Haydn and the classical symphony

In 1761 Joseph Haydn, a 29-year-old Austrian composer, took a post as assistant music director to the wealthy Esterhazy family, Hungarian princes who kept a private orchestra at Eisenstadt and later at their new palace of Esterhaza. He stayed in the family's service for nearly thirty years. With a skilled band on call every day and a patron who wanted new music constantly, Haydn could try ideas and hear the results at once. He wrote 104 numbered symphonies and about 68 string quartets, and in the process fixed the shape of both forms.¹²

The symphony had humble roots. It grew from the sinfonia, the instrumental overture that opened Italian operas, and from orchestras of the 1740s and 1750s, such as the one at Mannheim, which showed what disciplined strings could do. The string quartet drew on the violin family perfected in Italian workshops. Haydn gave the symphony its standard four movements: a fast opening built on contrasting themes (sonata form), a slow movement, a dance-like minuet, and a quick finale. He treated the quartet as a conversation among four equals, famously in his Opus 20 set of 1772.²

Haydn's fame spread far beyond the Esterhazy estates as printed editions circulated, and his two visits to London in 1791 to 1795 produced his last twelve symphonies for large public audiences. His wit was part of his appeal: the Farewell Symphony ends with players leaving the stage one by one, and the Surprise Symphony has a sudden loud chord in a quiet slow movement. Mozart admired and learned from him, and the young Beethoven studied with him in Vienna. The forms he shaped became the framework for composers for the next century and a half.¹