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Haydn’s music expansion exposed

Professor of Music Kathleen Lamkin takes her turn in the Faculty Lecture Series Monday afternoon with “Recent Findings Regarding the Early Dissemination of Haydn’s Music in Central Europe.” Her presentation explained findings during her spring 2012 sabbatical and travels to Germany and Austria. / photo by Hunter Cole
Professor of Music Kathleen Lamkin takes her turn in the Faculty Lecture Series Monday afternoon with “Recent Findings Regarding the Early Dissemination of Haydn’s Music in Central Europe.” Her presentation explained findings during her spring 2012 sabbatical and travels to Germany and Austria. / photo by Hunter Cole

Mariela Patron
Staff Writer

Kathleen Lamkin, professor of music, discussed her discoveries made during her sabbatical regarding the duplication of Austrian composer, Joseph Haydn’s music, in Central Europe during the 17th century on Monday in the President’s Dining Room.

Throughout the faculty lecture, Lamkin showed pictures of the places she visited in Europe to explain the journey she took to study the history behind Haydn’s duplicated compositions.

“We would look at copies of Haydn’s music from the Moravian libraries,” Lamkin said.

While traveling Europe in the spring and summer of 2012, Lamkin focused specifically on studying the copies made by the Moravians. Moravia was a part of Austria, and now is part of the Czech Republic.

The Moravians would embrace all types of music as part of their culture, unlike the Puritans who would be stricter on what kind of music they played, Lamkin said.

Lamkin visited the Moravian communities in eastern Germany, where a group of Moravians settled after being persecuted for their religion.

In Herrnhut, Germany, she visited the in archives of the Moravian Church and looked at copies, as well as diaries and obituaries of possible copyists.

Lamkin found copies with water marks impressed onto the paper copies of Hayn’s compositions. Among them were marks with religious figures and some marked with the name “Reinertz.”

The watermarks make it easier to link when the composition was copied as well as locate them to a particular place. The Reinertz clue led Lamkin to a paper mill surrounded by water in German Silesia, which is now present day Poland.

A water mark expert working at the paper mill dated the specific watermark sometime between 1805 and 1835, Lamkin said.

“Haydn organized copies of his music to be sold,” Lamkin said. “But once it’s out there, everyone can make copies.”

The Moravians were a huge source for the distribution of copies and they were often duplicated with mistakes.

Lamkin said that there is not enough research to know the type or the amount of mistakes these copies have.

Haydn made the majority of his money from being a full time employee, like being a music director, or composing music for people.

“This was the beginning of string quartets,” Lamkin said.

Early copies of Haydn’s music were made by Furnberg’s copyists, she said.

Michael Lamkin, husband of Kathleen Lamkin, who also helped her with research, explained how Haydn wrote for the Esterhazy family. While employed by them, Haydn was not allowed to distribute any new music written for them within the first six months.

“Then Hayden could sell it if he could find someone that hadn’t copied it,” Michael Lamkin said.

Although 18th century copyright laws did exist, they were not enforced, Kathleen Lamkin said.

“It was largely illicit that people could simply copy it,” said Al Clark, associate vice president of academic affairs.

Clark compared Haydn’s copyists to illegal downloading happening today.

There are at least 200 unknown copyists, and it is hard to tell how many people duplicated Haydn’s music.

Haydn was so popular that people would compose music and put his name on it, Michael Lamkin said.

“Scholars have now sorted out what music is Hayden’s and which is not,” he said.

Kathleen Lamkin ended her lecture with playing an early symphony composition of Haydn.

Mariela Patron can be reached at mariela.patron@laverne.edu.

Mariela Patron, News Editor
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