Markus Becker writes: “Solitude, or, more exactly, isolation, is what marked Haydn’s biography the most. Composing at the Esterházy court, he lived far from Vienna,...

Markus Becker writes: “Solitude, or, more exactly, isolation, is what marked Haydn’s biography the most. Composing at the Esterházy court, he lived far from Vienna, without having to bother with the distractions of socializing among the upper set in the Imperial city. Haydn could remain at one with himself and his music, as he famously stated himself: “No one near could confuse me, so I was forced to become original.” Perhaps his situation in those surroundings allowed him the inner freedom to write a sort of music that seems to remain at one with itself. Of course this music is also “asking” to be awoken into sound, to be heard by others. Yet in another way, in a spectacularly unspectacular manner, it seems to be thoroughly introspective, listening to itself.