Thank you Mark, I would have enjoyed this very much...but I missed it. I've been struggling with unreliable or no internet access in a rural area...
Anna, I've read that the story of the pen - watch swap originated with Georg Griesinger, a friend of Haydn's and author of an early biography of the composer that I believe is still considered reasonably sound by scholars. So perhaps it's more than just a nice yarn. " When Lord Nelson traveled through Vienna, he asked for a worn out pen that Haydn had used in his composing, and made him a present of his watch in return." (Georg August Griesinger,
Biographical Notes Concerning Joseph Haydn)
In some accounts Nelson asks for the pen with which Haydn wrote out the D minor mass; and gives Haydn his own "gold" watch. Haydn wrote this mass in July and August 1798, and met Nelson in September 1800. I wonder if he would have been able to produce that very pen two years later...
There are a few texts out there specifically dealing with this famous meeting, none of which I've read.
Among them are the The Nelson Society's
Admiral Nelson and Joseph Haydn, an English translation of Otto Erich Deutsch's work originally published in German. Unfortunately the Nelson Society's on-line store is down indefinitely. (No phone orders either.) I'm having a copy sent to my local library through the ILLiad program, because used editions listed on-line are priced at anywhere between $64 and $250. Read German and save money: copies of
Admiral Nelson und Joseph Haydn start at around $15.00.
"Admiral Nelson's Journey Through Germany" by R. P. Keigwin appeared in
The Mariner's Mirror, volume 21, number 2, 1935. Anyone have
The Mariner's Mirror on CD ROM, or a hard copy?
The June 1939 edition of
The Musical Times and Singing-Class Circular included D. Millar Craig's "When Haydn Met Nelson." The library here seems to have one in the closed stacks I can copy.
Kester, Carola Oman, in
Nelson, states that Haydn "left in his will engravings of Lord Nelson and Aboukir Bay." Maybe the warship drawing was in with those?
I'd like to know what happened to the watch! That would be worth
double relic points.
Gretchen