The Haydn and Croatian folk music reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Haydn and Croatian folk music

Joseph Haydn is known to have used many folk songs, usually modified in some way, in his compositions. An intriguing aspect of these folk songs is that many of them, perhaps most, are of Croatian ethnic origin. This article gives examples of his use of Croatian folk tunes and discusses Haydn's Croatian connection.

Table of contents

1 Examples 2 Haydn and Croatian ethnicity 3 External link

Examples

Here are some borrowings from Croatian folk music in Haydn's music:

• The opening theme of the finale of Haydn's Symphony No. 104 (the "London" Symphony) is based on the Croatian traditional song Oj, Jelena, Jelena, jabuka zelena ("Oh, Helen, Helen, green apple of mine").

• The finale of the "Drumroll" Symphony no. 103 begins with a theme based on the Croatian folk song Divojčica potok gazi ("A little girl treads on a brook").

• The tune of what is now the German national anthem was written by Haydn--paradoxically, to serve as the national anthem of Austria). The tune has its roots in an old folk song known in Medjimurje and northern regions of Croatia under the name "Stal se jesem". For details, see "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser." Amazingly, the second Austrian national song (Des ist mein Österreich) was written by Franz von Suppé, who was born in Croatian city of Split.

• A song widely known in Croatia, Nikaj na svetu lepšega ni, nego gorica kad nam rodi...)(Nothing more beautiful in the world than a fruitful hill), was used by Haydn in an early work, the Cassation in G major (1765).

Caution must be used in interpreting these similarities--we cannot be guaranteed that the direction of transmission was as indicated. In the case of "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser", the hypothesis has been offered that the Croatian versions collected by fieldworkers represent folklorically altered versions of a tune entirely by Haydn, imperfectly transmitted (as the national anthem) through the Austrian Empire.

Haydn and Croatian ethnicity

It is not clear why Haydn chose Croatian songs for his music. Perhaps he simply liked the Croatian songs the best. Perhaps he felt they would be most likely to be novel to his listeners, who were mostly of German or Hungarian ethnicity.

It has also been conjectured that Haydn was himself of Croatian ancestry and thus felt a personal tie to this music. The village of Rohrau in which he lived for his first six years was apparently a Croatian ethnic enclave, and the Slavic language variously known as Serbo-Croatian or Croatian (nationalist feelings generally determine which term is used) is still spoken in the area today.

Advocates of the Croatian hypothesis rely in part on the phonetic resemblance of the name Haydn to the Croatian names Hajdin, Hajdinjak, and other. The hypothesis evidently is that the Croats who migrated to Austria changed their names to something that sounded more German, much as the great piano maker Heinrich Steinweg became Henry Steinway when he moved to America. Croatianists cite with enthusiasm the prevalence and geographic spread of "Hajdinjak," noting that it occurs abundantly in the Croatian telephone book. There are 218 entries for Hajdinjak, mostly in the Medjimurje region (Cakovec, Prelog, and many smaller municipalities, as well as areas around Varazdin, Zagreb, even Zadar), 124 entries just for --Hajdin.

The scholarly literature on the Croatian question might fairly be said to be bogged down in ethnic controversy. Since the advocates of the view that Haydn was of Croatian ancestry have characteristically been Croatian themselves, and have advanced their view with fervent enthusiasm, mainstream Haydn scholars have perhaps been too eager to reject the Croatian hypothesis out of hand, as a mere manifestation of ethnic chauvinism. A more cautious opinion would be that the ethnic background of Joseph Haydn is simply --not known.

Many music lovers feel that Haydn's ethnicity is not only unknown, but irrelevant: his music would be equally significant and beautiful no matter who his ancestors were.

External link

• Excerpts from the book A Croatian Composer: Notes toward the study of Joseph Haydn, by William H. Hadow.

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