Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 2, 2025
The French musicians had not yet finished the tune, when a window in the upper story of the house was opened, and Joseph Haydn's venerable white-haired head appeared. His cheeks were pale, and his lips trembled, for his footman, who had just returned home, had brought him the news that the French had been victorious again, and that Napoleon had defeated the two emperors at Austerlitz.
"Your father!" she screamed passionately, and a scar on her chin showed white against a suffused complexion; "don't talk to me of your father. Before we were married, he often came to my uncle's shop, and talked to me about books I got up Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, bits of Browning, and Lamb's Essays, and Omar Khayyam.
Napoleon, who had almost lived upon horseback, was a poor runner, and would often, in his eagerness, fall, rolling head-long over the grass, raising shouts of laughter. Josephine and Hortense were as agile as they were graceful. On the 24th of December, 1800, Napoleon, Josephine, and Hortense were going to the opera, to hear Haydn's Oratorio of the Creation.
But at last he was won over by Haydn's gentleness and patience, until he was willing to answer all his questions and to correct his compositions. Best of all he brought Haydn to the attention of the nobleman in whose house he was teaching, so that when the nobleman and his family went to the baths of Mannersdorf for several months, Haydn was asked to go along as accompanist to Porpora.
And here we cannot refrain from a passing remark on certain criticisms, which have obtained, as we think, an undeserved currency. He who can thus, as it were, embody an abstraction is no mere pander to the senses. And who that has a modicum of the imaginative would assert of one of Haydn's Sonatas, that its effect on him was no other than sensuous?
A fairly close analogy is that of Burns, who, with little natural inspiration, found inspiration in his native ballads, and often worked up the merest doggerel into artistic shapes of wondrous poignancy. Haydn's habitual temper was cheerful, and his music rattles along with a certain gaiety of gallop very far away from the mechanical grinding or pounding accents of the contrapuntalists.
But Pleyel, though noted in his day as a teacher of the violin, and still remembered as the author of elementary violin duets useful to beginners, was a gentle, kindly soul, perfectly aware of Haydn's strength and his own weakness. Fight there was none, for Haydn simply paid no attention: but it is good to know that the two men remained friends.
It is a fact never to be forgotten, in hearing good papa Haydn's music, that he lived in the fine old world when stately men and women went through life in the grand manner with a languid pulse, when the earth and the days were alike empty, and hurry to get finished and proceed to the next thing was almost unknown, and elbowing of rivals to get on almost unnecessary.
A deep friendship sprang up at once between them and they corresponded freely. Haydn's letters to her were published by Nohl, and you may read them in Lady Wallace's translation. They are full of the most interesting lights upon Haydn's life and experiences, and are brimful of affection for Frau von Genzinger.
The latest reverses of Austria had produced a most painful impression upon the aged maestro, and the ravishing joy which had illuminated Joseph Haydn's face at the performance of "The Creation," had long since disappeared from his careworn and mournful countenance.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking