Mathias Haydn - Visits To Joseph in Vienna

Visits To Joseph in Vienna

Although Mathias sent both of his future-composer sons away from home at a tender age, he certainly did not lose interest in them. This is attested, for instance, by the letter quoted above, and by two visits he made to Vienna that were remembered decades later by Joseph and related to biographers.

Of these, the more dramatic was one in which Mathias rescued Joseph from being turned into a castrato. Griesinger (1810) relates the tale thus:

At that time there were still many castrati employed at the court and in the churches in Vienna, and the director of the Choir School doubtless supposed he was making young Haydn's fortune when he came up with a plan to turn him into a soprano, and actually asked the father for permission. The father, whom this proposal utterly displeased, set off at once on the road for Vienna; and thinking that the operation might perhaps already have been undertaken, he entered the room where his son was with the question, "Sepperl, does anything hurt you? Can you still walk?" Delighted to find his son unharmed, he protested against all further unreasonable demands of this sort. ... The truth of this anecdote was vouched for by persons to whom Haydn has oftentimes told it.

A few years later, when Joseph as working as a freelance musician and living in very humble quarters, he suffered a burglary, and Mathias came to Vienna to help:

While he was living in the Seilerstadt, all his few possessions were stolen. Haydn wrote to his parents to see if they might send him some linen for a few shirts; his father came to Vienna, brought his son a seventeen-kreutzer piece and the advice "Fear God, and love thy neighbor!" By the generosity of good friends, Haydn soon had his loss restored.