page_title: Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser
section_title: Composition
hierarchical_section_title: Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser / Composition
caption_attribution_description: English: Joseph Haydn: Kaiserlied (Hob XXVIa:43). Draft of the melody with the four stanzas. Perhaps between October 1796 and January 1797. Deutsch: Joseph Haydn: Kaiserlied (Hob XXVIa:43). Entwurf der Melodie mit den vier Strophen. Vielleicht zwischen Oktober 1796 und Januar 1797.
context_page_description: "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" was a personal anthem to Francis II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and later of the Austrian Empire, with lyrics by Lorenz Leopold Haschka and music by Joseph Haydn. It is sometimes called the "Kaiserhymne". Haydn's tune has since been widely employed in other contexts: in works of classical music, in Christian hymns, in alma maters, and as the tune of the "Deutschlandlied", the national anthem of Germany.
context_section_description: As elsewhere in Haydn's music, it has been conjectured that Haydn took part of his material from folk songs he knew. This hypothesis has never achieved unanimous agreement, the alternative being that Haydn's original tune was adapted by the people in various versions as folk songs. For discussion, see Haydn and folk music.
  One claimed folk source of "Gott erhalte" is a Croatian song, known in Međimurje and northern regions of Croatia under the name "Stal se jesem". The version below was collected by a field worker in the Croatian-speaking Austrian village of Schandorf.
  Irrespective of the original source, Haydn's own compositional efforts went through multiple drafts, discussed by Rosemary Hughes in her biography of the composer. Hughes reproduces the draft fragment given below (i.e., the fifth through eighth lines of the song) and writes: "His sketches, preserved in the Vienna National Library, show the self-denial and economy with which he struggled to achieve [the song's] seemingly inevitable climax, pruning the earlier and more obviously interesting version of the fifth and sixth lines, which would have anticipated, and so lessened, its overwhelming effect."
  The original version of the song (see autograph score, above) included a single line for voice with a rather crude piano accompaniment, with no dynamic indications and what Jones calls "an unevenness of keyboard sonority". This version was printed in many copies (two different printers were assigned to the work) and sent to theatres and opera houses across the Austrian territories with instructions for performance. The Vienna premiere took place in the Burgtheater on 12 February 1797, the day the song was officially released. The Emperor was present, attending a performance of Dittersdorf's opera Doktor und Apotheker and Joseph Weigl's ballet Alonzo und Cora. The occasion celebrated his 29th birthday.
  Not long after, Haydn later wrote three additional versions of his song:
  He first wrote a version for orchestra, called "much more refined" by Jones.
  During 1797, Haydn was working on a commission for six string quartets from Count Joseph Erdödy. He conceived the idea of composing a slow movement for one of the quartets consisting of the Emperor's hymn as theme, followed by four variations, each involving the melody played by one member of the quartet. The finished quartet, now often called the "Emperor" quartet, was published as the third of the Opus 76 quartets, dedicated to Count Erdödy. It is perhaps Haydn's most famous work in this genre.
  The last version Haydn wrote was a piano reduction of the quartet movement, published by Artaria in 1799. The publisher printed it with the original cruder piano version of the theme, though a modern edition corrects this error.
caption: Autograph sketch of "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser"
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