Dismissed From the Choir, Then Father of the Symphony

Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 in Rohrau, a small town in Austria. His father was a wheelwright who held a position of local leadership in the village. There were no known musicians in the family. They owned a harp and sang at the hearth, but no one read music or had formal training.

At six, Haydn left home and never lived with his parents again, though he stayed close to them. A relative who was choirmaster in Hainburg took him in as a choirboy because of his good voice. He received singing and some instrumental lessons but little theory or composition, which he wanted. WETA's programme says he was often hungry and wore threadbare, dirty clothing, and never forgot those humiliations. At eight he moved to Vienna to sing at St Stephen's Cathedral.

Around 1749, as a teenager, he was dismissed from the choir. The programme describes him as then on his own, with three shirts, almost no money and no means of making a living.

He survived as a freelance musician, performing, teaching private pupils, and composing and arranging in the evenings. He played serenades in the streets, a popular and reasonably paid activity in mid-18th-century Austria. He taught himself theory by reading treatises by candlelight, studying scores and admiring C. P. E. Bach. His reputation grew as a skilled, dependable and agreeable musician. At about 20 he became valet and accompanist to the composer Nicola Porpora, whose work was menial but who taught him some composition and theory.

In 1761 he became vice Kapellmeister for the Esterházy family, and full Kapellmeister in 1766, a post he held under Prince Nicholas I until 1790. Later he made two trips to London, where he wrote the London Symphonies, and in 1798–99 The Creation was premiered. He died in Vienna on 31 May 1809. Looking back on his years at Esterházy, where he was cut off from the world, he said he had to become original.