2. Vienna, c1750–61.

Haydn's account of his freelance 1750s narrates a classic ‘rags to riches’ story:

When my voice finally broke, for eight whole years I was forced to eke out a wretched existence by teaching young people. Many geniuses are ruined by this miserable [need to earn their] daily bread, because they lack time to study. This could well have happened to me; I would never have achieved what little I have done, had I not carried on with my zeal for composition during the night. I composed diligently, but not quite correctly, until I finally had the good fortune to learn the true fundamentals of composition from the famous Porpora (who was in Vienna at the time). Finally, owing to a recommendation from the late [Baron] von Fürnberg (who was especially generous to me), I was appointed as director with Count Morzin, and from there as Kapellmeister with his highness Prince [Esterházy].

This period comprises three stages, of which the first two overlap without clear division. (1) During the ‘lean years’, about 1749 to the mid-1750s, Haydn was a freelance musician, teacher and budding composer. Even then, however, he was reaping professional and social advantage from contact with figures such as Porpora and Metastasio. (2) Beginning around 1753, and increasingly after 1755, his compositional activity expanded, as his reputation and access to patronage grew. (3) His first regular appointment, as director of music for Count Morzin, began probably in 1757 and lasted until winter 1760–61 or spring 1761.

Haydn's first lodgings (according to Framery) were offered by Johann Michael Spangler, a tenor (later regens chori) at the Michaelerkirche, in a garret with Spangler’s wife and infant son (b February 1749). This situation obviously could be no more than temporary, especially as Spangler’s wife was soon pregnant with their second child, Maddelena (b 4 September 1750); these birthdates are consistent with Haydn’s having moved there in November 1749 and with Framery’s account. (In 1768 Haydn engaged Maddelena Spangler as a soprano at the Esterházy court, where among other roles she created Vespina in L'infedeltà delusa and Rezia in L'incontro improvviso; she was also the first Sara in Il ritorno di Tobia.) Another good deed was done him by Johann Wilhelm Buchholz, a lacemaker, whose granddaughter was remembered in Haydn's will ‘because her grandfather lent me 150 gulden without interest in my youth and great need'; the amount was close to a year's salary for an ordinary musician at a minor court. It was perhaps in the following spring (1750) that he journeyed to the huge Benedictine pilgrimage church in Mariazell (Styria). Griesinger relates that he took with him ‘several motets which he had composed and asked the regens chori there for permission to put out the parts in the church and sing them’, and continues with an anecdote according to which Haydn the next day got his way by trickery. If ‘motet’ means a liturgical work other than a mass, it can only have been his first Lauda Sion hymns, hXXIIIc:5; another possibility is the Missa brevis in F. In any case this pilgrimage was important to Haydn; later he composed both the Missa Cellensis and the ‘Mariazellermesse’ with Mariazell in mind.

According to Pohl, it was in the spring or summer of 1750 that Haydn occupied his most frequently described early lodgings: a ‘miserable little garret without a stove’ (Griesinger) in the so-called Michaelerhaus, attached to the Michaelerkirche. At this time ‘his entire life was devoted to giving lessons, the study of his art, and performing. He played in serenades and in orchestras for pay, and devoted himself diligently to composition, for “when I sat at my old, worm-eaten clavier, I envied no king his good fortune”’. Here occurred the first of many strokes of luck through which, in addition to his genius and unremitting labour, he gradually improved his professional lot. Griesinger writes:

In the same house … lived as well the famous poet Metastasio. He was raising one Fräulein Martinez; Haydn was engaged to give her lessons in singing and on the clavier, in return for which he received free board for three years. At Metastasio's he also made the acquaintance of the aging Kapellmeister Porpora. Porpora was teaching singing to the mistress of the Venetian ambassador, Correr; however, because he was too proper and too fond of his ease to accompany at the piano himself, he delegated this task to our Giuseppe. ‘There was no lack of Ass, Blockhead, Rascal and pokes in the ribs, but I willingly put up with it all, for I profited immensely from Porpora in singing, composition and Italian.’ In the summer Correr travelled with the lady to the popular bathing resort Mannersdorf …; Porpora went as well … and took Haydn with him. For three months Haydn served there as Porpora's valet; he ate at Correr's officers' table, and was paid six ducats [c25 gulden] a month. From time to time he was required to accompany Porpora on the clavier at one Prince von Hildburghausen's, in the presence of Gluck, Wagenseil and other famous masters; the approval of these connoisseurs was especially encouraging to him.

Access to such personages – whose overlapping relations were as much social as artistic – was essential for an aspiring young musician. ‘Fräulein Martinez’ was the composer and singer Marianne von Martínez. At the court of Joseph Friedrich, Prince of Sachsen-Hildburghausen (1702–87), Haydn could also have encountered Dittersdorf (whom he certainly knew by the mid-1750s) and Giuseppe Bonno, later Hofkapellmeister.

All these events took place during the first half of the 1750s. Haydn's instruction of Martínez began in 1751 or 1752; presumably his three years with Metastasio were from 1751 to 1754. Porpora arrived in Vienna from Dresden in late 1752 or early 1753; Haydn might well have met him in March 1753, when Metastasio was considering him as composer of his new opera L'isola disabitata (which in the event he assigned to Bonno; Haydn himself set this libretto in 1779). Given the mastery of Haydn's music by 1755–6, 1753 or 1754 are the latest plausible dates for his having ‘learnt the true fundamentals of composition’ from Porpora, whose expert knowledge of singing and Italian – ‘singing’ in this context implies Italian opera and oratorio – was also of great importance; Haydn became fluent in Italian and the italianate singing style. In addition, it may well have been at Porpora's instigation that he systematically worked through Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum (the only work mentioned by any source that offers ‘true fundamentals’). Another important musical encounter was Haydn's discovery of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, but this is unlikely to have taken place as early as about 1750, as the biographers claim. Dies portrays Haydn asking for ‘a good theoretical textbook’; this can refer only to the second volume of Bach's Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen. However, it appeared far too late (1762) to serve the function Dies attributes to it; even Bach's first volume (1753) was apparently not sold in Vienna until the 1760s. Moreover, unlike Fux or Mattheson, neither volume figures in Haydn's library catalogue (1804) or his estate. Indeed Griesinger speaks more plausibly of compositions:

About this time [his move to the Michaelerhaus] Haydn came upon the first six sonatas of Emanuel Bach; ‘I did not leave my clavier until I had played them through, and whoever knows me thoroughly must discover that I owe a great deal to Emanuel Bach, that I understood him and studied him with diligence. Emanuel Bach once paid me a compliment on that score himself’.

Although it is unclear which of Bach's sonatas Griesinger meant by ‘the first six’, there is no doubt of his influence on Haydn as a composer. Again, however, Haydn's style does not reflect that influence until the 1760s.

An important early personal contact was with Joseph Felix von Kurz, a well-known comic actor (under the stage-name Bernardon) and minor impresario active at the Kärntnertortheater, for whom Haydn supplied music to Der krumme Teufel, a comedy of the Hanswurst type. It was apparently given its première in the 1751–2 season and revived in May 1753, with considerable success. Neither libretto nor music of this, his earliest stage work, survives; a libretto does survive for a later version of 1759, often called Der neue krumme Teufel, but, again, there is no music. It has been speculated that many anonymous numbers in contemporary Viennese collections of theatrical songs stem from this work or others that Haydn might have composed, although documentation is lacking.

Haydn's lot improved substantially in the mid-1750s, as Griesinger describes:

At first Haydn received only two gulden a month for giving lessons, but gradually the price rose to five gulden, so that he was able to look about for more suitable quarters. While he was living in the Seilerstätte, all his few possessions were stolen … Haydn soon saw his loss made good by the generosity of good friends … [he] recovered through a stay of two months with Baron Fürnberg, which cost him nothing.

A 150% increase in fees implies a rise not only in Haydn's economic status but his professional reputation – and therefore increased access to patronage. The most important figure was Baron Carl Joseph Fürnberg (1720–67), who employed him as music master to his children (he lived near the Seilerstätte), commissioned his first string quartets and eventually recommended him to Morzin. Important as well was the elder Countess Maria Christine Thun, who (according to Framery) took singing and keyboard lessons from Haydn.

His freelance activities continued apace. Griesinger writes:

In this period Haydn was also leader of the orchestra in the convent of the Barmherzige Brüder … at 60 gulden a year. Here he had to be in the church at eight o'clock in the morning on Sundays and feast days, at ten o'clock he played the organ in what was then the chapel of Count Haugwitz, and at eleven o'clock he sang at St Stephan's. He was paid 17 kreutzer for each service. In the evenings Haydn often went ‘gassatim’ with his musical comrades, when one of his compositions was usually performed, and he recalled having composed a quintet [possibly hII:2] for that purpose in 1753.

(Both Griesinger and Dies supply the obligatory comic anecdotes involving Haydn and Dittersdorf.) Griesinger's account conflates several church jobs: from 1754 to 1756 Haydn performed as a singer in the Hofkapelle during Lent (1 gulden per service, not 17 kreuzer), and in 1755 and 1756 as an orchestral violinist for balls during carnival (4 gulden per evening). In the Hofkapelle he sang both concerted and a cappella works, including Palestrina's Stabat mater and the Allegri Miserere. His Sunday job at Count Haugwitz’s newly consecrated chapel near the Piaristenkirche began in mid-1759; he was responsible for the entire concerted music. According to an account by a Prussian prisoner of war, he participated in chamber-music parties arranged by Count Harrach at Rohrau. Of Haydn's many students during these years, Martínez has already been mentioned; another of more than marginal importance was Robert Kimmerling, later regens chori at Melk.

Although a sizable number of Haydn's works originated during the 1750s, documented dates are few. Both the very early Missa brevis in F and the first Lauda Sion exhibit technical faults, implying that he composed them before learning the ‘true fundamentals’ (i.e. before c1753–4); such faults are found in no other surviving genuine works. Griesinger writes: ‘In addition to performing and teaching, Haydn was indefatigable in composing. Many of his easy clavier sonatas, trios and so on belong to this period, and he generally took into consideration the needs and capacities of his pupils’. Numerous tiny keyboard sonatas and ‘concertinos’ indeed survive, although some authorities argue that the smallest sonatas are not necessarily the earliest or least accomplished, and the concertinos appear to date from about 1760; possibly some keyboard trios antedate 1755 as well, although none is so short or simple. In any case Haydn's compositional activity increased exponentially in the mid-1750s. The quintet-divertimento hII:2 survives in a later source dated 1754, and many of his ensemble divertimentos probably date from before 1761. Of the ten or so pre-1780 keyboard trios and the 21 or so string trios, the earliest also may date from the mid-1750s, although others are from the early 1760s. Late in life Haydn dated the autographs of the Organ Concerto in C (hXVIII:1) and the Salve regina in E (hXXIIIb:1) ‘1756’ (fig.2).

The precise dates of the final two stages of Haydn's early ‘progress’ – Fürnberg and Morzin – also remain uncertain. Griesinger writes:

The following, purely coincidental circumstance led him to try his hand at the composition of quartets. A certain Baron Fürnberg had an estate in Weinzierl, several stages from Vienna; from time to time he invited his parish priest, his estate manager, and Albrechtsberger (a brother of the well-known contrapuntist) in order to have a little music. Fürnberg asked Haydn to compose something that could be played by these four friends of the art. Haydn, who was then 18, accepted the proposal, and so originated his first quartet [incipit of hIII:1], which, immediately upon its appearance, received such uncommon applause as to encourage him to continue in this genre.

Griesinger's statement that Haydn composed his first quartet at 18, although roughly supported by Dies and Carpani, is far too early. All the circumstantial details, as well as the sheer mastery of Haydn's early quartets, suggest rather the Seilerstätte period, i.e. about 1755–7. Whether hIII:1 was actually Haydn's first quartet, or whether he (or Griesinger) named it simply because it occupied first position in Pleyel's famous edition (1801) and therefore in his own thematic catalogue, cannot be determined. In any case Haydn had not yet adopted the ‘opus’ format; there are, simply, ten early quartets, of which hIII:1–4, 6 (op.1 nos.1–4, 6) and hII:6 (‘op.0’) are probably the earliest, hIII:10, 12 (op.2 nos.4, 6) perhaps in the middle, and hIII:7–8 (op.2 nos.1–2) probably the latest, perhaps even 1759–60.

Regarding Haydn's employ by Count Karl Joseph Franz Morzin (1717–83), Griesinger states:

In the year 1759 Haydn was engaged as music director to Count Morzin in Vienna at a salary of 200 gulden, free lodging and board at the officers' table. Here he was finally able to enjoy the happiness of a carefree existence; he was quite contented. The winters were spent in Vienna, the summers in Bohemia [at Dolní Lukavice, usually referred to as Lukavec]…. As music director in the service of Count Morzin Haydn composed his first symphony [incipit of no.1].

Although Dies agrees regarding the date (‘about 27’), Haydn's earliest symphony cannot be as late as 1759: a manuscript source for no.37 is dated 1758 (Carpani's date), implying a date of composition in that year or, more likely, at least a year earlier. Moreover, Haydn himself in old age organized a list of his symphonies according to ten-year periods: 1757–67, 1767–77 etc.; ‘1757’ is so precise that he must have believed that it was the actual year of his first symphony – or, perhaps, of his appointment with Morzin. (The list also appears to confirm Griesinger's identification of the symphony we know as ‘no.1’ as the earliest.) Finally, if one accepts 1749 as the date of Haydn's dismissal from the Stephansdom and takes literally his ‘eight whole years’ of ‘wretched existence’, 1757 is implied as end-point; but the most likely marker of the latter, again, was his appointment with Morzin. Be all this as it may, the free-spending Count Morzin soon had to dissolve his little musical establishment. Although the early biographers again disagree as to the date, Haydn's marriage certificate (26 November 1760) refers to him as ‘Music Director with Count v. Morzin’, so he probably moved from Morzin to Esterházy without meaningful interruption. Haydn's compositions during the Morzin years include about 15 symphonies; keyboard sonatas (including hXVI:6, probably not later than 1760), trios, divertimentos (including hXIV:11, 1760) and concertos; string trios; partitas for wind band (including hII:15, 1760) and possibly the quartets op.2 nos.1–2.

On 26 November 1760 Haydn was married to Maria Anna Aloysia Apollonia Keller (bap. 9 Feb 1729; d 20 March 1800); the marriage contract, in which he pledged 1000 gulden as a matching sum to her dowry (a common custom), is dated 9 November. The bride was the daughter of the wigmaker Johann Peter Keller, who is said variously to have assisted him in his years of poverty or employed him as a music teacher. The early biographers relate that in the mid-1750s Haydn had fallen in love with her younger sister Therese (b 1733), who however was compelled by her devout parents to enter a nunnery in 1755, taking her formal vows in 1756. It has been speculated that he composed the Salve regina in E and perhaps the Organ Concerto in C on the latter occasion. Whether (the speculation continues) out of continuing gratitude to the Kellers or owing to a psychological displacement of his own affections, he married the elder sister four years later. The marriage was an unhappy one (we have only his side of the story) and led to infidelities on both sides; as he said to Griesinger (somewhat illogically): ‘My wife was incapable of bearing children, and thus I was less indifferent to the charms of other women’.

Haydn, Joseph