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

place, socially and musically; and Joseph Haydn was both an agent and a beneficiary
of this shift. The institutions of a public, commercial musical culture had been
developing for some time: music publishing, journalism, impresarios, concert
societies, and freelance musical professionalism had begun to reach something like
their modern form in late seventeenth-century England. These developments spread to
northern Germany and France though the work of pioneers like Telemann, Philidor,
and Breitkopf. At the beginning of Haydn’s career, Vienna had no local music
publishers and no indigenous musical criticism. Although music printed elsewhere
was sold there, the chief means of dissemination was through handwritten copies;
professional copying was quite an industry in Vienna—contemporary catalogues show
that was possible to acquire copies of music from all over Europe. Only in 1777 did
the first Viennese music publisher, Artaria, open for business. It is not surprising
therefore that the first publications of Haydn’s music emerged in Paris and Leipzig.
As was usual at the time, these prints were made at no profit to the composer,
and probably without his knowledge. At first Haydn’s response seems to have been a
naïve delight that his name was becoming known: according to Griesinger ‘he gave
[his autographs] away and considered it an honour when they were accepted; he was
not aware of the fact that the music dealers were doing a good business with them, and
he loitered with pleasure in front of the shops where the one or the other of his works
in print was displayed.’ 23 Eventually, his attitude toward publishers became canny to
the point of sharp practice. His opp.1 and 2 were instantaneously successful,
provoking pirated editions and imitations (including ‘op.3’) all over Europe. The sets
of string quartets and clavier trios that followed, opp.9, 17, and 20, received almost
universal praise; better still, they provided a further source of income (after his
youthful poverty, Haydn retained a keen sense of the value of money).
23 Ibid., I, p.62.
It unlikely that any amount of celebrity and prosperity would have persuaded
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