Haydnhaus

NEW OPENING HOURS FROM 1.1.2010:
Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Closed on 1.1., 1.5., 25.12., Easter- and Whit Monday and all public holidays on Mondays.

2009 is the two hundredth anniversary of the death of Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). To raise the curtain on the celebratory year, the Wien Museum is holding a new permanent exhibition in the Haydnhaus, the composer’s final home. The focus is on the last years of Haydn’s life, with links drawn to the political and social context of his time.

Joseph Haydn acquired the residential home in Gumpendorf, at the time one of the more outlying of the Viennese suburbs, in between his two stays in England. He extended it by one storey and moved in in 1797 at the advanced age of 64. He spent the last twelve years of his life in this house, and died here, on May 31, 1809.

Visitors from the past and the present

The exhibition focuses on Joseph Haydn’s music, the way he lived and aged. Haydn’s popularity and reputation at this time had reached its zenith. He was celebrated internationally, admired by his composer colleagues, courted by music publishers. Numerous visitors from home and abroad paid their respects to Haydn in this house. Their records and memoirs served as a starting point for curator Werner Hanak-Lettner in designing the exhibition: “In his final years Haydn was the most famous composer in Europe. I was fascinated to see who and how many people paid him their respects. Their accounts give us many clues as to life in this house, to Haydn’s struggle with his last works, and with the symptoms of old age.”

As an “introduction” to the exhibition city portraits of London and Vienna have been designed which lead today’s visitor into the life and world around 1800. Accompanied by the guests of those years,whose portraits and comments on their host line the way up, we enter Haydn’s flat on the first floor. Thanks to careful restoration the lay-out of the rooms corresponds exactly to that of the original apartment.

The place where “The Creation”
and “The Seasons” were created

The most important works of his old age were created in this, the last of his homes, including the two oratorios “The Creation” (1796 – 1798) and “The Seasons” (1799 – 1801). Haydn at this time went through one of the most fruitful stages of his life in creative terms: “Imagination plays on me as if I were a piano.” Yet at the same time Haydn’s sunset years were marked by the loss of vigour.

The exhibition includes some of those scores which Haydn had already framed and hung up in his bedroom. In the room that was set aside for “honourable things”, the medals, certificates and presents which Haydn had received from the rich and the powerful of his time are on show, objectshe showed to his guests with great pride. Besides Haydn’s piano, there is also his clavichord, one of the main objects of the exhibition, which was acquired by Brahms later on. This instrument has been extended by numerous new exhibits.

The creator’s garden

In tales recounted by guests, the composer’s garden is constantly mentioned. It has been redesigned in cooperation with the Vienna City Gardens – an attempt at a bourgeois garden around 1800. The opening of the garden will take place at the end of May on the occasion of a large celebration to mark the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death (May 29/30/31).

A house that is also a memorial

Soon after Haydn’s death the building turned into a memorial. The “Haydn” Orchestra Club rented a part of the house and laid the foundation for a Haydn Museum, which opened in 1899. Since 1904 the commemorative house has been owned by the City of Vienna and so is the oldest museum-cummusician’s flat of the Wien Museum. Johannes Brahms, an ardent admirer of Haydn, made considerable effort to keep the memory of his great hero alive. A separate room has been dedicated to Brahms in the Haydnhaus.

The newly conceived Haydn display opens up new aspects both of the composer and his era. The main concern of curators Werner Hanak-Lettner and Alexandra Hönigmann-Tempelmayr has been to document the phase in Haydn’s life that he spent in this house. In this way he is presented in a new light, one that reflects his epoch and his contemporaries. The exhibition was designed by the architects Kirchweger und Zechner as well as by graphic artists bauer - konzept & gestaltung.

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