The Friends: Mozart and Haydn

Among great musicians, jealousy has often been a default setting. Not so with Mozart and Haydn. Whatever rivalries existed in their world, these two simply didn’t play that game.

Haydn had been writing symphonies before Mozart had made any real mark. But Mozart’s rise was so fast that he soon caught up—and even outpaced—the older master, until it sometimes felt as if Haydn was the one learning from Mozart. Mozart died in 1791; Haydn lived eighteen years longer and premiered The Creation eight years after Mozart’s death.

Their respect for each other was open and warm. Haydn wrote to a friend: “Oh, Mozart! … Mozart is incomparable… Forgive me if I get excited when speaking of him, I am so very fond of him.” Mozart was just as devoted. When Haydn left for England in 1791, Mozart said affectionately, “Oh, papa, you have had no training for the wide, wide world.” Haydn replied, “My language is spoken everywhere.” Mozart’s parting words—“We shall now, no doubt, take our last farewell in this world”—turned out to be true.

Mozart defended Haydn whenever anyone tried to nitpick. When Kozeluch pointed out “strange progressions” in Haydn and asked if Mozart would have written them, Mozart said, “I think not—and for this reason: neither you nor I would have thought of them.” And when a Viennese professor kept attacking Haydn, Mozart finally ended it: “Sir, if you and I were melted down together we could not furnish materials to make one Haydn.”