The Life of Haydn

by David Wyn Jones

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107610811
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/17/2013
Series:	Musical Lives
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	262
Product dimensions:	5.39(w) x 8.46(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

David Wyn Jones is Professor of Music and Head of School at Cardiff University and has written extensively on music and musical life in the Classical Period. He is the author of The Symphony in Beethoven's Vienna (2006), The Life of Beethoven (1998), Beethoven: The Pastoral Symphony (1996) and is the editor of Music in Eighteenth-Century Austria (1996), all published by Cambridge University Press. His Companion to Haydn (2002) was awarded the C. B. Oldman Prize by IAML UK. He has contributed to several programmes on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4.

Table of Contents

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.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The author provides an accessible, insightful, and sympathetically humanistic portrait of the day-to-day existence of the man, bringing to light commonplace practical matters of the life of a musician in the 18th century." —Choice

Editorial Reviews

"The author provides an accessible, insightful, and sympathetically humanistic portrait of the day-to-day existence of the man, bringing to light commonplace practical matters of the life of a musician in the 18th century."
—Choice

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

From the Publisher