Piano Music - Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn

In Haydn's Words:

📖 "Young people can learn from my example that something can come from nothing. What I have become is the result of my hard efforts."

📖 "[Of his period as Kapellmeister at the Esterházy court:] I was cut off from the world. There was no one to confuse or torment me, and I was forced to become original."
In Hadden, Haydn (1934)

📖 "It is the melody which is the charm of music, and it is that which is most difficult to produce. The invention of a fine melody is a work of genius."

📖 "Never was I so devout as when I composed The Creation. I knelt down each day to pray to God to give me strength for my work....When I was working on The Creation I felt so impregnated with Divine certainty, that before sitting down to the piano, I would quietly and confidently pray to God to grant me the talent that was needed to praise Him worthily."

📖 "When I think of my God, my heart dances within me for joy, and then my music has to dance, too."

📖 "Since God has given me a cheerful heart, He will forgive me for serving Him cheerfully."

📖 "If you want to know whether you have written anything worth preserving, sing it to yourself without any accompaniment."

📖 "I was never a quick writer, but composed with great care and efforts."

📖 "Rules are my very humble, obedient servants."

📖 "Mozart is the incarnation of music."

📖 "The life's story of great geniuses is a sad one, without much tangible reward, which does not inspire future generations to face a similar fate. Alas also, it stands to reason why so many talent will not come to sparkle on the artistic firmanent."

📖 "I'm going to commune with God and I must be appropriately dressed!"

📖 "I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son (W A Mozart)is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition."

📖 "I get up early, and as soon as I have dressed I go down on my knees and pray God and the Blessed Virgin that I may have another successful day. Then when I've had some breakfast I sit down at the clavier and begin my search. If I hit on an idea quickly, it goes ahead easily and without much trouble. But if I can't get on, I know that I must have forfeited God's grace by some fault of mine, and then I pray once more for grace until I feel I'm forgiven."
In Hughes, Haydn (1970)

📖 "Often when I was wrestling with obstacles of every kind, when my physical and mental strength alike were running low and it was hard for me to persevere in the path on which I had set my feet, a secret feeling within me whispered: 'There are so few happy and contented people here below, sorrow and anxiety pursue them everywhere; perhaps your work may, some day, become a spring from which the careworn may draw a few moments' rest and refreshment.' And that was a powerful motive for pressing onward."
In a letter to a group of music-lovers in Bergen

Quotes by Joseph Haydn

🔔 Reload the page a few times if you see orange widgets instead of books and music.

Joseph Haydn - Piano Music & Books

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