|
It was shortly after his return to Vienna--in January 1797, to be
precise--that he composed his favourite air, "God preserve the
Emperor," better known as the Austrian Hymn. The story of this
celebrated composition is worth telling with some minuteness. Its
inception was due to Count von Saurau, Imperial High Chancellor
and Minister of the Interior. Writing in 1820, the count said:
I often regretted that we had not, like the English, a national
air calculated to display to all the world the loyal devotion of
our people to the kind and upright ruler of our Fatherland, and
to awaken within the hearts of all good Austrians that noble
national pride so indispensable to the energetic fulfillment of
all the beneficial measures of the sovereign. This seemed to me
more urgent at a period when the French Revolution was raging
most furiously, and when the Jacobins cherished the idle hope of
finding among the worthy Viennese partisans and participators
in their criminal designs. [The scandalous Jacobin persecutions
and executions in Austria and Hungary took place in 1796].
I caused that meritorious poet Haschka to write the words,
and applied to our immortal countryman Haydn to set them to
music, for I considered him alone capable of writing anything
approaching in merit to the English "God save the King." Such
was the origin of our national hymn.
It would not have been difficult to match "God save the King,"
the mediocrity of which, especially as regards the words, has
been the butt of countless satirists. Beethoven wrote in his
diary that he "must show the English what a blessing they have"
in that "national disgrace." If Haydn regarded it as a
"blessing," he certainly did not take it as a model. He produced
an air which, looking at it from a purely artistic point of view,
is the best thing of the national anthem kind that has ever been
written. The Emperor was enchanted with it when sung on his
birthday, February 12, 1797, at the National Theatre in Vienna,
and through Count Saurau sent the composer a gold box adorned
with a facsimile of the royal features. "Such a surprise and such
a mark of favour, especially as regards the portrait of my
beloved monarch," wrote Haydn, "I never before received in
acknowledgment of my poor talents."
|
|
