Franz Joseph Haydn’s birthday is this coming Sunday, so it’s not technically his birthday week, but we’ll stretch a point this once. Haydn was an industrious and brilliant contemporary of Mozart, who, unlike his younger comrade, was perfectly happy down on the farm: He was employed as Kapellmeister (“chapel master” — the chief musician, conductor, composer) in the house of Prince Esterhazy, one of the richest and most powerful Hungarian nobles in the Austrian Empire. Haydn worked for the family for most of his working life.
He wrote and conducted operas for the Prince’s private theater, and it was only late in the 1770s, when he was well over 40 years old, that the Prince allowed him to publish his many instrumental compositions, for which he is now much more famous than for his operas. He is now called “Father” of the symphony, though he didn’t invent it. He did write 104 of them, though, and 68 string quartets, a genre he actually did develop from almost nothing. Read about his life and music, and find some fun facts about the composer on SFCV’s composer biography page.