Transcriber’s Notes:
Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
in the original text.
Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
Illustrations have been moved so they do not break up paragraphs.
Deprecated spellings have been preserved.
Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.
[Illustration: JOSEPH HAYDN
_From an Engraving by W. Daniell after G. Dance, R.A._]
A CROATIAN COMPOSER
NOTES TOWARD THE STUDY
OF
JOSEPH HAYDN
BY
W. H. HADOW, M.A.
_Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford
Author of “Studies in Modern Music”_
LONDON
SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED
38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET
1897
TO
W. R. MORFILL
_A small return for much assistance
and encouragement_
PREFACE.
The materials for this essay have been almost entirely gathered
from two works by Dr. František Š. Kuhač, the one his collection of
South Slavonic Folksongs, the other a pamphlet upon Joseph Haydn.
Indeed, so greatly am I indebted to them that the essay would not
have been written had it been possible to present them to the reader
more directly. All that has been added is a certain rearrangement of
the data, a certain amount of commentary and exposition, and a few
supplementary facts which happen to have come within my reach. I should
state that during a recent visit to Croatia, I saw Dr. Kuhač, who
most kindly gave me full permission to make use of his results, and
augmented the gift with much valuable information.
It is not for me to determine how far the subject will be of interest
to English readers. We have somewhat forgotten Haydn: we do not always
attach great importance to abstract problems. But I venture to think
that the practical issue is not insignificant, and that in any case the
question of historical truth is one which demands some consideration
and regard. There is little need to say that I am myself convinced of
the point which I have endeavoured to make: if the facts have been
misinterpreted, at least the endeavour may invite discussion.
No doubt it will have to take its chance with those critics who would
censure it at the outset for prying too curiously behind the veil.
From such antagonists I beg, for two reasons, courteously to differ.
In the first place, this is not a question of irrelevant detail, but
an inquiry into the methods of a great artist, and into the character
of his work. Grant that it deals with a single aspect alone, it does
not therefore disregard or undervalue the others. And to suppose that
Haydn is depreciated by the acknowledgment of his debt to his age and
country is, I think, somewhat to misunderstand the conditions under
which all true “creative” art is produced. In the second place, if we
accept the historical statement as true, we do something to rescue
a musical nation from undeserved neglect. The race which has given
to a master not only birth but inspiration may surely claim from us
something better than the oblivion into which we have allowed its name
to fall.
I wish to offer all due acknowledgment to Mr. L. Finkenstein for his
translation of Dr. Kuhač’s pamphlet.
OXFORD, _October 12, 1897_.
A CROATIAN COMPOSER.
The study of Human Nature contains few problems more difficult or
more important than those which deal with distinctions of national
character. In most countries the original race, itself not always pure,
has been affected and modified by a hundred causes; by conquest, by
immigration, by intermarriage with neighbours, by all the circumstances
and conditions of historical development; and the result is commonly
a web of many diverse threads; in which we are fortunate if we can
explain the prevailing colour and the prevailing pattern. Sometimes, as
in our Indian Empire, the threads lie comparatively free, and puzzle us
more by their number and variety than by actual closeness of texture.
Sometimes, as in the Kingdom of Hungary, the interplay is so thorough
and so complex as almost to baffle analysis at the outset. And when to
this is added the influence of climate, of government, of religion, of
all that is implied in past record and traditional usage, it will be
seen that the question of causality is one which may well tax to their
utmost limit the skill and patience of the ethnologist.
But if the reasons are hard to trace, the fact is no longer open to
intelligible doubt. Physiology tells us that it manifests itself at
birth; history, that it has formed a channel for the whole course and
current of events. There is no crisis so great, there is no occurrence
so trivial, as not to exhibit in some degree its presence and efficacy
in the life of man. Nations at peace do not follow the same policy;
nations in conflict do not fight with the same weapons; the contrast
of laws and customs is so vivid that it has led some impatient
philosophers to consider all morality relative. And what is true of
the life as a whole is equally true of its specialisation in art and
literature. For these are pre-eminently the expression of the national
voice, as intimate as its language, as vital as the breath that it
draws, and every artist who has compelled the attention of the world at
large has done so by addressing it as the spokesman of his own people.
No doubt there are other factors in the case, the personal idiosyncrasy
that separates a man from his fellows, and again the general
principles, fewer perhaps than is commonly supposed, that underlie all
sense of rhythm and all appreciation of style. But to say this is only
to say that the artist is himself, and that he belongs to our common
humanity. In everything, from the conception of a poem to the structure
of a sentence, the national element bears its part with the other
two; it colours the personal temperament, it gives a standpoint from
which principles of style are approached, and wherever its influence
is faint or inconsiderable the work of the artist will be found to
suffer in proportion. It is hardly necessary to add that the law holds
equally good whether the race in question be pure or mixed. If the
former, it will move along a single line: if the latter, it will mark
the converging point of many; but in either case its operation is a
sure test of genuineness both in feeling and expression. Occasionally,
it may be, a careless public has been deceived by some trick of
imitation—by the Spanish comedies of Clara Gazul or the Persian Lyrics
of Mirza Schaffy; but such instances of deception no more traverse the
law than the Ireland forgeries or the pictures of Cariani. Some men are
born with a talent of mimicry: none have ever by its means attained to
greatness.
It may at once be admitted that this rule of national influence is at
present less firmly established in music than in poetry or painting.
In the two latter arts we have certain obvious externals to aid
investigation—broad and salient contrasts of language, wide differences
of scene and subject—with which music as such has little or nothing to
do. Her subject is usually vague and indeterminate, her vocabulary is
made up of a few scales, and for the rest we are told that her genius
is limited to the common emotions of mankind and the common inheritance
of pure form. But it is wholly false to infer that music is independent
of nationality. The composer bears the mark of his race not less surely
than the poet or the painter, and there is no music with true blood in
its veins and true passion in its heart that has not drawn inspiration
from the breast of the mother country.
Two main causes have retarded the acceptance of this truth. First,
the belief that national melody is entirely an affair of artifices
and mannerisms, that it is constituted by special turns of phrase and
figure—as though you could make a rose tree by tying roses to a Scotch
fir, or turn “Rule Britannia” into a Hungarian tune by ending it with
a Hungarian cadence. This, it may be said, simply misunderstands the
nature of the law which it criticises. No doubt a certain range of
expression belongs to each type of folksong. No doubt these accidents
of figure and phrase appear upon the surface, and are often useful
as indications, but it makes all the difference whether they grow
naturally in their place or lie there as mere lifeless appendages.
Even the foreign idioms which a great composer may occasionally employ
are only a graft let into the parent stock; the new growth is at
once modified by the influence of the old, and alters its character
to match its change of condition. And apart from these rare grafts
the phrase of a true master will always be found conformable to the
spirit that animates it, not because it constitutes the spirit, but
because it emanates as property from essence. The second error springs
from our loose and inaccurate methods of classification. That Mozart
was an Italian composer seems now to be taken as an accredited jest;
but it is more serious when we show our gratitude for the splendid
work that Germany has done by scoring to her account all that has
been accomplished by her neighbours. Schumann claims Chopin as a
fellow-countryman; we are so far from protesting that we add Liszt, for
whom “the great German master” was long a newspaper synonym, and even
hesitate about Smetana and Dvořák. It is true that classification is
often extremely difficult—records are imperfect, names are misleading,
histories are marred by want of ethnological knowledge; but the
admission of ignorance is not a very strong basis for dogmatic denial.
Critics who traverse a law, because they cannot see its applicability
to the facts, would do well to make sure at the outset that the facts
have been correctly observed.
The subject of the present essay is one of the most remarkable
instances of such misattribution. From the time of Carpani to that
of Dr. Nohl, Haydn’s biographers have been unanimous in describing
him as a German, born, as everybody knows, in Lower Austria, speaking
German as his native language, Teutonic in race, in character, in
surroundings. Yet the more we study him the more impossible it becomes
to regard his music as the work of a Teuton. It is undoubtedly
affected by his education and circumstances, by the early study of
Emanuel Bach, and the subsequent intercourse with Mozart, but when we
penetrate to the essential spirit of the man himself we find that its
inherent characteristics are no more German than they are Italian or
French. Haydn’s sentiment is of a kind without analogue among German
Composers—mobile, nervous, sensitive, a little shallow it may be, but
as pure and transparent as a mountain stream. His humour is a quality
in which he stands almost alone; it differs totally from the wit of
Mozart, or the grim jesting of Beethoven; it is quaint and playful,
rippling over the whole surface of the page, and equally removed from
satire and epigram. Again, he has less breadth and stateliness than
belong to the German temper, but he has far more versatility. He was
the most daring of pioneers, the most hazardous of experimentalists,
and, what is more noticeable, his experiments are rather the natural
outcome of a restless and vivid imagination than the efforts of a
deliberate and conscious reform. From the external side, too, the
same contrast is apparent. The shapes of his melodic phrases are not
those of the German folksong; his rhythms are far more numerous and
varied; his metres are often strange and unfamiliar. Throughout Western
Europe the four-bar line has almost uniformly been taken as the unit
of measurement, carrying with it the corresponding stanza of eight or
sixteen or thirty-two. In a hundred German or English folksongs it will
be strange if a single exception can be found: in a hundred melodies
from Haydn’s quartets it will be strange if the exceptions are not
as frequent as the instances. In a word, his range of stanza is far
wider than that known to the Germany of his day, and many of his most
characteristic tunes belong to another language and another scheme of
versification.
The evidence here briefly epitomised can only point to one of two
conclusions: either that the law of nationality is inapplicable to
Haydn, or that his assignment to the German race is an ethnological
error. The former alternative is unsatisfactory enough; the latter was
for many years put out of court by our inability to sustain the _onus
probandi_. But in 1878 Dr. Kuhač began to publish his great collection
of South Slavonic melodies,[1] and in 1880 he supplemented it by a
special pamphlet on Haydn’s relation to them.[2] The main points of the
thesis are three in number: first, that the Croatian folk-tunes possess
all the characteristics which have been noted as distinctive in the
melodies of Haydn; second, that many of them are actually employed by
him; and third, that the facts of his birth and parentage afford strong
presumptive proof that he was a Croatian by race.[3] If this contention
can be established it strengthens an important law with valuable and
unexpected support, and it remains therefore that we should bring
forward a critical statement of the case, beginning, for clearness’
sake, with the historical and biographical testimony, and so bringing
into prominence the special character of the compositions themselves.
[1] Južno-slovjenske Narodne Popievke: Zagreb, 1878-1881.
[2] Josip Haydn i Hrvatske Narodne Popievke; reprinted from the Vienac,
Zagreb, 1880.
[3] As early as 1862 the Lumír put in a claim for Bohemia. This was a
step in the right direction, since it represented Haydn as a Slav, but
the evidence preponderates in favour of a more Southern origin.
First, then, we must consider whether the character of the Croatian
people is such as to render its claim to Haydn reasonable and
intelligible. It would be poor logic to illustrate our law by deriving
a great artist from an inartistic nation. And the question becomes
more pressing when we remember that Haydn’s whole family was musical,
that he learned his first lessons from his father and mother, that his
brother Michael long enjoyed a repute little inferior to his own. But
to answer it in the affirmative is to run counter to an established
belief. From Mrs. Western in “Tom Jones” to Barto Rizzo in “Vittoria”
everybody has had a fling at the Croats. We have come to regard them at
best as savages, and at worst as mercenary assassins. The associations
that we connect with their name are those of war and pillage, of
fierce onslaught and misused victory, of lives bartered for gain or
spilled in mere wantonness. Their art is a matter into which we have
never dreamed of inquiring, and we should as soon think of learning
their language as of accrediting them with a literature. To dispel
this superstition it is only needful that we should study the country.
Few towns are more charming than Agram, few regions more delightful
than the long fertile valley of the Save in which it lies. In the
remoter districts there is still much ignorance and much poverty, but
civilisation is spreading from the centre, and eliciting, not creating,
the signs of progress. The strongest impulse of the national life is
loyalty to race and Church. Recent events have shown us that outbreaks
may readily be provoked in religious and patriotic causes, but the
temper that will fight for them is not ignoble, and is not infrequently
conjoined with the inspiration that will make songs in their honour.
And throughout the country the love of music prevails.[4] The men sing
at their plough, the girls sing as they fill their water-pots at the
fountain; by every village inn you may hear the jingle of the tambura,
and watch the dancers footing it on the green. Grant that the music is
not always of a high order, that the tunes are often primitive and the
voices rude and uncouth, still the impetus is there, and it only needs
guidance and direction. Certainly the present condition of the race
does not disqualify it to be the parent of a great composer.
[4] Dr. Kuhač (Josip Haydn, p. 5) declares that one in every three
of the population “either sings, plays, or composes.” And there is a
significant Croatian proverb to the effect that “an age is known by its
music.”
It will be objected that this is only a present impression, and that
it tells us nothing of those days when, apparently, the whole _raison
d’être_ of the population was to furnish fighting-men for the army of
Maria Theresa. In answer to this, two points must be made clear: first,
the state of Croatia proper during the past two centuries; second, the
position occupied at the same period by other members of the Croatian
race.[5] The argument “e nihilo nihil” need hardly be stated here,
though it will be seen later that nothing has been added to the Croats
except opportunity.
[5] For the sake of clearness, it may be well to say that Croatia
proper means that district across the Save of which Agram (_i.e._
Zagreb) is the capital; and that the same race occupies the entire
territory from the Drave to the Lake of Scutari; and from the Roumanian
frontier to the Adriatic. There is some Italian population in the
extreme west, _e.g._, at Zara; but most of this region is exclusively
Slavonic, and the Servo-Croatian language prevails with certain
modifications over the whole of it. There is also a considerable Croat
population in Istria, Carniola, Lower Austria, and the adjoining parts
of Hungary.
Throughout the eighteenth century the policy of the Austrian Government
was to repress as far as possible the Slavonic peoples that lay under
its rule. Bohemia, which had lost its independence at the Thirty Years’
War, was intellectually the “desert” which the Emperor Ferdinand had
wished to make it; and the same drastic measures, though for somewhat
different reasons, were applied to the subject races that fringed the
southern border. Croatia in particular was used merely as an outpost
against Turkish invasion: “purchased,” as Dr. Kuhač says, “with a few
empty political concessions,” but kept in reality under the close
discipline of a barrack-state. “We were not allowed,” he continues, “to
provide for our people the advantages of a real city, we had no centre
of intellectual life and progress, and it was considered a sufficient
privilege if the name of capital was bestowed upon one or other of our
towns.”[6]
[6] Josip Haydn, p. 3.
Naturally, the Croatian nobles spent as little time as possible in
their own country. It was much more amusing to stay at Pressburg or
Vienna, where there were balls and theatres and pageants, and a man
could see life. And so it happened that even the chance of patronage
was denied, and the people sank to a state of apathy, their gifts
forgotten, their voice starved into silence. But about 1835, the poet
Ljudevit Gaj began, as Tyl was doing in Bohemia, to restore from its
suspended animation the intellectual life of his countrymen. He settled
their alphabet. He made their grammar. He collected the folksongs from
every village and hamlet, and enriched them with lyrics of his own.
He sowed dragon’s teeth over the length and breadth of the country,
and there sprang up as if by magic a crop of artists. Of course they
were not of any great European importance. Lisinski and Franz von Suppé
are the most famous among their musicians—but the whole lesson had
to be learned anew, and these men were the first pupils.[7] And when
the revolutions of 1848 gave fresh impulse to national life, a second
chapter opened in the Croatian renascence, and, under the patronage of
Bishop Strossmayer, there rose into being a new artistic generation.[8]
Here, again, the musicians rather lag behind the poets and the men of
letters; there was no conservatorium, there was no satisfactory method
of training, and the young talent was generally too poor to embrace
the opportunities which foreign lands afforded. But, if as yet the
quality of the work is slight and trivial, something at least should
be said about its extraordinary volume and facility. And it should be
added that the leaders of the present generation—Zajc, Vilhar, Faller,
Dr. Kuhač himself—are all making large use of the national melodies as
material.
[7] See Appendix A.
[8] See Appendix B.
Meantime, while the fortunes of Croatia were at their lowest, an
event of earlier occurrence was producing important consequences. The
Southern Slavs had always been a migratory people. As early as 595 they
occupied the Tyrolean Pusterthal, where they have left their mark,
not only in the character of the inhabitants but in a large number of
local names[9]; later, under stress of Turkish invasion, they colonised
Montenegro; and in the fifteenth or sixteenth century a body of Eastern
Croats—Bosnen or Wasser-Kroaten, as the Germans called them—settled
in the district of Central Austria which extends from Lake Balaton
north-west to the Danube. The new home was eminently suited to the
development of the race. It was rich and fertile, with vine-clad hills
and broad stretches of alluvial plain, it was well wooded and well
watered, it extended to Pressburg, the second city in the empire, and
contained at least one other town of considerable note; it was within
easy reach of the great intellectual and artistic movements. There is
little wonder that this region soon came to be regarded as the focus of
Croatian life, and that the wealth which sought it for entertainment
attracted in due course the talent which sought it for livelihood.
[9] See Appendix C and compare Dr. Mitterrutzer’s “Slavisches aus dem
Oestlichen Pusterthal in Tirol,” quoted by Dr. Kuhač, Josip Haydn, p.
12.
[Illustration]
The number of the original immigrants is unknown, but by the eighteenth
century they unquestionably formed the larger part of the population.
In 1780 Pressburg contained rather less than 28,000 inhabitants,
of whom about half are noted in the official census as Croats or
Slavonians; while the smaller towns and villages in the neighbourhood
were mainly occupied by the newcomers, and are still, despite German
and Magyar influence, largely affected by Slavonic traditions. One
curious and rather bewildering consequence is that almost every
place in the region has possessed two names, one the German, used
for official purposes; the other, Slavonic, for the benefit of the
population. And when we add that east of the Leitha the Slavonic
name is being ousted by the Hungarian, it will be seen that the
unsophisticated traveller may now and again be at some difficulty to
ascertain his route. An amusing instance fell under my own experience
during the summer of 1897. Wishing to make pilgrimages to Eisenstadt,
where Haydn was Kapellmeister, and to Željez, where Schubert taught
music to Countess Esterházy, I took a ticket at Vienna for the first
of these places, only to find, when my watch informed me of my
destination, that Eisenstadt and Željez were the same place, and that
the name upon the railway-station was Kis Martom.[10]
[10] For other instances of Slavonic occupation and nomenclature see
Appendix D.
It is something more than a coincidence that among all districts of
Austria this area of Croatian settlement has been the most fruitful
in great musicians. Veit Bach, the grandfather of John Sebastian,
was born at Pressburg; so was Chopin’s great hero, Johann Nepomuk
Hummel. The Haydns came from a neighbouring village, the proper name
of which—Trstnik—was despairingly translated by the Germans into
Rohrau. Joseph Weigl was a native of Eisenstadt, so was Ivan Fuchs,
who succeeded Hummel as Prince Esterházy’s Kapellmeister. Liszt was
born at Rustnik, near Oedenburg, Joachim at Kitsee, Ludwig Strauss at
Pressburg, Carl Goldmark at Keszthely. And round this constellation
there gathers a whole nebula of lesser stars[11] names unfamiliar,
it may be, to English readers, but in their own country accepted and
recognised. Of course it is not claimed that all these artists are of
Croatian blood. Some unquestionably are not; but there is at least an
_a priori_ likelihood that some of them belonged to the race which
was numerically dominant, especially as that race was Slavonic and
therefore musical, and on this general point a word may perhaps be said
before we proceed to particularise in the case of Haydn.
[11] See Appendix E.
Now, apart from his, it should be noted that none of the names given
above are distinctively Slavonic in character. For this fact a simple
reason suffices. There had long been spreading through the world of
music a practice, originated in Europe by scholars and divines, of
taking a _nom de guerre_ which should either represent the sound
or translate the meaning of the family name. Erasmus, Melanchthon,
Stephanus are familiar instances in the world of letters, and
following these august models Grobstimm became Baryphonus; Schneider,
Sartorius; Glareau, Loritius; and the like. Musicians for the most
part seem to have avoided Latin and taken in its place whatever
language lay ready to hand for display or convenience. Thus two famous
Bohemians called themselves Dussek and Gyrowetz; Beethoven’s father
occasionally appeared as Bethoff; and the list may be extended even to
such grotesques as Gionesi and Coperario. This device was specially
necessary to the Croatian who was aiming at a career. We know with what
diligence poor Abel, fresh from the German vowel sounds, endeavoured to
adapt his name to the requirements of a British public.[12] The need
of adaptation is still greater when the language is one which hardly
any foreigner can hope to pronounce. Thus it was that the Croatian
words tended to drop out altogether, and to be replaced by some rough
German or Italian equivalent; and so complete was the transformation
that we have to look twice before recognising Beethoven’s first violin
in Župančić, or finding in Trtić the composer of the “Trillo del
diavolo.”[13] In like manner the words “Bach” and “Hummel” may very
possibly have been translations of Croatian names, names which are
known to have existed in Pressburg and which bear the same meaning;
while the family of Liszt, also claimed by Dr. Kuhač,[14] may have been
Slavonic in origin, though by the time of the great pianist the Magyar
element had predominated for about a century. At any rate there can be
no reasonable doubt as to the Slavonic origin of Tartini, Dragonetti,
Giornovichi, Zingarelli, and many other of Haydn’s contemporaries.
There may have been in them some intermixture of race, but the parent
stock was Croatian.
[12] He called himself successively Abel, Ebel, Ibel, and Eibel. But
his patrons always moved a stage in advance, even completing the circle
by pronouncing the diphthong as it is pronounced in the word “eight.”
[13] For a list of such adaptations see Appendix F.
[14] Josip Haydn, p. 16. See note to Appendix E.
We cannot, then, assert that there is any antecedent improbability in
assigning Haydn to the Croats. They are a musical people, they formed
the chief population of the district where he was born, they have a
fair claim to other great musicians of his time. It follows that we
should discuss the biographical evidence, and see what is to be made
out of the record of Haydn’s family.
And here attention should be called to three points. First, that the
name Hajden or Hajdin (with its derivative Hajdenić, Hajdinović, &c.)
is of common occurrence throughout Croatia, and, in days when spelling
was roughly phonetic, may easily have appeared in Austrian official
documents as Haiden or Hayden, forms by which its pronunciation is
exactly represented. Now among all the variants assumed by the name
of the composer’s family,[15] these two are the most frequent and the
most authoritative. His great-grandfather—the first member of the house
who can be traced—appears in the Hainburg register as Caspar Haiden;
his grandfather, once by obvious error called Thomas Hayrn, is usually
Hayden elsewhere, the contemporary monuments at Rohrau give Mathias
Haiden as the name of his father and Josephus Hayden as his own. He
himself seems to have used the dissyllabic form up to January, 1762,
when he signs for salary at Eisenstadt “Giuseppe Hayden”; in the
February of the same year he changes to the signature “Joseph Haydn”
which he afterwards habitually adopted. Even then the majority of
documents relating to him are conservative enough to retain the earlier
orthography, and the monument in Count Harrach’s park, which bears the
name Josephus Hayden, was erected as late as 1794. Indeed, there can
be little doubt that Haiden or Hayden was the family name, shortened
to suit the Viennese convention, as for the same reason Händel used to
be shortened to Händl.[16] Secondly, the name, in one or other of its
variants, is widely spread over the whole district from Wiener-Neustadt
to Oedenburg. Dr. Pohl found it in some ten or a dozen villages, many
of which are claimed by Dr. Kuhač as Croatian, and in the country
towns like Hainburg or Eisenstadt it is of course more frequent
still. There is no need to remind the reader that this is precisely
the region occupied, since the sixteenth century, by the Slavonic
immigrants. Thirdly, the home of the entire Haydn family is situated at
the centre of the district in question. Caspar was born within sight
of the Hainburg walls, Thomas lived and died as a burgher of that
town, Mathias, after a brief period of travel, settled at Rohrau some
ten miles away, and the most adventurous of his brothers wandered no
further afield than Frankenmarkt or Ungarisch-Altenburg. It fits well
enough with this home-keeping temper that Joseph Haydn should have
spent more than threescore and ten years of his life inside a thirty
mile radius from his native place.
[15] Dr. Pohl gives fourteen variants, and even his list is not
exhaustive. There are at least six in documents relating to the
composer himself. See Appendix G.
[16] See the announcement of “Alexander’s Feast” (Vienna, 1812)
preserved in the Gesellschaft library. Carpani spells the name Hendl.
On the father’s side, then, Haydn would seem to belong to the Slavonic
race among whom he lived and worked.[17] Again, his mother was a
native of Rohrau, in her day a distinctively Croatian village,[18]
and her maiden name of Koller—a _vox nihili_ in German—is plausibly
regarded by Dr. Kuhač as a phonetic variant of the Croatian Kolar
“wheelwright.”[19] Everything that we know about his look and character
favour the supposition of Slavonic descent. The lean ugly kindly face
with high cheek-bones, long nose, and broad prominent under lip, the
keen grey eyes softened by a twinkle of humour, the thin wiry figure,
the strong nervous hands; all these and their analogues may be seen
to-day in any village where Slavonic blood is still pure; and though
of course they afford no argument in themselves, they add a touch of
corroborative evidence which is worth noting. To the same cause may
be traced that intense love of sport which has left his name as a
proverb at Eisenstadt[20]; and something, too, of the conviviality
which made him say that his best evenings were those spent with his
comrades at the “Engel.” His talk, like his music, was full of that
obvious fun which raises a laugh by a sudden touch of the unexpected;
so are hundreds of Croatian ballads and aphorisms.[21] The humour is
sometimes primitive, as when a Croat will tell you, “It is as true as
that two and two make seven”; sometimes it reaches a more respectable
level, as the gibe at the Bosnian Brethren, “who were ordered to
abstain from something in Lent, and therefore took no water in their
wine.” But good, bad, or indifferent, it marks a distinctive type of
peasant character; and in remembering that Haydn was a genius we need
not forget that he was a peasant. The same holds good, too, of his
religious feeling. It is not without significance that we may turn
from one of his scores, with its “In Nomine Domini” at the beginning,
and its “Laus Deo” at the end, to read in our newspaper that another
Croatian village has risen in revolt upon the bare report of an
ecclesiastical change. His temper, it may be, had grown more equable
than that of his uneducated countrymen; it had not lost anything of
their loyalty.
[17] It is fair to state that some etymologists derive the name Haiden
from the district “Auf der Haid” near Hainburg. But this is very
unlikely. The district is a narrow stretch of moorland, and could not
account for the prevalence of the name through the whole country-side,
to say nothing of the frequent occurrence in Croatia proper.
[18] Its second title, “Trstnik,” is significant enough. And at the
present day it contain a good many Croats, especially among the poorer
inhabitants.
[19] In like manner Pìlar has been Germanised into Piller, Solar into
Soller, Kresar into Kresser, and so on. See a list of such changes in
Kuhač’s Josip Haydn, pp. 17, 18.
[20] To je lovac i ribar kao Haydn; _i.e._, as good a shot and
fisherman as Haydn.
[21] See instances quoted by Dr. Kuhač, Josip Haydn, pp. 27-29.
The reasons which have led to this indication of detail may easily be
misunderstood. It is not, of course, contended that any race has the
monopoly of these characteristics, or that it differs ethically from
its neighbours except by the very important fact of the proportion in
which they are blended. But when it appears that the more we study
Haydn, and the more we study the Slavonic character, the closer becomes
the accord between them, when every feature of the one finds its
parallel in the prevailing qualities of the other, then we may surely
infer that to the antecedent probability some weight is added by this
estimate of internal evidence. And probability will strengthen to
certitude if we realise that Haydn’s music is saturated with Croatian
melody, that the resemblances are beyond question, beyond attribution
of coincidence, beyond any explanation but that of natural growth. Some
of his tunes are folksongs in their simplest form, some are folksongs
altered and improved, the vast majority are original, but display
the same general characteristics. He would stand wholly outside the
practice of the great composers if he wrote, by habitual preference, in
an idiom that was not his own.
His acquaintance with these folk-tunes must have begun from his
earliest years. His father, we know, was a good musician who used,
of an evening, to sit by the cottage door at Rohrau, singing to the
children until they plucked up their courage and joined in. And when
Frankh carried off the boy for his first experience of schooling, it
was only to Hainburg, the earlier home of the family, where he may well
have heard the same ballads breaking the quiet of the market-place,
or echoing under the great arch of the Wiener Thor. Then, no doubt,
came a change; the splendid apparition of George Reutter, the halo of
Imperial patronage, the ten years in the choir at St. Stephen’s, the
sharp struggle for existence when the boy’s voice broke, and he was
turned into the streets of Vienna to shift for himself. It is in every
way natural that his first composition should show little direct trace
of national influence. He was in his student period; like all students
he was dominated by the authority of his models, and for a time his
chief ambition was to master the form of Emanuel Bach, and emulate the
counterpoint of the Gradus ad Parnassum. But from the days when he
began to speak in his own voice the Slavonic qualities unmistakably
appear. There is the same general shape of melody, the same repetition
of phrases, the same oddity of rhythm and metre, the same fineness and
sensitiveness of feeling; and that not once or twice in a composition,
but throughout its entire length. The common employment of folksongs
dates from the Symphony in D major (1762) to the Salomon Symphonies
of 1795; they find their way into everything—hymns, quartets,
divertimenti; not, of course, because Haydn had any need to take
them, but because he loved them too well to leave them out. It will
be remembered that for thirty years, from 1761 to 1790, he worked as
Prince Esterházy’s Kapellmeister in the very centre of the Croatian
colony. He must have heard these songs every day, he must have set
his life to their lilt and cadence; they were the melodies of his own
people, the echoes of his own thought. No one is surprised that Burns
should have gathered the Ayrshire peasant songs and transmuted them
into gold by the fire of his genius; it is not more wonderful that
Haydn should have enriched the treasures of Eisenstadt with metal from
his native mines, and as Heine pertinently puts it, the Temple is built
by the Architect, not by the stone-cutters who supply him with his
materials.
Among the numerous illustrations collected by Dr. Kuhač, the following
deserve special attention.
(1) The Cassation in G major (1765)[22] begins as follows:—
[Music]
[22] Dr. Kuhač gives 1754 as the date of this work. If so, it is
the earliest known instance. The above date, which is more probably
correct, is that given by Dr. Pohl.
a melody noticeable for the breaking of the four-quaver rhythm by
alternate bars of six. It can hardly be doubted that when Haydn wrote
this he had in his mind the old Slavonic drinking song, “Nikaj na
svetu”—
[Music]
variants of which may still be heard in Croatia, and in the Carinthian
Zillerthal. Similar instances of slight adaptation may be traced from
the spring song, “Proljeće”—
[Music]
which appears at the beginning of the D major Quartet (Op. 17, No. 6)
as—
[Music]
and from the dance-song “Hajde malo dere”—
[Music]
which is thus altered by Haydn—
[Music]
(2) The curious and characteristic finale of the D major Symphony
(Salomon, No. 7) is founded on the following theme:—
[Music]
This is simply an amended version of the popular ballad, “Oj Jelena,”
which belongs to the district of Kolnov, near Oedenburg, and is
specially noted by Dr. Kuhač as being commonly sung in Eisenstadt. Its
tune, essentially Slavonic in rhythm and cadence, runs thus:—
[Music]
Variants of this melody are found in Croatia proper, Servia, and
Carniola.[23]
[23] See Kuhač, “South Slavonic Popular Songs,” vol. iii. pp. 98-100.
It is probable that the other movements of this symphony are equally
influenced by folksongs; in any case, no doubt can exist as to the
Symphony in E♭, “Mit dem Paukenwirbel.” The opening theme of the
Allegro—
[Music]
is noted by Dr. Kuhač as Croatian.[24] The Andante is founded on two
themes, the first minor—
[Music]
[24] See Kuhač, “South Slavonic Popular Songs,” vol. iii. p. 92.
the second major—
[Music]
both of which are taken, and considerably improved, from two folksongs
of the Oedenburg district, (_a_) “Na Travniku”—
[Music]
and (_b_) “Jur Postaje”—
[Music]
while the principal tune of the Finale—
[Music]
is that of the song “Divojčica potok gazi”—
[Music]
which is common among the Croats, especially those of Haydn’s
district.[25] Again, the Trio of the A major Symphony (No. 11 in
Haydn’s Catalogue) contains a Slavonic melody—
[Music]
[25] See Kuhač, “South Slavonic Popular Songs,” vol. iii. p. 82.
and the first movement of its successor (D major, No. 12) suggests
another—
[Music]
(3) There are several cases in which, without direct adaptation, Haydn
has shown the same tendency of thought or phrase as the Slavonic
folksongs. A favourite “curve” of his may be illustrated by the opening
of the B♭ Symphony (Salomon, No. 9)—
[Music]
as well as by the Dalmatian Overture of Franz von Suppé and the tunes
(from Zara and Borištov) on which it was founded—_e.g._, the ballad “Na
placi sem stal”—
[Music]
Another, even more beautiful, ends the opening strain in the Adagio of
the G major Quartet (Op. 77, No. 1)—
[Music]
and appears also in the Croatian “Čuješ doro dobro moje”—
[Music]
while the use of the unprepared dominant ninth, constructed out of a
dominant seventh by shifting the melody a third higher, was not so
common in Haydn’s day that we can afford to neglect the resemblance of—
[Music]
quoted by Dr. Kuhač from a Quartet in B♭,[26] to—
[Music]
from a popular folksong of Carniola.
[26] Dr. Kuhač calls it the Sixth Quartet (“u Allegru šestoga
četverogudja”), but it is not the sixth in the Paris and London
edition, or in the Dresden, or in that of Peters.
(4) These latter examples do not imply reminiscences, but at most a
general sympathy of temper. A good deal more, however, is involved in
the treatment of Slavonic dance tunes. It is hardly too much to say
that what the Csardas was to Liszt the Kolo was to Haydn; with this
difference—that the earlier and greater musician has throughout made
a finer use of his materials. The Kolo is a Slavonic measure, which I
have seen the children dance at Agram and the men at Sarajevo, bright
and cheery of movement, its tune in two-four time ingeniously varied by
patterns of quaver and semiquaver figures. Here, for instance, is an
example well known in Bosnia and Dalmatia:—
[Music]
and used with an amended cadence in the Finale of the C major Quartet
(Op. 33, No. 3):—
[Music]
Here, again, is a similar dance-tune from Servia, which opens the
Symphony in D major (Haydn’s Catalogue, No. 4):—
[Music]
and here another in the Finale of the G major Quartet (Op. 77, No. 1):—
[Music]
in which so wonderful an effect is produced by the alternation of cold
unison and glowing harmonies.
Many of Haydn’s characteristic melodies follow one or other of these
types: _e.g._, this from the Finale of the F major Quartet (Op. 74, No.
2)—
[Music]
or this from the “Bear” Symphony:—
[Music]
or this from the Finale of the Quartet in D (Op. 76, No. 5):—
[Music]
while the metrical peculiarities of the Eastern or Servian Slav may be
illustrated by the following, from the Symphony in F major (No. 1 in
the Viennese edition):—
[Music]
as they may, apart from the Kolo measure, in a hundred of his minuets
and finales. Again, the early Pianoforte Concerto in D major ends with
an oddly named “Rondo à l’Hongrie”, the principal subject of which is
as follows:—
[Music]
This melody, which contains no Magyar characteristics, either of
figure, scale, or stanza, is compressed from that of the Siri Kolo, as
commonly danced in Bosnia and Dalmatia. The complete tune runs:—
[Music]
[Music]
a typical rustic dance, which in Haydn’s hands has gained not only by
compression, but by a more artistic accompaniment.
(5) In addition to the dance measure, Haydn has adopted other
instrumental forms, _e.g._, marches, bag-pipe melodies, and the like.
Here is one, with a strange rhythm, from the Pianoforte Scherzando in F
major:—
[Music]
and here, from the Finale of the B♭ Symphony (Salomon, No. 9), is the
march which is commonly played in Turopol at rustic weddings:—
[Music]
Another Croatian march beginning—
[Music]
has been identified by Dr. Kuhač from an unpublished Symphony in A
major, and there is a further example from the Allegro of the B♭
Quartet (Op. 71, No. 1)—
[Music]
(6) The two most remarkable instances are yet to come. According
to a well-known story, Prince Esterházy once discussed with his
Kapellmeister the question whether Church music could not be made
“at the same time religious and popular.” It is hard to realise
that Haydn’s Masses were ever regarded as too severe; in any case,
the Prince felt dissatisfied, and wanted a change. He had recently
returned from his annual pilgrimage to Maria Zell. He had heard there
music which pleased him, and he seems to have suggested that in the
Eisenstadt chapel there was too much counterpoint and too little
melody. Haydn listened, sent to Maria Zell for information, bided his
time, and, when next year the day of the pilgrimage was approaching,
wrote a “Mass” or Service to German words,[27] despatched it to the
famous church, had it secretly practised, and finally found an excuse
for slipping off on a holiday. The Prince came back more dissatisfied
than ever. “I have heard,” he said, “a service of Church music composed
and played in a style which you will never equal.” “Your Highness,”
answered Haydn, “the composition was mine, and I was the organist.”
[27] This story is sometimes told of the Mariazeller Mass in C major
(Novello, No. 15). But first, the Mariazeller Mass was written by
commission for Anton Liebe von Kreutzner; second, it is set to the
usual Latin text; and third, it does not contain any of the popular
melodies in question.
From this “Mass,” of which at present no other trace seems to be
discoverable, Dr. Kuhač quotes seven melodies on the authority of the
Dominican Alois Russwurm, who was a personal friend of Haydn, and by
whom the story was originally recorded.
The first, “Hier liegt vor Deiner Majestät,” is the opening theme of
the first number—
[Music]
and comes from the Croatian tune—
[Music]
The second, “Gott soll gepriesen werden”—
[Music]
is the song “Ti jabuka,” as sung in Velik-Borištov—
[Music]
The third, “Allmächtiger, vor Dir im Staube,”—
[Music]
begins remarkably like the Slavonian drinking song, “Draga moja
gospodo.”[28]
[Music]
[28] The three-bar phrase is a common feature of early Slavonic
melodies, especially when conjoined with a second phrase of four bars
in irregular balance.
The fourth, “O Vater, sieh vor Deinem Throne”—
[Music]
may fairly be regarded as a variant of the Dalmatian song, “Jedna
Ciganka”—
[Music]
The fifth, “Betrachtet ihn in Schmerzen”—
[Music]
is almost identical in both parts with the following Croatian melody:—
[Music]
The sixth—“Nun ist das Lamm geschlachtet”—
[Music]
is derived partly from two separate strains in the Croatian and
Slavonian versions of a convivial chorus—“Vivla compagnija”—
[Music]
[Music]
partly from a Croatian sacred song—“Stani gori gospodar.”
[Music]
The seventh—“Dich wahres Oesterlamm”—which is the concluding phrase of
the canticle for the Celebration,—
[Music]
borrows its exact sequence and its curious halting rhythm from the
Croatian “Miši prave svatove”—
[Music]
Clearly, in Haydn’s vocabulary “popular” meant Slavonic.
It may be objected that this example proves nothing. Grant that Haydn
was living in a certain district, and that he was asked for once to
write in a popular style; what more natural than that he should adapt
himself to his surroundings, and use the idioms that he found in common
currency? A man readily drops into dialect when he is addressing a
rural audience, and does not become a countryman by seasoning his
discourse with a few country proverbs and metaphors. This rejoinder
would be of more effect if the “Mass” were an isolated phenomenon: it
somewhat loses weight when we remember that the music only turns to
Church use the tendencies that have already been noted in symphony and
quartet. Still, our case would undoubtedly be stronger if we could find
Haydn appealing, in the same tongue, to the Austrian Empire at large,
and using the native Slavonic for some great political or ceremonial
occasion. Here, at any rate, is a test which we may reasonably regard
as crucial, and which, if successfully applied, should go some way
towards settling the question.
Unfortunately, the Croatian melodies are not, as a rule, well suited
for such a purpose. They are bright, sensitive, piquant, but they
seldom rise to any high level of dignity or earnestness. They belong
to a temper which is marked rather by feeling and imagination than by
any sustained breadth of thought, and hence, while they enrich their
own field of art with great beauty, there are certain frontiers which
they rarely cross, and from which, if once crossed, they soon return.
One limitation in particular will have been observed by every student.
It frequently happens that a Croatian or Servian tune will begin with
a fine phrase, and then fall to an anti-climax—either losing sight
of its tonality, or wavering in its rhythm, or ending with a weak or
commonplace cadence. In almost all the examples quoted above, it is
the opening of the tune which Haydn has borrowed; its conclusion he
has nearly always improved or re-written.[29] And the reasons that
impelled him to this practice may be illustrated by the following
variants, in all of which are apparent the same touch of inspiration,
and the same weakness of development.
(_a_) The song “Stal se jesem,” as sung in Marija Bistric[30]—
[Music]