Austrian composer.

The composer, who knew to arrive to a brilliant synthesis of the Baroque music and preclassical, introduced into the living rooms and the courses of Europe of works combining rigor and serenity, often inspired by traditional airs of the Croatian, Austrian and Hungarian peasants.

Without letting itself attract by the tempting arabesques Italianists then in vogue in Vienna, privileging the more invaluable and denser art of the Germans of North, it contributed to the blooming of the musical forms of the classicism.

It is in a small borough of Low-Austria, in Rohrau year der Leitha, that Haydn is born on on March 31st, 1732. His/her father, main cartwright, played of the toothing-stone and his/her mother, cooker among lords of the village, liked to sing accompanied by her husband. To the six years age, he was entrusted to a remote, schoolmaster relative in Hainburg, the close city, which ensured his musical education. Its first tests of composition date from the time when he was soprano with the control of the Saint-Etienne cathedral of Vienna, which he had to leave in 1749, when its voice moulted. He practically only acquired his music group by studying the theoretical treaties of Fux, Matheson and C. pH. E. Bach.

Engaged, in 1759, as director of the music of the count Morzin, who had taken note of his first quartets, it started to compose of the symphonies. In love with the one of its pupils, who decided to enter to the convent, it was let persuade to marry the older sister of this one. This union lasted nevertheless forty years.

Haydn remained twenty-nine years with the service of the princely family Esterházy (as from 1761), first of all to that of prince Paul-Antoine, then, since 1762, of Nicolas 1st, said the Splendid one. Named second choir master in 1761, then become first choir master in 1766, it directed a troop of singers and qualified instrumentalists, making profitable its talents of interpreter and composer.

From its meeting with the Mozart young person, during the winter 1781-1782, is born an exceptional friendship, in spite of their difference in twenty-four years age. The musical influence that they exerted, obviously, one on the other testifies to the reciprocal admiration which bound the two composers.

Haydn, who reached notoriety little by little, saw his works played and published and touched important incomes of them. In 1790, prince Nicolas Esterházy died; his/her son, Paul Antoine, who succeeded to him, did not like the music. Dismissed with the other musicians, the composer had to return to Vienna. He accomplished its first stay in London (1791-1792), where the reception was cordial.

On its return in the capital, it met the Beethoven young person, to whom it gave some lessons. It is during a second voyage in England (1794-1795), where the university of Oxford had already decreed the title of honorary doctor to him, that he wrote his two oratorios: creation and Seasons. It took again then its station of choir master at Nicolas II. Its fame in Austria was such as one regarded it as the largest composer of its time. He lived withdrawn then in his house of the suburbs of Vienna, where he received visitors and friends, among which Constance Mozart, the Carl Maria von Weber composer and celebrates it singer Marianne von Genzinger. Haydn appeared for the last time in public at the time of a concert, on on March 27th, 1808, where Creation was unanimously acclaimed.

In May 1809, the French troops occupied Vienna. Napoleon made place a guard of honor in front of the house of the composer, of which the last days therefore were not obscured of it. Haydn died on on May 31st.

The work of Haydn is divided into five great periods. From 1760 to 1768, the first last years with the service of Esterházy, the symphonic style of the composer deviates then from the concerto grosso and the sonata of church to inaugurate, taking as a starting point the school by Mannheim, the quadripartite structure. Its style combined the influences of Austria, of Germany of the South and Italy (Opera buffa, sinfonia). At that time belong of the divertimenti, the symphonies numbers 6.7 and 8, Acis E Galatea (opera, 1763).

Between 1768 and 1773, Haydn is subject to the influence of Sturm und Drang, his style is agitated more, more serious. The symphonies written for this period often adopt the minor tonality (funeral Symphony, Symphonie of the good-byes). Its style darkens, looks further into and acquired a greater intellectual refinement. It composed for this period Stabat MATER (around 1767), Missa Sanctae Caeciliae (1769-1772), the symphonies numbers 44.49 and 52, quartet COp 20, the sonata for piano number 20.

From 1773 to 1780, probably exhorted by Esterházy, Haydn returns to a more traditional style and more diverting. It does not compose any string quartet but written about ten operas (of which Vera Costanza, 1776, and it Mondo della luna, according to Goldoni, 1777) and of the decorative religious parts.

During the years 1780, Haydn forsakes the operas for the instrumental music: he then composes the “Russian” quartets, dedicated to the Paul grand duke, as well as the six Parisian Symphonies, of a less external style.

In its last great working life, of 1790 to 1795, Haydn, marked by the last symphonies of Mozart, has a perfect command of his art; it is the time of the composition of the twelve London Symphonies and the last masterpieces: creation (1798), the Seasons (1801) and its six last masses.

With its a hundred and four symphonies, eighty-three string quartets and sixty-eight sonatas for pianoforte, it is above all in the field of the instrumental music that Haydn contributed to the enrichment of the Germanic music and, more generally, of the Western music. The discovery, around 1750, of the sonatas for harpsichord of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, who had developed this musical form, was determining for those of Haydn, made up throughout second half of the XVIII ^E century. The old one following the appearance of the bithematism, pleasant and gallant style with the country and popular inspiration, and until the last sonatas prébeethovéniennes, the sonatas summarize the stylistic and formal evolution of the musician.

Haydn is regarded as the father of the symphony and the quartet. By the number and the quality of its compositions, it determined, as well as regards the form as bottom, the traditional style of the two kinds. In fact, Haydn profited from the research carried out by his predecessors, in particular of the first tests of the symphonists of the school of Mannheim, who allowed him to very early establish a balanced and well proportioned structure, heralding the musical classicism.

Haydn and the symphony

The symphonies of Haydn are made up of four movements: they begin with the initial allegro, built starting from two well differentiated topics; it is followed by the andante, which is often with the sub-dominant; the minuet moves away from the elegance of the courses to take more pastoral and more put rhythm into forms, announcing the future scherzo beethovénien; the final one is in theory a rondo. A certain number of its some 105 symphonies, written between 1757 and 1795, comprise titles more evocative than descriptive: hunting, the Hen, the Queen, the Miracle, etc Its stays in London enabled him to explore new ways, especially with regard to the form and the harmony, and to look further into its lyricism.

Haydn and the quartet

The contribution of Haydn to the string quartet is quite as essential as its contribution to the evolution of the symphony. From 1780, the composer attaches less importance to the first violin and avoids thus that the quartet are not connected with a concerto of violin accompanied by a trio with cords. Whereas the central development of the allegros develops, the final ones run away, that the composer had considered to be too pretentious, leave the place to a better balance set of themes between the four instruments. The form of the old continuation disappears very early to be divided into four parts, like the symphony. These innovations will exert a manifest influence on Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, but also on all the chamber music of the XIX ^E century, as attest some the trios with piano, the six last masses and the oratorios, in particular, and the string quartets COp 76,77,103.

Haydn, who had begun in Vienna as singer and who preserved all his life a major religious feeling, quite naturally granted a choice place to the vocal music. The last masses (Nelsonmesse, Theresienmesse) are most outstanding of its religious parts. In the oratorios, as the description of chaos in Creation or the charming farming communities in the Seasons testifies some, Haydn moves away at the same time from the dramatic and imposing effects of Händel and from the spiritual depth of Bach, to leave free course within the meaning of the poetry and of picturesque which characterize it.