Joseph Haydn's ethnicity
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The ethnicity of the composer Joseph Haydn was a controversial matter in Haydn scholarship during a period lasting from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. The principal contending ethnicities were
Croat The Croats (; hr, Hrvati ) are a South Slavic ethnic group who share a common Croatian ancestry, culture, history and language. They are also a recognized minority in a number of neighboring countries, namely Austria, the Czech Republic, Ge ...
and German. Mainstream musical scholarship today adopts the second of these two hypotheses.


Kuhač's Croatian hypothesis

During the late 19th century, the Croatian ethnologist
Franjo Kuhač Franjo Ksaver Kuhač (November 20, 1834 – June 18, 1911) was a piano teacher, choral conductor, composer, and comparative musicologist who studied Croatian folk music. Kuhač did a great deal of field work in this area, collecting and publishing ...
gathered a great number of Croat
folk tunes Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fo ...
in fieldwork. Kuhač was struck by the resemblance of a number of these tunes to themes found in Haydn's works, and suggested that Haydn knew these tunes and incorporated them into his work. Other scholars disagreed, suggesting instead that the Haydn original themes had circulated among the people, evolving gradually into more folk-like forms. For details and examples, see
Haydn and folk music This article discusses the influence of folk music on the work of the composer Joseph Haydn (1732–1809). Background Haydn was of humble family, perhaps unusually so for a famous composer. His parents were working people (his mother Anna Maria was ...
. Haydn never set foot in Croatia, but he almost certainly lived in the vicinity of Croatian speakers. This is because
migration Migration, migratory, or migrate may refer to: Human migration * Human migration, physical movement by humans from one region to another ** International migration, when peoples cross state boundaries and stay in the host state for some minimum le ...
in previous centuries had resulted in a considerable number of Croats dwelling far to the north of Croatia in the Austro-Hungarian border region where Haydn was born and spent most of his life. This aspect of Kuhač's claim is considered uncontroversial, though the relative fraction of the population that was Croatian-speaking is in dispute. Kuhač went on to claim that the reason Haydn used so many Croatian folk tunes in his music is that he was himself a Croat; that is, a member of the Croat diaspora. As such, he would have been a native speaker of Croatian and a participant in Croatian folk culture. Kuhač also claimed that the name "Haydn" is of Croatian origin ("Hajdin"), and likewise for the name of Haydn's mother, Maria Koller. Kuhač wrote in Croatian, which would have been a barrier to scholarly transmission at the time. However, his works were studied by the English-speaking musicologist
Henry Hadow Sir William Henry Hadow (27 December 1859 – 8 April 1937) was a leading educational reformer in Great Britain, a musicologist and a composer. Life Born at Ebrington in Gloucestershire and baptised there on 29 January 1860 by his father, ...
, who promulgated them further in his book ''Haydn: A Croatian Composer'' (1897) and in the second and third editions (1904–1910; 1927) of the prestigious Grove Dictionary.


The "Haydn as German" hypothesis

In the 1930s, the German musicologist Ernst Fritz Schmid took up the issue of Haydn's origins, searching in parish records and elsewhere for evidence of Haydn's ancestry. He concluded on the basis of his research that Haydn's ethnic roots were not Croat, but German, and that the names "Haydn" and "Koller" are of German origin. Schroeder (2009) describes Schmid's work as entirely convincing; "an enormously detailed examination of Haydn's genealogy" that "put all lternativetheories to rest." He notes further, however, that the "timing of this type of study was unfortunate. Only a few years later similar genealogical studies affirming the German (and Aryan) roots of the Germanic musical giants had become a musicological preoccupation as a propaganda service to the
National Socialist Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
government ... Schmid's book pre-dates those sponsored by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and his chief ideologue
Alfred Rosenberg Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head o ...
, but it is a matter of regret that his proved to be a model for those which followed."


The Haydn-as-German hypothesis and modern scholarship

Despite its acquired associations with National Socialist musicology, Schmid's work has over the long term convinced not just Schroeder, but all mainstream Haydn scholarship.
Karl Geiringer Karl Geiringer (April 26, 1899 – January 10, 1989)Will Crutchfield, January 12, 1989 Retrieved 2013-08-10. was an Austrian-American musicologist, educator, and biographer of composers. He was educated in Vienna but at the beginning of the Nazi yea ...
endorses Schmid's views, both in his Haydn biography and in the fourth edition of the Grove Dictionary. In the 1982 revision of his biography, Geiringer wrote :Schmid undert o elaborate genealogical research, tracing the family names back to the Middle Ages and producing most valuable data about Haydn's ancestors. According to his final conclusions, there can be no doubt that the Haydn and Koller families were of German origin. Schmid's views were also endorsed by French scholar Michel Brenet and by Rosemary Hughes in their Haydn biographies.
H. C. Robbins Landon Howard Chandler Robbins Landon (March 6, 1926November 20, 2009) was an American musicologist, journalist, historian and broadcaster, best known for his work in rediscovering the huge body of neglected music by Haydn and in correcting misunderstand ...
devoted the opening pages of his massive work ''Haydn: Chronicle and Works'' to a long summary and warm endorsement of Schmid's research. Danish scholar
Jens Peter Larsen Jens Peter Larsen (14 June 1902 – 22 August 1988) was a Danish musicologist and Haydn scholar. In addition to serving as general editor of two major editions of Haydn's music, he researched and published important papers on the works of George F ...
, writing in the 1980
New Grove ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theor ...
, says of this question: :... the matter must be regarded as settled by chmid's work It may well be said that 'Schmid was even more intent to prove Haydn a German than Kuhač and Hadow had been to prove him a Slav' uotation from Scott, in the fifth edition of Grove But the weight of the documentary evidence that supports his case is decisive. In the current version of the Grove Dictionary, the Haydn biography (by James Webster) does not even mention the old controversy, other than to cite Schmid's work in the bibliography. Neither Kuhač nor Hadow is cited.


Haydn's remark on Croats

Curiously, Haydn himself is recorded as having made a somewhat disparaging remark about Croats. His words were remembered by the composer and pianist Friedrich Kalkbrenner, who was Haydn's student in Vienna around the year 1800; he wrote them down in his memoirs, published in 1824. In the memoirs, Kalkbrenner refers to himself in the third person. :He received instruction rom Haydnduring the remainder of his stay at Vienna, which was nearly two years. In the first quartet he attempted to write under this great master - the young artist thought he must put forth all his learning as well as all his imagination, and when he produced it, anticipated that he must inevitably receive no usual quantity of praise. The moment Haydn cast his eyes upon it, he exclaimed - hey day! what have we here! Calmuc,
Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...
n, Cossack,
Croat The Croats (; hr, Hrvati ) are a South Slavic ethnic group who share a common Croatian ancestry, culture, history and language. They are also a recognized minority in a number of neighboring countries, namely Austria, the Czech Republic, Ge ...
- all the barbarians of the world jumbled together - he laughed heartily, but tempered his severity with some commendation - telling him that there was by far too much fire, but that it was better to have too much than too little and that time and experience would bring his exertions to more favourable issue. Quoted in Robbins Landon and Jones 1988, 306


References


Further reading

* Brenet, Michel (1909) ''Haydn'', Paris. * * Hadow, Henry (1897) ''Haydn: A Croatian Composer'', London. * Hughes, Rosemary (1950) ''Haydn'', New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux. * Kuhač, Franjo (1880) ''Haydn i hrvatske narodne popievke'' oseph Haydn and National Folk Music Zagreb. * Larsen, Jens Peter (1982) ''The New Grove Haydn''. New York and London: W. W. Norton. [long article from the
New Grove ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theor ...
encyclopedia, excepted and published separately]. *Robbins Landon, H. C. (1976-1980) ''Haydn: Chronicle and Works. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976-1980. Also London: Thames and Hudson. * * Schmid, Ernst Fritz (1934) ''Joseph Haydn: ein Buch von Vorfahren und Heimat des Meisters''. Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag. *Schroeder, David (2009) "Folk music," in David Wyn Jones (2009) ''Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Scott, Marion M. (1950) "Haydn and Folk-Song," ''Music and Letters'' 31: 119-124. * Webster, James (2001) "Joseph Haydn", article in the online edition of the
New Grove ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theor ...
. Published separately as ''The New Grove: Haydn''.


External links



Notes on the genealogy of composer Joseph Haydn (Dr.Fritz Königshofer). Web site of the Eisenstadt Haydn Festival. {{Haydn Joseph Haydn, Ethnicity of Joseph Haydn