Franz Joseph Haydn's Biography
Franz Joseph Haydn 1732 - 1809 (b. Rohrau, Austria/Hungary)
Franz Joseph Haydn was the first of the three great composers of the Viennese Classical school, followed closely by Mozart and Beethoven. In his lifetime, he saw, and indeed influenced, the development of musical style from the Baroque period to the Classical.
Haydn was born in a small Hungarian town into a family of 12 children, of whom only six survived infancy. In spite of the strict discipline imposed on the household by their mother, the Haydn children enjoyed entertainment at home thanks to family concerts organized by their father. Though lacking any formal musical training himself, their father had learned to play the harp, and accompanied the children's singing on such occasions. Encouraged by a family friend, Haydn's parents sent him away at just six years of age to begin his musical education in a neighboring town, where he began learning to play a variety of instruments. From the age of 7 until he was 18, he was a member of the choir of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where he improved his singing and added the harpsichord and violin to the instruments he learned. At age 18, Haydn was kicked out of St. Stephen's, the official reason being that he'd been caught playing a practical joke on another student, supposedly cutting off the other boy's pigtail during class. In any case, his voice had changed unsuitably for the choir, and his music director needed a reason to expel him. So Haydn embarked on the "starving artist" phase of his musical career, living in Vienna - playing, teaching and composing music. To his good fortune, he was soon introduced to the local nobility under whose patronage his career would flourish.
Haydn's most important appointment was court composer to the Esterházy family (Prince Paul Anton, and after his death, his brother Prince Nikolaus). Prince Nikolaus established the family seat in Hungary, in a grand country estate called Esterháza, said to rival the palace of Versailles in France. Prince Nikolaus' desires to expand and modernize the family's musical repertory combined with the isolation of country life worked to Haydn's advantage, providing an environment in which his creative genius could thrive. He composed operas, symphonies and quartets (among other works) as his imagination guided him, without the distractions that might have come from having competing composers nearby. During this time, Haydn essentially invented the string quartet (musical ensembles prior to that were usually arranged for trios, often featuring the harpsichord).
An agreement with Prince Nikolaus enabled Haydn to publish his music after 1779, which enhanced his reputation and fortune considerably throughout Europe. By the end of his life, Haydn was so widely - and highly - respected, that even as Napoleon's armies made their way into Austria in 1809, Napoleon himself ordered his men to stand guard at Haydn's home, and to ensure that no harm came to the great composer.