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Haydn and Mozart

The composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) and Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) were friends. Their relationship is not very well documented, but the evidence that they enjoyed each other's company is strong. Six string quartets by Mozart are dedicated to Haydn (K. 387, 421, 428, 458, 464, 465, the "Haydn" Quartets).

Background[edit]

Haydn was already a fairly well-known young composer in Mozart's childhood. His six string quartets Opus 20 (1772), called the "Sun" Quartets from the drawing of the sun on the cover of the first edition, were widely circulated and are conjectured (for instance, by Charles Rosen)[1] to have been the inspiration for the six early string quartets K. 168–173 the 17-year-old Mozart wrote during a 1773 visit to Vienna.[a]


The two composers probably weren't able to meet until after Mozart's permanent relocation to Vienna in 1781. Haydn's presence was required most of the time at the palace of Eszterháza in Hungary some distance from Vienna, where his employer and patron Prince Nikolaus Esterházy preferred to live. During the winter months, the Prince moved to the ancestral palace of his family in Eisenstadt, bringing Haydn with him. In these periods it was often feasible for Haydn to make brief visits to Vienna, about 40 km away.[b]

Meeting[edit]

As Jones notes, there were various points in the 1770s and early 1780s when Haydn and Mozart might have met, Haydn visiting Vienna from his normal work venues of Esterháza and Eisenstadt, Mozart from Salzburg. The earliest at which it is likely they would have met is 22 and 23 December 1783, at a performance sponsored by the Vienna Tonkünstler-Societät, a charitable organization for musicians. On the program were works by both Haydn (Jones: "a symphony and a chorus, both probably from [the oratorio] Il ritorno di Tobia") and Mozart ("a new concert aria, probably 'Misero! o sogno!' [K. 431], and, on the first night, a piano concerto.")[2]

Form of address[edit]

The German language has two sets of second person pronouns, one (Sie, Ihnen, Ihr, etc.) for relatively formal relationships, the other (du, dich, dir, etc.) for more intimate relationships (see T-V distinction). Otto Jahn, in his 1856 Mozart biography, reported that Haydn and Mozart used the informal du forms in conversation, an unusual practice at the time for two people of such different ages, hence evidence for a close friendship.[14] Jahn relied on the testimony of Mozart's sister-in-law Sophie Haibel as well as Haydn's friend and biographer Georg August Griesinger.

Mozart's death[edit]

Haydn, still in London a year later when the news of Mozart's death reached him, was distraught; he wrote to their mutual friend Michael Puchberg, "For some time I was quite beside myself over his death, and could not believe that Providence should so quickly have called away an irreplaceable man into the next world".[17][k] Haydn wrote to Constanze Mozart offering musical instruction to her son when he reached the appropriate age, and later followed through on his offer.[17]

Brown, Peter (1992). "Haydn and Mozart's 1773 Stay in Vienna: Weeding a Musicological Garden". . 10 (2): 192–230. doi:10.2307/763612. JSTOR 763612.

The Journal of Musicology

(1965). Mozart: A Documentary Biography. Stanford University Press.

Deutsch, Otto Erich

(1810). Biographical Accounts of Joseph Haydn. Haydn: Two Contemporary Portraits. Translated by Vernon Gotwals. Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press.

Dies, Albert Christoph

; Irene Geiringer (1982). Haydn: A Creative Life in Music (3rd ed.). University of California Press. pp. xii, 403. ISBN 0-520-04316-2.

Geiringer, Karl

(1810). Biographical Notes Concerning Joseph Haydn. Haydn: Two Contemporary Portraits. Translated by Vernon Gotwals. Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press, Breitkopf und Härtel.

Griesinger, Georg August

(1856). W. A. Mozart. Vol. 3. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. (1858 edition at Google Books (in German)

Jahn, Otto

(2006). "Haydn". In Cliff Eisen; Simon Keefe (eds.). The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jones, David Wyn

Jones, David Wyn (2009). "Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus". Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hughes, Rosemary (1970). Haydn. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux.

(1980). "Joseph Haydn". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Republished 1982 as a separate volume, The New Grove: Haydn, by W. W. Norton. Page numbers refer to the separate volume version.

Larsen, Jens Peter

(1798). Leben des K. K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart. Translated by Helen Mautner. London: Leonard Hyman.

Niemetschek, Franz

(1998). The Classical Style. W. W. Norton.

Rosen, Charles

Thomson, Katherine (1976). "Mozart and Freemasonry". (57): 25–46. doi:10.1093/ml/LVII.1.25.

Music & Letters

(1977). "The Bass Part in Haydn's Early String Quartets". The Musical Quarterly (3): 390–424. doi:10.1093/mq/LXIII.3.390.

Webster, James

Webster, James; Feder, Georg (2001). "Joseph Haydn". . New York: Grove. Published separately as The New Grove Haydn (New York: Macmillan 2002, ISBN 0-19-516904-2)

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

White, Harry (2006). "Fux, Johann Joseph". In ; Simon Keefe (eds.). The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cliff Eisen

(1826). Reminiscences of Michael Kelly., cited in E. Kerr Borthwick (1990), "The Latin Quotations in Haydn's London Notebooks", Music & Letters

Kelly, Michael

(1976–1980). Haydn: Chronicle and Works. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. An extensive compilation of original sources.

Robbins Landon, H. C.

and Ernest Sanders (1956) "Mozart and Haydn", The Musical Quarterly 42: pp. 145–161.

Schmid, Ernst Fritz