Missa in Tempore Belli by Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)

In 1741, the 63-year old Antonio Vivaldi, his music no longer in fashion in Venice, moved to Vienna, where he expected to receive the patronage of Charles VI. But soon after Vivaldi’s arrival in Vienna, Charles died. Vivaldi had spent what savings he had in moving and setting up in Vienna; he was left destitute and died soon after. One of the choirboys who sang at Vivaldi’s grim funeral at St. Stephen’s Cathedral was the nine-year old Joseph Haydn.

Haydn had been born in the Austrian village of Rohrau, near the border with Hungary. His father was a millwright and his mother had been a cook. Neither had received any formal musical training, but his father played the harp and his mother sang. One day, Johann Matthias Franck, a relative who was a teacher and choirmaster at a school in nearby Hainburg, visited the Haydn family. His parents gave an impromptu concert and the five-year old Joseph was observed “sawing” on his left arm with a stick, as if he were playing the violin. But Franck noticed that the boy kept time correctly and deduced that he had a natural talent for music. Joseph was apprenticed to Franck and trained as a musician: reading, writing, singing, and playing string and wind instruments.

When Georg Reutter, the director of music at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, visited Hainburg in 1740, he was told of Joseph’s prowess as a singer, and the eight-year old Haydn was soon a choirboy in Vienna, then one of the political and cultural capitals of Europe. He was later joined by his younger brother Michael, who was an even better singer.

When Joseph’s voice broke, he was dismissed from St. Stephen’s and, at the age of 16, became a freelance musician and teacher. He earned a meagre living busking in the streets, as an accompanist, and as a teacher of aristocratic young ladies. Meanwhile he was developing his compositional skills by reading works by Johann Joseph Fux and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and getting advice from the Italian composer Nicola Antonio Porpora, who was then living in Vienna.

By 1761, Haydn was in the employ of the wealthy Esterházy family where he was to remain for almost 30 years, composing mainly chamber music, keyboard works, operas, concertos and symphonies. A few liturgical works were composed in this period, but, in 1782 Emperor Joseph II (who had famously commented to the young Mozart that his opera Die Entfhrung aus dem Serail had “too many notes”) decreed that masses with orchestral accompaniment and “operatic” arias were forbidden in Austria, and Haydn composed no masses between 1782 and 1796.

In 1790, Nicolaus Esterházy died and was succeeded by an unmusical Prince who immediately dismissed all the chamber musicians. Haydn might have remembered Antonio Vivaldi’s experience in similar circumstances almost 50 years before. But Haydn was anything but out of fashion; his music had been widely published and was much appreciated throughout Europe. He was now free to accept an offer by impresario Johann Peter Salomon for a concert tour of England.

This was an enormous success, both artistically and financially. According to Charles Burney,

In 1791, Haydn attended a Handel Celebration in London. He was profoundly moved by how the English venerated that composer: when the Hallelujah chorus started up, the whole congregation, including the King and Queen, rose up in homage.

A second tour was quickly arranged for 1794. Haydn composed some of his best symphonies for these tours. He even had a romantic fling with Rebecca Schroeter, a musically talented widow who was living in London.

When Haydn returned to live in Vienna, he was wealthy, independent, and motivated to do great things: he was now going to compose music for posterity, not just for the next Esterházy banquet. The two great Handel-inspired oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons, are from this period. Also, in 1795, the 1782 edict of Joseph II was revoked and Haydn composed six superlative orchestral masses before illness curtailed his composing. The second of this series of six “late” masses was the Missa in tempore belli (Mass In Time of War), also known as the Paukenmesse (Kettledrum Mass).

The composition was started in 1796, immediately after a performance of the first of the late masses at Eisenstadt, the summer home of the Esterházy family. Austria was in turmoil; it had attacked France in 1793 in an attempt to restore the monarchy there after the execution of Louis XVI, but Napoleon’s army was advancing steadily toward Vienna from the south. This explains Haydn’s description of it as a Mass “in time of war.”

The first performance was at the Piaristenkirche church in Vienna. The son of the Minister of War Finance had been admitted to the priesthood and was to celebrate his first Mass.

Apparently the family spared no expense; one of the items in the record of expenses is payment for 7 kegs of beer for the musicians.

In 1797, the political situation worsened. By now, Napoleon’s army had occupied Graz, Austria’s second-largest city, just two days march from Vienna. Nevertheless, that summer Haydn went to Eisenstadt, even closer to Graz, and conducted the Mass there on September 29th. In the Agnus Dei, Haydn uses the timpani and trumpets to produce “sounds of battle,” which the congregations may have thought were coming from just over the horizon. The next and concluding movement of the Mass is the Dona Nobis Pacem, the prayer for peace; the congregations in Vienna and Eisenstadt would certainly have taken this to heart. A temporary peace for Austria came on October 17th with the Treaty of Campo Formio, but the war soon resumed. Haydn died in 1809, shortly after a cannon attack on Vienna by Napoleon's army.