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Among the events of 1781-1782 should be noted the entertainments
given in connection with two visits which the Emperor Joseph II
received from the Grand Duke Paul and his wife. The Grand Duchess
was musical, and had just been present at the famous combat
between Clementi and Mozart, a suggestion of the Emperor. She had
some of Haydn's quartets played at her house and liked them so
well that she gave him a diamond snuff-box and took lessons from
him. It was to her that he afterwards--in 1802--dedicated his
part-songs for three and four voices, while the Grand Duke was
honoured by the dedication of the six so-called "Russian"
quartets. It had been arranged that the Duke and Duchess should
accompany the Emperor to Eisenstadt, but the arrangement fell
through, and an opera which Haydn had written for the occasion
was only produced at Esterhaz in the autumn of 1782. This was his
"Orlando Paladino," better known in its German form as "Ritter
Roland." Another work of this year (1782) was the "Mariazell"
Mass in C major (Novello, No. 15), which derives its name from
the shrine of the Virgin in Styria, the scene of an incident
already related. The mass was written to the order of a certain
Herr Liebe de Kreutzner, and the composer is said to have taken
special pains with it, perhaps because it reminded him of his
early struggling days as a chorister in Vienna. It was the eighth
mass Haydn had written, one being the long and difficult
"Cecilia" Mass in C major, now heard only in a curtailed form. No
other work of the kind was composed until 1796, between which
year and 1802 the best of his masses were produced. To the year
1783 belongs the opera "Armida," performed in 1784 and again in
1797 at Schickaneder's Theatre in Vienna. Haydn writes to Artaria
in March 1784 to say that "Armida" had been given at Esterhaz
with "universal applause," adding that "it is thought the best
work I have yet written." The autograph score was sent to London
to make up, in a manner, for the non-performance of his "Orfeo"
there in 1791.
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