Memo from Chief of Staff Rahier to the Prince:
Most Serene and Noble Prince of the Holy Roman Empire,
Gracious Prince and Lord!
I have communicated today to all the musicians by word of mouth your high order of the 8th, that none of the wives and children of the musicians except for the wives of Haydn, Fribert[h], Dichtler, Celini and Tomasini are to be allowed to be seen at Eszterház[a], and there was no one who did not agree to the terms of that high order…
Eisenstadt, 10 January, 1772…
Oh joy, it's going to be one of those years! This has been building up for a while, with the place overrun with actors, and they being pledged for a long season. Rumor also had it that Nicholas was working on a plan to cut expenses (whatever for?) by reducing extraneous musicians and cutting salaries of the remainder. Most assuredly the house officers would be getting restless before all was said and done!
Each thing in its place; the event which was big news at the time occurred several months before the event which is big today.
This year, instead of the Passer Troupe of actors, the more famous and highly regarded players of Carl Wahr were engaged for the season. Wahr was actually younger than Haydn, but already famous for his acting ability. 'Hanswurst' style playing, largely improvised and downright naughty, was finally passing out of style, at least among followers of the Enlightenment principles. It was the goal of the Habsburgs to raise the reputation of Austria in front of the rest of Europe. Certainly Hanswurst couldn't remain the height of culture, no matter how popular with all ranks of citizenry. Wahr's troupe did serious theater, and high quality to boot. He is considered the pioneer of German Shakespeareans. The Prince was unquestionably delighted with his contract with Wahr; they stayed on until the 1777 season, and in that period Nicholas entertained his most prominent guests. For this one moment in time, he had the finest dramatic actors and the finest musicians in the Holy Roman Empire all assembled in one place. Plenty of reason to show off, which is just what he did!
It is amazing how much of the history of this period is actually inferred from such mundane items as delivery receipts and workmen's bills. Blue taffeta and French lace became the costume for one of the singers at the Big Bash. Extra strings for the cembalo and reeds for oboes and bassoons, ditto. So what was the preparation for? As I mentioned earlier, it was big news at the time, although today, one merely says 'huh?'. Eszterháza was about to be visited by Prince Louis de Rohan, envoy to the Court of Vienna from Louis XV. He was important enough in the big scheme of things to be offered such things as theater, ballet and opera, as well as all sorts of musical entertainment by our Prince.
There are, fortunately, some very detailed accounts of the Rohan visit still extant. He arrived on July 12 from Vienna, and like many others he was amazed at the fantastic castle and grounds springing up from the surrounding wilderness. Entertainments began immediately upon arrival, starting with Wahr's group performing Charles Collé's play The Hunting Party of King Henry IV. It was French play, performed in German, thus my English translation. Quite nicely performed too, as it turns out. This was followed by a ballet.
I don't know a lot about the history of ballet, in fact, the only name I could pull out of a hat if I had a gun to my head would be Jean Georges Noverre, primarily because of an indirect affiliation with the young Mozart. He was the premier ballet master (and choreographer) of the time. So who else, of course, would Nicholas have brought in for the occasion? He produced his 1771 ballet written for Vienna, The Judgment of Paris, replete with Roman goddesses descending from the clouds and all the associated grandeur. On a more morose note, the fourteen year old sensation of the season in Vienna, Marguerite Delphine, danced to fabulous acclaim. However, she caught a cold while there and died a few days after her return to Vienna. Following the ballet there was the mandatory huge banquet and fireworks in the park, then a hunting party, all followed by a concert by Haydn and the band. Unfortunately the programme was not recorded; no doubt the auditors were uninformed about the proper Hoboken numbers. But wait, that's not all! Following the concert, the Wahr troupe presented another play, an unnamed tragedy this time, this followed by dinner, then a garden party. The park was lit up with torches, and there were booths with refreshments and amusements. In the middle of all this, there was a 'small listening hall' where 'sundry female singers sang only of love'. The day ended with a masked ball held in the beautiful garden clearing. Seriously, that was only Day 1!
The visit went on and on, for three days, each as full of artful presentations and manly activities as the previous one. It should be noted, although you probably already figured it; Haydn's band played all the music for the entire affair, every drama with its overture, entr'acte's and incidental music, the ballet with its own music, the formal concert (probably symphonies) and the singing ladies in the park. The 'small listening hall' in the park was actually populated by the opera singing ladies of the Esterházy troupe, and they sang all of the love arias, happy and sad, from Haydn's operas to date, probably from some other operas too. Thus the blue taffeta and French lace.
On another tack altogether, a different inference drawn from a bill follows here. What it accomplishes though is to put into proper perspective something which occurred later by helping us to date intentions a bit better.
Extract from a bill dated October 22, 1772, from one Joseph Stärzer (not the famous contemporary violinist, the horn repair man).
…for what I did in the way of work for the hunting horn player:
Two crooks for lowering a half a note………. 1 florin
Various crook sockets per ………….. 1 florin 30 kr.
Summa 2 florins 30 kr.
This bill presents us with a load of information if we consider its implications. One can see that if one takes a G horn crook and adds the ½ tone crook, one then has a horn in F#. And if one takes a C horn and adds the crook, one ends up with a horn in B. As we will see, Haydn would compose, before years end, a symphony in B and also one in f#. Thus preparations were already taking place for this event. So, is the tale which follows here, that the 'Farewell' symphony was an overnight project, plausible? I think we can see it was actually longer in the making.
The 'Farewell' symphony. The story of it is probably the most widely known Haydn anecdote, and has been so since only a very few years after it was composed. The stories themselves vary to some degree, but here they are summed up nicely here:
The wives were left behind in Eisenstadt when Haydn and his band of musicians - lusty and vigorous fellows in their prime - annually went to summer from May through October at the Eszterháza estate. Prince Nicholas was right to take pleasure in his fabulous castle with its 126 rooms, with adjoining opera house, outbuilding for the musicians, an inn, a coffee house, and gardens with Chinese pavilion. But when, at the beginning of November 1772, he announced his intention to remain there for another two months, the musicians made known to their Kapellmeister that to further delay their domestic pleasure was to risk a work stoppage. Haydn's solution ("I was young and lusty in those days, too," he remarked) was to compose this symphony-with-a-message: at the end, one by one, the players blow out the candles on their music racks as their part ends, and leave the room. The Prince took the hint: "If they all leave, we must leave too," he said with typically aristocratic understatement , then went to the antechamber to tell his musicians they could expect the necessary carriages the next morning. Thus the appellation Abschiedssymphonie (Farewell Symphony).
As we have already seen, the year began with an order to leave the women and children behind. Over the previous three years, we have also seen the Prince attempting to stretch the season out a bit further each time. There is little doubt the given reason, no room for everyone, was probably true. The 126 rooms included suites for guests, not dormitories for musicians' families! The one aspect which rings a bit false is the usually included one of the musicians complaining to Haydn (very likely) and the next day he produced this symphony, and the next day they all headed home. We have seen from the evidence of the horn crooks, an f# minor symphony was in the offing. Perhaps the idea of the entire having been already composed but not performed, and the finale being modified at the end without wrecking the entire balance is a bit more plausible. Upon consideration, why else would it have been there at all? It takes a substantial motivation to compose something like that!
This only touches the surface of 1772, lots more to come. Did I mention he composed the Opus 20 quartets this year? And even that doesn't finish it off. So next time, we will begin at the end and work our way through the year.
Thanks for reading!