Haydn’s audition

Karl Georg Reutter II was appointed choirmaster at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna in 1738.  The following year he went on tour to recruit choristers.  In the town of Hainburg, Joseph Haydn (at stage seven years of age) auditioned.  The contemporary biography Guiseppe Carpani recalled:

Reutter gave him a tune to sing at sight. The precision, the purity of tone, the spirit with which the boy executed it surprised him; but he was more especially charmed with the beauty of the young voice. He remarked that the lad did not shake (trill), and smilingly asked him the reason. The boy replied promptly: “How can you expect me to shake when my cousin does not know how to himself?””Come here,” said Reutter, “I will teach you.” He took him between his knees, showed him how he should produce the notes in rapid succession, control his breath, and agitate the palate. The boy immediately made a good shake. Reutter, enchanted with the success of his pupil, took a plate of fine cherries and emptied them into the boy’s pockets. [According to Dies, he also gave Sepperl a piece of money.] His delight may be readily conceived. Haydn often mentioned this anecdote to me, and added, laughing, that whenever he happened to shake he still thought he saw those beautiful cherries.

Cited in: Geiringer, Karl (1946) Haydn: A Creative Life in Music.  New York: W. W. Norton, p.28.

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

, ,

Featured Content

Music and time
“There is also in this [nineteenth-century romantic] music an extraordinary sense of control over the passage of time; a moment will be held still as if suspended, and then released with a rush. Einstein has told us that time is relative, flexible and elastic; I have noticed these qualities whenever I have tried to play […]
Bernstein’s television appearances
Bernstein is intent on demonstrating that the inevitable doesn’t just happen. It comes from intense work. To show this, he restores a handful of Beethoven’s discarded sketches to the score so that we can hear how the Fifth would have sounded if Beethoven had retained his first (or second or 10th) thought. Some discarded passages […]
Wie melodien zieht es mir (Brahms)
Composer: Johannes Brahms Text: Klaus Groth Title: Wie melodien zieht es mir (Like melodies it pulls me), op. 105, no. 1 Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:  
We can’t all play first violin
“If all would play first violin, we could not obtain an orchestra. Therefore esteem every musician in his place.” — Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (translated by Henry Hugo Pierson), Advice to Young Musicains [Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln]. New York: J. Schuberth & Co. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28219/28219-h/28219-h.htm, accessed 29 August 2021.
Understanding the world
“If we understood the world, we would realize that there is a logic of harmony underlying its manifold apparent dissonances.” Jean Sibelius, in conversation with Gustav Mahler, 1907. Cited in: Henry Thomas & Dana Lee Thomas Living Biographies of Great Composers. Garden City (NY): Blue Ribbon, [1940] 1946) p. 309.  [Cited at Wikiquote.]
Nick Cave on the creative process
What makes a great song great is not its close resemblance to a recognizable work. Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult […]
Borge on Borodin
"My favorite Russian composer is Borodin, mainly because he had the shortest name. Except for Cui, who was just showing off. […] Cui wrote an opera called A Feast in Time of Plague. Shows you what kind of guy HE was." (Victor Borge, My Favorite Intermissions, New York, 1971, p133)  
I Will Walk in the Presence of the Lord – Psalm 115 (116b), Psalm 114 (116a)
Title: I will walk in the presence of the Lord Text:     – Psalm 115 (116b):10, 15-19 (R. Psalm 114 (116a):9)     – Psalm 114 (116a):1-6, 8-9. R. v.9. Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF Score and part Sample:
Brahms at the tavern
When Brahms was young, he had to play in rowdy taverns to help support his family. Dance music was what the people in the taverns wanted, and Hannes would sometimes relieve the monotony by improvising variations on the popular waltzes of the day.  But what finally made his work endurable was the discovery that while […]
Tips for composers
Rob Deemer highlights several aspects needed for a composer to survive in the artistic community: – ability to accept “failure” (entering competitions, etc.) – maintaining a “stubbornness” to achieve recognition – promoting not only your best works, but also occasionally enjoying the success of your “foibles” – having a sense of “who you are” as […]