Einstadt and the Haydn Explosive

Today we embarked on our journey to the Alps, but not before stopping at the Schloss Esterházy castle to see the Haydn Explosive and surrounding town of Einstadt. The palace itself was constructed in the thirteenth century and was owned by the Esterhazy Family of Hungary beginning in 1622 when the building was transformed into the baroque palace that is still maintained today. Our tour primarily focused on the Haydn exhibit, entitled the “Hayden Explosive”. The exhibition focuses on the life and musical compositions of Joseph Hayden at both Einstadt and around Europe as a whole. He is known as the “inventor of the string quartet” due to the huge circulation of his music.

Haydn, like most other composers of the era, relied on patronage from nobility in order to attain a vehicle to draft and produce his symphonies and string quartets. Haydn first came to work for the Esterhazys in 1761 under Paul II Anton and became the music director in 1766 under Prince Nicholas I. The musical festivals put on at the palace once Haydn became musical director became widely famous, especially to Maria Theresa, who is pictured in the exhibit. Seeing the fame and accomplishment of Haydn, while bridled by his commitments to the Esterhazy family, helped me understand the place of music in culture during the 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th centuries. Composers like Hadyn and Mozart (there were obviously many more of similar characteristics, but I’ll focus on these for their relation to the course material) could only survive with not only the funding from the nobility of Europe, but also for the venues to display their work. In comparison with today, it seems ridiculous that the greatest figures of music would be forced to perform for only the nobility that had contracted them for a given amount of time, but looking at the culture and technology of the time it makes perfect sense. During this period there was obviously no mass media, no internet, and certainly no iTunes, so there was virtually no way for composers to produce their work to the public outside of using the opera houses controlled by the nobility. It’s clear that during this time the arts, on a large scale, were in large part financed and ultimately controlled by those with the money to finance their work. It extended beyond music as well into art and all kinds and architecture. The impact of technology and cultural development is stunning, especially in the sphere of the arts. If it wasn’t for the evolution and privatization of music and its composers, musical funding and output might still be controlled by the nobility today.

The remainder of the Hayden exhibit focuses on his specific works and their relationship to the Esterhazy and the greater Europe as a whole. One element that I thought particularly interesting to both the Haydn exhibit and the palace as a whole was the garden in the back. This garden was a manifestation of the Viennese Anglomania, or obsession of the Viennese with English culture and style. The garden mirrors the English style in that it is maintained to appear to be very natural and almost overgrown. I find it extremely interesting the contrast here to other palaces such as Versailles that has geometric and formed landscaping showing how humans can yield nature or impose our will to make it look as we please. The English style directly contrasts that as though we are living harmoniously with nature. I find it strange that this English style would spread as far as Austria and then to the Esterhazy castle, but the style makes sense when it’s related to the spread of other cultural elements during the era. The series of Fine Arts Exhibitions hosted by the Royal Society of Arts in London displayed much of England’s culture and accomplishments throughout the last half of the 18^th century and had a profound impact on the exposure of their culture to the rest of Europe and world. This would help explain how the English cultural influence would make its way to the Esterhazy palace. Prince Nicholas II was consumed by this culture and even went as far as bringing a steam engine from England to power the fountains in his park.

The Haydn Explosive served as an exhibition of not only the place of the fine arts in Austria during the turn of the 18^th century but showed how these cultures spread and interacted with each other all over Europe. The methods by which Haydn was employed and produced his music combined with the style and architecture of the Esterhazy palace, and even the palace itself shows how very different parts of Europe were consumed with similar cultural elements while still maintaining their own uniqueness.