Britain in the 1700s bestrode the globe, enormously rich and enormously powerful.
Artists of every kind flocked to London in search of patronage, wealth and fame. However, although at this time we produced great painters such as Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, great architects such as James Gibbs and Robert Adam and great playwrights such as David Garrick, what the artistic scene in Georgian London really lacked was a national composer of real genius.
So we imported one!
His name was Franz Joseph Haydn, the most celebrated composer in the late 18th century. His two visits to London caused a dramatic shift in his artistic output and, in return, he caused our musical tastes to take a major leap forward.
Haydn was born into humble beginnings in Austria in 1732. His father was a wheelwright and his mother a cook, but he showed musical talent from a young age.
At the tender age of six, he became a choirboy and later joined St Stephen’s cathedral choir in Vienna. He became a freelance musician by singing, playing and teaching. He received commissions to write symphonies from the city’s aristocratic circles, and married Maria Anna Keller, sadly not a marriage made in heaven…
The job of a lifetime came in 1761, when Prince Paul Esterházy, a wealthy, music-loving aristocrat, appointed him vice Kapellmeister at the Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt.
The extravagant Nicholas succeeded his older brother, Paul, the following year, and Haydn was placed in charge of all court music.
Nicholas built a summer palace at Esterháza in Hungary. Sometimes called the ‘Hungarian Versailles’, it served as Haydn’s home from 1766 to 1790.
Can you imagine being this young composer today? Suddenly you are employed by royalty, you are given a generous salary, your own 25-piece orchestra and a sumptuous concert hall. All you have to do is compose music for weekly performances in front of the Prince and his family. Truly the perfect job.
When Haydn later contemplated his appointment he remarked:
“I was cut off from the world. There was no one to confuse or torment me, and I was forced to become original”.
First visit to London
However, in 1790 Prince Nikolaus died. His son Anton showed no interest in music, disbanded the orchestra and granted Haydn an annual pension. On hearing this news, the German violinist and musical impresario Johann Peter Salomon (1745 – 1815) travelled directly to Vienna and asked Haydn to come to London. Haydn agreed and crossed the English Channel on New Year’s Day 1791. He was 58 years old and it was the first time he had seen the sea.
His music was very popular in England before he arrived. His symphonies and string quartets were being performed all over the country. He had already perfected his art. Now he was just going to enjoy himself. London was the place – Haydn was the man.
A Blue Plaque, erected by the Haydn Society of Great Britain, now marks the location in Great Pulteney Street where he stayed with Salomon.
He worked across the street at the back of a Broadwood Piano workshop – an ignominious workplace for a musical super star, but it was here that he grappled with the rapidly-advancing technology of the English Broadwood piano which was bigger, louder and more powerful than the Viennese forte piano.
There is no doubt that his first visit to London gave him a new lease of life and artistic freedom. He received about £1,200 for a wide range of compositions including his six ‘London Symphonies’ (Numbers 93 – 98). Many of these works were conducted by Haydn himself in the Hanover Square Rooms, destroyed in 1900.
Haydn contributed to more than twenty chamber music concerts for the Prince of Wales and he received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the University of Oxford.
This was also the age of scientific advancement. In June 1792, Haydn visited Observatory House in Slough, home of the eminent astronomer and discoverer of Uranus, William Herschel.
Haydn did not meet Herschel that day but inspected his 40-foot telescope, then the largest in existence. It is widely suggested that this visit later influenced the opening of his oratorio ‘The Creation’, based on the Book of Genesis and on Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Haydn left England in June 1792. He travelled back to Austria via Bonn, where he met the talented young Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).
Second visit to London
He returned to London in 1794 where he again composed six more ‘London Symphonies’ (Numbers 99 – 104), including the ‘Military Symphony’ (Number 100), the most popular of all his symphonies.
The 250 works that Haydn composed for his two London visits alone could easily stand for the life’s work of any composer.
King George III and his family encouraged Haydn to settle in England (just as Handel had done before him) and offered him an apartment in Windsor, but he decided to return to Austria.
Later Life in Vienna
Haydn returned to Vienna in 1795. During this time he wrote six masses and his two great oratorios: ‘The Creation‘(1798), partly inspired by his visit to the home of William Herschelin Slough, and ‘The Seasons’ (1801). Inspired by hearing audiences sing God Save the King in London
In 1797 Haydn wrote the patriotic hymn ‘Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser’ (‘God Save Emperor Francis’). This achieved great success and later evolved in to the national anthem of the Federal Republic of Germany.
His final days were hardly serene. In May 1809 the French army under Napoleon launched an attack on Vienna and on 10 May bombarded his neighbourhood. The city finally fell to the French on 13 May. Haydn, was, however, deeply moved and appreciative when on 17 May a French cavalry officer named Sulémy came to pay his respects and sang, skilfully, an aria from The Creation.
On 26 May Haydn collapsed. He died peacefully in his own home on 31 May 1809, aged 77.
His remains were interred in the local cemetery until 1820, when they were moved to Eisenstadt by Prince Nikolaus.
His head took a different journey, though.
It was stolen by phrenologists shortly after burial, and the skull was reunited with the other remains only in 1954.
Paul
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