He held a steady job for thirty years.
He created music that rocked the world, without living in misery.
His work was recognized throughout Europe, while he was still alive.
He is… the least interesting man in the world.
Yes, Franz Joseph Haydn was many things -- Father of the Symphony, of the String Quartet, an
instrumental part of the Classical Period, as prolific as Mozart or Beethoven, but a
tortured artist he was not.
He moved away from his parents when he was six, but that was what you did if you wanted
to be somebody back in the day.
And it worked wonders, he was only training for about a year before he got picked up by
a big time composer in Vienna to work as a choir boy.
That gig lasted him a good ten years, but by the time he was seventeen his angelic voice
sounded less like
[Austrian Boys Choir singing angelicly]
And more like
[Insufferable screeching and crowing]
For God's sake, somebody stop him!
But his employer wanted to let him down gently and look for some other reason he could fire
him.
Luckily, Haydn was a bit of a prankster, so one day when he snipped the pony tail off another
choir boy, his employer beat him with a cane and kicked him to the curb.
Don’t get too worried, because he was taken in by a friend and was able to find work in
the music business with enough time left over to give himself the education he never got
from his employers.
Pretty soon he was making a name for himself as a composer, until he came to the attention
of one Count Morzin
I need to look up that pronunciation
who offered him his first steady job.
Finally secure, Haydn decided to get married, and proposed to his true love…’s sister.
They quickly discovered they were not a good pair, but couldn’t do much about it because
divorce was a big no-no.
So they did themselves the favor of not having kids and seeing other people.
Then Haydn lost his job when the Morzin family had to scale back their expenses, so he took
a job with the Esterhazy family, with whom he would stay for about three decades and
produce his greatest work.
Now you’ve got your standard symphonies and whatnot, he was big in making sonatas
a thing, all very pretty, you’ve been listening to nothing but Haydn this whole time, but!
He never stopped being a prankster.
For example, there was this piece which sloooowly got quieter as it went on.
And that’s how you make sure no one falls asleep during your recital.
He’s also just about the only composer to have written for this instrument, which looks
like misshapen member of the violin family, but also has a set of plucked strings in the
back.
Because when you’re a hungarian prince you can get music made for any old instrument
you want.
Eventually Haydn got his contract renewed so he could release his music to the general
public, and by the time his employer cashed in his chips, he went to tour London, having
become wildly famous from his Hungarian hideaway.
Not bad for a man in his early sixties.
He also kept himself busy visiting his dear friend Mozart and taking on some kid named
Beeth... Beeth Oven as an apprentice.
Yeah, those guys.
Pushing further into his sixties, he returned to Vienna where he continued to crank out
music like a machine, and only by the time he was seventy-one did he start to slow down.
His head was still swimming with music, but he was too sick to compose.
His career began to wind down, but not without a touching sendoff.
He could no longer conduct in public, so a group of composers and aristocrats, including
Salieri, Beethoven, and, I assume, the ghost of Mozart, took it upon themselves to organize
a performance of his magnum opus The Creation, carrying the frail composer on an armchair
to thunderous fanfare.
Now that would’ve been a great place for him to shut his eyes and go to the big concert
hall in the sky, but he was destined to go out even more dramatically, probably to make
up for the rest of his life.
On the tenth of May, 1809, he awoke to the sound of cannons, and unfortunately it wasn’t
a time-travelling Tchaikovsky, but a Bonaparte bombarding Vienna.
So Haydn slams open his windows and declares “Don’t be afraid, children!
Where Haydn is, no harm can - gah!”
Three days later the city fell to the French.
In a small act of defiance, Haydn performed his hymn to the Austrian Emperor three times,
multo gusto.
And that evening, he took his last bow and collapsed.
If you’re enjoying this respectful moment of silence, you should like, comment, and
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It’s what he wouldn’t wanted.
And in case you haven’t noticed, my monthly schedule is shot so who knows when I’ll
be uploading next.
Okay, have a nice day.