Hungarian noble family, noted as musical patrons. They are particularly associated with Joseph Haydn, who served four of the princes: Paul Anton (b 22 April 1711; d 18 March 1762; reigned from 1734), his brother Nikolaus (Joseph) ‘the Magnificent’ (b 18 Dec 1714; d 28 Sept 1790), Nikolaus’s son (Paul) Anton (b 11 April 1738; d 22 Jan 1794), and Anton’s son Nikolaus (b 12 Dec 1765; d 25 Nov 1833). Their ancestral castle is in Eisenstadt (in Hungarian, Kismarton), and the summer residence of Prince Nikolaus ‘the Magnificent’, was Eszterháza. (Their first names are sometimes cited in their Hungarian forms: Pál, Antal, Miklós etc..) The first of these, Paul Anton, was a grandson of the composer Prince Pál Esterházy and a great-grandson of Nikolaus Esterházy (b 8 April 1582/3; d 11 Sept 1645). Created palatine in 1625 and count in 1626, Nikolaus already maintained a musical establishment. He acquired from two marriages a fortune which formed the basis of the Esterházys’ wealth. From the reign of Prince Pál (whose title was extended to the eldest son and tenant in tail in 1712) and his son Michael [Mihály] (b 4 May 1671; d 24 March 1721) five Kapellmeister are known: Paul Klebovszky (in the period 1674–7), Franz Schmidtbauer or Schmiedbauer (b ?Vienna, c1648–9; d Eisenstadt, 22 March 1701), Franz Rumpelnig (c1702–4), F.A. Payr (until 1714; d Eisenstadt, 20 Aug 1733) and W.F. Zivilhofer (1714–20). Prince Michael was succeeded by his half-brother Joseph ([József] Anton) (b 12 May 1687; d 6/7 June 1721), who died after only two and a half months; he was the father of Paul Anton and Nikolaus. His wife, Princess Maria Octavia (c1686–1762), acted as regent for Paul Anton, 1721–34; she maintained a small ensemble, at first directed by the bass J.G. Thonner (c1694–1761). On 10 May 1728 she appointed Gregor Joseph Werner as conductor, a position he held until 1766. During her regency and the reigns of her sons the household’s Hungarian character was lost; it was she who introduced German as the court language.
Prince Paul Anton, who in 1734 married Maria Anna Louise, formerly the Marchioness of Lunati Visconti (c1710–82), appointed Haydn in 1761 as vice-Kapellmeister, making him Werner’s subordinate in choral music but otherwise fully responsible. Paul Anton himself played the violin, flute and lute and began an important music collection. His brother, Prince Nikolaus ‘the Magnificent’, whom Haydn served for almost three decades, married Maria Elisabeth, formerly Countess Weissenwolf (1718–90), in 1737; he had an exceptional love of art and music and lived in a truly princely style. In the 1760s he built the Esterházy family palace, Eszterháza, on the Neusiedler See, with its own opera house and marionette theatre (for illustration see Eszterháza); thereafter he spent more of the year there, with his household, his orchestra and his opera singers, leaving only the chapel choir in Eisenstadt. He played the cello, the viola da gamba and probably the violin, and had a particular predilection for the baryton (viola di bordone), for which Haydn and other composers wrote numerous pieces with him in mind. In July 1782 or 1783 the emperor bestowed the rank of prince on all descendants of the line. This has led to confusion as to which Prince Nikolaus Esterházy was a member of the Vienna Masonic Lodge ‘Neu-gekrönte Hoffnung’ in 1790–93, and thus a lodge brother of Mozart in the last two years of the latter's life. Strebel believes this Nikolaus Esterházy, who served the lodge as Master of Ceremonies in 1790, was most likely the second son of Nikolaus the Magnificent (1741–1809). Prince Anton was twice married, to Maria Therese, formerly Countess Erdődy (1745–82), on 10 January 1763, and to Maria Anna, formerly Countess Hohenfeld (b 1767), on 9 August 1785. He did not share his father’s fondness for music, and when he succeeded in 1790 he disbanded the orchestra (Haydn retained the title of Kapellmeister). Haydn left for Vienna and then visited London, and as he remained in Vienna only briefly between his first and second visits, he had little contact with Anton, the third of his Esterházy employers, news of whose death reached him in London. On 28 January 1799 Anton’s widow married Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg. Prince Nikolaus married Maria (Josepha Hermenegild), formerly Princess of Liechtenstein (1768–1845), on 15 September 1783; it was he who revived the disbanded orchestra. He is reputed to have had an unlimited enthusiasm for the arts and sciences and spent vast sums on his collections. He was specially fond of church music; it was his desire to celebrate his wife’s name day with a new mass each year that stimulated the composition of the six large-scale masses between 1796 and 1802, the crowning achievement of Haydn’s church music. Beethoven’s C major Mass op.86 (1807) was also commissioned by Nikolaus. A portrait by Joseph Fischer shows him playing the clarinet.
Haydn’s successor as Kapellmeister was J.N. Fuchs (d Eisenstadt, 29 Oct 1839), who had first been engaged in 1788 as a violinist. He had been appointed vice-Kapellmeister in 1802 and it was on him that the task of conducting the choral music fell during Haydn’s absence, while supervision of the instrumental music was entrusted to the Konzertmeister, A.L. Tomasini. From 1804 to 1811 J.N. Hummel was also engaged at the Esterházy court as a Konzertmeister. The Austrian financial crisis of 1811, however, permanently ended the brilliance of life at the court. The extensive musical collection of the Esterházy archives has now been broken up: the secular works were moved to Hungary at the beginning of the 1920s and are now in the Széchényi National Library, Budapest, while the sacred works remain in Eisenstadt.
Several members of the cadet branch of the family are also of interest to musical history. At a memorial service for Count Franz [Ferenc] Esterházy (b 19 Sept 1715; d 7 Nov 1785) and the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, arranged by the Vienna Masonic Lodge ‘Nev-gekrönte Hoffnung’, Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music k477/479a was performed; ‘Quinquin’, the count’s Lotharingian sobriquet, was adopted by Hugo von Hofmannsthal in Der Rosenkavalier. Each Monday and Friday during March 1784 Mozart performed in the concerts organized by Count Johann ([János] Nepomuk) Esterházy (b 18 Oct 1754; d 23 Feb 1840); in 1788 he conducted a performance there of C.P.E. Bach’s Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu and in 1789 his arrangement of Handel’s Messiah k572. Count Johann (Karl) Esterházy (b 1775; d 21 Aug 1834), who married Countess Rosine Festetics (1779–1854), engaged Franz Schubert to teach his daughters Marie (1802–37) and Caroline (1805–51). Schubert dedicated the F minor Fantasy for piano, four hands, D940, to Caroline; in recent literature there has been much speculation about the nature of their relationship. It was probably at the Pressburg home of Count Michael Esterházy (b 9 Feb 1783; d 4 Dec 1874) that the nine-year-old Franz Liszt played on 26 November 1820; his success was such that his father, a bailiff on the sheep farm owned by the Esterházy princes in Raiding, was granted an annual income of 600 florins for a period of six years by the count and four other Hungarian nobles.
WurzbachL
Beschreibung des Hochfürstlichen Schlosses Esterháss im Königreiche Ungern (Pressburg, 1784)
V. Papp: Beethoven és a magyarok (Budapest, 1927), 51–88
A. Valkó: ‘Haydn magyarországi működése a levéltári akták tükrében’ [Haydn’s activities in Hungary as revealed in the archives], ZT, vi (1957), 627–67; viii (1960), 527–668 [with Ger. summaries]
J. Harich: Esterházy-Musikgeschichte im Spiegel der zeitgenössischen Textbücher (Eisenstadt, 1959)
M. Horányi: Eszterházi vigasságok (Budapest, 1959; Eng. trans., 1962, as The Magnificence of Eszterháza)
M. Hokky-Sallay: A fertödi Esterházy-kastély (Budapest, 1959; Eng. trans., rev., 1979)
J. Harich: ‘Das Repertoire des Opernkapellmeisters Joseph Haydn in Eszterháza (1780–1790)’, Haydn Yearbook 1962, 9–110
H.C.R. Landon: ‘Haydn’s Marionette Operas and the Repertoire of the Marionette Theatre at Esterháza Castle’, Haydn Yearbook 1962, 111–93
J. Harich: ‘Das fürstlich Esterházy’sche Fideikommiss’, Haydn Yearbook 1968 [iv], 5–38
J. Harich: ‘Das Opernensemble zu Eszterháza im Jahr 1780’, Haydn Yearbook 1970, 5–46
J. Harich: ‘Anfänge der Musikpflege in der Residenz des Palatins Nikolaus Esterházy’, ÖMz, xxv (1970), 221–8
H. Dreo: ‘Die fürstlich Esterházysche Musikkapelle von ihren Anfängen bis zum Jahre 1766’, Jb für österreichische Kulturgeschichte, i/2 (1971), 80–115
J. Harich: ‘Franz Liszt: Vorfahren und Kinderjahre’, ÖMz, xxvi (1971), 503–14
J. Harich: ‘Inventare der Esterházy-Hofmusikkapelle in Eisenstadt’, Haydn Yearbook 1975, 5–125
K. Bárdos: A tatai Esterházyak zenéje 1727–1846 [Music of the Esterházy court in Tata, 1727–1846] (Budapest, 1978)
U. Tank: Studien zur Esterházyschen Hofmusik von etwa 1620 bis 1790 (diss., U. of Cologne, 1979)
E. Radant: ‘A Facsimile of Hummel's Catalogue of the Princely Music Library in Eisenstadt, with Transliteration and Commentary’, Haydn yearbook 1980, 5–182
U. Tank: ‘Die Dokumente der Esterházy-Archiv zur fürstlichen Hofkapelle, 1761–1770’, Haydn-Studien, iv/3–4 (1980), 129–333
P. Petrobelli: ‘Goldoni at Esterháza: the Story of his Librettos set by Haydn’, Joseph Haydn: Bericht über den Internationen Joseph Haydn Kongress: Vienna 1982, 314–18
U. Tank: ‘Die Esterházy-Dokumente und ihre Bedeutung für die Lösung von Chronologieproblemen im Werk von Joseph Haydn’, ibid., 543–9
R. von Zahn: ‘Der fürstlich Esterházysche Notenkopist Joseph Elssler sen.’, Haydn-Studien, vi (1986–94), 130–47
N. Zaslaw, ed.: The Classical Era (London, 1989)
H. Strebel: Der Freimaurer Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (Stäfa, 1991)
E. Radant, ed.: ‘Die acta musicalia des Esterházy-Archives’, Haydn Yearbook 1993, 115–96
E. Radant and H.C.R. Landon: ‘Dokumente aus den Esterházy-Archiven in Eisenstadt und Forchtenstein, herausgegeben aus den Nachlass von János Hárich’, ibid., 1–109; 1994, 1–359
R. Steblin: ‘Neue Forschungsaspekte zu Caroline Esterházy’, Schubert durch die Brille, xi (1993), 21–33
P. Sárközy: ‘Les spectacles ŕ la cour des Esterházy comme modčle du théâtre européen’, Le théâtre et l’opéra sous le signe de l’histoire (Paris, 1994), 143–54
R. Steblin: ‘Le mariage malheureux de Caroline Esterházy: une histoire authentique, telle qu'elle est retracée dans les lettres de le familie Crenneville’, Cahiers F. Schubert, v (1994), 17–34
N. Rast: ‘Schubert's F minor Fantasy, D940 and the Countess Caroline Esterházy: a Coded Declaration of Love?’, Leading Notes: Journal of the National Early Music Association, xiv (1997), 17–22
J.W. McGrann: ‘Of Saints, Name Days and Turks: some Background on Haydn's Masses Written for Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy’, JMR, xvii (1998), 195–210
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