Haydn, Franz Joseph

Haydn, Franz Joseph (1732-1809), Austrian composer.

Joseph Haydn began learning music at the age of five.

At seventeen he was expelled from a choir school in Vienna for cutting off another boy's pigtail in front of him in the choir, pigtails were worn by choir boys at the time, and afterwards he played the violin in the streets.

He also gave music lessons and in time, found a job as a music master, first with a baron and later with a prince in Hungary.

He worked for the prince's family for most of the rest of his life, writing music and conducting the family's orchestra.

In this time he became the best-known composer in Europe. He wrote 104 symphonies and is called 'the father of the symphony'. He was not the first person to write a symphony but he showed how the musical form of the symphony could be used.

Haydn also wrote operas and many other kinds of music including the first string quartets, and two of these are among his best-loved works. They are String Quartet in D, Opus 64 No 5 (The Lark or Hornpipe) and String Quartet in C, Opus 76 No 3 ( The Emperor).

He spent two years in London and Oxford University made him a Doctor of Music.

See Karl Geiringer Haydn