David Wyn Jones, The Life of Haydn

Abstract

David Wyn Jones, The Life of Haydn (Cambridge University Press, 2009 ISBN: 9780521895743)It was high time that in the 'Musical lives' series by Cambridge University Press the biography of Joseph Haydn should appear. As No. 17 in the list of composers, Haydn was preceded by lesser names like Elgar or Charles Ives, or figures who feature plentifully in the literature like Mozart or Beethoven. (Even the jacket notes confess that 'this is the first biography of the composer to appear in over twenty-five years'!) Perhaps the bicentenary prompted the editors, that following the publication of The Life of Messiaen (2007), in 2009 Haydn should be the protagonist of the latest issue.The function of the 'Musical lives' series is described as follows on the first page of each volume:The books in this series each provide an account of the life of a major composer, considering both the private and the public figure. The main thread is both biographical and musical, and discussion of the music is integral to the narrative. Each book thus presents an organic view of the composer, the music and the circumstances in which the music was written.David Wyn Jones, author of a former book in the series (The Life of Beethoven, 1998), fulfils this object for the second time, in an exemplary fashion. His prose is clear, informative, never dull, and reflects a common sense that is somehow suited to the hero of his book.Any author about to write a biography of Haydn, would necessarily turn to the 5-volume magisterial work of H. C. Robbins Landon (Haydn: Chronicle and Works, London and Bloomington, 1976-1980), an inexhaustible source for all available documents. Indeed, it might be a matter of selection and condensation to make a slender volume out of the ca. 3100 pages of Landon's immense material. But a true biography is more than just a pile of facts and data. It needs interpretation, and insight towards the character of the person. David Wyn Jones possesses this insight: he understands the man, his time, and his music. The Life of Haydn is full of thoughtful observations, and conclusions.The structure of the book is well-arranged, and at once original. The chronological sequence of the seven chapters (1 'God and country'; 2 'Serving princes'; 3 'Italian opera at Eszterhaza'; 4 ' My misfortune is that I live in the country '; 5 'London - Vienna - London'; 6 'Viennese composer, European composer'; 7 ' Gone is all my strength ') is interrupted twice, and closed once with three 'Images of Haydn', taken from sources of three different times. The first (the composer's autobiographical draft, 1776) is a kind of self-portrait; the second (excerpt from A General History of Music by Charles Burney, 1790 [in fact 1789]) is a professional contemporary evaluation of Haydn's work; the third (the opening paragraphs of Griesinger's Biographische Notizen uber Joseph Haydn, 1810) is an obituary. These three documents articulate the content of the book in a meaningful way, and offer opportunity to the author for important inferences.Surviving documentary material concerning Joseph Haydn's life is distributed rather unevenly. We know incomparably more about the events of the last third of his life than about the earlier decades. To make up for this hiatus, Professor Wyn Jones generously produces background material for the more meagre patches in the biography, like Christoph Wolff does in his large monograph on J. S. Bach (Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, Norton, 2000). As Professor Wolff enriches the imperfectly known details of Bach's life by describing the exact schedule of the Thomasschule, or the functions of the four Cantoreien, similarly Wyn Jones informs the reader about a number of everyday items in Haydn's days. To take one example, he gives account of the school life and the church services in the town of Hainburg, where Haydn, as a small boy, was educated for some years:In Hainburg approximately seventy to eighty children attended the school, arriving at seven in the morning; they went to mass at ten before going home for lunch; at midday they returned to school where they stayed until three. …