Written by Robert Greenberg
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TTC - Great Masters: Haydn - His Life and Music
Taught By Professor Robert Greenberg, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley,
San Francisco Performances.

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The music of Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is so technically superb, so widely imitated, and so rich in quality and quantity that almost since the moment of its creation it has exemplified the Classical style.

More than any other single composer, it was Haydn who created the Classical-era symphony. And his 68 string quartets? They are the standard by which all other Classical string quartets were and are judged. No less an expert than Mozart wrote that it was from Haydn that he had learned how to write quartets.

And yet this gentle, creative dynamo, who penned more than 1,000 works over a 50-year career and remained musically vital well past middle age, is all too often thought of as an aged figure surpassed and overshadowed by Mozart and Beethoven.


8 Lectures
45 minutes / lecture

1 Introduction and Early Life
2 The Lean Years and the Pre-Classical Style
3 Haydn's Marriage and Esterháza
4 Esterháza Continued
5 The Classical String Quartet and the Classical Symphony
6 London
7 Beethoven, London Again, and Breakthrough
8 The Creation, The Seasons, and the End