Dartblog

Today is celebrated the 274th birthday of Joseph Haydn, one of the greatest music-makers ever to have graced this green Earth. Although the world is captivated these days by Mozart—and this entire year, of course, is dedicated to his birth’s 250th anniversary—Haydn in some musical respects was ahead of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and in many, many others was his father and shepherd, especially when it came to formalities, public life, and fame, all of which Haydn knew well—more so than Mozart ever did in his lifetime—and the tricks to which he was more than happy to share with his friend Mozart, whose ultimate gifts Haydn perhaps knew better than anyone alive. (With the yet-young Beethoven the only possible exception.)

Haydn forged the classical style, erecting symphonic frameworks that would be filled during his lifetime and for centuries thereafter with millions of different sounds, very few as elegant, joyful, or wondrously symmetrical as those Haydn produced. His music is discursive and fresh, but somehow always familiar. That familiarity, which modernists in their boundless revisionism are apt to call lethargy, is what makes Haydn’s music some of the most touching ever written: The listener, a fresh and unheard Haydn symphony doting about her, knows almost fully what the next bars contain. This isn’t because Haydn’s music is repetitive; it is because it is predictive. Every moment contains clues of what is to come, and that imparted familiarity makes every piece a thorough joy to listen to. It makes the music a conversation, rather than an address.

Working chiefly for the Eszterházy family in Austria and Hungary (although the symphonies he wrote while in London are among the most famous in the classical repertory) Haydn wrote in sum close to eight hundred works, including one hundred and four symphonies and eighty-three string quartets. Almost every single note reaches skyward, and every one is worth listening to.

As is often the case in music, a lot about Haydn can be learned by taking a look at who hated him. Tasked with describing the great maestro’s output, the generally-nonsensical American composer Charles Ives chose the words “easy music for the sissies.”

And as if to put too fine a point on a long, lush, musical life, there is the fact that it was snuffed out at the hands of the French army under the heartless baton of Napoleon. Happily for our very humanity, accordions reigned only for so long, and the wonderful music of Joseph Haydn lives on as strong and as fresh as it ever was.

Listening recommendations? Sir Collin Davis and the incomparable Concertgebouw provide definitive accounts of the London Symphonies on two volumes, here and here. A featherly little string quartet to fill your Sunday afternoon is the infamous Lark Quartet, and for the upcoming Easter there is The Creation.