Franz Joseph Haydn

Haydn was born in Rohrau in 1732 and died in Vienna in 1809. After singing in the choir of St Stephen's Cathedral he worked for Count Morzin from 1757 and then for the Esterházy family from 1761 to 1790. Two visits to London for the impresario Johann Peter Salomon (1791 to 1792 and 1794 to 1795) brought him wide fame. He is called the father of the symphony and of the string quartet, and his music builds large structures from short motifs, with a well-known streak of humour.

The catalog follows him across that career. Symphony No. 1 dates from 1759. Nos. 44 and 45 (1772) are minor-key works from his stormy Sturm und Drang period, and No. 45 ends with the players leaving one by one. Nos. 82 and 87 belong to the Paris set written for the Concert de la Loge Olympique (1785 to 1786), and No. 88 followed in 1787. The London symphonies, Nos. 94 to 104, all open with a slow introduction except No. 95, and several nicknames name a sound: the loud chord of the Surprise, the percussion of the Military, the ticking of the Clock, the drum roll of No. 103.

His chamber writing changes visibly. In the Op. 20 quartets (1772) the cello gets a far larger role and three finales are fugues. He called Op. 33 (1781) a new and entirely special kind, with a scherzo in place of the minuet. Op. 76 (1797 or 1798) uses forms as unusual as a canon and a fantasia. The piano sonatas run from the C minor work of 1771 to the E-flat sonata written in London in 1794. The concertos for cello, horn and trumpet add solo voices, and the overture to The Creation (1798) depicts chaos in a slow C minor that withholds cadences, so its phrases never settle.