(II) Kapellmeister, 1766–90.

In late 1765 and early 1766 Haydn's status and activities at the Esterházy court changed radically. First came a series of crises in his relations with the prince. In September 1765 the flautist Franz Sigl accidentally burnt down a house; the chief court administrator, Ludwig Peter Rahier (with whom Haydn often clashed), recommended that Sigl be imprisoned, and Haydn was reprimanded by the prince. Haydn however eloquently defended himself and succeeded in having Sigl's punishment reduced to simple dismissal (indeed he was later rehired). In October, Werner, having just signed his last will, wrote a vituperative letter to the prince in which he accused Haydn of neglecting the instruments and musical archives and the supervision of the singers. In late November or early December Nicolaus again sent Haydn a reprimand (perhaps drafted by Rahier), instructing him to see to these matters and to prepare a catalogue of the archives and instruments of the Chor-Musique. At the end stood the following postscript: ‘Kapellmeister Haydn is urgently enjoined to apply himself to composition more zealously than heretofore, and especially to compose more pieces that one can play on the [baryton]’. The baryton was a member of the viol family, on which the performer could ‘accompany himself’ by plucking a series of sympathetically vibrating strings while also playing normally with the bow; the prince was an accomplished performer. Haydn, though doubtless angry and dismayed, at once began to compose baryton trios in quantity. On 4 January 1766 he submitted three new ones (Nicolaus pronounced himself satisfied and awarded him 12 ducats, while immediately ordering six more), and completed a ‘book’ of 24 (they were elegantly bound in sets) that autumn; two additional books followed by July 1768. Thereafter production dropped off somewhat, though remaining steady into the mid-1770s, for a total of 126 trios plus sundry other works.

A different kind of response (so it is assumed) was Haydn's decision to begin a thematic catalogue of his own compositions, and thereby to refute the prince's charge of non-productivity. This document, misleadingly called the Entwurf-Katalog (‘draft catalogue’, fig.3), is of capital importance for our knowledge of Haydn's output from the pre-Esterházy days up to the late 1770s, as well as its chronology. It was laid out in about 1765–6 by Joseph Elssler, the most important music copyist at the court, doubtless according to Haydn's plan; Haydn made additional entries more or less regularly until the late 1770s.

On 3 March 1766 Werner died; Haydn was now Kapellmeister, responsible for the church music as well as everything else. It was presumably this higher status (his salary did not change) that induced him in May to purchase a house in Eisenstadt (now a Haydn museum). A more important change was signalled later that year: a portion of the court, including Haydn and some musicians, spent the summer at Nicolaus's splendid new castle, Eszterháza, then beginning to rise in reclaimed swampland east of Lake Neusiedl (present-day Hungary). Over time, the prince became increasingly attached to it, and ‘summer’ eventually expanded to ten months. Such an extension occasioned the ‘Farewell’ Symphony (no.45, autumn 1772), in which the pantomime of the departing musicians brought home to the prince the need to return to Eisenstadt.

As a result of these new circumstances, Haydn's compositional activity changed substantially. In addition to the upsurge in baryton music, in 1766 he began to compose large-scale vocal works, both sacred and secular. In the former domain he at once produced two works on the largest scale, with an astonishing assurance of style and technique for someone who had composed no church music for a decade. The first was the Missa Cellensis in honorem BVM of 1766 (possibly completed later), apparently intended for Mariazell (where earlier Esterházys had erected a chapel) or a Viennese church associated with that shrine. More masses followed: in 1768 the Missa ‘Sunt bona mixta malis’, about 1768–9 the Missa in honorem BVM (‘Great Organ Mass’; Haydn presumably performed the obbligato organ part), in 1772 the Missa Sancti Nicolai (the title implies a celebration of the prince's nameday, 6 December) and about 1775–8 a missa brevis (‘Little Organ Mass’). His other ‘inaugural’ liturgical masterpiece was the Stabat mater of 1767. Its original purpose is unknown; Haydn was confident enough to send it to Hasse, earning a letter of praise that he much valued, and he performed it in Vienna in March 1768. There followed a Salve regina (hXXIIIb:2; 1771) for four solo voices, string orchestra and obbligato organ (again performed by Haydn). It was presumably this work, not (as he later claimed) the Stabat mater, that resulted from his vow to compose a work of thanksgiving to the Virgin if he were cured of a serious illness; he suffered from a ‘raging fever’ (Griesinger) about 1770–71, so threatening that his brother applied for leave from Salzburg to visit him. The celebratory cantata Applausus (1768) was commissioned in honour of the abbot of the Cistercian monastery at Zwettl; because Haydn was unable to be present, he accompanied the work with a long and informative letter on performing practice. Haydn composed the Italian oratorio Il ritorno di Tobia (1774–5) for the annual Lenten concert of the Tonkünstler-Societät in Vienna, a charitable organization for musicians' widows and children founded by Hofkapellmeister Gassmann in 1771. He conducted the premières on 2 and 4 April 1775; most of the roles were sung by members of his own Kapelle. The work was a notable success; a review praised the choruses in particular and referred to his growing international reputation.

Beginning in 1766, the prince began to require operatic productions at the new castle; eventually opera would become the focus of the entire musical establishment (see §(iii) below). For the time being, however, Haydn's primary task was to compose operas to be produced during the festivities celebrating visits by high personages. Three comic operas date from the late 1760s: La canterina (1766) apparently had its première in the summer during a visit of the imperial court to Eisenstadt (in a makeshift theatre) and was afterwards produced in Pressburg (Bratislava). Lo speziale (1768) and Le pescatrici (1769–70) are both based on librettos by Goldoni; the former inaugurated the new opera house at Eszterháza probably during the last week of September 1768, on the visit of the Hungarian regent, Duke Albert of Saxe-Techsen, while the latter had its première on 16 September 1770 during the wedding celebrations of Countess Lamberg, the prince's niece. After a pause, operatic composition resumed in 1773 with L'infedeltà delusa, given on 26 July (the nameday of the dowager Princess Maria Anna, Paul Anton's widow), and Philemon und Baucis, a German marionette opera, given on 2 September during the festivities in honour of a ‘state’ visit by Empress Maria Theresa to Eszterháza. (Hexenschabbas, another marionette opera from about this time, is lost.) L'infedeltà delusa was also given for the empress; the performance occasioned her famous remark (if it is genuine) that in order to see a good opera she had to go to the country. Haydn's last opera during this phase was L'incontro improvviso, first given on 29 August 1775, during a visit by Archduke Ferdinand and his court.

During the late 1760s and early 1770s Haydn continued to compose instrumental works, albeit at a slower rate than before (except during the operatic hiatus of 1770–72). But they became longer, more passionate and more daring. The symphonies comprise nos.26, 35, 38, 41–9, 52, 58–9, 65; many of these are among his best-known before the London period, as is evident from their nicknames, which include ‘Lamentatione’, ‘Maria Theresa’, ‘La passione’, ‘Mourning’, ‘Farewell’ and ‘The Schoolmaster’. He also took up the string quartet, not cultivated since the 1750s, producing three increasingly imposing opera in rapid succession: op.9 (c1769–70), op.17 (1771) and op.20 (1772). The reason is unknown: there is no documentation of quartet performances at the Esterházy court, and it has been speculated that he composed them for Viennese patrons (Burney described the audience's transports at a performance of Haydn quartets in Vienna in September 1772). He also composed numerous keyboard sonatas for connoisseurs: hXVI:45 (1766), 19 (1767), 46 (late 1760s), 20 (in C minor, 1771), as well as seven lost works and one that survives only as a fragment (hXVI:2a–g, XIV:5) which, to judge from the incipits, were on the same scale. A few concertos date from this period as well. Many of these works are so bold and expressive that in the 20th century they became subsumed under the appellation Sturm und Drang. The term has been criticized: taken from the title of a play of 1776 by Maximilian Klinger, it properly pertains to a literary movement of the middle and late 1770s rather than a musical one of about 1768–72, and early proponents of this interpretation assumed implausibly and without evidence that these works expressed a ‘romantic crisis' in Haydn's life. Nevertheless, his style during these years was distinctive; furthermore, similar traits are found in the contemporary music of many other Austrian composers, including the young Mozart's G minor Symphony k183/173dB and D minor String Quartet k173.

In Haydn's case this development may have been related to his turn to vocal music beginning in 1766: perhaps the demand for expressive depth in sacred works and dramatic effectiveness in opera, as well as the tendency towards through-composition in both genres, stimulated this expansion of his instrumental music. In 1769 Nicolaus began engaging a theatrical troupe each summer season; in the seasons 1772–7 it was the famous one directed by Carl Wahr, which played primarily comedies and other entertainments, although Shakespeare's tragedies were also mounted. It has been speculated that Haydn supplied incidental music for these productions (including even Hamlet and King Lear) and that some Sturm und Drang symphonies recycle this music, although the only documented example is Symphony no.60 (‘Il distratto’, 1774), from a very un-Shakespearean French comedy. In any case, from about 1773 Haydn's instrumental music became generally lighter in style – the reason (if any) is again unknown; there is no evidence of princely intervention – and was again addressed to amateurs as well as connoisseurs. The string quartet was abandoned. Both the symphonies of 1773–5 (nos.50–51, 54–7, 60, 64, 66–9) and two contemporaneous sets of keyboard sonatas, hXVI:21–6 (1773) and especially 27–32 (1774–6), exemplify this mixed orientation; the former was published in Vienna in 1774 (the first authorized publication of Haydn's music) with a dedication to the prince, who presumably paid the costs. A third set (nos.35–9 and 20), again mixed in style, was published in 1780.

Haydn, Joseph, §3: Esterházy, 1761–90