Haydn

Haydn

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 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 readera 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 indeedand 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 waynothing 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 secretwhich I take leave to doubthe certainly kept it. "The daemon of music," said Wagner, "revealing itself through the mind of a child"which tells us nothing. In reading his Life we must perpetually bear in mind the mighty changes he wrought in and for music, else we shall not read far. Wherefore, first roughly to outline his achievement is the reason why I open with a peroration of a sort. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 13504
Author: Runciman, John F.
Release Date: Sep 20, 2004
Format: eBook
Language: English