Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn, by Thomas Hardy (1791)

 
Part of a series of articles on Composers on the lines of the clock

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   Capricorn    Giacomo Puccini

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   Aquarius    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Franz Schubert Felix Mendelssohn

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   Pisces    Frederick Chopin George Frideric Handel

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   Aries    Johann Sebastian Bach Joseph Haydn Sergei Rachmaninoff

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   Taurus    Johannes Brahms Franz Lehár Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

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   Gemini    Edward Elgar Charles Gounod Edvard Grieg Robert Schumann Richard Wagner

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   Cancer    Stephen Foster Gustav Mahler

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   Leo    Sigmund Romberg Claude Debussy Carrie Jacobs Bond Adolphe Adam

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   Virgo    Amilcare Ponchielli Giacomo Meyerbeer Johann Pachelbel

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   Libra    Ralph Vaughan Williams Camille Saint-Saëns Giuseppe Verdi

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   Scorpio    Johann Strauss, Jr. Dominico Scarlatti Franz Liszt Georges Bizet

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   Sagittarius    Ludwig van Beethoven Cesar Franck Edward Alexander MacDowell Mascagni Jean Sibelius Arthur Rubenstein

Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer who lived from 1732 to 1809. He had that independence, self-reliance, the tireless genius of an Aries. He had the eagerness for treading new and untried paths. And these characteristics manifested in his life, just as the cheerful, enthusiastic demeanor of an Aries were also apparent.

He and Mozart were very great friends. Haydn had the steadfastness and warmth natural to the fiery Arian, whereas Mozart had the quicksilver personality of the Pisceans.

The crowning achievements of Haydn are his Creation, and The Seasons. In The Seasons, Summer, the chorus sings a hymn to the sun. Fittingly, the Aries composer writes:

The sun ascends, he mounts, he mounts.
He’s near, he comes,
he beams, he shines,
he flames in radiance full in glowing majesty.
Hail, O sun, be hailed.
O source of light and life be hailed.
In laud and praise resounds thy name throughout the world.
Hail, O sun, be hailed.
In laud and praise resounds thy name throughout the world.

Haydn was the translator of misery into joy, of death into life through the son of God. His inspiration The Creation, as in The Seasons, anchors the transition of energies from Father to Son, from Son to Mother, from Mother to Holy Spirit and the return of the Holy Spirit to God.

Karl Geiringer writes of Haydn:

Always experimenting and trying out new devices, eager to learn and to improve, never clinging to tradition out of love for the easy way: these qualities enabled Haydn at the age of nearly seventy to write the great oratories that marked the climax of his creative output.

Haydn achieved the lowering into human dimensions of the Word, thus making the Word, through music, the Word incarnate.

Sources

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, October 7, 1973.