In his charming little cottage near Vienna Haydn was the centre of a
brilliant society. Princes and nobles were proud to do honor to him;
and painters, poets, scholars, and musicians made a delightful coterie,
which was not even disturbed by the political convulsions of the time.
The baleful star of Napoleon shot its disturbing influences throughout
Europe, and the roar of his cannon shook the established order of things
with the echoes of what was to come. Haydn was passionately attached to
his country and his emperor, and regarded anxiously the rumblings and
quakings of the period; but he did not intermit his labor, or allow
his consecration to his divine art to be in the least shaken. Like
Archimedes of old, he toiled serenely at his appointed work, while the
political order of things was crumbling before the genius and energy of
the Corsican adventurer.
In 1798 he completed his great oratorio of "The Creation," on which he
had spent three years of toil, and which embodied his brightest genius.
Haydn was usually a very rapid composer, but he seems to have labored
at the "Creation" with a sort of reverential humility, which never
permitted him to think his work worthy or complete. It soon went the
round of Germany, and passed to England and France, everywhere awakening
enthusiasm by its great symmetry and beauty. Without the sublimity
of Handel's "Messiah," it is marked by a richness of melody, a serene
elevation, a matchless variety in treatment, which make it the most
characteristic of Haydn's works. Napoleon, the first consul, was
hastening to the opera-house to hear this, January 24, 1801, when he was
stopped by an attempt at assassination.
Two years after "The Creation" appeared "The Seasons," founded on
Thomson's poem, also a great work, and one of his last; for the grand
old man was beginning to think of rest, and he only composed two or
three quartets after this. He was now seventy years old, and went but
little from his own home. His chief pleasure was to sit in his shady
garden, and see his friends, who loved to solace the musical patriarch
with cheerful talk and music. Haydn often fell into deep melancholy, and
he tells us that God revived him; for no more sweet, devout nature ever
lived. His art was ever a religion. A touching incident of his old age
occurred at a grand performance of "The Creation" in 1808. Haydn was
present, but he was so old and feeble that he had to be wheeled in a
chair into the theatre, where a princess of the house of Ester-hazy
took her seat by his side. This was the last time that Haydn appeared
in public, and a very impressive sight it must have been to see the aged
father of music listening to "The Creation" of his younger days, but too
old to take any active share in the performance. The presence of the old
man roused intense enthusiasm among the audience, which could no longer
be suppressed as the chorus and orchestra burst in full power upon the
superb passage, "And there was light."
Amid the tumult of the enraptured audience the old composer was seen
striving to raise himself. Once on his feet, he mustered up all his
strength, and, in reply to the applause of the audience, he cried out
as loud as he was able: "No, no! not from me, but," pointing to heaven,
"from thence--from heaven above--comes all!" saying which, he fell back
in his chair, faint and exhausted, and had to be carried out of the
room.
One year after this Vienna was bombarded by the French, and a shot fell
in Haydn's garden. He requested to be led to his piano, and played the
"Hymn to the Emperor" three times over with passionate eloquence and
pathos. This was his last performance. He died five days afterward, aged
seventy-seven, and lies buried in the cemetery of Gumpfenzdorf, in his
own beloved Vienna.