The tales associated with the subjects’ final years are among the most detailed in musical biography and often also the best supported by contemporary documentation, for this period was coincident, generally speaking, with that of their greatest
appreciation and distinction. Hence this chapter crystallizes around a smaller cluster of stories (just seven in total) than previously, and it is surely no accident that those that recommend themselves for analysis are drawn predominantly from the biographies of composers whose lives were either uncharacteristically long or tragically short, and with a certain leaning towards eighteenth-century canonical figures. (In this respect, the absence of Handel is slightly curious; perhaps Mainwaring’s biography – which set the agenda for subsequent life-writing on the composer – appeared slightly too early to have exhibited such tendencies towards hagiography and myth-making.) In the three sections that follow, the first continues the previously-encountered theme of recognition, here examining illustrative stories of the acknowledgement that composers latterly received from members of the nobility as a result of the esteem they had attained in the course of their careers, where earlier discussions concerned stories of recognition from fellow composers that (with one exception consciously included by way of counterexample) concerned subjects in early adulthood prior to achieving fame and success. I then proceed to an analysis of other famous tales told of composers late in their lives and at their death, to investigate the ways in which their biographers sought to illustrate the grand reputation they had latterly acquired as well as to bring the life story to as satisfying a close as possible and to prepare the reader for the subject’s passing.
Recognition II: Aristocrats
Amid patronage and court entertainment there was much opportunity for Great Composers to receive recognition of their abilities from aristocrats throughout their lives. One example pertaining to childhood has already been encountered in the story of Handel’s time at the court of Saxe-Weissenfels (myth 4-B), to which I might add the tales of the young Mozart’s delighting members of the nobility with his prowess in performance. There is, however, an important difference to be made between
aristocrats’ innocent encouragement of a child who shows promising ability, and acts that demonstrate their identification of a musician’s mature artistry in relation to contemporaries – which could only come at a much later point in the biography. The episodes under discussion in this section – Bach’s invitation to the court of King Frederick the Great at Potsdam (myth 1-E) and Haydn’s visit to the monument erected in his honour by Count Karl Leonhard Harrach at Rohrau (myth 5-C) – are distinctive in that they are associated with acts of recognition that took place independently of any prompting on the part of the subject, such as the extravagant dedication of a
newly-written musical work. (Indeed, the apocryphal story of the unfortunate fate that befell Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos alone suggests that when composers endeavoured to bring themselves to the attention of the nobility in such manner, due recognition was not necessarily forthcoming; it had to be earned by other means.) Neither benefited the aristocrats concerned, except for satisfying their own pleasure, and each took place towards the end of the relatively long lives of their respective subjects, thus paving the way for the next section of this study on myths told of the composers’ final years.
Several authors observed that Bach’s visit to Potsdam was his last significant journey, and the story is typically followed in biographies only by that of his demise three years later. It thus assumes something of the nature of a final act prior to death; Terry
(1-E-12) even wrote that ‘[Bach] regarded it as the culminating pinnacle of his career’.
In contrast, several famous episodes are told of Haydn’s later years, of which the first is to be discussed here. Since news of the monument reached Haydn on returning from the second of his journeys to England, the story has functioned in biography as an
illustration of the role of that country in bringing him to public attention closer to home.
This trope, though it originated with the composer as recorded in Griesinger’s
reminiscences (5-C-1), therefore became important to later English musical biography, being well-developed in accounts such as the one found in Rosemary Hughes’s volume for the Master Musicians series (5-C-9, 1950). Yet the evidence suggests that Harrach had not acted in response to the reception accorded to the composer in England: the monument was erected in 1793, during the period of Haydn’s interim return to Austria, although he was informed of its existence only two years later. Harrach later wrote to Dies – who would have been particularly interested in this episode, not just as Haydn’s early biographer but as a student of the fine arts who described himself as
‘Landschaftmahler’ (landscape painter) on the frontispiece of his volume – as follows:
The reason for my placing a monument to Haydn in my garden was simply that, having come of age, I wished to transform the formal and kitchen gardens, the orchards and the pheasant preserve around my castle… into an orderly promenade… I considered it fitting and proper, as well as an honor for my park, to erect in the castle precincts surrounding his birthplace a stone monument to the laudably celebrated J. Haydn.
Haydn himself was then in England, was only slightly known to me, and knew nothing of my undertaking… (Gotwals 1963: 161-2)
Thus Harrach conceived the monument to Haydn during the composer’s first visit to England in 1791-2; and his mention of the composer’s being ‘slightly known’ to him suggests that Haydn had come to his attention through his musical activities in Austria, and partly through personal acquaintance, rather than through his subsequent success in England. Moreover, as Harrach indicated, the monument to Haydn was merely built as one aspect of the plans he then had for developing his garden, rather than specifically to honour the composer’s new-found fame; the timing would seem to be nothing more than felicitous biographical coincidence.
The earlier sources merely described the monument; both Griesinger (Gotwals 1963:
36-7) and Dies (: 161-4) wrote at some length, noting Haydn’s awareness of its appearance.1 However, with Pohl’s article on Haydn for Grove’s Dictionary (5-C-5, 1878) came a new story: that Haydn was taken by a company of aristocrats to his birthplace near Rohrau, where he visited both his monument and the house in which he grew up. Its origin is unclear; presumably, Pohl had uncovered it in the course of researching for his ‘definitive’ biography, though he died prior to writing the volume that would have incorporated this period of Haydn’s life. The episode functioned to illustrate two important tropes of musical biography. The first is Haydn’s pride in his humble origins: Pohl wrote that he was ‘Overcome by his feelings’ and ‘kissed the threshold’, even remarking that his musical career had started in that very house. As Part II will demonstrate, musical biography has traditionally placed much emphasis (and not always justifiably) on composers’ modest living standards, serving to indicate that greatness can flourish even within an underprivileged environment, as well as facilitating the lay reader’s identification with the subject. In confirmation of its cultural value, the notion received more extensive voice in retellings of Pohl’s story: just six years later, for instance, Pauline Townsend (5-C-6) elaborated it to emphasize Haydn’s indebtedness to his upbringing, writing that the composer ‘audibly expressed the
gratitude due to [his parents] for those lessons of industry and rectitude which had never faded from his mind’.
The second, related trope arises in respect of the constituency of the group who
accompanied Haydn on his visit. In Grove’s Dictionary, Pohl described ‘a genial party of noblemen and gentlem[e]n’ led by Count Harrach, suggesting a predominantly
1 The monument had also been discussed some years earlier in an article in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (‘Nachricht: Monumente deutscher Tonkünstler’, 12 March 1800, 417-23, at 419-20). For a modern description, see Head 2000: 191-3.
upper-class contingency. Taking this episode at face value, then, it would appear that an aristocratic company was obliged on this occasion to Haydn – in taking him to Rohrau, and (according to Townsend’s slightly later account) in waiting upon his presence in order to inaugurate the monument – rather than the other way around. In the volume later added to complete Pohl’s biography, Botstiber (5-C-8, 1927) identified the party as having included Harrach’s two brothers, Franz and Ludwig (i.e. Counts Franz Anton Harrach and Alois Leonhard Harrach), in addition to the head of the family himself.
Moreover, Botstiber suggested that the impetus for visiting Haydn’s birthplace may have actually come from the composer, which similarly implies a reversal of the
normative social hierarchy in that it was the nobility who accorded with Haydn’s wishes and not he with theirs. The point is especially important given that much of Haydn’s life had famously been spent in feudal employment, where his status had initially been little more than that of a servant. The role of the Harrach brothers within the episode
emphasized this link with Haydn’s past in that their own father had been the overlord for the young Haydn’s household; the composer’s mother had even been in the service of his family. It thus served to demonstrate that Haydn, by token of his achievements as an artist, was now considered on equal terms with the very people who once governed him, thereby reinforcing the emancipation from aristocratic patronage heralded by his time in England. The irony is that the story as retold in Haydn biography was somewhat at variance with the testimony of the Count himself: Harrach wrote to Dies that ‘it was not until two or three years later that [Haydn] happened to hear that this monument in Rohrau existed and without my knowing it went to see it.’2
2 Quoted in Landon 1994: III, 201; italics added. Despite this obvious discrepancy and the general lack of documentation for the episode, Landon’s view is that it ‘no doubt took place’ (: IV, 55).
The notion of obligation to composers on the part of aristocrats also arises from the story of Bach’s visit to the court of King Frederick the Great in 1747 (myth 1-E), in which his Musikalisches Opfer, BWV 1079 was said to originate. In neither instance do nineteenth-century interpretations show much evidence of explicit conditioning by historical revisionism concerning the relationship between employers and artists, even despite the shifting political climate across Europe, though this was doubtless a factor affecting the ways in which they were understood. As one of the best-documented tales in Bach biography, the episode that unfolded in Potsdam was supported by a
contemporary newspaper article3 and by the subject himself, in the dedication to Frederick that preceded the completed Musikalisches Opfer.4 In addition, of the two of his sons who were present at the time, C. P. E. Bach co-authored the ‘Nekrolog’, while W. F. Bach (who had travelled with his father) was the authority for the account given by Forkel; hence both of the earliest major biographical writings essentially offer
witness testimonies. The former followed just a few years after it had taken place, and is therefore comparatively reliable in relation to other sources for Bach biography; and even though the latter, much more extensive account was written only some decades afterwards, it retained sufficient currency that it was quoted wholesale in Schweitzer’s biography over a century after its original publication (1911: I, 176-7). That Frederick, himself a performer and composer, had invited Bach to his court several times served as an illustration of the extent of his reputation towards the end of his life; and its value was by no means negated by the fact that one of Frederick’s court musicians was Bach’s son, while (as Spitta observed) many others had either studied under him or at least made his acquaintance. Conversely, it gave biographers cause for concern that Bach had
3 ‘Bach Visits Frederick the Great: Report in the Spenersche Zeitung, Berlin, May 11, 1747’, in David and Mendel 1998: 224.
4 ‘Bach Publishes the Musical Offering, Dedicated to Frederick the Great’, in David and Mendel 1998:
226, 228.
not accepted sooner an invitation that had been extended some years earlier and reiterated thereafter, given that it had originated with the King of Prussia (and
particularly since the timing of Bach’s visit may have been at least partly motivated by his desire to meet his son’s wife of three years, for they had recently started their own family). In attempting to justify Bach’s earlier inaction, and to rescue him from the taint of disrespectful behaviour, biographers proposed explanations ranging from the
composer’s immersion in his work to the general inaccessibility of Potsdam owing to Frederick’s military campaigns.
Forkel’s account (1-E-3), which elaborated upon a sequence of events merely outlined in the ‘Nekrolog’ (1-E-1), emphasized the esteem in which Frederick held Bach, and his eagerness to make his acquaintance. Bach had not even been granted the time to change out of his travel clothes and into more appropriate dress, the implication being that Frederick was so anxious to meet him that he was summoned at once to court, even (according to Forkel) dispensing with the usual formalities according to which one is presented to a King. Having receiving a list of visitors to Potsdam and noticing Bach’s name, Frederick had supposedly cancelled his customary evening concert, presumably in order to spend time with the composer instead and to be able to welcome him properly to the court. In Forkel’s version, Frederick had changed his plans ‘just as he was getting his flute ready and his musicians were assembled’. While this might appear to have been rather an advanced stage at which to abandon the evening’s entertainment, subsequent biographers have ascribed it to a later point still, thereby demonstrating the significance of this rather improbable detail. Fétis (1-E-6), whose account is largely based on Forkel’s, wrote that the incident happened ‘au moment où il [Frédéric] allait commencer un concerto’; Spitta (1-E-8) that it took place ‘Just as the king was about to perform his flute solo’. That Frederick was so explicitly identified as a flautist and
patron of the arts within this episode is convenient in that it established him as
musically knowledgeable; but it is hardly conceivable (yet biographically appropriate) that he should have without hesitation prioritized Bach’s music over his own
performance. However, any turn of events involving selfishness, delay, or orderly protocol on Frederick’s part would have resulted in a much less powerful story than one in which Bach, socially empowered by the esteem his music had brought him,
inadvertently dictated the King’s schedule for the evening.
Forkel related that in place of the concert, Frederick invited Bach to play his Silbermann pianos, with the court musicians in attendance; the following day, Bach similarly
performed on the organ. This tale, like several others found elsewhere in Bach
biography, therefore functioned to confirm its protagonist as a great musical authority, on keyboard instruments in particular. Moreover, in the course of examining the King’s pianos, Bach reportedly extemporized two fugues. The theme for the first, in three parts, was apparently given to him by Frederick himself, presumably to satisfy his curiosity and by way of demonstration of Bach’s phenomenal abilities. According to the
‘Nekrolog’, Bach chose his own theme for the second, six-part fugue, the reason being, as Forkel clarified, that Frederick’s theme lay beyond the bounds of such complex polyphonic extempore treatment. Bach subsequently used the King’s theme in the trio sonata (for flute, violin, and continuo), the puzzle canons, and the ricercars in three and six parts that together comprised the Musikalisches Opfer; the latter piece was perhaps intended retrospectively to prove to Frederick that, given the time to rework the theme carefully in open score, he could indeed achieve what was deemed impossible within the more limited bounds of keyboard improvisation. While this suggestion was at least implicit in most accounts (not to mention Bach’s original dedication) – for ultimate success in such a sophisticated contrapuntal undertaking was eminently in keeping with
the previously-discussed understanding of Bach as a learned composer – Parry’s biography, published in 1909, represents a revealing departure. Since the same subject is used for the two ricercars, Parry (1-E-10) claimed that it was more likely that both of Bach’s extemporizations were on the subject supplied by Frederick, the implication being that the pieces in the Musikalisches Opfer were at the very least versions of those originally performed. On one level, Parry thereby deftly circumnavigated any
suggestions that Bach’s extemporization skills had shortcomings; on another, the conclusion at which he arrived may be indicative of the intervention of the
nineteenth-century aesthetic of the work-concept. If so, and although it has not been widely adopted in life-writing on Bach (unlike parallel manifestations discussed elsewhere), Parry’s proposition nonetheless provides another instance of the shifting cultural emphasis from performance to composition in retellings of musical biography’s most celebrated tales.
Final Years
Having examined above a pair of stories in which composers received recognition of their artistic distinction towards the end of their lives, the purpose of this section is to investigate two other celebrated tales that emerge from their subjects’ final years.
Though essentially unrelated to death, the episodes discussed here are used within biography to epitomize the composer’s life, in terms of both the heights of genius that they had attained and the obstacles that they overcame on their path to success. The first (myth 5-D) concerns the homage paid to the aged Haydn at the last of a series of events given by the Viennese Society of Amateur Concerts on 27 March 1808, at which The Creation was performed to Giuseppe Carpani’s Italian translation. The event is documented in some detail in a number of contemporary accounts including
Griesinger’s and Dies’s reminiscences (5-D-1, 5-D-2) and Carpani’s own, slightly later
(and less factually reliable) biography in the form of a series of letters (5-D-4, 1812), whose significance as an early source for the composer’s life is demonstrated by how quickly its contents were disseminated across Europe. Stendhal drew heavily upon it in his volume on Haydn, Mozart, and Metastasio (Bombet 1814), of which by far the most substantial section was that on Haydn; as noted, it travelled in this guise to England via Brewin’s translation (1817). Carpani’s account is particularly significant to this
discussion as he was present at the occasion in question, while Griesinger and Dies would presumably have received their version of events directly from Haydn.5 As somebody who was in any case known for going ‘one better’ than Griesinger and Dies (see Gotwals 1959: 441), with whose texts he was acquainted prior to the appearance of his own, Carpani offered a much more detailed report of the episode. Nevertheless, given the authority with which these various biographers were writing, it is unsurprising that they are in broad agreement with one another. The picture is painted of a glorious occasion that suitably illustrated the widespread recognition of Haydn’s lifetime of musical achievement. As the guest of honour, the composer made a triumphant entry accompanied by a trumpet fanfare, whereupon the assembled company (some 2,000 people, according to Carpani) rose to their feet, cheering loudly as he was carried in his
discussion as he was present at the occasion in question, while Griesinger and Dies would presumably have received their version of events directly from Haydn.5 As somebody who was in any case known for going ‘one better’ than Griesinger and Dies (see Gotwals 1959: 441), with whose texts he was acquainted prior to the appearance of his own, Carpani offered a much more detailed report of the episode. Nevertheless, given the authority with which these various biographers were writing, it is unsurprising that they are in broad agreement with one another. The picture is painted of a glorious occasion that suitably illustrated the widespread recognition of Haydn’s lifetime of musical achievement. As the guest of honour, the composer made a triumphant entry accompanied by a trumpet fanfare, whereupon the assembled company (some 2,000 people, according to Carpani) rose to their feet, cheering loudly as he was carried in his