String Quartet in E Major, Hob.III:8, (Op.2 No.2): 4. Menuetto
Joseph Haydn (31 March or 1 April 1732–31 May 1809) was a leading composer of the Classical period, called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet".
The name "Franz" was not used in the composer's lifetime; scholars, along with an increasing number of music publishers and recording companies, now use the historically more accurate form of his name, rendered in English as "Joseph Haydn".
A life-long resident of Austria, Haydn Read Full BioJoseph Haydn (31 March or 1 April 1732–31 May 1809) was a leading composer of the Classical period, called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet".
The name "Franz" was not used in the composer's lifetime; scholars, along with an increasing number of music publishers and recording companies, now use the historically more accurate form of his name, rendered in English as "Joseph Haydn".
A life-long resident of Austria, Haydn spent most of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Eszterházy family on their remote estate. Being isolated from other composers and trends in music until the later part of his long life, he was, as he put it, "forced to become original".
Joseph Haydn was the brother of Michael Haydn, himself a highly regarded composer at the court of Archbishop-Prince Hieronymous von Colloredo who also had in his employ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and father Leopold Mozart. Haydn had a third brother, Johann Evangelist Haydn, a tenor singer.
Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 in Rohrau, Austria village near the Hungarian border. His father was Matthias Haydn, a wheelwright who also served as "Marktrichter", an office akin to village mayor. Haydn's mother, the former Maria Koller, had previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau. Neither parent could read music. However, Matthias was an enthusiastic folk musician, who during the journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the harp. According to Haydn's later reminiscences, his childhood family was extremely musical, and frequently sang together and with their neighbors.
Haydn's parents were perceptive enough to notice that their son was musically talented and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain any serious musical training. It was for this reason that they accepted a proposal from their relative Johann Matthias Franck, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, that Haydn be apprenticed to Franck in his home to train as a musician. Haydn thus went off with Franck to Hainburg (ten miles away) and never again lived with his parents. At the time he was not quite six.
Life in the Franck household was not easy for Haydn, who later remembered being frequently hungry as well as constantly humiliated by the filthy state of his clothing. However, he did begin his musical training there, and soon was able to play both harpsichord and violin. The people of Hainburg were soon hearing him sing soprano parts in the church choir.
There is reason to think that Haydn's singing impressed those who heard him, because two years later (1740), he was brought to the attention of Georg von Reutter, the director of music in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, who was touring the provinces looking for talented choirboys. Haydn passed his audition with Reutter, and soon moved off to Vienna, where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister, the last four in the company of his younger brother Michael.
Like Franck before him, Reutter didn't always bother to make sure Haydn was properly fed. The young Haydn greatly looked forward to performances before aristocratic audiences, where the singers sometimes had the opportunity to satisfy their hunger by devouring the refreshments. Reutter also did little to further his choristers' musical education. However, St. Stephen's was at the time one of the leading, musical centers in Europe, where new music by leading composers was constantly being performed. Haydn was able to learn a great deal by osmosis simply by serving as a professional musician there.
In 1749, Haydn had matured physically to the point that he was no longer able to sing high choral parts. On a weak pretext, he was summarily dismissed from his job. He evidently spent one night homeless on a park bench, but was taken in by friends and began to pursue a career as a freelance musician. During this arduous period, which lasted ten years, Haydn worked many different jobs, including valet–accompanist for the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, from whom he later said he learned "the true fundamentals of composition". He laboured to fill the gaps in his training, and eventually wrote his first string quartets and his first opera. During this time Haydn's professional reputation gradually increased.
In 1759, or 1757 according to the New Grove Encyclopedia, Haydn received his first important position, that of Kapellmeister (music director) for Count Karl von Morzin. In this capacity, he directed the count's small orchestra, and for this ensemble wrote his first symphonies. Count Morzin soon suffered financial reverses that forced him to dismiss his musical establishment, but Haydn was quickly offered a similar job (1761) as assistant Kapellmeister to the Eszterházy family, one of the wealthiest and most important in the Austrian Empire. When the old Kapellmeister, Gregor Werner, died in 1766, Haydn was elevated to full Kapellmeister.
As a liveried servant of the Eszterházys, Haydn followed them as they moved among their three main residences: the family seat in Eisenstadt, their winter palace in Vienna, and Eszterháza, a grand new palace built in rural Hungary in the 1760s. Haydn had a huge range of responsibilities, including composition, running the orchestra, playing chamber music for and with his patrons, and eventually the mounting of operatic productions. Despite the backbreaking workload, Haydn considered himself fortunate to have his job. The Eszterházy princes (first Paul Anton, then most importantly Nikolaus I) were musical connoisseurs who appreciated his work and gave him the conditions needed for his artistic development, including daily access to his own small orchestra.
In 1760, with the security of a Kapellmeister position, Haydn married. He and his wife, the former Maria Anna Keller, did not get along, and they produced no children. Haydn may have had one or more children with Luigia Polzelli, a singer in the Eszterházy establishment with whom he carried on a long-term love affair, and often wrote to on his travels.
During the nearly thirty years that Haydn worked in the Eszterházy household, he produced a flood of compositions, and his musical style became ever more developed. His popularity in the outside world also increased. Gradually, Haydn came to write as much for publication as for his employer, and several important works of this period, such as the Paris symphonies (1785–6) and the original orchestral version of The Seven Last Words of Christ (1786), were commissions from abroad.
Around 1781 Haydn established a friendship with Mozart, whose work he had already been influencing by example for many years. According to later testimony by Stephen Storace, the two composers occasionally played in string quartets together. Haydn was hugely impressed with Mozart's work, and in various ways tried to help the younger composer. During the years 1782 to 1785, Mozart wrote a set of string quartets thought to be inspired by Haydn's Opus 33 series. On completion he dedicated them to Haydn, a very unusual thing to do at a time when dedicatees were usually aristocrats. The extremely close 'brotherly' Mozart-Haydn connection may be an expression of Freemasonic sympathies as well: Mozart and Haydn were members of the same Masonic lodge. Mozart joined in 1784 in the middle of writing those string quartets subsequently dedicated to his Masonic brother Haydn. This lodge was a specifically Catholic rather than a deistic one.
In 1789, Haydn developed another friendship with Maria Anna von Genzinger (1750–93), the wife of Prince Nicolaus's personal physician in Vienna. Their relationship, documented in Haydn's letters, was evidently intense but platonic. The letters express Haydn's sense of loneliness and melancholy at his long isolation at Eszterháza. Genzinger's premature death in 1793 was a blow to Haydn, and his F minor variations for piano, Hob. XVII:6, which are unusual in Haydn's work for their tone of impassioned tragedy, may have been written as response to her death.
The London journeys
In 1790, Prince Nikolaus died and was succeeded by a thoroughly unmusical prince who dismissed the entire musical establishment and put Haydn on a pension. Thus freed of his obligations, Haydn was able to accept a lucrative offer from Johann Peter Salomon, a German impresario, to visit England and conduct new symphonies with a large orchestra.
The visit (1791-2), along with a repeat visit (1794-5), was a huge success. Audiences flocked to Haydn's concerts, and he quickly achieved wealth and fame: one review called him "incomparable." Musically, the visits to England generated some of Haydn's best-known work, including the Surprise, Military, Drumroll, and London symphonies, the Rider quartet, and the Gypsy Rondo piano trio.
The only misstep in the venture was an opera, L'anima del filosofo, which Haydn was contracted to compose, and paid a substantial sum of money for. Only one aria was sung at the time, and 11 numbers were published; the entire opera was not performed until 1950.
Final years in Vienna
Haydn actually considered becoming an English citizen and settling permanently, as composers such as Handel had before him, but decided on a different course. He returned to Vienna, had a large house built for himself, and turned to the composition of large religious works for chorus and orchestra. These include his two great oratorios The Creation and The Seasons and six masses for the Eszterházy family, which by this time was once again headed by a musically-inclined prince. Haydn also composed the last nine in his long series of string quartets, including the Emperor, Sunrise, and Fifths quartets. Despite his increasing age, Haydn looked to the future, exclaiming once in a letter, "how much remains to be done in this glorious art!"
In 1802, Haydn found that an illness from which he had been suffering for some time had increased greatly in severity to the point that he became physically unable to compose. This was doubtless very difficult for him because, as he acknowledged, the flow of fresh musical ideas waiting to be worked out as compositions did not cease. Haydn was well cared for by his servants, and he received many visitors and public honours during his last years, but they cannot have been very happy years for him. During his illness, Haydn often found solace by sitting at the piano and playing Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, which he had composed himself as a patriotic gesture in 1797. This melody later became used for the Austrian and German national anthems, and is the national anthem of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Haydn died in 1809 following an attack on Vienna by the French army under Napoleon. Among his last words was his attempt to calm and reassure his servants as cannon shots fell on the neighbourhood.
Character and appearance
Haydn was known among his contemporaries for his kindly, optimistic, and congenial personality. He had a robust sense of humour, evident in his love of practical jokes and often apparent in his music. He was particularly respected by the Eszterházy court musicians whom he supervised, as he maintained a cordial working atmosphere and effectively represented the musicians' interests with their employer; see Papa Haydn.
Haydn was a devout Catholic who often turned to his rosary when he had trouble composing, a practice that he usually found to be effective. When he finished a composition, he would write "Laus deo" ("praise be to God") or some similar expression at the end of the manuscript. His favourite hobbies were hunting and fishing.
Haydn was short in stature, perhaps as a result of having been underfed throughout most of his youth. Like many in his day, he was a survivor of smallpox and his face was pitted with the scars of this disease. Haydn was quite surprised when women flocked to him during his London visits as he did not consider himself to be handsome.
About a dozen portraits of Haydn exist, although they disagree sufficiently that, other than what is noted above, we would have little idea what Haydn looked like were it not also for the existence of a lifelike wax bust and Haydn's death mask. Both are in the Haydnhaus in Vienna, a museum dedicated to the composer. All but one of the portraits show Haydn wearing the grey powdered wig fashionable for men in the 18th century, and from the one exception we learn that Haydn was bald in adulthood.
Works
Haydn is often described as the "father" of the classical symphony and string quartet. In fact, the symphony was already a well-established form before Haydn began his compositional career, with distinguished examples by Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach among others, but Haydn's symphonies are the earliest to remain in "standard" repertoire. His parenthood of the string quartet, however, is beyond doubt: he essentially invented this medium singlehandedly. He also wrote many piano sonatas, piano trios, divertimentos and masses, which became the foundation for the Classical style in these compositional types. He also wrote other types of chamber music, as well as operas and concerti, although such compositions are now less known. Although other composers were prominent in the earlier Classical period, notably C.P.E. Bach in the field of the keyboard sonata (the harpsichord and clavichord were equally popular with the piano in this era) and J.C. Bach and Leopold Mozart in the symphony, Haydn was undoubtedly the strongest overall influence on musical style in this era.
The development of sonata form into a subtle and flexible mode of musical expression, which became the dominant force in Classical musical thought, owed most to Haydn and those who followed his ideas. His sense of formal inventiveness also led him to integrate the fugue into the classical style and to enrich the rondo form with more cohesive tonal logic, (see sonata rondo form). Haydn was also the principal exponent of the double variation form, that is variations on two alternating themes, which are often major and minor mode versions of each other.
The name "Franz" was not used in the composer's lifetime; scholars, along with an increasing number of music publishers and recording companies, now use the historically more accurate form of his name, rendered in English as "Joseph Haydn".
A life-long resident of Austria, Haydn Read Full BioJoseph Haydn (31 March or 1 April 1732–31 May 1809) was a leading composer of the Classical period, called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet".
The name "Franz" was not used in the composer's lifetime; scholars, along with an increasing number of music publishers and recording companies, now use the historically more accurate form of his name, rendered in English as "Joseph Haydn".
A life-long resident of Austria, Haydn spent most of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Eszterházy family on their remote estate. Being isolated from other composers and trends in music until the later part of his long life, he was, as he put it, "forced to become original".
Joseph Haydn was the brother of Michael Haydn, himself a highly regarded composer at the court of Archbishop-Prince Hieronymous von Colloredo who also had in his employ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and father Leopold Mozart. Haydn had a third brother, Johann Evangelist Haydn, a tenor singer.
Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 in Rohrau, Austria village near the Hungarian border. His father was Matthias Haydn, a wheelwright who also served as "Marktrichter", an office akin to village mayor. Haydn's mother, the former Maria Koller, had previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau. Neither parent could read music. However, Matthias was an enthusiastic folk musician, who during the journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the harp. According to Haydn's later reminiscences, his childhood family was extremely musical, and frequently sang together and with their neighbors.
Haydn's parents were perceptive enough to notice that their son was musically talented and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain any serious musical training. It was for this reason that they accepted a proposal from their relative Johann Matthias Franck, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, that Haydn be apprenticed to Franck in his home to train as a musician. Haydn thus went off with Franck to Hainburg (ten miles away) and never again lived with his parents. At the time he was not quite six.
Life in the Franck household was not easy for Haydn, who later remembered being frequently hungry as well as constantly humiliated by the filthy state of his clothing. However, he did begin his musical training there, and soon was able to play both harpsichord and violin. The people of Hainburg were soon hearing him sing soprano parts in the church choir.
There is reason to think that Haydn's singing impressed those who heard him, because two years later (1740), he was brought to the attention of Georg von Reutter, the director of music in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, who was touring the provinces looking for talented choirboys. Haydn passed his audition with Reutter, and soon moved off to Vienna, where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister, the last four in the company of his younger brother Michael.
Like Franck before him, Reutter didn't always bother to make sure Haydn was properly fed. The young Haydn greatly looked forward to performances before aristocratic audiences, where the singers sometimes had the opportunity to satisfy their hunger by devouring the refreshments. Reutter also did little to further his choristers' musical education. However, St. Stephen's was at the time one of the leading, musical centers in Europe, where new music by leading composers was constantly being performed. Haydn was able to learn a great deal by osmosis simply by serving as a professional musician there.
In 1749, Haydn had matured physically to the point that he was no longer able to sing high choral parts. On a weak pretext, he was summarily dismissed from his job. He evidently spent one night homeless on a park bench, but was taken in by friends and began to pursue a career as a freelance musician. During this arduous period, which lasted ten years, Haydn worked many different jobs, including valet–accompanist for the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, from whom he later said he learned "the true fundamentals of composition". He laboured to fill the gaps in his training, and eventually wrote his first string quartets and his first opera. During this time Haydn's professional reputation gradually increased.
In 1759, or 1757 according to the New Grove Encyclopedia, Haydn received his first important position, that of Kapellmeister (music director) for Count Karl von Morzin. In this capacity, he directed the count's small orchestra, and for this ensemble wrote his first symphonies. Count Morzin soon suffered financial reverses that forced him to dismiss his musical establishment, but Haydn was quickly offered a similar job (1761) as assistant Kapellmeister to the Eszterházy family, one of the wealthiest and most important in the Austrian Empire. When the old Kapellmeister, Gregor Werner, died in 1766, Haydn was elevated to full Kapellmeister.
As a liveried servant of the Eszterházys, Haydn followed them as they moved among their three main residences: the family seat in Eisenstadt, their winter palace in Vienna, and Eszterháza, a grand new palace built in rural Hungary in the 1760s. Haydn had a huge range of responsibilities, including composition, running the orchestra, playing chamber music for and with his patrons, and eventually the mounting of operatic productions. Despite the backbreaking workload, Haydn considered himself fortunate to have his job. The Eszterházy princes (first Paul Anton, then most importantly Nikolaus I) were musical connoisseurs who appreciated his work and gave him the conditions needed for his artistic development, including daily access to his own small orchestra.
In 1760, with the security of a Kapellmeister position, Haydn married. He and his wife, the former Maria Anna Keller, did not get along, and they produced no children. Haydn may have had one or more children with Luigia Polzelli, a singer in the Eszterházy establishment with whom he carried on a long-term love affair, and often wrote to on his travels.
During the nearly thirty years that Haydn worked in the Eszterházy household, he produced a flood of compositions, and his musical style became ever more developed. His popularity in the outside world also increased. Gradually, Haydn came to write as much for publication as for his employer, and several important works of this period, such as the Paris symphonies (1785–6) and the original orchestral version of The Seven Last Words of Christ (1786), were commissions from abroad.
Around 1781 Haydn established a friendship with Mozart, whose work he had already been influencing by example for many years. According to later testimony by Stephen Storace, the two composers occasionally played in string quartets together. Haydn was hugely impressed with Mozart's work, and in various ways tried to help the younger composer. During the years 1782 to 1785, Mozart wrote a set of string quartets thought to be inspired by Haydn's Opus 33 series. On completion he dedicated them to Haydn, a very unusual thing to do at a time when dedicatees were usually aristocrats. The extremely close 'brotherly' Mozart-Haydn connection may be an expression of Freemasonic sympathies as well: Mozart and Haydn were members of the same Masonic lodge. Mozart joined in 1784 in the middle of writing those string quartets subsequently dedicated to his Masonic brother Haydn. This lodge was a specifically Catholic rather than a deistic one.
In 1789, Haydn developed another friendship with Maria Anna von Genzinger (1750–93), the wife of Prince Nicolaus's personal physician in Vienna. Their relationship, documented in Haydn's letters, was evidently intense but platonic. The letters express Haydn's sense of loneliness and melancholy at his long isolation at Eszterháza. Genzinger's premature death in 1793 was a blow to Haydn, and his F minor variations for piano, Hob. XVII:6, which are unusual in Haydn's work for their tone of impassioned tragedy, may have been written as response to her death.
The London journeys
In 1790, Prince Nikolaus died and was succeeded by a thoroughly unmusical prince who dismissed the entire musical establishment and put Haydn on a pension. Thus freed of his obligations, Haydn was able to accept a lucrative offer from Johann Peter Salomon, a German impresario, to visit England and conduct new symphonies with a large orchestra.
The visit (1791-2), along with a repeat visit (1794-5), was a huge success. Audiences flocked to Haydn's concerts, and he quickly achieved wealth and fame: one review called him "incomparable." Musically, the visits to England generated some of Haydn's best-known work, including the Surprise, Military, Drumroll, and London symphonies, the Rider quartet, and the Gypsy Rondo piano trio.
The only misstep in the venture was an opera, L'anima del filosofo, which Haydn was contracted to compose, and paid a substantial sum of money for. Only one aria was sung at the time, and 11 numbers were published; the entire opera was not performed until 1950.
Final years in Vienna
Haydn actually considered becoming an English citizen and settling permanently, as composers such as Handel had before him, but decided on a different course. He returned to Vienna, had a large house built for himself, and turned to the composition of large religious works for chorus and orchestra. These include his two great oratorios The Creation and The Seasons and six masses for the Eszterházy family, which by this time was once again headed by a musically-inclined prince. Haydn also composed the last nine in his long series of string quartets, including the Emperor, Sunrise, and Fifths quartets. Despite his increasing age, Haydn looked to the future, exclaiming once in a letter, "how much remains to be done in this glorious art!"
In 1802, Haydn found that an illness from which he had been suffering for some time had increased greatly in severity to the point that he became physically unable to compose. This was doubtless very difficult for him because, as he acknowledged, the flow of fresh musical ideas waiting to be worked out as compositions did not cease. Haydn was well cared for by his servants, and he received many visitors and public honours during his last years, but they cannot have been very happy years for him. During his illness, Haydn often found solace by sitting at the piano and playing Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, which he had composed himself as a patriotic gesture in 1797. This melody later became used for the Austrian and German national anthems, and is the national anthem of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Haydn died in 1809 following an attack on Vienna by the French army under Napoleon. Among his last words was his attempt to calm and reassure his servants as cannon shots fell on the neighbourhood.
Character and appearance
Haydn was known among his contemporaries for his kindly, optimistic, and congenial personality. He had a robust sense of humour, evident in his love of practical jokes and often apparent in his music. He was particularly respected by the Eszterházy court musicians whom he supervised, as he maintained a cordial working atmosphere and effectively represented the musicians' interests with their employer; see Papa Haydn.
Haydn was a devout Catholic who often turned to his rosary when he had trouble composing, a practice that he usually found to be effective. When he finished a composition, he would write "Laus deo" ("praise be to God") or some similar expression at the end of the manuscript. His favourite hobbies were hunting and fishing.
Haydn was short in stature, perhaps as a result of having been underfed throughout most of his youth. Like many in his day, he was a survivor of smallpox and his face was pitted with the scars of this disease. Haydn was quite surprised when women flocked to him during his London visits as he did not consider himself to be handsome.
About a dozen portraits of Haydn exist, although they disagree sufficiently that, other than what is noted above, we would have little idea what Haydn looked like were it not also for the existence of a lifelike wax bust and Haydn's death mask. Both are in the Haydnhaus in Vienna, a museum dedicated to the composer. All but one of the portraits show Haydn wearing the grey powdered wig fashionable for men in the 18th century, and from the one exception we learn that Haydn was bald in adulthood.
Works
Haydn is often described as the "father" of the classical symphony and string quartet. In fact, the symphony was already a well-established form before Haydn began his compositional career, with distinguished examples by Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach among others, but Haydn's symphonies are the earliest to remain in "standard" repertoire. His parenthood of the string quartet, however, is beyond doubt: he essentially invented this medium singlehandedly. He also wrote many piano sonatas, piano trios, divertimentos and masses, which became the foundation for the Classical style in these compositional types. He also wrote other types of chamber music, as well as operas and concerti, although such compositions are now less known. Although other composers were prominent in the earlier Classical period, notably C.P.E. Bach in the field of the keyboard sonata (the harpsichord and clavichord were equally popular with the piano in this era) and J.C. Bach and Leopold Mozart in the symphony, Haydn was undoubtedly the strongest overall influence on musical style in this era.
The development of sonata form into a subtle and flexible mode of musical expression, which became the dominant force in Classical musical thought, owed most to Haydn and those who followed his ideas. His sense of formal inventiveness also led him to integrate the fugue into the classical style and to enrich the rondo form with more cohesive tonal logic, (see sonata rondo form). Haydn was also the principal exponent of the double variation form, that is variations on two alternating themes, which are often major and minor mode versions of each other.
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String Quartet in E Major Hob.III:8 : 4. Menuetto
Franz Joseph Haydn Lyrics
No lyrics text found for this track.
The lyrics can frequently be found in the comments below or by filtering for lyric videos.
The lyrics can frequently be found in the comments below or by filtering for lyric videos.
Elaine Blackhurst
@Ultra Legendary Master
Haydn did not enter these quartets into his own Entwurf-Katalog which he began in c.1765, though they were mistakenly entered into another much later list by his secretary and can thus be counted a clerical error.
This clerical error appears in the Haydn-Verzeichnis - in effect the second contemporary catalogue of works by the composer - compiled by Haydn’s trusted copyist Johann Elssler in 1805.
Elssler quite reasonably accepted Opus 3 as genuine Haydn as they had been widely circulated across Europe by Pleyel in his ‘complete edition’ of Haydn quartets of 1801.
Haydn knew Pleyel well, he had been a pupil aged 15 to 20 in the 1770’s and lodged with Haydn; they met again in London in 1791/92.
Haydn cooperated with Pleyel over this ‘complete edition’ of 83 quartets that Pleyel was about to publish - which included Opus 3, hence nearly 200 years of confusion.
The HV by Elssler was overseen by Haydn, but he was mentally very fragile and forgetful by this time; additionally, if he did know these spurious works had been added to his account, some of his previous devious and unscrupulous activities in this area would suggest that he would not want them removed if it would be likely to increase his income.
(Forget all the genial ‘Papa’ nonsense so widely perpetrated across YouTube; in an age with no copywrite or protections, Haydn was a pragmatically ruthless and efficient, sometimes scheming, devious, and downright dishonest businessman*).
HC Robbins Landon and Alan Tyson in 1964 discovered that the name of Pater Romanus Hofstetter (a Benedictine monk who admired Haydn’s music), had been only partially erased by the Paris publisher Bailleux from his engraving of the works in 1777.
Haydn’s name had been superimposed on top, and when HCRL investigated the originals, he found clear traces of Hofstetter’s name underneath on two of the quartets.
I am certain beyond any doubt that Haydn did not write Opus 3, it is likely Hofstetter may have written only two of them (Nos 1 and 2) and therefore not including the famous No 5; it is also very possible that Bailleux created a composite set of quartets by more than one composer.
Studies by musicologists suggest that stylistically they cannot be by Haydn,** nor do they fit with other biographical details of his career; similarly, nor are they all consistent with other works by Hofstetter.
At the very best, I would say that parts of Opus 3 can be labelled ‘attributed to Hofstetter’, and quite probably not Opus 3 No 5 which is probably impossible to attribute correctly today.
This shocking deception by Bailleux - to us today - and the origin of all the ???s was common practice in Paris at the time; there was actually more fake Haydn published in Paris during these years than real Haydn as publishers found that it sold better.
* Haydn’s questionable and less than straightforward dealings with publishers and patrons was one of the things Beethoven did unequivocally admire about Haydn; he frequently sold ‘exclusive’ rights to works to different recipients.
Haydn embarrassingly got involved in a legal battle in London between two publishers over a set of three ‘Haydn’ piano trios he had sold them, two of which - having attempted to palm them off as his own - were actually discovered to be by Pleyel.
** The famous sugary, sweet Serenade movement from Opus 3 No 5 is the most un-Haydnesque music imaginable.
Elaine Blackhurst
@Timothy Thorne
Well done, it’s good that you’ve been able to work it out for yourself.
Whilst this quartet is competently composed, I think the key to understanding and explaining the long-standing mis-attribution is the fact that it is composed in the style of Haydn, and the copy is quite good.
Another work that I think is similarly problematic is Haydn’s marionette opera Die Feuerstbrunst (1775 - 1778 ?) which for reasons similar to those you have correctly identified with the quartet, I suspect is at best only part-Haydn.
I believe this work was partly composed by Haydn’s pupil Ignaz Pleyel who was studying - and lodging - with Haydn between the ages of 15 and 20 (1772 - 1777) ie at the time of the composition of Die Feuerstbrunst, the overture being identical to a three movement symphony by Pleyel; I have problems with much of the rest as well, especially as it is one of the very few Haydn vocal works I would not recommend to the curious.
All good fun, and we’re as entitled as the experts by just listening with our ears, or studying a score to question some long-held possible mis-attributions.
Aya Sagiv
I'm playing this and it's amazing 😉 I'm playing the viola
Elliott Blanchard Composing
Its great that the best movement starts at 4:20
Ultra Legendary Master
@Elaine Blackhurst Did you learn western classical music history in university or on your own? It would be much appreciated if you shared some of your resources for learning the history behind the music. It’s very easy to find the theoretical information complied together, but not so much for the historical context. I’ve been quite fascinated by the historical background of composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and others for a while now. The only problem is I’m not sure how to approach it properly. Your help has been greatly appreciated and I would also love if you steered me in the proper direction. Thank you for your help.
Elaine Blackhurst
@Ultra Legendary Master
Haydn did not enter these quartets into his own Entwurf-Katalog which he began in c.1765, though they were mistakenly entered into another much later list by his secretary and can thus be counted a clerical error.
This clerical error appears in the Haydn-Verzeichnis - in effect the second contemporary catalogue of works by the composer - compiled by Haydn’s trusted copyist Johann Elssler in 1805.
Elssler quite reasonably accepted Opus 3 as genuine Haydn as they had been widely circulated across Europe by Pleyel in his ‘complete edition’ of Haydn quartets of 1801.
Haydn knew Pleyel well, he had been a pupil aged 15 to 20 in the 1770’s and lodged with Haydn; they met again in London in 1791/92.
Haydn cooperated with Pleyel over this ‘complete edition’ of 83 quartets that Pleyel was about to publish - which included Opus 3, hence nearly 200 years of confusion.
The HV by Elssler was overseen by Haydn, but he was mentally very fragile and forgetful by this time; additionally, if he did know these spurious works had been added to his account, some of his previous devious and unscrupulous activities in this area would suggest that he would not want them removed if it would be likely to increase his income.
(Forget all the genial ‘Papa’ nonsense so widely perpetrated across YouTube; in an age with no copywrite or protections, Haydn was a pragmatically ruthless and efficient, sometimes scheming, devious, and downright dishonest businessman*).
HC Robbins Landon and Alan Tyson in 1964 discovered that the name of Pater Romanus Hofstetter (a Benedictine monk who admired Haydn’s music), had been only partially erased by the Paris publisher Bailleux from his engraving of the works in 1777.
Haydn’s name had been superimposed on top, and when HCRL investigated the originals, he found clear traces of Hofstetter’s name underneath on two of the quartets.
I am certain beyond any doubt that Haydn did not write Opus 3, it is likely Hofstetter may have written only two of them (Nos 1 and 2) and therefore not including the famous No 5; it is also very possible that Bailleux created a composite set of quartets by more than one composer.
Studies by musicologists suggest that stylistically they cannot be by Haydn,** nor do they fit with other biographical details of his career; similarly, nor are they all consistent with other works by Hofstetter.
At the very best, I would say that parts of Opus 3 can be labelled ‘attributed to Hofstetter’, and quite probably not Opus 3 No 5 which is probably impossible to attribute correctly today.
This shocking deception by Bailleux - to us today - and the origin of all the ???s was common practice in Paris at the time; there was actually more fake Haydn published in Paris during these years than real Haydn as publishers found that it sold better.
* Haydn’s questionable and less than straightforward dealings with publishers and patrons was one of the things Beethoven did unequivocally admire about Haydn; he frequently sold ‘exclusive’ rights to works to different recipients.
Haydn embarrassingly got involved in a legal battle in London between two publishers over a set of three ‘Haydn’ piano trios he had sold them, two of which - having attempted to palm them off as his own - were actually discovered to be by Pleyel.
** The famous sugary, sweet Serenade movement from Opus 3 No 5 is the most un-Haydnesque music imaginable.
Ultra Legendary Master
@Elaine Blackhurst I mean it makes sense why Haydn put it his catalog of works to help the others sales but the question is who actually wrote it.
Elaine Blackhurst
@Timothy Thorne
The six string quartets of Opus 3 are not by Haydn.
The famous sugary-sweet serenade movement is one of the most un-Haydnesque melodies imaginable; it is astonishing that this mis-attribution is still given so much credence.
Timothy Thorne
That second movement is one of the two most famous tunes that Haydn wrote, along with the slow movement of his "Emperor" quartet.
Derex
I heard this as a freshman during our chamber unit, and now I'm playing it as a senior during our chamber unit this year
Tobi Oh
Cool!
Key After Key
Lol I’m playing it this year