German Dance
Joseph Haydn
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Browse piano sheets by Joseph Haydn on Zen Virtual Piano. Haydn later recounted of his years serving Prince Nicolaus, “My Prince was content with all my endeavours; I received applause (...) I was cut off from the world (...) and so I was compelled to become original.” Joseph Haydn was the second son of humble parents, a wheelwright father and a mother who had been a cook for the lords of the village, and before he was six a cousin in Hainburg, a school principal and choirmaster, offered to take him into his home and train him. He stayed at the choir school for nine years, acquiring an enormous practical knowledge of music through constant performance but little instruction in theory, and when his voice changed he was expelled from both the cathedral choir and the choir school. A choir school that offered constant performance but little theory shows one way a musician can be formed. At 17 he found refuge in a fellow musician’s garret and supported himself miserably with odd musical jobs; Nicola Porpora hired him as an accompanist and gave him formal lessons in composition. A boy taught by performing and then left to scrape a living learned music first by doing it, then by lessons. Haydn served Prince Miklós for nearly 30 years, and he composed over 170 chamber pieces featuring the baryton for the prince between 1765 and 1778, including 126 Divertimenti for baryton, viola and cello. Writing 126 divertimenti for a prince’s instrument shows how a patron’s taste could set a composer’s daily work. In 1779 his contract was renegotiated so that he could travel, accept commissions from abroad and sell his works to publishers, and the freedom produced a burst of creativity including the String Quartets Opp. 33, 50, 54, 55 and 64 and the “Paris” Symphonies, Nos. 82–87. Court patronage, the baryton and a later freer contract show how both rules and freedom shaped what he wrote. On visits to Vienna in the prince’s retinue he formed a close friendship with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who declared that he had learned from Haydn how to write quartets and dedicated a set of six to his “beloved friend.” While travelling to London in 1790 he met the young Ludwig van Beethoven in Bonn, and Beethoven later came to Vienna and was his pupil until the second London journey. A friend who dedicated quartets to him and a pupil who later came to Vienna put his friendships and his teaching in the same city. He arrived in England on New Year’s Day 1791, and he was a devout Catholic who normally began the manuscript of each composition with “In nomine Domini” and ended it with “Laus Deo.” Normally opening and ending a manuscript with a short pious phrase gave a score a frame of its own.
Browse piano sheets by Joseph Haydn on Zen Virtual Piano.
Haydn later recounted of his years serving Prince Nicolaus, “My Prince was content with all my endeavours; I received applause (...) I was cut off from the world (...) and so I was compelled to become original.”
Joseph Haydn was the second son of humble parents, a wheelwright father and a mother who had been a cook for the lords of the village, and before he was six a cousin in Hainburg, a school principal and choirmaster, offered to take him into his home and train him. He stayed at the choir school for nine years, acquiring an enormous practical knowledge of music through constant performance but little instruction in theory, and when his voice changed he was expelled from both the cathedral choir and the choir school. A choir school that offered constant performance but little theory shows one way a musician can be formed. At 17 he found refuge in a fellow musician’s garret and supported himself miserably with odd musical jobs; Nicola Porpora hired him as an accompanist and gave him formal lessons in composition. A boy taught by performing and then left to scrape a living learned music first by doing it, then by lessons.
Haydn served Prince Miklós for nearly 30 years, and he composed over 170 chamber pieces featuring the baryton for the prince between 1765 and 1778, including 126 Divertimenti for baryton, viola and cello. Writing 126 divertimenti for a prince’s instrument shows how a patron’s taste could set a composer’s daily work. In 1779 his contract was renegotiated so that he could travel, accept commissions from abroad and sell his works to publishers, and the freedom produced a burst of creativity including the String Quartets Opp. 33, 50, 54, 55 and 64 and the “Paris” Symphonies, Nos. 82–87. Court patronage, the baryton and a later freer contract show how both rules and freedom shaped what he wrote.
On visits to Vienna in the prince’s retinue he formed a close friendship with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who declared that he had learned from Haydn how to write quartets and dedicated a set of six to his “beloved friend.” While travelling to London in 1790 he met the young Ludwig van Beethoven in Bonn, and Beethoven later came to Vienna and was his pupil until the second London journey. A friend who dedicated quartets to him and a pupil who later came to Vienna put his friendships and his teaching in the same city. He arrived in England on New Year’s Day 1791, and he was a devout Catholic who normally began the manuscript of each composition with “In nomine Domini” and ended it with “Laus Deo.” Normally opening and ending a manuscript with a short pious phrase gave a score a frame of its own.
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He later recounted: “My Prince was content with all my endeavours; I received applause (...) I was cut off from the world (...) and so I was compelled to become original.”
He formed a close friendship with Mozart, who dedicated six quartets to his “beloved friend,” and Beethoven was his pupil in Vienna until Haydn’s second London journey.
The freedom to travel, accept foreign commissions and sell to publishers brought a burst of creativity that produced the String Quartets Opp. 33, 50, 54, 55 and 64 and the “Paris” Symphonies Nos. 82–87.