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[MUSIC]
While Bach has been an inspiration
and reference point
point for practically every composer, he
really does represent the end of an era.
So Haydn, the next unarguably great
composer, chronologically, marks a
new beginning.
And not only because he's the father of so
many of the forms that came to dominate
the classical
era but because with him, we see the place
of
a composer in society begin to undergo a
serious evolution.
Not to say revolution, that comes later.
Haydn was born in 1732 which means that he
was 18 years old at the time of Bach's
death.
From 1761 when Haydn was age
29 he was employed as Kapellmeister by the
Esterhazys,
one of the wealthiest and most prominent
Austro Hungarian families.
The chief conductors of German opera
houses
with active symphony orchestras today are
often called
Generalmusikdirector.
Kapellmeister is a bit like an antecedent
to this in that the title implied that the
person ran the musical life of the court
and had many and various responsibilities.
But while Meister may have been in the
title, at the
outset, Haydn was under absolute
obligation to do as told by the
Esterhazy
family.
He wrote what he was told to write,
performed what he was told to perform, and
he
played chamber music with the members of
aristocracy,
presumably terrible, that he was told to
play with.
This state of affairs continued more or
less unchanged for 18 long years.
In 1779 finally a significant change took
place.
Haydn was given permission by the
Esterhazys to write and publish music
of his own choice and out of his own
desire. In essence, he
was given a measure of creative freedom
and ownership of his own professional
career.

It's difficult in 2013 to convey what a

dramatic shift this represents.
But as you can see, no one to this
point had considered creative fulfillment
to be a significant
reason for Haydn's writing music, to say
nothing of
Bach's. Obviously this is the time of the
lead
up to the French Revolution and relations
between the classes were evolving rapidly.
Whether this is the principal cause of the
change
in Haydn's status or whether it was
primarily a matter
of the respect he had earned in two
decades of
writing great music, that's a subject for
a historian to investigate.
But, what is significant for us is that while
Haydn had already demonstrated
great genius, from the moment he was given
a measure of musical
independence, his expressive palette
broadened substantially.
I will return to this point, and to Haydn
generally, in a moment.
But we're at 1779 now, and this is the
moment in which Mozart's story becomes
interesting as well, historically.
Mozart was only 23.
Beethoven, for those of you keeping score,
is only 8 years
old at this point, a talented kid living
in remote Bonn.
But unlike Haydn, Mozart was an
extraordinary prodigy, and
at the age of 23, he was fully mature.
He had already, two years earlier, written
the so-called
Jeunehomme Concerto, K. 271, which many
call his first fully mature work.
The writer Alfred Einstein actually
believed that he never surpassed it.
Whether or not one agrees with that
statement, it
is indisputable that at this point Mozart
is not "promising."
He is, alongside Haydn, the greatest active
composer in the world.
And they knew and liked each other, which
is interesting.
According to Mozart's father--who was, in
fairness, not always the most
reliable reporter--Haydn said, "I tell you
before God and as an honest
man, your son is the greatest composer
known to me in person and
repute. He has taste, what is more the
greatest skill in composition."

It was high praise.

In 1785, Mozart published a series of six
quartets which he dedicated to
Haydn and which are clearly significantly
influenced by Haydn's Opus 33 quartets-quartets which, interestingly, are the first
works
Haydn wrote after his quasi liberation
from Esterhazy.
Like Haydn, Mozart began his career as
a
court composer, although at a much younger
age, obviously.
Unlike Haydn,
he quickly began to chafe against the
system.
It could have stemmed from Mozart's
beginnings as
an--exploited--child prodigy, or differing
circumstances within
their respective courts, or simply from
the generational
gap, 23 years, between the two of them.
But whereas Haydn accepted his lot as a
musical servant, albeit a
well-treated one, for most of his career,
Mozart was instantly unhappy under similar
circumstances.
From the age of 16, he was employed by
the Archbishop Colloredo in Salzburg, who
not only dictated
what music he could or couldn't write, but
which
engagements outside of his court he was
allowed to accept.
Mozart first resigned from his position,
without
the security of another one, in 1777,
which is before Haydn even achieved the
elevated status within court as we
discussed.
After a year and a half of wandering, as
far as Paris even, he came back to
Salzburg for an improved salary, but
continued, unsuccessfully,
to try to establish more freedom within
his position.
But when Colloredo refused to allow Mozart
to accept an engagement playing for the
emperor in Vienna that would've paid
particularly
well, Mozart resigned and for the final
time.
His resignation was only accepted after
initial refusal and legend
has it that it was accompanied by a "kick
in the arse" from the Archbishop's steward.
By the way, Mozart is not the protagonist
of these
lectures, but for those of you who are

interested in this
topic, Mozart letters make highly
entertaining reading, even though I find
that he never reveals himself in the way
that Beethoven does.
The more I read about Beethoven, the more
I
understand the relationship between the
man and the music,
but even as I fall ever deeper in love
in with Mozart's music, the man himself
remains opaque.
This "kick in the arse," honestly, is a
watershed moment in the history of music.
Classical music's great civil rights
moment.
It's the first time on record that a
composer of note refused to
be treated as a servant, the first time a
composer ever left permanent employment
without first achieving financial
security.
It would be nice to be able to report that
things
turned out well for Mozart, but the
reality is more complicated.
Mozart's first years as a freelancer were
in fact the most successful of his career.
The vast majority of Mozart's greatest
piano concerti--which
is to say ten or so immortal masterworks-these were written between 1781 and '87 and
performed by Mozart in extremely popular
Viennese concerts.
In these years he also wrote Abduction
from
the Seraglio, The Marriage of Figaro, and
Don Giovanni.
Each one of them was extremely well received
and
really represented a fulfillment of his
long held wish, which
Colloredo
had ignored, to write opera.
Mozart was, even for a time, financially
secure or at least he
would have been had he and his wife not
drastically overspent.
But, this all proved to be short lived.
And, the last four years of Mozart's life,
from 1788 onward, they were a mess.
He fell out of fashion in Vienna where
money was anyway generally scarcer
than it had been in Mozart's glory years.
Now, this is not a lecture on Mozart, so I
won't go into the various details of what
went wrong.
Suffice to say that Mozart's final years
were an unhappy mix of part-time
employment, poverty, ill health, and

general humiliation.
Was this the result of his own bad
choices, or was the
world just not ready for a
self-sufficient, self-made composer at
this point?
Let's go back to Haydn.
Throughout the 1780s when Mozart was
trying his luck as an
independent contractor, Haydn was working
at
Esterhazy but enjoying his increased
freedom.
Permitted to publish his music wherever he
liked, he became
inordinately popular, and he was
fantastically productive in those years.
He wrote no fewer than 30 string quartets
in that decade.
And those are among his really finest and
most influential
characteristic achievements.
Haydn finally left Esterhazy in
1790 after 30 years, which is nearly the
entire duration of Mozart's life.
And even then he kept a part-time
position.
He spent much of the next 5 years in
London where
his work was already known and where he
became extremely popular.
To keep score again, when Haydn left
Esterhazy for London the first time,
Beethoven was 19, and they did briefly
meet while
Haydn was passing through Bonn on his way
to London.
At any rate, London was an unambiguous
triumph for Haydn.
And when he came back to Europe to stay in
1795, he was wealthy.
He continued to do some part-time work for
the Esterhazys, but he lived in Vienna.
And when he was old and ill, he was
carried into the hall on an
armchair to listen to a performance of his
Creation.
And at home, he was attended to by his
servants.
This world was very far away from the one
Bach inhabited.
Many have suggested that the court system
was good for music,
but I think the cases of Haydn and Mozart
suggest otherwise.
It certainly worked for Bach but is Bach
an example of anything?
It's not just his genius--his mastery, his
professionalism, and
his work ethic work were positively

freakish.
Haydn wrote fantastic music throughout his
career, but the more
freedom he enjoyed at Esterhazy, the more
inventive his music became.
The London years were very fertile as
well.
The great London symphonies obviously were
all composed there.
And even the last Vienna years, when he
was unwell and he was truly well off, are
fertile.
The Creation, one of the greatest choral
works ever written, and the last ten
string quartets are all from those years.
The only thing that changed is that he
could spend less time
writing the symphonies, which were first
required and then expected of him,
and devote his energy to writing chamber
music in
oratorio, which evidently is where his
creative urges lay.
And what of Mozart?
The years of freedom were decidedly mixed,
financially and personally,
but they produced the vast majority of his
greatest music.
He wrote literally hundreds of pieces,
including most
of the ones on which his reputation rests.
And, even in those last four miserable
years, he
wrote the final three symphonies, the last
piano concerto,
the Requiem, obviously, the clarinet
concerto, the clarinet quintet,
the last two string quintets, and Cos fan
tutte.
Amazing.
With Haydn, the circumstances of his final
years influenced at least the choice of
genres.
Mozart, as ever, remains inscrutable.
Ironically, his unbelievable facility for
expressing human
emotion in music makes him impossible to
know.
He could do anything, did, and continued
doing so even when the chips were down.
At any rate, in Haydn and Mozart
we have two examples of composers who
struck
out on their own and, despite vastly
different
practical outcomes, managed to produce
timeless work without
the support--and the shackles--of their
early years.
Whether or not one agrees with my theory

that the
court system was of dubious or no benefit
to composers,
the fact is that by the time Beethoven
reaches maturity,
it was disappearing as the model for the
great composers.
Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792, at
which point
Mozart was dead and had been out of the
Salzburg court for eleven years.
Haydn was a London-based celebrity and was
about to become a Viennese celebrity.
This was the world that Beethoven emerged
into.
Let's take a short break for a review
question.