Haydn & the Symphony
“Father of the Symphony” and “Father of the String Quartet” — Joseph Haydn invented the two dominant Classical forms, mentored Mozart, taught Beethoven, and remained creative into his seventies.
5.1 Joseph Haydn (1732–1809): A Life in Service
Franz Joseph Haydn was born on 31 March 1732 in Rohrau, a small village on the Austrian border with Hungary, the son of a wheelwright. He showed musical talent early and was taken as a chorister to St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna at the age of eight. When his voice broke at seventeen he was dismissed with almost nothing — a poor cloak and three shillings.
He survived for years as a freelance musician in Vienna, teaching, playing in street serenades, and studying counterpoint from Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum largely on his own. His big break came in 1761 when he was appointed Vice-Kapellmeister (soon effectively Kapellmeister) to Prince Paul Anton Esterházy, one of the wealthiest nobles in the Habsburg Empire.
Haydn spent almost thirty years at the Esterházy court, most of it at the remote palace of Esterháza in rural Hungary — a gilded isolation that paradoxically freed him. As he later told a biographer: “My prince was content with all my works, I received approval, I could, as head of an orchestra, make experiments, observe what enhanced an effect and what weakened it, and was thus in a position to improve, alter, make additions or omissions, and be as bold as I pleased.”
In 1790 the music-loving Prince Miklós died and his successor dissolved the musical establishment, granting Haydn a generous pension. At fifty-eight, Haydn was finally free. The impresario Johann Peter Salomon promptly invited him to London for two seasons (1791–92 and 1794–95), which produced the twelve “London Symphonies” and made Haydn the most celebrated composer in Europe. Oxford awarded him an honorary doctorate.
5.2 Inventing the Symphony
The symphony — a multi-movement orchestral work, typically in four movements — evolved gradually from the Italian opera overture (sinfonia) in the 1730s and 1740s. When Haydn wrote his first symphony around 1757, the form was still unsettled: three or four movements, variable scoring, no fixed character for individual movements. By the time he wrote his last symphony (No. 104, the “London,” 1795), the Classical four-movement plan was firmly established.
Haydn's 104 symphonies chart the evolution of the Classical orchestra over forty years. The earliest use only strings and continuo; the mature symphonies deploy a full Classical orchestra with woodwinds (flute, oboes, clarinets, bassoons), brass (horns, trumpets), and timpani. The “Paris Symphonies” (Nos. 82–87, 1785–86) and “London Symphonies” (Nos. 93–104, 1791–95) are the acknowledged masterpieces of the Classical symphonic tradition.
Haydn's nickname titles — “Surprise,” “Military,” “Clock,” “Drumroll,” “London” — reflect the distinctive character he gave each work. The “Surprise” Symphony (No. 94) is named for a fortissimo orchestral crash in the middle of a quiet theme in the slow movement — supposedly designed to wake the London audience from its post-dinner doze.
5.3 Humour as a Compositional Tool
Haydn was the most consistently humorous of all the great composers — and his humour was not merely decorative but structural. He used the listener's expectations about musical form as the material for comedy: false endings, premature returns of the opening theme, rhythmic displacements that destroy the expected downbeat, sudden silences, unexpected key changes, and themes that seem to be going somewhere obvious and then go somewhere else entirely.
The finale of his String Quartet Op. 33 No. 2 (“The Joke”) ends with a series of apparently conclusive cadences interrupted by silences, so that the audience never knows when to applaud — a joke at the expense of the concert convention itself. The finale of Symphony No. 90 tricks the audience into premature applause by presenting a false ending, then continuing.
This wit was part of Haydn's deeper aesthetic purpose: to keep the listener fully engaged, always alert, never certain what would come next. Beethoven learned this lesson and extended it to cosmic proportions; the difference is that Haydn's surprises make you smile, while Beethoven's make you gasp.
5.4 Father of the String Quartet
The string quartet — two violins, viola, and cello — is the most intellectually demanding and revered of all chamber music genres, sometimes called “four people having a conversation.” Haydn effectively invented it: his first quartets in the 1750s and 1760s were essentially divertimenti for four strings; by the Op. 20 quartets (1772) he had transformed the medium into a vehicle for the most serious musical thought.
The Op. 33 quartets (1781) — which Haydn advertised as written in “an entirely new and special manner” — perfected the Classical quartet style and directly influenced the young Mozart, who responded with his own six quartets dedicated to Haydn (the “Haydn Quartets,” K. 387–465). At a famous private performance in Vienna, Haydn told Leopold Mozart: “Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.”
Haydn's final quartets — the Op. 76 set (1797–1798), including the “Emperor” with its theme that became the Austrian (and later German) national anthem — are works of profound depth that influenced Beethoven's middle-period quartets. The late quartets of both Haydn and Beethoven are considered the supreme achievements of the medium.
5.5 Mentor to Mozart, Teacher of Beethoven
Haydn's influence on the two greatest Classical composers was direct and personal. He and Mozart became close friends after meeting in Vienna in the early 1780s, playing chamber music together regularly and admiring each other's work without rivalry. Their mutual influence was profound: Mozart's last symphonies and quartets show Haydn's structural economy; Haydn's late London symphonies show Mozart's harmonic depth and orchestral richness.
When Mozart died in 1791, Haydn was devastated. He wrote to a friend: “Posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years.” He dedicated the six “London Symphonies” of his second London visit to the memory of his younger friend.
The young Beethoven came to Vienna in 1792 specifically to study with Haydn. The lessons did not go smoothly — Beethoven found Haydn inattentive; Haydn found Beethoven intractable — but the influence was real. Beethoven's early piano sonatas and string quartets are deeply informed by Haydn's formal models, even as Beethoven was already straining against them.
5.6 The Creation (1798): Late Masterpiece
Inspired by Handel's oratorios during his London visits, Haydn composed two late oratorios that rank among his greatest achievements. The Creation (1798), with a libretto drawn from the Book of Genesis and Milton's Paradise Lost, was an immediate sensation: the Vienna premiere was attended by virtually every musician of note in the city and had to be repeated almost immediately.
The famous opening — a slow orchestral introduction representing “Chaos,” formless and harmonically unstable — resolves into a blazing C major chord on the words “and there was — LIGHT!”: one of the great theatrical strokes in all music. Haydn reportedly wept at performances when the audience broke into applause at this moment.
The last public appearance of Haydn's life came in 1808, when he was carried into the Vienna palace where The Creation was being performed in his honour. The audience rose as he entered; the soprano Angelica Catalani knelt to kiss his hand. He was too weak to stay for the whole performance and was carried out; Mozart's student Hummel walked beside his chair, holding his hand. He died on 31 May 1809, during Napoleon's second occupation of Vienna.