Did Haydn study Bach or not?

Question

Did Haydn study Bach or not?

Answer 1

he most probably did NOT. js bach was forgotten shortly after his death in 1750. hardly anyone remembered him. his sons went their own ways and evidently didnt recycle their fathers stuff. haydn was roman catholic and lived in austria, bach was protestant and lived in germany. he was rediscovered by mendelssohn who performed his st matthew passion almost 100 years later. cpe bach is a different world. js bach is baroque, cpe bach is "emfindsame stil". the composers who influenced haydn according to what he himself stated were mattheson and fux, most certainly not js bach. but he certainly got to know some of his cantatas when he traveled around as a choirboy when people still knew that js bach existed.

Answer 2

I would venture to say that while Haydn was probably not intimately familiar with Bach s great choral and orchestral works, he undoubtedly knew at least some of the keyboard works (i.e., the Well-Tempered Clavier) which survived and were included in the keyboard repertoire of Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Lizst, and Brahms. They were particularly valued for piano pedagogy and good fugal writing. It is somewhat of a Romantic myth that J.S. Bach was entirely forgotten. The truth is that among keyboardists he never faded into oblivion.

Answer 3

Shawn W is right about most people at the time forgetting about Bach,

but I can name one person who didn't.

Baron Gottfriend van Swieten was an avid connoisseur of music of the early Eighteenth Century.

He invited Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven to his home and made sure that all three compsers were thorougly instructed therein.

Answer 4

I would imagine so, if he studied the work of his son.



"and carefully studied the work of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whom he later acknowledged as an important influence." - wiki



and again,



"Haydn's early work dates from a period in which the compositional style of the High Baroque (seen in Bach and Handel) had gone out of fashion. This was a period of exploration and uncertainty, and Haydn, born 18 years before the death of Bach, was himself one of the musical explorers of this time.[53] An older contemporary whose work Haydn acknowledged as an important influence was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.[21]" - wiki

Answer 5

Its most probable he did.