Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 in Rohrau, a village in Lower Austria very close to the border with Burgenland - at that time the Austrian-Hungarian border, of course. At the age of six, the musically talented boy was brought to a relative to Hainburg where he was taught the basics of musical education. Two years later Haydn went to Vienna.

In 1761, Haydn came to Eisenstadt to the court of the Esterházys as a vice Kapellmeister, promoted Prince Paul Anton and especially by Prince Nikolaus. When the old Kapellmeister Gregor Werner died in 1766, Haydn succeeded. He was a true employee with the Esterházy family. Whenever they moved to the various palaces they possessed (e.g. Eszterháza at Lake Neusiedl), Haydn followed. He was a composer, the head of the orchestra, arranged operas and played chamber music for the Esterházys.

During the period in Eisenstadt, Haydn produced an overwhelming amount of compositions. In the 1780´s he was popular in whole Europe. At this time Haydn had a very close friend in Vienna, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They played in string quartets together.
When Prince Nikolaus died in 1790, Haydn and the whole musical staff were dismissed by the successor on the throne, who didn´t give a dime on music. So the great composer went to London and gained huge success and popularity.

In 1795, Joseph Haydn returned to Vienna and composed plenty of music in the following years. One of the best-known melodies is his Emperor, which was the Austrian anthem in monarchy times (“Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser”) and now is the German national anthem.
Around 1802, Haydn noticed that he was becoming seriously sick. He obviously was unable to continue composing. He died in 1809 at the age of 77. At his memorial service in the Viennese Schottenkirche Mozart´s Requiem was performed.

Haydn was buried in Vienna. In 1820, his corpse was exhumated due to an order by Prince Nikolaus II. and was brought to the Haydnkirche (Bergkirche) in Eisenstadt. But his head was missing, because someone had stolen it to make some medical experiments. In the following decades the skull of Joseph Haydn was stored in the museum of the Viennese Society of Music Friends. It was not before 1954 that the head of Joseph Haydn was brought to Eisenstadt. Gustinus Ambrosi, a famous sculptor and artist of Burgenland, reunited the skull with the rest of Haydn´s corpse.

Joseph Haydn´s works are listed: 104 symphonies, 24 operas, 14 masses and a lot of works in chamber music, concertos, piano trios, string quartets and baryitons etc. He also combined regional folk songs with his works. Further, his oratories “The Creation” and “The Seasons” are well-known all over the world. Mag. Walter Dujmovits jun.