paid him marked attention; the public applauded him with enthusiasm, and the university of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of doctor of music; and he took away with him such a sum as secured his independence for the remainder of his life. The Baron van Swieten, a Viennese amateur—at whose instigation it was that Mozart wrote his additional instrumentation of Handel's Messiah—entertained the fanciful conceit that the imitation of visible forms and motions was within the province of music. In pursuance of this idea, he planned the scheme of the oratorio of the "Creation," and proposed the composition of the work to Haydn, who eagerly entered into his views. Swieten compiled the text of this work, interpolating matter of his own between the scriptural passages he selected, and writing the entire of the third part. Haydn entered upon his task with profound earnestness, laboured at it with feelings of the deepest devotion, and spent a greater time upon it than he had ever given to the same amount of composition, saying that he meant the work to live long, and must not therefore hasten its production. Accounts vary as to when he began to write this oratorio; the most natural seems to be that it was not until 1797, but he doubtless gave long preconsideration to its plan. It was completed in April, 1798. Its first performance was at the Schwarzenberg palace in Vienna, 19th March, 1799, and its success exceeded that of any musical work that had ever been produced. In England there was a rivalry between Salaman and Ashley (the director of the oratorio performances at Covent Garden theatre) as to who should first introduce the "Creation" to the public, and Ashley outwitted his competitor by the aid of a king's messenger—an official who then had more rapid means of transit than any other traveller—who privately brought him a copy of the score. This arrived on a Saturday night, and the work, being copied and studied in the interim, was performed on the Friday following, 23rd March, 1800. In every other country there was a like eagerness for the production of the new oratorio, and the artistic societies of each conferred their membership on the composer. The "Seasons" was another work in which Haydn had Swieten for a coadjutor, who compiled the test of this secular oratorio from Thomson's poem, with sundry insertions of his own. Its composition is said to have occupied eleven months, and it was first played, 24th April, 1801. Its success, though great, was not equal to that of the "Creation," nor has it ever been so popular as this work; but just criticism cannot pronounce it of less merit. The powers of the veteran now began to fail him, and he produced with a difficulty unknown to him before; the weakness from which he suffered was aggravated by his position at the pianoforte, and he was compelled to refrain from the favourite pursuit of his whole life. The quartets, Nos. 82 and 83, were written in the course of 1802; after which he laboured for nearly a year at an eighty-fourth quartet. Of this he completed but two movements, and then being forced to desist, he wrote the following pathetic words to a musical phrase, and so closed his artistic career:—"Hin ist alle meine kraft; alt und schwach bin ich"—(Gone is all my power; old and weak am I). He sent a copy of this very remarkable passage to each of his friends, and thus announced, as no other creative artist has ever done, that he voluntarily retired from a field wherein his course had been one of unchequered honour, and resolved to produce no more. Haydn was drawn from his subsequent seclusion to attend a performance that was given, 27th March, 1808, of an Italian version of the "Creation," translated by his friend and biographer, Carpani. On this occasion all the most distinguished for talent or birth in Vienna were present: the venerable master was wheeled into the front of the dense assembly, thronged to pay him homage, and Princess Esterhazy took her place beside him. Salieri, who was to direct the orchestra, came first to receive the composer's instructions; the performance began—it was interrupted by a murmur of universal admiration at the passage which presents the creation of light—and the author, exultingly rising to his feet, pointed to heaven, and exclaimed, "It comes from thence!" Exhausted by the excitement and the exertion, he was obliged to be borne away at the end of the first part of the oratorio; but stopping his chair at the entrance of the hall, he bowed a farewell to the performers and the audience, the sharers and the donors of his successes. He never left his house again. On the 10th of May, 1809, the French commenced the bombardment of Vienna, and though Napoleon—noblest of all his deeds of greatness—placed a guard to protect the dwelling of Haydn, some shells burst so near it, that the terrified domestics deemed it necessary to bear him to a place of more security. He stayed them however, demanding, as though inspired with assurance of divine protection, "Where Haydn is, what is there to fear?" His strength failed him under this trying excitement, and he was carried to his bed never thence to rise. On the 26th of the month he broke, as if by a preternatural effort from his long torpor, and sang thrice, with clear and emphatic voice, his own hymn, "God preserve the Emperor," his feeble efforts to articulate which had been the solace of his illness; the act of devoted loyalty overpowered him, and he sank senseless; five days later he breathed his last.
The remarkable career of Haydn furnishes a grand proof that the inborn power to accomplish great works finds its own means to achieve them. Two lessons from Renter were all the instruction in composition he ever received, but he carved out for himself a path of such unerring certitude that his successors could but follow in his track; their modifications of his perfect design being but to adorn it with flowers of their own imagination, not to divert its course. Who then shall say that such or such a man might have become great had his genius been duly cultivated? The prodigious amount of Haydn's compositions is scarcely credible; the number of his quartets has been named—there are a hundred and eighteen published symphonies, and twenty-two are mentioned that are unprinted; he wrote nearly as many pieces of the same extent for the baritone, an instrument now obsolete, on which Prince Nicolas used to play in concert with his orchestra; his other instrumental works are almost countless; his oratorios have been enumerated; nineteen of his masses are published; his "Stabat Mater" and several other pieces of church music (but it is unknown how much of his labours in this department of the art is hidden from us in MS.); and finally, he produced eight German and fifteen Italian operas, besides some smaller dramatic pieces and a large number of detached vocal compositions. His works, regarded as a successive series, constitute a remarkable illustration of the progress of modern instrumental music, the almost childish infancy of which is to be observed in his first quartets, and its most vigorous manhood in his last compositions for the chamber and the concert-room. It must be remembered, however, while we make due acknowledgment of his everlasting services to music; firstly, that the art of design which he matured, and the constructive forms of which his works have furnished models to all after writers, were anticipated by Bach and less honoured composers; secondly, that the class of works in which he especially advanced the art exercised the mean abilities of many small writers, his early contemporaries, whose names like their compositions are forgotten, but whose labours prove that Haydn had not the merit of first appropriating the principles of construction in the manner he has taught his successors to apply them; lastly, that he lived both before and after Mozart, and the immense discrepancy between his first productions and his latest shows how vastly much he gained from his experience of the workings of this wonderful genius; nay, further, that he knew the first thirty publications of Beethoven, and wrote subsequently to this knowledge. There has, perhaps, never been so great an artist who was so little of a poet as Haydn. This is proved, if not by his acceptance of the text of the "Creation" as a subject for musical treatment, certainly by his rendering of many portions of it—those, for example, which describe the several atmospheric and zoological phenomena. A great humorist he was, or he would never have written his "Farewell Symphony," in which each player has successively to leave the orchestra until one remains alone; nor his "Toy Symphony," in which all the instruments of the nursery are brought into requirement: and this quality of humour constantly evinces itself thoughout his works, even where its exercise is less positively defined. His highest artistic trait was his sincere religious feeling; this was equally distinct from the ostentatious formularity of the Italian, and the severe simplicity of that of the German church; it was an ample sense of the beauty of all things, and a conviction that the Author of this beauty was the source of all happiness; when ideas failed him he would count his rosary, and his implicit faith was equivalent to inspiration. Thus, when in his sacred music his own emotions are best embodied, it is in the expression, most generally paramount, of joyous, grateful exultation.—G. A. M.
HAYDN, Johann Michael, a musician, brother of the
