Why Is Haydn Called the Father of the Symphony? The Wheelwright's Son Who Shaped Classical Music

Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) is called the "Father of the Symphony" because he wrote more than a hundred symphonies and, over a long career, did more than anyone to turn the symphony into the central form of Classical orchestral music. He earned two similar nicknames as well, "Father of the String Quartet" and "Father of Sonata Form", and he was a friend of Mozart and a teacher of the young Beethoven. Yet he began life as the son of a village wheelwright whose parents could not read music. How he got from a small Austrian village to the concert halls of London is one of the great success stories of music history.

A village childhood

Haydn was born on 31 March 1732 in Rohrau, a village in Lower Austria near the Hungarian border. His father, Mathias, was a wheelwright and a keen amateur folk musician who had taught himself the harp; his mother, Maria, had worked as a cook in a nobleman's palace. Neither parent could read music, but the house was full of singing.

His parents noticed his talent early. When he was about six, they sent him to live with a relative, Johann Matthias Franck, a schoolmaster and choirmaster in the town of Hainburg, so that he could get a proper musical education. It meant leaving home very young, and Haydn later remembered being frequently hungry and humiliated by his dirty clothes. But he learned to sing, and to play the harpsichord and violin.

Choirboy in Vienna

In 1739 Georg Reutter, the director of music at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, heard the boy sing and recruited him. Haydn moved to Vienna in 1740 and spent the next nine years as a chorister. It was a practical education in music, not a theoretical one: according to Haydn, Reutter gave him only two lessons in composition.

Around 1749 his voice broke and he was dismissed from the choir. One story says a schoolboy prank, cutting off another chorister's pigtail, gave Reutter the excuse he needed. Suddenly Haydn was a teenager in Vienna with no job and no home.

Teaching himself

The next years were hard. Haydn survived as a freelance musician, giving lessons and playing wherever he could. He worked as a valet and accompanist for the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, and he taught himself counterpoint from Johann Joseph Fux's textbook Gradus ad Parnassum. He also studied the keyboard sonatas of C. P. E. Bach, the son of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose expressive style he deeply admired.

His first full-time post came around 1757, as music director for Count Morzin. There he wrote his first symphonies.

Thirty years with the Esterházys

In 1761 Haydn joined the household of the Esterházys, one of the richest noble families of the Habsburg Empire, and in 1766 he became their full Kapellmeister. Under Prince Nikolaus I he worked for nearly three decades, much of the time at Eszterháza, a grand palace in rural Hungary.

The job was demanding. Haydn composed, ran the orchestra, recruited and trained singers and led the court's opera performances, acting as a de facto company director. But it also gave him something rare: a skilled orchestra available every day and a patron who loved music. Haydn later said that, cut off from the world, he could experiment freely and so was "forced to become original". His fame spread anyway, and from 1779 a new contract allowed him to sell his works to publishers.

The Farewell Symphony

One of the best-known Haydn stories comes from these years. In 1772 the prince stayed at Eszterháza longer than expected, and the musicians, most of whom had left their wives at home in Eisenstadt, wanted to go back. Instead of complaining directly, Haydn wrote a symphony in the unusual key of F-sharp minor whose final adagio lets the players stop one by one, snuff out their candles and leave, until only two violins remain.

According to the tale, which Haydn told his biographers in old age, the prince understood the hint and the court returned home soon after. The work became known as the Farewell Symphony, No. 45. It also shows why the musicians called him "Papa Haydn": he looked after them.

Mozart, Beethoven and London

Haydn met Mozart around 1784, and the two became close friends despite their age difference. Mozart returned the esteem with a set of string quartets now known as his "Haydn" quartets. A few years later, in Vienna, Haydn took on a new pupil, the young Ludwig van Beethoven, who arrived in the city in 1792.

When Prince Nikolaus died in 1790, Haydn was finally free to travel. The impresario Johann Peter Salomon brought him to London, where he made two long visits, in 1791–92 and 1794–95. For those concerts he wrote his last twelve symphonies, the "London" symphonies, including the "Surprise" Symphony, whose sudden loud chord in the slow movement is the most famous example of Haydn's musical humour. The man from Rohrau was now a celebrity.

The Creation and the Emperor's Hymn

Back in Vienna, Haydn turned to large choral works. He wrote The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801). A visit in 1792 to the astronomer William Herschel in Slough, near London, is said to have influenced The Creation. In 1797 he composed the "Emperor's Hymn", Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser. Its melody was later used for the Deutschlandlied, whose third verse is today the national anthem of Germany.

Last years and a missing head

From about 1803 Haydn's health declined and he could no longer compose. He died in Vienna on 31 May 1809, aged 77, while the city was occupied by Napoleon's army. Even his burial had a strange sequel: his head was stolen by followers of phrenology shortly after the funeral, and it was only reunited with the rest of his remains in Eisenstadt in 1954.

Why Haydn matters

Haydn did not invent the symphony or the string quartet, but he gave them their classic shape: clear themes, surprising turns, humour and careful development. Mozart and Beethoven built on that foundation. For learners, his life is also a reminder that formal education is not everything. Haydn had two composition lessons, a borrowed textbook and endless practice, and that was enough to change music.

Learn with Haydn: English phrases about work and hints

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to drop a hint	to suggest something indirectly	Haydn dropped a hint with his symphony.
to take the hint	to understand an indirect message	The prince took the hint.
self-taught	having learned without a teacher	He was largely self-taught.
to work your way up	to rise step by step	He worked his way up from choirboy to star.
to break new ground	to do something new	His quartets broke new ground.

Try this: Imagine you want a longer holiday from work or school. Write three English sentences about how you would "drop a hint" without asking directly.