This 18th century Austrian was the son of a wheelwright whose love for music led him to ignore his parents' wish for him to enter holy orders and insstead to doggedly pursue a musical career. He rose over the years of his life from a talented choirboy who sang for his neighbors to one of the most significant composers of his time. Deeply involved in the evolution of the Classical style, its subsequent growth can be seen in his own music. Under his care the symphony and the string quartet came to life. The great oratorios and masses of his late years belong to the consummation of the classical spirit in music. The New Grove Haydn takes an in-depth look at this fascinating composer.About The New Grove II Composer Biography Series:These new, fully re-written editions of some of the most popular titles in the New Grove composer biography series last published in the 1980s build on the enormous success of those books, offering fresh new insights drawn from the most recent scholarship. Focusing on some of the greatest and most influential composers of the last few centuries of the millennium, these titles are derived from the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Most excitingly, as they will be published before the dictionary, they offer sneak previews of some of the best, most up-to-date entries in this landmark, end-of-the-century edition of the most authoritative, comprehensive, and widely respected music encyclopedia in the world. In addition to the re-written editions of The New Grove Wagner, The New Grove Haydn,and The New Grove Mozart comes for the first time The New Grove Stravinsky, the first in a series of New Grove composer biographies that will cover the great masters of the 20th century, never before published as individual volumes. This series is edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. Both men live in the United Kingdom and have edited The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition.

James Webster is Goldwin Smith Professor of Music at Cornell University Georg Feder was director of the Joseph-Haydn-Institute in Cologne from 1960 until his retirement in 1990