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A CROATIAN COMPOSER
NOTES TOWARD THE STUDY
OF
by Sir William H. Hadow
First edition in 1897, London,
reprinted in 1972, New York.
Joseph Haydn (1738-1809).
Pencil sketch by George Dance, 1794.
Source of the photo Classical
Music Pages.
[INTRODUCTION]
EXCERPTS from the book from p. 13 to p. 40.
p. 13 ...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.
p. 15 ...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.
p. 16 ...Haydn's sentiment is of a kind without analogue
among German Composers - mobile, nervous, sensitive, a
little shallow may be, but as pure and transparent as a
mountain stream. His humour is a quality in which he stands
almost alone.
p. 16 ...The shapes of his melodic phrases are not those of
the German folksong; his rythms are far more numerous and
varied; his metres are often strange and unfamiliar.
p. 17 ...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 sustaint the onus
probandi. But in 1878 Dr. Kuhac began to publish his
great collection of South - Slavonic melodies^*
[Juzno-slovjenske Narodne Popieveke: Zagreb
1878-1881.] and
in 1880 he supplemented it by a special pamphlet on Haydn's
relation to them.^* [Josip Haydn in Hrvatske Narodne
Popievke: reprinted from the Vienac, Zagreb, 1880.] 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.
p. 19 ...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.
p. 20 ...To dispel this superstition it is only needful that
we should study the country. Few towns are more charming
than Agram [=Zagreb], few regions more delightful than the long
fertile valley of the Save in which it lies.
...And throughout the country love of music prevails.^*
[Dr.
Kuhac (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."] The men sing at their plough, the
girls sing as they fill 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 an direction.
Certainly the present condition of the race does not
disqualify it to be the parent of a great composer.
p. 25 ...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; later, under stress of Turkish invasion, they
colonized 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
[Bratislava], 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 littel 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.
p. 26 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.
p. 27 ...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 Zeljez
[Zeljezno],
where Schubert taught music to Countess Esterhazy, 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 Zeljez were the same place...
It is something more than a coincidence that among all
district 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... Liszt was born at Rustnik, near Oedenburg...
Ludwig Strauss at Pressburg,... And round this constellation
there gathers a whole nebula of lesser stars, 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.
p. 31 ...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
Hajdenic, Hajdinovic, &tc.) is of common occurence
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,^*
[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.] 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 Hyrn, is
usually Hayden elsewhere, the contemporary monuments at
Rohrau give Mathias Haiden as the name of his father and
Josephus Hayden as his own.
p. 33 ...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. Kuhac
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.
p. 34 On the father's side, then, Haydn would seem to belong
to the Slavonic race among whom he lived and worked.^* [It is
fair to state that some etymologists derive the name Haide
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
occurance in Croatia proper.] Again, his mother was a
native of Rohrau, in her day a distinctively Croatian
village,^* [Its second title, "Trstnik," is
significant enough. And at the present day it contains a
good many Croats, especially among the poorer
inhabitants.] and her maiden name of Koller - a vox
nihili in German - is plausibly regarded by Dr. Kuhac as
a phonetic variant of the Croatian Kolar "wheelwright."
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;*^ [To je lovac i ribar kao Haydn; i.e., as good
a shot and fisherman as Haydn]
p. 36 ...His talk, like his music, was full of that obivious
fun which raises a lough by a sudden touch of the
unexpected; so are hundreds of Croatian ballads and
aphorisms... 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 upont 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.
p. 37 ...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 folksong 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 practise
of the great composers if he wrote, by habitual preference,
in an idiom that was not his own.
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the study of Joseph Haydn
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