Galloping Gypsy
  • Home
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • About
  • Music
    • Repertoire
  • Events
  • Links
  • Gallery
  • Blog 2

Happy Haydn Day!

31/3/2016

0 Comments

 
Today is the birthday of composer Joseph Haydn, whose legacy has enriched my experience of Central Europe. His patrons, the noble Esterházy family, have left us two sumptuous palaces that make a Haydn tour through Austria and Hungary a feast for the eyes as well as the ears.
 
Franz Joseph Haydn (†1809) was born in Rohrau, an Austrian village not far from today’s Slovak and Hungarian borders, on March 31, 1732. He spent much of his career as court musician for the Esterházy family, so wealthy they once covered the road from Vienna to their Eisenstadt palace with salt after they’d promised Empress Maria-Theresa a sleigh ride but it failed to snow that unseasonably warm January. They helped make him the highest-earning composer during his lifetime—consider how many others lived in penury.
 
Haydn’s wealth was also due to prolific output, 104 symphonies among other things. Not only was he the “Father of the Symphony” but also the composer of the “Kaiserlied,” which has become today’s German national anthem. (Next time a German tells you that Beethoven was really a German and Hitler an Austrian, try pointing out this factoid.) He arranged it as a birthday present for “Good Kaiser Franz.”
 
Following the Haydn trail makes a wonderful little daytrip. I did it with my parents in the summer of 1996. After three days indulging in the sights of Vienna, nicely accessible by public transport, we picked up a rental car and headed southeast.
 
The first stop, Eisenstadt, was in the composer’s day called Kismarton, part of the Kingdom of Hungary, one of numerous entities within the Empire of the Habsburgs. It became part of modern-day Austria in the aftermath of World War I.
 
After a visiting the Haydnhaus, his residence for twelve years, we dropped into a sidewalk café for coffee and pastries. There’s another Central European interethnic rivalry—the Hungarians claim the Austrians stole the recipe for their almás rétes, or Apfelstrudel. Anyway, it was flaky on the outside and sweet-tart on the inside. We also ordered a cream horn and a poppy-seed cake, and passed the plates around.
 
This indulgence was to fortify us for the tour of the baroque Schloss Esterházy. It is one of the most magnificent things outside Vienna. Crowds always linger extra-long in the Haydnsaal, one of the best acoustic spaces in Europe, with an elaborately painted baroque ceiling.
 
We had a spicy, savory chicken paprikash lunch in the Hungarian border town of Sopron before heading to the village of Fertőd, just off the highway. The gate to this palace, called Esterháza, was open for people to wander around, but the sign on the ticket office read “Hétfőn-kedden minden zárva.” We’d planned this trip to avoid the common Monday museum closings, not expecting them to take Tuesday off, too!
 
So this tour is definitely on my “bucket re-do list.” Esterháza has been extensively renovated. And it’s open Tuesday-Sunday in season.
 
Final note: one of my most treasured memories of living in Central Europe was performing Haydn’s Paukenmesse (“Timpani Mass”), aka Missa in Tempori Belli (“Mass in Time of War,” i.e. the Napoleonic Wars), when I sang bass in the Saint Cecelia Choir of the Saint Elizabeth Cathedral in Košice, East Slovakia.
 
 
(See also the Schloss Esterhazy official site)
Picture
Locales associated with Haydn (from Wikipedia)
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014

    Musical & Literary Wanderings of a Galloping Gypsy

    Mark Eliot Nuckols is a travel writer from Silver Beach Virginia who is also a musician and teacher.

    Categories

    All
    Austria
    Birthday
    Central Europe
    Czechoslovakia
    Czech Republic
    Folk Music
    Francis Ferdinand
    Grand Budapest Hotel
    Hungary
    Martin
    Mozart
    Music
    Pécs
    Prague
    Requiem
    Sarajevo
    Slovakia
    St. Cecilia
    Stefan Zweig
    The World Of Yesterday
    Vienna
    World War I

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly