Joseph Haydn
Austrian Classical father of the symphony and the string quartet
1732
1809
Austrian
Classical
The Creation, London Symphonies, Emperor Quartet
Early life
Joseph Haydn was born on 31 March 1732 in Rohrau, a village in Lower Austria near the Hungarian border. His father was a wheelwright and his mother a cook. He was sent at the age of six to live with a relative in Hainburg, where he received basic musical training, and at eight became a choirboy at St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. When his voice broke, he was dismissed from the choir and spent several lean years as a freelance musician in Vienna, teaching, playing in street serenades, and studying the sonatas of C.P.E. Bach, which he later cited as a formative influence.
Career and major works
In 1761 Haydn was engaged by the Esterházy family, one of the wealthiest and most powerful noble houses in the Habsburg Empire, initially as Vice-Kapellmeister and from 1766 as full Kapellmeister. He served the family for nearly thirty years, composing an enormous quantity of music for their court at Eszterháza: symphonies, operas, baryton trios for Prince Nikolaus, string quartets, and masses. The relative isolation of Eszterháza, far from Vienna, forced Haydn to experiment and innovate — 'I was cut off from the world,' he later reflected, 'and so I was forced to become original.' His 104 numbered symphonies trace the evolution of the form from the galant style to the high Classical idiom, with the twelve 'London' Symphonies (1791–1795), composed for his triumphant visits to England, representing a culmination. His sixty-eight string quartets, including the 'Emperor' Quartet with its variations on the Austrian hymn, are foundational to the chamber music repertoire.
Musical style and legacy
Haydn's late choral masterpieces, The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), crown his career. His music is characterised by wit, formal ingenuity, rhythmic vitality, and an ability to surprise that never diminishes with familiarity. Known to his contemporaries as 'Papa Haydn,' he was revered by Mozart and Beethoven alike, and his role in establishing the symphony, the string quartet, and the sonata form as the central genres of Western classical music cannot be overstated. He died in Vienna on 31 May 1809.