Haydn
Runciman, John F., 1866-1916
English
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Below is a summary of Haydn
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HAYDN
BY
JOHN F. RUNCIMAN
Bell's Miniature Series of Musicians
LONDON
1908
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS CHAPTER I. JOSEPH HAYDN CHAPTER II. 1732-1761 CHAPTER III. THE EARLY MUSIC CHAPTER IV. 1761-1790 CHAPTER V. MUSIC OF THE MIDDLE PERIOD CHAPTER VI. 1790-1795 CHAPTER VII. THE GREAT SYMPHONIES CHAPTER VIII. 1795-1809 CHAPTER IX. SUMMING UP HAYDN'S PRINCIPAL COMPOSITIONS BELL'S MINIATURE SERIES OF MUSICIANS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
JOSEPH HAYDN. (From a print)
FACSIMILE OF A LETTER FROM HAYDN
MONUMENT TO HAYDN AT BERLIN
JOSEPH HAYDN. (From an engraving after Hoppner.)
MONUMENT TO HAYDN AT VIENNA
PORTION OF AN ORIGINAL MS. BY HAYDN, IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
CHAPTER I
JOSEPH HAYDN
It is, as a rule, inexpedient to begin a book with the peroration. Children are spared the physic of the moral till they have sucked in the sweetness of the tale. Adults may draw from a book what of good there is in it, and close it before reaching the chapter usually devoted to fine writing. But the case of Haydn is extraordinary. One can only sustain interest in a biography of the man by an ever-present sense that he is scarcely to be written about. All an author can do is, in few or many words, to put a conundrum to the reader—a conundrum that cannot even be stated in exciting terms. This apparition and wonder-worker of the eighteenth century, Franz Joseph Haydn, is compact of paradoxes and contradictions. Born a peasant, and remaining in thought and speech a peasant all his days, he became the friend of princes, dukes, and, generally speaking, very high society indeed—and this in days when class distinctions had to be observed. He effected a revolution in music, and revolutionists must have daring; and save in music he showed no sign of unusual daring. His shaping and handling of new forms called for high intellect, and he displayed no intellect whatever in any other way—nothing beyond a canny, cunning shrewdness. Until he was sixty his life was a plodding one of dull regularity and routine; only his later adventures in England are in themselves of interest. The bare facts of his existence might be given in a few pages. Look at him from any point of view, and we see nothing but his simplicity; yet it is hard to believe that a man who achieved such great things was in reality simple. If only we had his inner spiritual biography! And even then one wonders whether we would have much. If Haydn actually knew his own secret—which I take leave to doubt—he
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