Haydn at Eisenstadt
The Esterhazys were a Hungarian noble family with an ancestral castle in Eisenstadt (now in Austria, where AAM performs on 8.9.00) and a summer residence in Eszterhaza (in Hungary). Haydn (1732–1809) served four of the princes, starting with Prince Paul Anton (1711–1762) who appointed Haydn in 1761 as vice-kapellmeister. His brother, Prince Nikolaus ‘the Magnificent’ (1714–1790), whom Haydn served for nearly three decades, had an exceptional love of the arts, was responsible for building in the 1760s the Esterhazy family palace at Eszterhaza complete with its own opera house. Once it was finished, Prince Nikolaus spent more of the year there, with his household including Haydn, his orchestra and his opera singers, leaving only the chapel choir in Eisenstadt. On the death of Prince Nikolaus in 1790, his son Prince Anton (1738–1794) disbanded the orchestra and although Haydn retained the title of Kapellmeister, he left for Vienna and then London. It was Anton’s son Prince Nikolaus (1765–1833) who revived the orchestra, and contact with Haydn was resumed. This Prince was especially fond of church music in contrast to his opera-loving grand-father namesake, which stimulated Haydn’s composition of the six large-scale masses between 1796 and 1802.
There is a nice story about the Eisenstadt/Eszterhaza axis. Prince Nikolaus (‘the Magnificent’) was spending more and more time at his ‘summer’ residence at Eszterhaza, while the musicians’ families were left behind in Eisenstadt. The story goes that, in 1772, the musicians asked Haydn for his help: the result was his ‘Farewell’ symphony (No.45). The symphony ended with each player, one-by-one as his part instructed, blowing out his candle and leaving with his instrument under his arm. The Prince understood the point, and the next day issued the order to leave Eszterhaza and to return to Eisenstadt.