![]() ![]() Just before Christmas 1784, Haydn's new opera, ''La fedelta premiata,'' was staged in the Vienna Theater near the Carinthian Gate by a company headed by Hubert Kumpf and Emanuel Schikaneder (later to be the author of the book for ''The Magic Flute''). In Mozart's case, some of the musical examples are spectacular and provide the most persuasive evidence of Haydn's impact on his younger friend. Part of Mozart's reaction to Haydn's music was simply the normal interaction of one great contemporary artist with another the same phenomenon may be observed with Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael: to emulate, and if possible attempt to surpass, the model. The younger master, born 24 years after Haydn, was music's greatest assimilator: within a year he had mastered all Haydn's tricks of the trade. Haydn had perfected a style popular all over Europe he was wary about taking on new elements, even from Mozart. Haydn was badly married, Mozart happily wedded to Constanze.Ĭautuious as he was, Haydn watched the meteoric rise of Mozart's career - but also its meteoric fall. Mozart was mercurial, outgoing, given to many false starts and stops, his letters full of breathless dashes. Haydn was reserved, organized and rather old-fashioned in his manners. Given their personal and musical closeness in many respects, the differences between the two men were remarkable. Haydn had to spend most of the year in Hungary and could be in Vienna only for about six or eight weeks at Christmastime. By the end of 1784 they were fast friends. ![]() They must have met in Vienna in the early 1780's, perhaps at Christmas 1783, when they both participated in a concert. Haydn cultivated the English horn in the way Mozart favored the clarinet. Their orchestra was the same, except for the fact that Haydn had no clarinets in his orchestra in Hungary. Of course, the two shared a common musical language. Mozart's scores, on the other hand, are notable for the number and variety of their themes: Haydn taught him economy. Often, Haydn's movements are constructed around a single theme or motive. He found in his older friend's works a strict sense of organization. Mozart always said that he had learned how to write string quartets from Haydn. became a most sincere admirer of the great and incomparable Joseph Haydn, who had already become the pride of music.Mozart often called him his teacher.'' In 1798, only seven years after Mozart's death, a biography of him, based on information from Mozart's widow Constanze and other authentic sources, reports: ''Mozart. If I could only impress on the soul of every friend of music, and on high personages in particular, how inimitable are Mozart's works, how profound, how musically intelligent, how extraordinarily sensitive! (for this is how I understand them, how I feel them) - why then the nations would vie with each other to possess such a jewel within their frontiers.''Īlthough the name of Joseph Haydn appears only occasionally in the extensive correspondence of Mozart and his family, there is no lack of evidence of the regard in which Mozart held Haydn. scarcely any man can brook comparison with the great Mozart. Haydn's opinion of Mozart is summed up admirably in a letter first published in 1798, in which Haydn wrote, ''. Their close relationship both musically and personally makes the Mostly Mozart Festival's Haydn week particularly apt. But contemporary and near-contemporary documents and Mozart's own compositions make it clear that Mozart treated the elder composer and his music with loving attention. The relationship of Haydn and Mozart has been the subject of much comment, most of it (as far as 19th-century and 20th-century scholarship is concerned) of a slightly surprised nature, because Mozartians have always considered Haydn a second-rate composer. ![]()
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