J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

When Haydn wrote string quartets, therefore, he needed to take into account neither
his employer nor anyone else at Esterháza. Instead he wrote chiefly for an anonymous,
generic public: those who performed and enjoyed chamber music (or at least the
publishers who supplied them). While the possession of an international musical
celebrity must have given Prince Nicholas a great deal of satisfaction, from time to
time the question of Haydn’s musical priorities caused a certain amount of friction.
In November 1765, the prince drafted an unusually peremptory letter to Haydn.
Incorporating a list of Werner’s grievances, it concluded with the following
instruction: ‘Finally, said Capellmeister Haydn is urgently enjoined to apply himself to
composition more diligently than heretofore, and especially to write such pieces as can
be performed on the gamba [baryton], of which pieces we have seen very few up to
now.’ 21 This letter had two important consequences. First of all it prompted Haydn to
begin his Entwurf-Katalog (‘draft catalogue’), to demonstrate to his prince that he had
not after all been inactive as a composer. The catalogue contains the incipits of all the
works which remained in his possession, and he continued to add to it throughout his
working life. Secondly, he began in earnest the series of baryton trios which was to
occupy him over the next ten years. At the time of Prince Nicholas’ letter he had
probably composed only the first dozen (a fact which gives some justification to the
complaint); in total he was eventually to write at least 125 trios, along with several
works for gamba and larger ensembles. It is clear that when he started the Entwurf-
Katalog he had no idea that he would soon produce so many—having made room for
the first twelve, he went on to other categories and thereafter had to fit them in
wherever there was room. At this rate of production, Haydn might easily have run to
seed and ended up with a copious but meaningless oeuvre like the endless stream of
flute concertos and sonatas that J. J. Quantz wrote for his employer; but during the mid
1770s Prince Nicholas seemed to lose interest in the baryton as his attention turned
21 Ibid., I, p.420.
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