Portraits · Composers · XVI of XVII
Joseph Haydn
1732–1809 · Composer
Read it in the source →As head of an orchestra I could make experiments, observe what creates an impression and what weakens it, and so improve, add, cut away, dare.
Mein Fürst war mit allen meinen Arbeiten zufrieden, ich erhielt Beyfall, ich konnte als Chef eines Orchesters Versuche machen, beobachten, was den Eindruck hervorbringt, und was ihn schwächt, also verbessern, zusetzen, wegschneiden, wagen; ich war von der Welt abgesondert, Niemand in meiner Nähe konnte mich an mir selbst irre machen und quälen, und so mußte ich original werden.
For nearly thirty years Joseph Haydn was music director to the Esterházy princes, away from Vienna. Late in life he told Georg August Griesinger what that had given him: an orchestra to test every idea on, and no one nearby to make him doubt himself.
The sentence ends: "I was cut off from the world … and so I had to become original."
Haydn's own words on his years with Prince Esterházy, as recorded by Georg August Griesinger, Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1810), pp. 24–25.
The originals
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