Papa Haydn
The composer Joseph Haydn is sometimes given the nickname "Papa" Haydn. The practice began in Haydn's lifetime and has continued to the present day.
Höslinger (2009) identifies three senses of the term, discussed below in the order of their chronological origin.
"Papa" as a term of affection
"Papa Haydn" started out as a term of affection bestowed on Haydn by the musicians who worked for him. After 1766 Haydn was the
As time went by, the group of musicians who called Haydn "Papa" expanded beyond the Esterházy court[2] and included Haydn's friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.[3]
Höslinger summarizes this aspect of "Papa Haydn" thus: "'Papa' arose as a term of affection, commonly used by the Esterházy players ... for a father figure, somebody who willingly gave advice and who was generally respected as a musician." He notes that in Haydn's time the term was used for other musicians as well; e.g. "Franz Schubert called Salieri his 'Grosspapa' (German: 'grandad')".[4]
"Papa" as founder
Another sense of the term "Papa Haydn" came from his role in the history of
Höslinger asserts that this usage of "Papa Haydn" increased during the 19th century, "as the sense of reverence for older composers increased."[4]
"Papa" as pejorative
This usage, which arose in the 19th century, is characterized thus by Höslinger: it is "a more patronizing, even dismissive one. In comparison with Romantic artists and Romantic music, Haydn and his output were seen as genial, but naive and superficial."
With the rise of acclaim for Haydn's music during the 20th century, the patronizing sense of "Papa Haydn" caused scholars and critics to become leery of the term, seeing it as a distortion of the composer's work. For example, Haydn scholar Jens Peter Larsen wrote (1980):
For years the nickname 'Papa Haydn' has characterized the composer. Used by his own musicians and others as a tribute of affection and respect, the expression increasingly took on misleading connotations, and came to signify a benevolent but bewigged and old-fashioned classic. The recent revival of interest in Haydn's music has made plain that the traditional picture had become a caricature, and that it gave a false impression of richness and diversity of his development as a composer.[7]
"Papa Haydn" was used in a children's song, sung to the first bars of the second movement of the
Papa Haydn's dead and gone
but his memory lingers on.
When his mood was one of bliss
he wrote jolly tunes like this.[8]
Notes
- ^ For discussion and examples, see Geiringer 1982, pp. 46–51
- ^ Höslinger 2009.
- ^ In his old age, Haydn remarked to Georg August Griesinger that Mozart had called him "Papa". The remark was recorded in a letter Griesinger sent to the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel, for whom he served as representative (Deutsch 1965, 489).
- ^ a b Höslinger 2009, p. 206.
- ^ A. Peter Brown writes, "It is almost a cliché to say that Haydn was the father of the symphony. But it could also be said that he was the father of the string quartet, the piano trio, and the keyboard sonata as we conceive these genres today. But to say that he was the "father" of these genres should not be confused with his being the inventor; instead, he was the prime propagator. Indeed, Haydn's accomplishment was the establishment of these genres in the modern sense." (Brown 2002, 301)
- ^ From the online edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
- ^ Larsen 1980.
- ISBN 9780822201274.
Sources
- Brown, A. Peter (2002) The First Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, vol. 2 of The Symphonic Repertoire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253334879
- Deutsch, Otto Erich (1965). Mozart: A Documentary Biography. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
- ISBN 0-520-04316-2.
- Höslinger, Clemens (2009). "Papa Haydn". In David Wyn Jones (ed.). Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn. Oxford University Press.
- Larsen, Jens Peter (1980). "Joseph Haydn". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Larsen's article was published separately as The New Grove: Haydn, Norton, New York, 1982.
Further reading
- The New Grove's current article on Haydn (by Webster and Feder, not by Larsen) includes other material on the term "Papa Haydn".
- Niemetschek, Franz (1798/1956) Life of Mozart, translated by Helen Mautner. London: Leonard Hyman.