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Through von Fürnberg or some one else he got to know the Countess Thun, who loved to play the friend to struggling genius. Finally, he was presented to Count Morzin, who, in 1759, appointed him as his composer and bandmaster. The band was small and the pay was small, but it placed Haydn in an assured position. He had a band to practise on, and he soon wrote his first symphony.
Count Morzin, where he had conducted the orchestra, was obliged to reduce his establishment and dismissed his band and its director. As soon as this was known, the reigning Prince of Hungary, Paul Anton Esterházy offered Haydn the post of assistant Capellmeister at his country seat of Eisenstadt. The head Capellmeister, Werner, was old, but the Prince kept him on account of his long service.
This post was none too lucrative, however, for it brought the composer only about one hundred dollars a year, while his teaching could not have provided him with much extra wealth, and his compositions brought him nothing. Yet his financial troubles did not deter him from seeking those of matrimony, in spite of the fact that Count Morzin never kept married men in his service.
If Providence in very deed ordained that millions of men and women should toil that a few small electors, dukes and princes should lead lives of unhappy artificial luxury, then Providence did well at the same time to arrange for a few counts such as Morzin, and princes like those of Esterhazy. Haydn's chief in musical affairs was old Werner.
Apparently realizing that marriage at best is but a lottery, Haydn accepted the proposition. The wedding took place at St. Stephen's, on November 26, 1760. Whether Count Morzin would have made an exception in Haydn's case, and retained him in spite of this event, there is no means of telling, for that nobleman met with financial reverses, and was forced to give up his musical establishment.
Morzin had to rid himself of such an expensive encumbrance as an orchestra, and, marriage or no marriage, Haydn would have found himself without a post. He quickly got another position, so that one bad consequence of hasty marriage did not count. The other consequence remained he still had a wife. She was, from all accounts, a demon of a wife.
After Bach's death, in 1750, she struggled bravely to support her children, but became gradually poorer, and was forced to end her days in an almshouse, and be buried in a pauper's grave. Less happy than Bach in his married life was Franz Josef Haydn. After a boyhood of poverty and struggles, he obtained a position as Kapellmeister to a Bohemian nobleman, Count Morzin.
The next piece of good fortune was Haydn's appointment as director of the band and composer to Count Ferdinand Morzin at Lukaver near Pilsen; and here, in 1759, his first symphony was written. A barber, named Keller, is said to have been very kind to him in the days of his poverty, and out of gratitude Haydn gave music-lessons to his daughters.
A wealthy music patron persuaded him to write a string quartet, the first of many to follow. Through this man he received, in 1759, an appointment of music director to a rich Bohemian, Count Morzin, who had a small orchestra at his country seat. In the same year the first Symphony was composed. As brighter days dawned, Haydn procured all the works on theory obtainable, and studied them deeply.
His declared object always was to please his patrons; and consider who his patrons were. We may be sure that the "discords" of a Beethoven suddenly blared forth would have scared Count Morzin and all his pigtail court.
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