Johann Michael Hadyn

Johann Michael Haydn, born 1737, in the village of Rohrau, Austria, to a father who was a wheelwright and local mayor, a mother who had worked as a cook for the local aristocrat, Count Harrach.  Hadyn’s father dabbled in music even teaching himself to play the harp and with that he also made sure that his children learned to sing.  Both Johann and his older brother Joseph sang in the choir at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, very prestigious at the time.  After his time in the choir Johann was appointed Kapellmeister at GroBwardien, or music master and later at Salzburg where he worked for forty-three years.  During his tenure as Kapellmeister at Salzburg he wrote over 360 compositions for the church and many other instrumental pieces.  It was during this time that he wrote Incidental Music to Voltaire’s ‘Zaire’.  I actually chose this piece by random because I wanted to write about something that wasn’t main stream, yet after researching the music and looking at what it was written for an interesting comparison comes up.  Here you have a composer who has written over 360 works for the church, a church that is trying to adhere to the credo of the Council of Trent, and you have a theatrical work about Muslimism.  In addition to writing the music for the play he also used a musical style that was popular at the time but not an accepted Christian genre.  “Turkish” music was the genre of music that was used, it included five segments and many special effects were expressed in the music.  The play by Voltaire is written about some Christians that were slaves of Osman a Sultan of Turkey and their lives growing up in his palace. One girl Zara accepts Muslim faith and agrees to marry Osman.  The question that I mule about in my head is; what is a christen, who has written hundreds of works for the Catholic Church doing writing music for Voltaire’s play about a christen converting to the Muslim faith?