Tonos Aureos - Season One, Meeting #3
A look at Symphony No. 45 ("Farewell") by Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn was a friend and mentor to Mozart, Beethoven's tutor, and composer Michael Haydn's elder brother. His contributions to musical form have led him to be called "Father of the symphony" and "Father of the string quartet."
His nickname was “Papa” Haydn. He was a father figure to Mozart and was admired by those who played in the orchestras he conducted.
He was a beloved man, a profound optimist, and (surprisingly!) a prankster. I hope you will come to appreciate his music more as a result of an exploration of his 45th symphony.
Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)
Symphony N. 45 (“Farewell”) (composed in the 1771)
The life of Haydn
Joseph Haydn was born on March 31, 1732, in Rohrau, Austria. At that time, Rohrau was near the border of Hungary. Joseph is the second of twelve children. Haydn’s parents realized early on that their young son Joseph possessed tremendous innate musical gifts.
Just before Haydn turned six, his parents sent him to live with a distant relative (Johann Mathias Franck) who was a schoolmaster and choirmaster of a boy’s school in the town of Hainburg. While at the school in Hainburg, Haydn began his first formal training as a musician. Joseph Haydn would never live with his parents again.
Schooling at the boys’ school in Hainburg was appalling. Haydn recalled later that the headmaster gave the boys more beatings than food. Despite this, Haydn fondly recalled his time at the school, saying in his journal, “I shall owe it to that man even in my grave that he taught me so many things, though in the process I received more thrashings than food.”
This reveals a key personality trait about Haydn—his fierce optimism and ability to see the best in even the worst situations. For many decades after his schoolboy days ended, Haydn kept a framed picture of the man who beat him above his bed.
Life at St. Stephen’s Cathedral
At the age of seven, Haydn was noticed by Johann Georg Reutter, who was the Kapellmeister of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna.
Reutter was taken by the beauty and accuracy of the young boy’s singing voice. Reutter asked Haydn’s parents to let their son come to the Cathedral to study music and sing in the choir. Haydn moved to Vienna in 1740 and worked for nine years as a chorister at St. Stephen’s.
Haydn lived in the Kapellhaus next to the cathedral, along with Reutter, Reutter's family, and four other choirboys. The choirboys were instructed in Latin and other school subjects as well as voice, violin, and keyboard.
Like his time at the boys’ school, Haydn often went hungry at St. Stephen’s. He admitted that he tried to out-sing the other boys to gain more invitations to perform before aristocrats, who would feed him better.
By 1749, Haydn’s voice had changed and he could no longer sing the high choral parts. His voice—once so pure and effortless—now sounded like “crowing.” One day, Haydn carried out a prank, snipping off the pigtail of a fellow chorister. Reutter had seen and heard enough. Haydn was dismissed and sent into the streets to fend for himself. Haydn was not only a relentlessly optimistic person but also a relentless practical joker. We will come onto that more in a moment.
After being cast aside by Reutter, Haydn struggled to make ends meet. He tried his hand at being a freelance musician. Eventually, through the help of a few teachers and intense self-directed study, Haydn became well-versed in music theory and composition.
His training and composing ability allowed Haydn to become Kapellmeister in several capacities.
Haydn the Kapellmeister
Count Morzin (1757 – 1761)
The Esterházy family (1761 – 1790)
Prince Paul Anton (d. 1762)
Prince Nikolaus I (d. 1790)
In 1760, with the security of a Kapellmeister position, Haydn married. His wife was the former Maria Anna Keller (1729–1800), the sister of Therese, with whom Haydn had previously been in love. Haydn and his wife had a deeply unhappy marriage. They had no children and both committed affairs on the other.
Eszterháza
Prince Nikolaus Esterházy loved to get out into nature by staying at the family’s hunting lodge. Prince Nikolaus decided a more audacious building was needed. Thus, the idea of Eszterháza was born.
Upon completion, Eszterháza contained a ballroom, an opera house, a concert hall, military quarters, horse stables, and (of course) a marionette theater. Sadly, when Prince Nikolaus died in 1790, neither his son Anton nor Nikolaus’ later successors had any interest in living in Eszterháza.
The survey of Haydn’s life ends here because it is here—while employed by the Esterházy family—that his 45th Symphony is written.
Those who wish to pursue Haydn’s life and work further are encouraged to read Haydn: A Creative Life in Music by Dr. Karl Geiringer.
About the Work
Haydn’s Symphony No. 45 was written in 1772. It is in the key of F# minor. It is the only known symphony of the 18th Century written in that key. It is also the only known symphony of the 19th Century written in that key. It might be the only symphony in F# until Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony (in F# major) in 1910. The key of F# minor was so foreign in Haydn’s day that blacksmiths had to build new crooks and lengths of tubing for the horns to play the work.
When Prince Nikolaus decided to stay at Eszterháza, he didn’t go there alone. He took with him a vast armada of people. Included in the number were Kapellmeister Haydn and his entire orchestra.
When Prince Nikolaus wanted to stay longer than expected, there were problems. None of the musicians were able to bring their families to Eszterháza, so everyone was ready to “bid farewell” and go home. They complained about it to Haydn.
Haydn decided to petition Prince Nikolaus about going home through music. The petition provides the practical joke at the end of the fourth movement. And what a poignant, affecting practical joke it is.
With his 45th symphony, Haydn managed to do the following:
Compose a symphony that has never left the standard repertoire in a wildly eccentric key (F# minor)
Compose a symphony that has real life concerns behind it (homesickness).
Compose a symphony that ends quietly.
Haydn’s musical message came through loud and clear. Everyone wanted to bid farewell to Eszterháza and go home. Prince Nikolaus gave the orders and, after a time of preparation and packing, everyone returned to Vienna.
Here is a performance of Haydn’s Symphony No. 45 (“Farewell”):
Recommended Recording
Charles Mackerras and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s on Telarc
Antal Dorati and the Philharmonia Hungarica on Decca
Links From Our In-Person Meeting
A brief explanation of sonata form.
Tonos Aureos is a listening club for parents of students attending Classical School of Wichita. We gladly welcome all other interested music lovers who wish to learn more about the canon of Western Classical Music. We meet on the third Monday of every month from 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. at Morningstar Community Church (11010 E Kellogg Dr).
Our next featured work is the opera Dido and Aeneas by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell. Next month’s meeting will take place on Monday, November 18 at Morningstar Community Church at 7 p.m. We would love for you to join us.
Previously, I wrote a longer explanation of why we do what we do with Tonos Aureos. You can read that Substack post here.