Background
Haydn was already a famous composer when Mozart was a child. His six string quartets of Opus 20 (1772), called the "Sun" Quartets, were widely circulated and are conjectured (for instance, by Charles Rosen) to have been the inspiration for the six string quartets K. 168-173 that the 17-year-old Mozart wrote during a 1773 visit to Vienna.
The two composers probably would not have had an opportunity to meet until after Mozart moved permanently to Vienna in 1781. Haydn was required to reside most of the time at the remote palace of Eszterháza in Hungary, where his employer and patron Prince Nikolaus Esterházy preferred to live. During the winter months, the Prince moved to the ancestral palace of his family in Eisenstadt, bringing Haydn with him. In these periods it was often feasible for Haydn to make brief visits to Vienna, about 40 km away.
Read more about this topic: Haydn And Mozart
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)