Haydn

“Strange that so great a man should have been born in so poor a home!” Beethoven remarked when shown a picture of Joseph Haydn’s birthplace: a low cottage near the Leitha, twice swept away by floods.

In eighteenth-century Rohrau, Haydn is the son of a wheelwright, in a small household where his father plays the harp and the family sings after a day’s work. J. Cuthbert Hadden follows the boy from these informal musical evenings to Vienna, where the choir school of St Stephen’s offers a chance to learn—and a life marked by strict training and hardship. Haydn’s gifts must carry him far beyond the modest home he remembers with such affection. How does a child from this quiet village find his way into the great musical world?

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