1798. On 31 March, Haydn will be 66 years old. He is not wealthy, but he is comfortably well off. He is well-known and popular throughout Europe and much of the New World and the Far East. Perhaps this will be the year Haydn retires? Would you care to wager?
|
Portrait of Johann Florian Elßler |
The First Violin performance part to 'The Creation', 1798 in Elßler's beautiful handwriting |
If you were this highly productive artist, what sort of schedule do you think you would be keeping by your sixty-sixth year? We know Haydn's, courtesy of his amanuensis, Johann Elssler:
Daily Schedule of the late Herr v. Haydn*
In the summer time he rose at half past six. The first thing he did was to shave, which he did for himself up to his 73rd year. After shaving, he got dressed completely. If a pupil were present, he had to play the lesson he had been assigned on the clavier to Hr. v. Haydn as he was dressing. The mistakes were at once corrected, the pupil instructed about the reasons there of, and then a new task was assigned. For this, one and a half hours were required. At the dot of 8 o'clock, breakfast had to be on the table and right after breakfast, Haydn sat down at the piano and improvised [fantasirte] whereby at the same time he worked out the sketch of the composition: for this a daily period from 8 to 11:30 in the morning was required. At 11:30 visits were paid or received; or he took a walk until 1:30. From 2 to 3 o'clock was the hour for lunch. After lunch Haydn always concerned himself with some small domestic task, or he went into his small library and read a book. At 4 o'clock Haydn returned to musical affairs. He took the sketch which had been prepared that morning and put it into score, for which task he took three to four hours. At 8 pm. Haydn usually went out, but came home again at 9 and either sat down to write scores or took a book and read until 10 o'clock. The hour of 10 o'clock was suppertime, which consisted of bread and wine. Haydn made it a rule not to have anything else except bread and wine in the evening, and he broke the rule now and then only when he was invited out for dinner. At table Haydn liked light conversation and altogether a merry entertainment. At half past eleven Haydn went to bed - in old age even later - The wintertime made no appreciable difference in the daily schedule except that Haydn got up in the morning a half hour later, otherwise everything was as in the summer. In old age, mainly during the last 5 to 6 years of his life, physical weakness and illness disturbed the above schedule. The active man could, at last, find no occupation. In this latter period Haydn used to lie down for half an hour in the afternoon.
*NB – Elßler spells "Haydn" throughout with a ӱ, thusly "Haӱdn"
Johann Elßler - From a manuscript copy in the Mozarteum, Salzburg – Date unknown
Johann Elßler (Elssler) (3 May 1769 in Eisenstadt - 12 January 1843 in Vienna) has been mentioned a few times here already. He is another of those invaluable people who have helped both Haydn and us as we work our way through his life. Elssler's father, Joseph (the Elder), was Haydn's copyist in the early years of Nicholas I, until his death in 1782. His brother, Joseph Jr. (the Younger, that is) was an oboist in the Esterházy Band for many years. Johann seems to arrive on the scene when Haydn is looking for a copyist/valet who could be trusted, for his second London visit. He remained in that position for the remainder of Haydn's lifetime. While Elssler's manuscript is undated, 'Haydn's typical day' almost certainly occurs during the period we are looking at now, the creation of The Creation. It is also rather heartwarming to note how Elssler has promoted 'Herr von Haydn' to the gentry, an honor he no doubt felt was richly deserved. The bond between the two of them was very strong, so much so that Elssler's distinctive handwriting is used as authentication that a work is really a Haydn work. Note that on the manuscript pictured above, many of the dynamics were added by Haydn afterward. Perhaps after a rehearsal?
Which is appropriate because, after all, Die Schöpfung, (The Creation), is the story of 1798, no matter the other items of interest we will run up on. Of all Haydn's works, this is the one which never fell out of favor or out of the 'standard repertoire'. In fact though, there was rather a lot going on this year, let's have a look.
Haydn began the year in Eisenstadt, preparing a musical festivity for the Prince. It seems sometimes that the 'part-time job' was plenty enough to keep a person occupied. It does give cause for us to have noted this bit though:
"Herr Jos. Haydn excuses himself that he could not come to today's session, because he has to go to Eisenstadt with his Prince, but meanwhile he offers the Society for its Lenten Academy the '7 Words' in the vocal version. The Society accepts this offer with greatest thanks and profound pleasure".
Minutes of the Tonkünstler-Societät meeting, 19 January 1798
Finally, the public première of what would be a long-running seasonal masterpiece. So, on 1 and 2 April, Haydn personally led his The Seven Last Words of Christ in the new version with choral parts. Beethoven also had a share in the first night's program, performing the piano part in his Quintet for Piano and Winds (Op. 16). We have seen the Tonkünstler-Societät (Society of Musicians) quite a few times before this, in 1774 I described it as a sort of private insurance for Vienna's musicians. The leading Court Composer in Vienna of the early '770's, Florian Gassman, father of Theresa, was the driving force in organizing this group.
Mon très cher Père! Vienna, 11 April 1781
[snip] I forgot to tell you the other day that at the concert the symphony [NB – either K 300a ('Paris') or the new K 338] went magnifique and had the greatest success. There were forty violins, the wind instruments were all doubled, there were ten violas, ten double basses, eight violoncellos and six bassoons…
Emily Anderson Letters of Mozart & His Family #398
ca. 1770 by Balzer
This huge orchestra was without equal for Vienna, and it is easy to see why Mozart was enthused about it. The concerts also served as a career launching pad; this one, for example, was not headlined by the Famous Mozart, it was an oratorio, George Albrechtsberger's Die Pilgrime auf Golgotha, and Mozart's symphony was either a lead-in curtain raiser or an intermission time filler. Nonetheless, it was a break for him and got his name out in front of the most important people in the city at a time, early in 1781, when he really needed the publicity because he was planning his getaway from Salzburg.
Gassmann's original idea, that the musicians had just one service to offer to make money, i.e.- concertizing, had blossomed by this point into being the biggest concert series in the City. It had become a point of honor among the nobility and clergy to attend all the concerts and to donate heavily to the Society's coffers. And why not? After all, they were the ones who used nearly all the services during the year. Vienna didn't make the pretense that London did of having "public" concerts at that point in time. London's "open to the public" was true, as far as it went, however if you weren't among the aristocracy or business elite, the several weeks' pay equivalent it took to buy a ticket probably lowered its priority on your agenda. Vienna's concert scene, though, was driven by private groups of the nobility, and the concerts were held in their palaces. Thus it was with Die sieben letzten Worte. It was premiered on 26 March, 1796 in the palace of Prince Schwarzenberg, and other than a few other private performances, such as Silverstolpe wrote about from Prince Schwarzenberg's on 7 April 1797, or the one we saw in October 1797 in Eisenstadt with Theresa Gaßmann singing, this was definitely not in the public domain, such as it would have been in London.
Was the première of a 'new' Haydn oratorio such a big deal in 1798 as to generate this much interest from the Tonkünstler-Societät? You can judge for yourself from the table below, I will tell you that from ticket sales alone, which were easily matched or surpassed by private donations, this was the single biggest income-generating booking they had since their founding! Here are a very few others, by way of comparison:
|
Date |
Feature |
Gross Income |
Expenses |
Net Income |
Attendance |
|
21 & 23 March 1779 |
George Frideric Handel: |
1,028 fl. 49x |
337 fl. |
691 fl. 49x |
1,587 |
|
11&13 March 1781 |
Johann Adolf Hasse: |
1,608 fl. 36x |
198 fl. 35x |
1,410 fl. 1x |
1,896 |
|
28 & 30 March 1784 |
Joseph Haydn: |
1,466 fl. 21x |
309 fl. 50x |
1,156 fl. 31x |
1,804 |
|
13 & 15 March 1785 |
Wolfgang Amadeus |
950 fl. 55x |
306 fl. 33x |
644 fl. 22x |
827 |
|
20-21 March 1796 |
Antonio Salieri: La |
1,774 fl. 47x |
487 fl. 21x |
1,287 fl. 26x |
1,776 |
|
1 & 2 April 1798 |
Joseph Haydn: Die sieben |
2,734 fl. 21x |
366 fl. 33x |
2,367 fl. 48x |
2,893 |
|
22-23 Dec. 1798 |
Variety Academy |
1,887 fl. 39x |
292 fl. 5x |
1,595 fl. 34x |
1,583 |
These are a small fraction of all the shows (at least 2 per year) produced, but you get some flavor here of just how popular Haydn suddenly had become, even in Vienna, a city notorious for ignoring its homegrown talent.
It has been a truly long while since we heard anything at all about Haydn's younger Brother, Johann Michael. They were both in Vienna in 1761, and traveled together to Rohrau once. Then, in late 1770 and early 1771, Haydn had become seriously ill, to the point where either Mrs. H or the Prince contacted Michael in Salzburg and let him know that Joseph might pass on. Michael arranged leave from the Archbishop and was preparing to journey to Eisenstadt when Joseph suddenly made a miraculous recovery. Joseph wrote his Salve Regina in g (Hob 23b:2) in thanksgiving, and Michael canceled his journey, not to be seen again until now. Which is not to say the brothers weren't close or didn't keep in touch, but there are no documents extant to demonstrate it.
Michael had managed to keep more than a little busy during these years. He was the Salzburgian Kapellmeister from 1762 and for the next 43 years. His own career as a composer was only scarcely less imposing than his brother's. Since he worked for the Archbishop, it should be no surprise that his specialty was sacred music. By 1798, most of his forty-seven masses had been composed. The quality of these works is beyond compare: Joseph felt Michael's masses were superior to his own. Even Leopold Mozart, who never said anything good about any musician, not least one who had got the job he felt he deserved, had this to write to Wolfgang in Paris:
Mon très cher Fils! Salzburg, 1 November 1777
I have this moment come in from the Cathedral service, during which Haydn's oboe mass was performed, he himself conducting it. He had also composed the offertory and, instead of a sonata, he had set to music the words of the graduale (Timete Dominum), which the priest has to say. The mass was rehearsed yesterday after Vespers. … I liked the whole mass very much, as there were six oboists, three double basses, two bassoons and the castrato who has been taken on for six months at one hundred gulden a month. Ferlendis and Sandmayr played the oboe solos. …. What I particularly liked was that, since oboes and bassoons resemble very much the human voice, the tutti seemed to be a very strongly supported chorus of voices, as the sopranos and altos, strengthened by the six oboes and the alto trombones, admirably balanced the number of tenor and bass voices; and the [ri]pieno was so majestic that I could have easily done without the oboe solos. The whole affair lasted an hour and a quarter and I found it far too short, for it is really an excellent composition. (goes on for another long paragraph)…
Even Leopold likes it!
Michael seems to have got on a lot better with Wolfgang than with Leopold. When Wolfgang and Constanze visited Salzburg in late summer of 1783, he found Michael ill (Leopold's statement that he was too drunk to compose doesn't hold water, only sour grape juice) and unable to complete a commission for six duos for violin and viola. Wolfgang composed the remaining ones in the set and simply gave them to Michael as a gift. He later also warned Leopold about the copyists in Salzburg making extra copies of new music, claiming that he already had Michael Haydn's three latest symphonies. To one of those he added a slow introduction and very probably used it as a warmup in his own concerts in 1784 at the Trattnerhof. Because the first movement of this symphony was in Mozart's handwriting, it was believed for years to be his work (called Symphony #37). This is another example of the toll the pressure to produce put on composers. We've already seen it with Haydn; none were immune!
Michael reached Vienna on or about the 24th of August, and his stay seems to have been as long as three months. We will soon know Joseph Eybler; some of us already do. Michael, unlike his more famous brother, kept a pocket journal which included details of his trip to Vienna. The book seems to be missing, but Pohl tells us about a letter, from Michael to Eybler, his cousin, dated one year later, which mentions some details of the trip. Among these were two Akademien (concerts) which he attended at Schickeneder's Freihaus Theatre auf der Wieden, on 27 October and 5 November, almost certainly with his brother. These were benefits for Ludwig Fischer , one of the great bass voices of the age, and the original 'Osmin' in The Abduction from the Seraglio. Fischer was still singing, but Rosenbaum, ever the impartial observer notes "one notices his not inconsiderable number of years in his voice".
by Carl Pippich
As always at benefits, there were a variety of concertos and other favorites performed. For example, one of these saw the Vienna première of Beethoven's C major Pianoforte Concerto (Op. 15). Ignaz Schuppanzigh, near the beginning of his fine career, played a Viotti concerto. But here is something else, a rarely mentioned fact: Schuppanzigh also played the première of one of Beethoven's Romances for Violin & Orchestra, possibly Op. 40, but more likely Op. 50. Both concerts closed with "the Popular Symphony by Haydn", which at that point in time was nearly certainly #94, The Surprise. Additionally, mentions from some such as Rosenbaum include attending Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio. And on 3 November there was Figaro's Hochzeit, the German version of Mozart's Le Nozze…, so ultimately the brothers managed to hit the high spots musically, and no doubt, it was a fine, long-overdue reunion for two men separated by nothing more than differing circumstances for far too long.
[Michael Haydn to Sigismund Neukomm]
Salzburg, 23rd November 1799.
Dearest Cousin !
You gave me the greatest pleasure with your Hochgesang [which was performed at a surprise party in honor of Michael's name-day]. . . . I thought at once of my dearest brother (please be good enough to pay him, and his wife, my respectful compliments). When I lunched with him he surprised me most pleasantly with wind-band music [Harmoniemusik] quite unknown to me then, and even his parrot cried out when he heard it: what's that? . .
'That' was most likely one of Haydn's little Marches for London, probably Derbyshire March #1, which he kept the original autograph of in his library. The letter itself is addressed to another Haydn cousin, Sigismund von Neukomm, now a pupil of Haydn in Vienna, but once a pupil of Michael in Salzburg. Once we reach the new century, Neukomm will become a major player in the remaining years of Haydn in Gumpendorf.
So let's see how the events of 1798 unfold. Don't believe for a moment that just because I haven't gone into any detail about Napoleon it means the war is over. But it did stop to catch its breath for a moment, and so only when it becomes necessary, such as when Nelson defeats the French fleet at Aboukir, will we turn our attention in its direction.
Next: The Creation!
Thanks for reading!
Music of 1798
|
Hob No. |
Genre |
Key |
Name |
Libretto |
Instruments/Voices |
Notes |
|
21:02 |
Oratorio |
N/A |
Die Schöpfung |
German: Gottfried van Swieten |
Solo Soprano - Tenor – Bass & Chorus (4 voice parts), 3 Flutes, 2 Oboes, 2 Clarinets, 2 Bassoons, Double Bassoon, 2 Horns, 2 Trumpets, 3 Trombones, Timpani, Strings & Basso Continuo (Fortepiano or Harpsichord) |
First performed 29 – 30 April, Vienna |
|
The Creation |
English: original unknown, based on Milton & the Bible. This one is translated from the German by van Swieten |
Haydn would not allow the German version to be released until the English version was ready. |
||||
|
22:11 |
Catholic Mass |
d |
Missa in Angustiis (Mass during troubled times), also called Nelson Mass |
N/A |
Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass & Chorus, 3 Trumpets, Timpani, Strings & Organ Continuo & solo Organ obbligato |
First performed in Eisenstadt 23 Sept 1798. |
|
24b:20 |
Concert Aria |
Bb |
Solo e pensoso |
From a sonnet by Petrarch (Sonnet #28) |
Solo Soprano, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, Strings |
References:
Wuchner, Emily M. - The Tonkünstler-Societät and the Oratorio in Vienna 1771–1798 - Dissertation at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2017
Morrow, Mary Sue - Concert life in Haydn's Vienna: aspects of a developing musical and social institution – Pendragon Press 1989
Landon, H.C.R. – Joseph Haydn – Chronicle & Works Vol. 4 – The Years of "The Creation" 1796-1800 – University of Indiana Press 1977
Anderson, Emily - Letters of Mozart & His Family – MacMillan 3rd Edition 1985
Zaslaw, Neal – Mozart's Symphonies – Clarendon Press 1989