FOREWORD

In this sketchy and unpretentious booklet the readermust not expect to find any thoroughgoing or penetratingdiscussion of Haydn’s works or, for that matter, morethan a hasty and superficial account of his career. Haydnwrote an appalling quantity of music, some of which hasto this day not been finally catalogued. In a pamphletof this brief and unoriginal sort the reader will look invain for anything more than the titles of a handful ofcompositions. About the vast number of symphonies, themagnificent string quartets, the clavier works, the songsthere can here be no question. Nor can one do more thanallude to a few of the stage pieces though these operas,composed for the most part for the festivities arrangedby the Eszterházy princes, do not pretend to fill a role inthe history of the lyric drama comparable to those ofMozart or even to the intermezzi and the buffas of the18th Century Italians or the Singspiele of men like Dittorsdorfand Hiller. Neither is there room to consider thetechnical advancements achieved by Haydn in the sonataor symphonic form. Yet, even a rapid glance through thefollowing pages will, none the less, make it clear thatHaydn, barring a few hardships in his youth, lived anextraordinarily fortunate life and had abundant reasonfor the optimism which marked every step of his progress.Not even Mendelssohn was so unendingly lucky, whetherin his spiritual constitution or in his year by yearexperiences. That Haydn was a master by the grace ofHeaven and a servant only by the artificial conventionsof a temporary social order must become clear to anyonewho follows his amazing development in the biographyof Pohl and Botstiber, or the briefer but no less deeplyperceptive accounts of a scholar like Dr. Karl Geiringer,on whose writings and analyses the present little accountis chiefly based.

H. F. P.

JOSEPH HAYDN
Servant and Master

By
HERBERT F. PEYSER

When Mendelssohn first heard Haydn’s “Grand OrganMass” he found it “scandalously merry.” Now, thiswork, composed at Eszterháza in 1766, was by no meansa mature effort and it might have been reasonable toascribe its exuberance to the high spirits of a young manof uncommonly slow artistic development. But the factis that, virtually to the end of his days, Haydn did notoutgrow a joyfulness rooted in an unfaltering optimismof soul. This is not to say that his creative inspiration andoriginality did not enormously deepen and ramify and,particularly in his later years, foreshadow in startlingfashion some of the most influent

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