CHAPTER VIII

1795-1809


During his stay in London, Haydn's good wife had asked him to buy her
that house in the suburbs of Vienna which would come in so conveniently
when he left her a widow. The request was not entirely wasted--that is,
he bought the house, made some additions, and from 1797 lived in it
himself. Here he composed _The Creation, The Seasons,_ and the bulk of
his church music; and here he died.

It is said that the notion of composing the Austrian National Hymn was
suggested to Haydn by the Prussian National Hymn which George I. had
brought to England with him from his beloved Hanover; but however that
may be, and whether the abominable melody known then and now as "God
Save the King" inspired him or not, he determined to write a tune for
his countrymen, and he did. On the Emperor's birthday in 1799 the new
tune was played in every theatre in the Empire. Next to the
_Marseillaise_, it is certainly the finest thing of the sort in
existence.

Salomon had wanted Haydn to write an oratorio in London, and handed him
a copy of a libretto of _The Creation_, which one Lidley had compiled
from the Bible and Milton's "Paradise Lost" for Handel. The proposal
came to nothing then, but when Haydn got comfortably settled down in
Vienna van Swieten repeated the suggestion. This van Swieten had been a
parasitic patron of Mozart. He was an enthusiast for the older-fashioned
forms of music, and he had concerts of oratorio in an institution of