Composer · Classical
Joseph Haydn
1732–1809 · Austrian
Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 in the Lower Austrian village of Rohrau, the son of a wheelwright, and rose from rural poverty to become the most famous composer in Europe. After years as a chorister at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna and a precarious freelance youth, he entered in 1761 the service of the immensely wealthy Esterházy princes, for whom he would work for nearly three decades, much of it at the remote palace of Eszterháza in rural Hungary. There, as he later put it, he was ‘cut off from the world’ and ‘forced to become original’. Out of that isolation came the body of work that effectively defined the Classical style: he is rightly called the father of both the symphony and the string quartet, having brought each to maturity over a long, experimental career of more than a hundred symphonies and almost seventy quartets. Genial, witty, and deeply professional, Haydn was admired across Europe, befriended and influenced the young Mozart, and taught the young Beethoven. After his prince’s death in 1790 he travelled twice to London, where his late ‘London’ symphonies and the oratorio The Creation made him a celebrity. He died in Vienna in 1809, having lived through, and shaped, an entire era of music.
Works
- Keyboard Concerto in D major, Hob. XVIII:11 2
- Sinfonia concertante in B-flat major, Hob. I:105 1
- Symphony No. 102 in B-flat major, Hob. I:102 1
- Symphony No. 103 in E-flat major, Hob. I:103 (‘Drumroll’) 1
- Symphony No. 104 in D major, Hob. I:104 (‘London’) 2
- Symphony No. 26 in D minor, Hob. I:26 (‘Lamentatione’) 1
- Symphony No. 49 in F minor, Hob. I:49 (‘La Passione’) 1
- Symphony No. 88 in G major, Hob. I:88 1
- Symphony No. 97 in C major, Hob. I:97 1
Performed at
Upcoming
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Iván Fischer conducts Mahler’s Fifth Symphony Haydn · Mahler
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Maxim Emelyanychev conducts Mendelssohn, Mozart and Haydn Mendelssohn · Mozart · Haydn
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Buchbinder at Eighty: Haydn, Beethoven, Schumann Haydn · Beethoven · Schumann
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Vienna 1783, London 1792, and a Box of Toys Haydn · Mozart · Mozart
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Mitsuko Uchida plays Beethoven, Vladimir Jurowski conducts Bruckner’s Third Haydn · Beethoven · Bruckner
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Muti’s Bridge from Haydn to Beethoven Haydn · Strauss · Beethoven
Past guides
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Three Times London Haydn
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Two Knights and a Passion Strauss · Haydn
Sources 1
- Joseph Haydn, Wikipedia