A capital fellow
When Austrian composer Joseph Haydn made London his temporary home in the 1790s, he enjoyed both great fame and ample fortune. Rick Jones basks in a little of the composer’s limelight by dressing up as the great man himself and visiting some of his old ha
Rick Jones assumes the persona of Joseph Haydn to make a tour of the composer’s London haunts
In the last decades of the 18th century, London tried repeatedly to attract Franz Josef ‘Papa’ Haydn to the city. Letters of invitation from counts and earls went unanswered, and it was eventually down to the entreaties of Johann Peter Salomon, a London-based German violinist, that Haydn was persuaded to cross the English Channel – an achievement that is celebrated in Salomon’s epitaph in Westminster Abbey.
Arriving on 2 January 1791, Haydn was acclaimed everywhere he went. Oxford University conferred an honour on him and, thanks to his considerable charm, women fell at his feet. He stayed 18 months, returning to Vienna in July 1792, then headed back to the English capital in February 1794. He wrote 12 symphonies for Georgian London, six on each visit.
In the summer of last year Rick Jones enjoyed a week-long impersonation of the Viennese composer, conducting free tours of the London that Doctor Haydn, Master of Symphonies, knew. Here, in full Haydn garb, he presents the diary that the composer himself might just have kept. Well, possibly.
2 January 1791
I arrive in London with my new friend
Johann Peter Salomon, who appeared unannounced in Vienna before Christmas to fetch me. How could I refuse? I am free of the wife and the mistress and can play the flirtatious Viennese. Salomon has reserved for me a room at his newly built lodging in Great Pulteney Street, Soho. It was all fields round here once, he says. He has made his home among the English and urges me to consider the same. Opposite is the Broadwood piano shop where a desk is available, and I start by arranging anonymous local folksongs like ‘The German Musicianer’, a bawdy ballad advising Georgian husbands not to neglect their wives when the piano teacher calls.
20 January 1791
London is cosmopolitan. The landlord is Italian and so is the cook. Soho is full of French and Swiss clockmakers fleeing the French beheadings. King George is German, but mad as a hatter. Salomon accompanies me to the Palace of St James where his eccentric Majesty’s son, The Prince of Wales, ignores the formalities and says ‘Ach Herr Haydn!’ before I have been presented. In Vienna I was merely a count’s musician, but here I am a celebrity, mobbed by crowds. The Queen says I should stay and be the new Handel. The King says he will send for my wife, but I tell him she wouldn’t even cross the Danube.
15 May 1791
I pass the windmill in Great Windmill Street and the house of Mrs John Hunter who sings my songs while her surgeon husband exhibits his excisions. I am en route to His Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket. It is Salomon’s idea to produce an Italian opera in the same place as Handel’s Rinaldo 80 years ago. Mine is L’anima del filosofo, the story of Orpheus who loved his wife as I, alas, do not. Misfortune scuppers the show. The burned out theatre is not ready and though we move to the Theatre Royal opposite, a dispute between the King and the heir denies us a licence and we cancel. Handel had the same problem, though his Georges were I and II, where mine are III and IV. The backers lose money, so Salomon suggests some symphonies. A dozen, say? Two sets. This is no problem as I have already written 92. I agree but will study the taste of the English before committing notes to paper.
8 July 1791
To Oxford for the Encaenia, a Latin ceremony conferring honorary doctorates on individuals. I am addressed as ‘Summe symphoniorum magister’, highest master of symphonies.
I wear the costume until the hire charge expires. The university orchestra performs the Symphony No. 92, which I wrote for Paris but is henceforth known as ‘The Oxford’. The English, also henceforth, call me ‘Doctor’.
23 March 1792
Salomon solicits for piano pupils, and the widow Rebecca Schroeter sends a calling card on a silver tray. We correspond, study piano, dine and attend concerts as I replace her late German composer husband. I bring flowers. Frau Schroeter likes surprises and in Symphony No. 94 I write a big one, a sudden
fortissimo following the simplest andante melody. It is a week before my 60th birthday and I am in party mood. I conduct from the
keyboard and tell the timpanist to terrify the ladies and wake the post-prandial snoozers. A flautist calls it ‘The Surprise’ and it is a big hit – literally! – back in Vienna where it is called after the kettledrum, Paukenschlag. It is the talk of London, and the Hanover Square Rooms have not been so popular since concerts began ten years ago under Christian ‘London’ Bach, son of the late Cantor of Leipzig.
30 June 1792
The concerts contain works by other composers as well as yours truly, though a new symphony, or ‘Grand Overture’, always begins either half and is much reported on in the press. I complete a set of six symphonies which appear mostly in my second spring before I return to Vienna for the anniversary. The second set will come on my reappearance in London…
5 February 1794
And here I am, back in London. The earlier excitement is replaced by deferential familiarity. ‘Dr Haydn’ resides no longer in
Soho but now in St James’s – Bury Street to be precise – with the courtiers, diplomats and visiting nobs. From either abode it is a halfmile stroll to the concert hall at Four Hanover Square. From Bury Street, I pass St James’s Church where I am witness at the wedding of one of my piano pupils. Half a mile further is St George’s where Handel was organist. In church one might remove one’s wig – a great relief. Strange that so contrived a look clothes the period known as ‘The Enlightenment’.
3 March 1794
One is never late: clocks are everywhere, thanks to the horologists. There is a prominent one on the Blewcoat School by Frau Schroeter’s in Buckingham Gate. The relationship cools a little on my return. One hears the ticking of the clock more. I give this effect to the bassoon in No. 101’s Andante with a wistful melody above. It is encored and everyone knows it as ‘The Clock’ thereafter. Nicknames are evidence of popularity. My No. 100 is called ‘The Military’ for its ‘Turkish March’ second movement with bells and bugle, and is published in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna and Augsburg. No symphony was ever so widely known. I fed an appetite as there are soldiers everywhere and I like to march in step with the Duke of York’s 10,000 men up and down The Mall. However, it is the melody at the heart of the first movement which people sing in the streets. The Viennese bandleader Johann Strauss will grow up with it – it will become his Radetzky March and will be the hit of the Vienna Congress sorting post-napoleon Europe out when I am gone.
2 March 1795
France has developed a taste for blood with its decapitation machine. A drumroll precedes the guillotine’s chop and I begin No. 103 with such an effect. The sound is in the air and a refugee street musician transfixes a crowd with it. My drumroll proceeds with no triumph, however, but sorrow in a murky bassline melody. It repeats at the end of the movement, haunting the dreams of the squeamish. No. 96 will become called ‘The Miracle’ after a chandelier comes down during the interval and no one is hurt. Except that the historians will have got the wrong symphony. A chandelier does fall down during a performance, but it is in March 1795 and not 1791, the Symphony is No. 102 and not No. 96, and the venue is His Majesty’s. Strangely, though, that theatre will one day have an almost permanent resident in a work called The Phantom of the Opera in which a chandelier nightly plummets to the ground.
4 May 1795
With Napoleon setting fire to Europe, it is tempting to stay in London. Salomon hands me an anonymous poem, The Creation of the
World, which Handel had considered setting as an oratorio and encourages me to do the same. I think I could have fun setting the worm and the music begins to grow in me. In the meantime, I compose my last symphony, No. 104, which has a country dance finale over a hurdy-gurdy drone. To some the tune is a fishmonger’s street cry. The concert is my last in London and brings in 4,000 gulden. I could be rich if I stayed, but Napoleon is knocking at the gates of Vienna and I have yet to compose the national anthem. I bow to responsibility as I take my leave of Salomon. After all, I am a married man. This month’s cover CD features Haydn’s Symphony No. 100, one of the works the composer wrote for his second stay in London