Birth of Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn was born on 31 March 1732 in Rohrau. An Austrian composer, Haydn spent nearly three decades in the service of the Esterházy princes, working at their remote palaces and writing music for their court. His isolation, he later said, forced him to be original. He is called the father of the symphony and the string quartet because he did so much to establish these forms. His works include more than one hundred symphonies, notably the London symphonies written for visits to England in the 1790s, and the oratorios The Creation and The Seasons. He was a friend of Mozart and briefly taught Beethoven. His tune for the Emperor's Hymn later became the melody of the German national anthem.

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