A problem with reading history is that we tend to focus on our own particular interest and the larger forces which are at work shaping that interest tend to go unnoticed. Since, as I mentioned earlier, there is virtually no documentation concerning what Haydn was up to while in the employ of the Morzin family, excepting the surviving music which he composed, perhaps this is a good time to pull back the lens and see what was happening in Vienna at the time.
The Haydn biographies tell us this about the Morzin Era; "we believe that summers were spent in the country seat, at Lukavec in Bohemia. Most likely winters were spent in Vienna, probably at Batthyány Palace. It is likely that Haydn was the only musician who traveled with the family to Vienna, and possibly he gave music lessons and communed with his fellows while there."
Which is to say, they tell us nothing! But it isn't that there was nothing to tell, only a more panoramic point of view needs to be adopted. Musically, this was the heyday of Italian opera in Vienna. Metastasio still held sway as the Court Poet and Librettist. Gluck was very much in favor and his reform operas were on stage at the Imperial Theater. Wagenseil was the leading composer of instrumental music and the primary teacher of the Court. His music can be fairly said to have had some small influence on Haydn at the time, certain idiomatic gestures passed from one to the other. From the retrospective point of view that we would adopt today, Wagenseil seems a bit archaic relative to early Haydn, and indeed he is. His music masters were a generation earlier, and his beginnings were in Italian opera seria which he mastered in the 1740’s, before he became a more well known instrumentalist. His works from the 1750’s and ‘60’s which you might enjoy include keyboard sonatas for both organ and harpsichord of high quality. His concertos in general were being played at many opportunities in Vienna and all over the Holy Roman Empire, including Italy, of course. In the years of our current concern, Wagenseil was on sabbatical in Milan. His next published works, the Op 3 keyboard sonatas of 1761 would seem to reflect an advancement in his style. Despite the fact one didn’t need to go to Italy to learn new things, Haydn being a prime exemplar of the antithesis, still, it didn’t hurt to go when one’s expenses were totally underwritten by ones patron, in this case the Empress.
Both in the Autobiography of Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf and in the various biographies of Haydn dating from the end of his life, we read anecdotes concerning a friendship that developed between the two after their putative meeting in 1754 at the estate of Ditters’ patron, Prince Hildburghausen. It is hard to know when these adventures may have taken place, since Ditters was leading a life of adventure during most of the time that Haydn was in Vienna. But we know that by March of 1761 he showed up in Vienna for good, as a violinist with the Burgtheater orchestra. The newlywed and newly employed Haydn was not likely to have shared drunken adventures with him then, if indeed they ever did. A nice dinner perhaps?
Haydn’s old master Reutter was still in charge of all the music in the city. 1760 was a year of fierce power struggles for supremacy of the Hofburg’s musical establishment. The Habsburg trait which would disrupt the whole musical establishment in the 1780’s when wielded solely by Joseph II was already in evidence; they wanted it all, but they only wanted to pay for some of it! As we saw previously, Haydn was pressed into service as a singer in 1754-56 for the Holy Week services because no new singers were to be hired, and the old singers were indeed just that; old and thinning in number. But there was no shortage of personnel on hand for the social event of the season in 1760, Joseph’s wedding to Princess Isabella of Parma. As can be seen here, it was the place to be on October 6:
Unfortunately, the marriage was a disaster and she was dead a mere three years later. I linked the story for you, it is quite interesting.
Finally, one sole bit of documented biographical information exists from this time. On 9 November, 1760, Haydn entered into a marriage contract with Maria Anna Theresia Keller (1730 – 1800) (NOT Maria Anna Aloysia Apollonia Keller (1729 – 1730) as was falsely reported by Pohl and accepted by others for a century at least). After nearly five years of courtship, and twenty years nearly to the day of Haydn’s first employment in St. Stephen’s Knabenchor (Boys Choir), they were married in St Stephen’s on 26 November. Sometime within the next few weeks, Morzin realized that he was bankrupt and his erstwhile Kapellmeister was released from service, on his own again. Fortunately, he had sown his seeds well. The best was at hand!
Thanks for reading!