In this sketchy and unpretentious booklet the reader must not expect to
find any thoroughgoing or penetrating discussion of Haydn’s works or,
for that matter, more than a hasty and superficial account of his
career. Haydn wrote an appalling quantity of music, some of which has to
this day not been finally catalogued. In a pamphlet of this brief and
unoriginal sort the reader will look in vain for anything more than the
titles of a handful of compositions. About the vast number of
symphonies, the magnificent string quartets, the clavier works, the
songs there can here be no question. Nor can one do more than allude to
a few of the stage pieces though these operas, composed for the most
part for the festivities arranged by the Eszterházy princes, do not
pretend to fill a role in the history of the lyric drama comparable to
those of Mozart or even to the _intermezzi_ and the _buffas_ of the 18th
Century Italians or the _Singspiele_ of men like Dittorsdorf and Hiller.
Neither is there room to consider the technical advancements achieved by
Haydn in the sonata or symphonic form. Yet, even a rapid glance through
the following pages will, none the less, make it clear that Haydn,
barring a few hardships in his youth, lived an extraordinarily fortunate
life and had abundant reason for the optimism which marked every step of
his progress. Not even Mendelssohn was so unendingly lucky, whether in
his spiritual constitution or in his year by year experiences. That
Haydn was a master by the grace of Heaven and a servant only by the
artificial conventions of a temporary social order must become clear to
anyone who follows his amazing development in the biography of Pohl and
Botstiber, or the briefer but no less deeply perceptive accounts of a
scholar like Dr. Karl Geiringer, on whose writings and analyses the
present little account is chiefly based.