Music Composers: Franz Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn is widely imitated because of his excellent technique that makes his music, so rich in quality and quantity by having one of the most fertile musical minds. Haydn is one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is also known as one of the pivotal figures in all western musical history. Here I will try to showcase and highlight some of Haydn’s brilliance by talking about the life he lead growing up, his work and career, a little introduction to his music, touching on some of his compositions, his contributions to music, and finally Haydn’s influence.

Franz Joseph Haydn was born on March 31, 1732, in the town of Rohrau in what is now Austria. His parents were Matthias Haydn and Maria Koller. Joseph’s father worked as a Cartwright, making and repairing wheels and carts while his mother was a cook in the Palace of Count Harrach. Matthias and Maria had twelve children of which only Haydn and his two other brothers survived. In 1754 Joseph’s mother died leading to his father to remarry and have five more children that didn’t make it. Music was brought into the family when Matthias got a harp on one of his travels and learned how to play it a little without knowing how to read music. Matthias harp playing lead to the father encouraging his sons to sing while he played. These family concerts spurred all three of the Haydn boys to have musical careers. This lead to Haydn’s parents discovering Joseph’s musical talents for which they sent Joseph, at the tender age of six to live in the Hainburg with his relative Johann Mathias Franck who was the local schoolmaster and choir director of the church. For the next two years Haydn was trained as a male soprano, a soloist, and to sing in church ...

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... only through his music, but through teaching music. One of his most prominent students was Beethoven. Also, Haydn and Mozart were dear friends. Mozart always said that he had learned how to write string quartets from Haydn. After Haydn’s death his music was largely forgotten. The twentieth century brought back Haydn. Even if Haydn didn’t know he had quite the profound influence on Beethoven. Beethoven had deep love and respect for Haydn as a person and as a musical composer. He had such deep love and respect for Haydn that he hung a portrait of Haydn in his apartment.

In the end we see that throughout Franz Joseph Haydn’s life he made lots of contributions to not only classical music, but music as a whole. Today, Joseph Haydn is the basis to every orchestral and symphony performance with or without us realizing. What would classical music have been without Joseph?