such as Handel received from Zachau, Mozart from his father, and Mendelssohn from Zelter. He had to pick up his instruction as he went along; and if he felt constrained to play the lackey to Porpora, it was only with the object of receiving in return something which would help to fit him for his profession. As he naively said, "I improved greatly in singing, composition, and Italian." [The relations of Haydn and Porpora are sketched in George Sand's "Consuelo."]
Emanuel Bach
In the meantime he was carrying on his private studies with the greatest assiduity. His Fux and his Mattheson had served their turn, and he had now supplemented them by the first six Clavier Sonatas of Philipp Emanuel Bach, the third son of the great composer. The choice may seem curious when we remember that Haydn had at his hand all the music of Handel and Bach, and the masters of the old contrapuntal school. But it was wisely made. The simple, well-balanced form of Emanuel Bach's works "acted as well as a master's guidance upon him, and led him to the first steps in that style of writing which was afterwards one of his greatest glories." The point is admirably put by Sir Hubert Parry. He says, in effect, that what Haydn had to build upon, and what was most congenial to him, through his origin and circumstances, was the popular songs and dances of his native land, which, in the matter of structure, belong to the same order of art as symphonies and sonatas; and how this kind of music could be made on a grander scale was what he wanted to discover. The music of Handel and Bach leaned too much towards the style of the choral music and organ music of the church to serve him as a model. For their art was essentially contrapuntal--the combination of several parts each of equal importance with the rest, each in a sense pursuing its own course. In modern music the essential principle is harmonic: the chords formed by the combination of parts are derived and developed in reference to roots and keys. In national dances few harmonies are used, but they are arranged on the same principles as the harmonies of a sonata or a symphony; and "what had to be found out in order to make grand instrumental works was how to arrange more harmonies with the same effect of unity as is obtained on a small scale in dances and national songs." Haydn, whose music contains many reminiscences of popular folk-song, had in him the instinct for this kind of art; and the study of Philipp Emanuel's works taught him how to direct his energies in the way that was most agreeable to him.
A Disciple of Emanuel Bach
Although much has been written about Emanuel Bach, it is probable that the full extent of his genius remains yet to be recognized. He was the greatest clavier player, teacher and accompanist of his day; a master of form, and the pioneer of a style which was a complete departure from that of his father. Haydn's enthusiasm for him can easily be explained. "I did not leave the clavier till I had mastered all his six sonatas," he says, "and those who know me well must be aware that I owe very much to Emanuel Bach, whose works I understand and have thoroughly studied. Emanuel Bach himself once complimented me on this fact." When Haydn began to make a name Bach hailed him with delight as a disciple, and took occasion to send him word that, "he alone had thoroughly comprehended his works and made a proper use of them."
This is a sufficient answer to the absurd statement which has been made, and is still sometimes repeated, that Bach was jealous of the young composer and abused him to his friends. A writer in the European Magazine for October 1784, says that Bach was "amongst the number of professors who wrote against our rising author." He mentions others as doing the same thing, and then continues: "The only notice Haydn took of their scurrility and abuse was to publish lessons written in imitation of the several styles of his enemies, in which their peculiarities were so closely copied and their extraneous passages (particularly those of Bach of Hamburg) so inimitably burlesqued, that they all felt the poignancy of his musical wit, confessed its truth, and were silent." Further on we read that the sonatas of Ops. 13 and 14 were "expressly composed in order to ridicule Bach of Hamburg." All this is manifestly a pure invention. Many of the peculiarities of Emanuel Bach's style are certainly to be found in Haydn's works--notes wide apart, pause bars, surprise modulations, etc., etc.--but if every young composer who adopts the tricks of his model is to be charged with caricature, few can hope to escape. The truth is, of course, that every man's style, whether in music or in writing, is a "mingled yarn" of many strands, and it serves no good purpose to unravel it, even if we could.
Violin Studies
Haydn's chief instrument was the clavier, but in addition to that he diligently practiced the violin. It was at this date that he took lessons on the latter instrument from "a celebrated virtuoso." The name is not mentioned, but the general opinion is that Dittersdorf was the instructor. This eminent musician obtained a situation as violinist in the Court Orchestra at Vienna in 1760; and, curiously enough, after many years of professional activity, succeeded Haydn's brother, Michael, as Capellmeister to the Bishop of Groswardein in Hungary. He wrote an incredible amount of music, and his opera, "Doctor and Apotheker," by which he eclipsed Mozart at one time, has survived up to the present. Whether or not he gave Haydn lessons on the violin, it is certain that the pair became intimate friends, and had many happy days and some practical jokes together. One story connected with their names sounds apocryphal, but there is no harm in quoting it. Haydn and Dittersdorf were strolling down a back street when they heard a fiddler scraping away in a little beer cellar. Haydn, entering, inquired, "Whose minuet is that you are playing?" "Haydn's," answered the fiddler. "It's a--bad minuet," replied Haydn, whereupon the enraged player turned upon him and would have broken his head with the fiddle had not Dittersdorf dragged him away.
Attempts at Programme Music
It seems to have been about this time--the date, in fact, was 1751--that Haydn, still pursuing his serenading practices, directed a performance of a quintet of his own composition under the windows of Felix Kurz, a well-known Viennese comedian and theatrical manager. According to an old writer, Kurz amused the public by his puns, and drew crowds to his theatre by his originality and by good opera-buffas. He had, moreover, a handsome wife, and "this was an additional reason for our nocturnal adventurers to go and perform their serenades under the harlequin's windows." The comedian was naturally flattered by Haydn's attention. He heard the music, and, liking it, called the composer into the house to show his skill on the clavier. Kurz appears to have been an admirer of what we would call "programme" music. At all events he demanded that Haydn should give him a musical representation of a storm at sea. Unfortunately, Haydn had never set eyes on the "mighty monster," and was hard put to it to describe what he knew nothing about. He made several attempts to satisfy Kurz, but without success. At last, out of all patience, he extended his hands to the two ends of the harpsichord, and, bringing them rapidly together, exclaimed, as he rose from the instrument, "The devil take the tempest." "That's it! That's it!" cried the harlequin, springing upon his neck and almost suffocating him. Haydn used to say that when he crossed the Straits of Dover in bad weather, many years afterwards, he often smiled to himself as he thought of the juvenile trick which so delighted the Viennese comedian.
His First Opera
But the comedian wanted more from Haydn than a tempest on the keyboard. He had written the libretto of an opera, "Der Neue Krumme Teufel," and desired that Haydn should set it to music. The chance was too good to be thrown away, and Haydn proceeded to execute the commission with alacrity, not a little stimulated, doubtless, by the promise of 24 ducats for the work. There is a playfulness and buoyancy about much of Haydn's music which seems to suggest that he might have succeeded admirably in comic opera, and it is really to be regretted that while the words of "Der Neue Krumme Teufel" have been preserved, the music has been lost. It would have been interesting to see what the young composer had made of a subject which--from Le Sage's "Le Diable Boiteux" onwards--has engaged the attention of so many playwrights and musicians. The opera was produced at the Stadt Theatre in the spring of 1752, and was frequently repeated not only in Vienna, but in Berlin, Prague, Saxony and the Breisgau.
An Aristocratic Appointment
An event of this kind must have done something for Haydn's reputation, which was now rapidly extending. Porpora seems also to have been of no small service to him in the way of introducing him to aristocratic acquaintances. At any rate, in 1755, a wealthy musical amateur, the Baron von Furnberg, who frequently gave concerts at his country house at Weinzierl, near Vienna, invited him to take the direction of these performances and compose for their programmes. It was for this nobleman that he wrote his first string quartet, the one in B flat beginning-- This composition was rapidly followed by seventeen other works of the same class, all written between 1755 and 1756.
Taken for an Impostor
Haydn's connection with Furnberg and the success of his compositions for that nobleman at once gave him a distinction among the musicians and dilettanti of Vienna. He now felt justified in increasing his fees, and charged from 2 to 5 florins for a month's lessons. Remembering the legend of his unboylike fastidiousness, and the undoubted nattiness of his later years, it is curious to come upon an incident of directly opposite tendency. A certain Countess von Thun, whose name is associated with Beethoven, Mozart and Gluck, met with one of his clavier sonatas in manuscript, and expressed a desire to see him. When Haydn presented himself, the countess was so struck by his shabby appearance and uncouth manners that it occurred to her he must be an impostor! But Haydn soon removed her doubts by the pathetic and realistic account which he gave of his lowly origin and his struggles with poverty, and the countess ended by becoming his pupil and one of his warmest friends.
A Count's Capellmeister
Haydn is said to have held for a time the post of organist to the Count Haugwitz; but his first authenticated fixed engagement dates from 1759, when, through the influence of Baron Furnberg, he was appointed Capellmeister to the Bohemian Count Morzin. This nobleman, whose country house was at Lukavec, near Pilsen, was a great lover of music, and maintained a small, well-chosen orchestra of some sixteen or eighteen performers. It was for him that Haydn wrote his first Symphony in D--
Falls in Love
We now approach an interesting event in Haydn's career. In the course of some banter at the house of Rogers, Campbell the poet once remarked that marriage in nine cases out of ten looks like madness. Haydn's case was not the tenth. His salary from Count Morzin was only 20 pounds with board and lodging; he was not making anything substantial by his compositions; and his teaching could not have brought him a large return. Yet, with the proverbial rashness of his class, he must needs take a wife, and that, too, in spite, of the fact that Count Morzin never kept a married man in his service! "To my mind," said Mozart, "a bachelor lives only half a life." It is true enough; but Mozart had little reason to bless the "better half," while Haydn had less. The lady with whom he originally proposed to brave the future was one of his own pupils--the younger of the two daughters of Barber Keller, to whom he had been introduced when he was a chorister at St Stephen's. According to Dies, Haydn had lodged with the Kellers at one time. The statement is doubtful, but in any case his good stars were not in the ascendant when it was ordained that he should marry into this family.
Marries
It was, as we have said, with the younger of the two daughters that he fell in love. Unfortunately, for some unexplained reason, she took the veil, and said good-bye to a wicked world. Like the hero in "Locksley Hall," Haydn may have asked himself, "What is that which I should do?" But Keller soon solved the problem for him. "Barbers are not the most diffident people of the world," as one of the race remarks in "Gil Blas," and Keller was assuredly not diffident. "Never mind," he said to Haydn, "you shall have the other." Haydn very likely did not want the other, but, recognizing with Dr Holmes's fashionable lady that "getting married is like jumping overboard anyway you look at it," he resolved to risk it and take Anna Maria Keller for better or worse.
His Wife
The marriage was solemnized at St Stephen's on November 26, 1760, when the bridegroom was twenty-nine and the bride thirty-two. There does not seem to have been much affection on either side to start with; but Haydn declared that he had really begun to "like" his wife, and would have come to entertain a stronger feeling for her if she had behaved in a reasonable way. It was, however, not in Anna Maria's nature to behave in a reasonable way. The diverting Marville says that the majority of women married to men of genius are so vain of the abilities of their husbands that they are frequently insufferable. Frau Haydn was not a woman of that kind. As Haydn himself sadly remarked, it did not matter to her whether he were a cobbler or an artist. She used his manuscript scores for curling papers and underlays for the pastry, and wrote to him when he was in England for money to buy a "widow's home." He was even driven to pitifully undignified expedients to protect his hard-earned cash from her extravagant hands.
There are not many details of Anna Maria's behaviour, for Haydn was discreetly reticent about his domestic affairs; and only two references can be found in all his published correspondence to the woman who had rendered his life miserable. But these anecdotes tell us enough. For a long time he tried making the best of it; but making the best of it is a poor affair when it comes to a man and woman living together, and the day arrived when the composer realized that to live entirely apart was the only way of ending a union that had proved anything but a foretaste of heaven. Frau Haydn looked to spend her last years in a "widow's home" provided for her by the generosity of her husband, but she predeceased him by nine years, dying at Baden, near Vienna, on the 20th of March 1800. With this simple statement of facts we may finally dismiss a matter that is best left to silence--to where "beyond these voices there is peace."
Whether Count Morzin would have retained the services of Haydn in spite of his marriage is uncertain. The question was not put to the test, for the count fell into financial embarrassments and had to discharge his musical establishment. A short time before this, Prince Paul Anton Esterhazy had heard some of Haydn's compositions when on a visit to Morzin, and, being favourably impressed thereby, he resolved to engage Haydn should an opportunity ever present itself. The opportunity had come, and Haydn entered the service of a family who were practically his life-long patrons, and with whom his name must always be intimately associated.