FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN – MOZART – BEETHOVEN
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809) was one of the most prominent and prolific composers of the Classical period. His contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets “Father of the Symphony” and “Father of the String Quartet”.
Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. During the nearly thirty years that Haydn worked at the Esterházy court, he produced a flood of compositions, as his musical style continued to develop.
In 1779, an important change in Haydn’s contract permitted him to publish his compositions without prior authorization from his employer. This may have encouraged Haydn to rekindle his career as a composer of “pure” music. The change made itself felt most dramatically in 1781, when Haydn published the six string quartets of Opus 33, announcing (in a letter to potential purchasers) that they were written in “a new and completely special way”. Charles Rosen points out a number of important advances in Haydn’s compositional technique that appear in these quartets, advances that mark the advent of the Classical style in full flower.
In the 1790s, stimulated by his England journeys, Haydn developed his “popular style”. An important element of the popular style was the frequent use of folk-like material. Haydn’s popular style can be heard in virtually all of his later work.
where Haydn lived in the last years of his life.
Haydn met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sometime around 1784. He was hugely impressed with Mozart’s work and praised it unstintingly to others. Mozart evidently returned the esteem, as seen in his dedication of a set of six quartets, now called the”Haydn” quartets.
STRUCTURE AND CHARACTER OF HIS MUSIC
A central characteristic of Haydn’s music is the development of larger structures out of very short, simple musical motifs, often derived from standard accompanying figures. The music is often quite formally concentrated, and the important musical events of a movement can unfold rather quickly.
Haydn’s work was central to the development of sonata form. His formal inventiveness also led him to integrate the fugue in his classical style. His music is also known for its humor – perhaps, more than any other composer. The most famous example of humor is the sudden loud chord in the slow movement of his ”Surprise” symphony. Haydn’s many other musical jokes include numerous false endings (e.g., in the quartets Op. 33 No. 2 and Op. 50 No. 3), and the remarkable rhythmic illusion placed in the trio section of the third movement of Op. 50 No. 1.
Much of Haydn’s music was written to please and delight a prince, and its emotional tone is correspondingly upbeat. This character reflects, perhaps, Haydn’s fundamentally healthy and well-balanced personality. Occasional minor-key works, often deadly serious in character, from striking exceptions to the general rule. Haydn’s fast movements tend to be rhythmically propulsive and often impart a great sense of energy, especially in the finales. A characteristic example of Haydn’s “rollicking” finale type is found in the “London” symphony No. 104. Haydn’s early slow movements are usually relaxed, and reflective. Later on, the emotional range of the slow movements increases. The minuets tend to have a strong downbeat (first beat of each measure) and a popular character. Over time, Haydn made some of his minuets into “scherzi” which are much faster.
The return to Vienna in 1795 marked the last turning point in Haydn’s career. Although his musical style evolved little, his intentions as a composer changed. While he had been a servant, and later a busy entrepreneur, Haydn wrote his works quickly and in profusion, with frequent deadlines. As an established composer, Haydn now felt that he had the privilege of taking his time and writing for posterity. This is reflected in the subject matter of The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), which address such weighty topics as the meaning of life and the purpose of humankind. They represent an attempt to render the sublime in music. Haydn’s new intentions also meant that he was willing to spend much time on a single work: Both oratorios took him over a year to complete. Haydn once remarked that he had worked on The Creation so long because he wanted it to last.
Mozart
However, a younger contemporary, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, brought his genius to Haydn’s ideas and applied them to two of the major genres of the day: opera, and the virtuoso concerto. Whereas Haydn spent much of his working life as a court composer, Mozart wanted public success in the concert life. This meant composing opera and performing as a virtuoso. Haydn was not a virtuoso at the international touring level; nor was he seeking to create operatic works that could play for many nights in front of a large audience. Mozart wanted both. Stylistically, Mozart had a taste for more chromatic chords (and greater contrasts in harmonic language generally), a greater love for creating a large number of melodies in a single work, and a more Italianate sensibility in music as a whole. He found, in Haydn’s music and later in his study of the polyphony of Bach, the means to discipline and enrich his gifts.
The Mozart family circa 1780. The portrait on the wall is of Mozart’s mother.
Haydn hailed Mozart. He studied his works, and considered the younger man his only true peer in music. In Mozart, Haydn found a greater range of instrumentation, dramatic effect and melodic resource; the learning relationship moved in two directions.
Mozart’s arrival in Vienna in 1780 brought an acceleration in the development of the classical style. There Mozart absorbed the fusion of Italianate brilliance and Germanic cohesiveness. His own taste for brilliant, rhythmically complex melodies and figures, long cantilena melodies, and virtuoso flourishes was merged with an appreciation for formal coherence and internal connection. It is at this time in history that the economic restrictions caused by war and inflation halted a trend to larger orchestras and forced the disbanding or reduction of many theater orchestras. This pressed the classical style inwards: toward seeking greater ensemble and technical challenge. A premium was placed on chamber music giving a further boost to the string quartet and other small ensemble groupings.
During this decade public taste began, increasingly, to recognize that Haydn and Mozart had reached a higher standard of composition. By the time Mozart arrived at age 25, in 1781, the dominant styles of Vienna were recognizably connected to the emergence of the early classical style. During this decade Mozart composed his most famous operas, his six late symphonies that helped to redefine the genre, and a string of piano concertos that still stand at the pinnacle of these forms.
The importance of London in the classical period is often overlooked, but it served as the home to the Broadwood’s factory for piano manufacturing and as the base for composers who, while less notable than the “Vienna School”, had a decisive influence on what came later. They were composers of many fine works, notable in their own right. London’s taste for virtuosity may well have encouraged the complex passage work and extended statements on tonic and dominant.
Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven, the most fateful of the above described new generation launched his numbered works in 1794 with a set of three piano trios, which remain in the repertoire. Somewhat younger than the others, though equally accomplished because of his youthful study under Mozart and his native virtuosity, was Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Hummel who studied under Haydn was a friend to Beethoven and Franz Schubert. Taken together, these composers can be seen as the vanguard of a broad change in style and the center of music for anticipating the Romantic period. .