The Life of Haydn

Presenting a fresh picture of Haydn's life and work, this biography captures all the complexities and contradictions of the composer's long career.

David Wyn Jones (Author)

9780521895743, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 April 2009

264 pages, 13 b/w illus.
22.3 x 14.3 x 1.8 cm, 0.48 kg

"Jones' concise biography of Franz Joseph Haydn incorporates material discovered in the last thirty years and dwells on his life..." -- The Opera Journal

Presenting a fresh picture of the life and work of Joseph Haydn, this biography captures all the complexities and contradictions of the composer's long career. In his lifetime Haydn achieved a degree of fame that easily surpassed that of Mozart and Beethoven. Later his historical significance was more restricted, regarded exclusively as the composer who first recognised the potential of the symphony and the quartet. However, Haydn had also composed operas, oratorios and church music with similar enthusiasm and self-regard. Too easily buttonholed as a Viennese composer, he interacted consistently with the musical life of Vienna only during the earliest and latest periods of his life; London was at least as important in fashioning the composer's fame and legacy. To counter the genial view of the composer, this biography probes the darker side of Haydn's personality, his commercial opportunism and double dealing, his penny-pinching and his troubled marriage.

Preface
1. God and country
2. Serving princes: images of Haydn: 1776
3. Italian opera at Eszterháza
4. 'My misfortune is that I live in the country': images of Haydn: 1790
5. London–Vienna–London
6. Viennese composer, European composer
7. 'Gone is all my strength': images of Haydn: 1809.

Subject Areas: Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups [AVH], Classical music [c 1750 to c 1830 AVGC4]