Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser

\new Staff <<

\clef treble \key g \major {

\time 4/4 \partial 2

\relative g' { \set Staff.midiInstrument = #"clarinet"

\repeat unfold 2 {

g4. a8 | b4 a c b | a8 (fis) g4 e' d | c b a b8 (g) | d'2 \bar "|" \break

}

a4 b | a8 (fis) d4 c' b | a8 (fis) d4 d' c | b4. b8 cis4 cis8 (d) | d2 \bar "|" \break

\repeat volta 2 {

g4. fis8 | fis8 ([ e8 ]) d4 e4. d8 | d8 ([ c8 ]) b4 a4. b16 (c) | d8 ([e]) c ([a]) g4 \appoggiatura b8 a8 (g) | g2

}

}

}

\new Lyrics \lyricmode {

Gott4. er8 -- hal4 -- te Franz den Kai -- ser,

Un -- sern gu -- ten Kai -- ser Franz!2

Lang4. -- e8 le4 -- be Franz der Kai -- ser,

In des Glück -- es hell -- stem Glanz!2

Ihm4 er -- blü -- hen Lor -- beer -- rei -- ser,

Wo er geht,4. zum8 Eh4 -- ren -- kranz!2

Gott4. er8 -- hal4 -- te Franz4. den8 Kai4 -- ser,

Un4. -- sern8 gu4 -- ten Kai -- ser Franz!2

}

>>

\layout { indent = #0 }

\midi { \tempo 4 = 90 }

The lyrics are as follows:

Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, unsern guten Kaiser Franz!

Lange lebe Franz der Kaiser, in des Glückes hellstem Glanz!

Ihm erblühen Lorbeerreiser, wo er geht, zum Ehrenkranz!

Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, unsern guten Kaiser Franz!

God save Francis the Emperor, our good Emperor Francis!

Long live Francis the Emperor in the brightest splendour of bliss!

May laurel branches bloom for him, wherever he goes, as a wreath of honour.

God save Francis the Emperor, our good Emperor Francis!{{clear|left}}

The song was written when Austria was seriously threatened by Revolutionary France and patriotic sentiments ran high. The story of the song's genesis was narrated in 1847 by Anton Schmid, who was Custodian of the Austrian National Library in Vienna:Quotation from {{harvnb|Robbins Landon|Jones|1988|p=[https://archive.org/details/haydnhislifemusi00land/page/300/mode/2up?q=Saurau 301]}}

{{blockquote|In England, Haydn came to know the favourite British national anthem, 'God Save the King', and he envied the British nation for a song through which it could, at festive occasions, show in full measure its respect, love, and devotion to its ruler.

When the Father of Harmony returned to his beloved Kaiserstadt,{{efn|German: 'city of the emperor'.}} he related these impressions to that real friend, connoisseur, supporter and encourager of many a great and good one of Art and Science, Freiherr van Swieten, Prefect of the I. R. Court Library, who at the time was at the head of the Concert Spirituel (supported by high aristocracy) and likewise Haydn's particular patron."Concert Spirituel" normally denotes an important orchestra of Paris in Haydn's time; see Concert Spirituel. Here, however, it is more likely that Schmid was using the term to refer to the Gesellschaft der Associierten, a concert-sponsoring society of noblemen that Swieten had organized in Vienna. Swieten was not active in Paris. Haydn wished that Austria, too, could have a similar national anthem, wherein it could display a similar respect and love for its Sovereign. Also, such a song could be used in the fight then taking place with those forcing the Rhine; it could be used in a noble way to inflame the heart of the Austrians to new heights of devotion to the princes and fatherland, and to incite to combat, and to increase, the mob of volunteer soldiers who had been collected by a general proclamation.

Freiherr van Swieten hastily took counsel with His Excellency, the then President of Lower Austria, {{ill|Franz Josef von Saurau|de|lt=Franz Count von Saurau}} ... and so there came into being a song which, apart from being one of Haydn's greatest creations, has won the crown of immortality.

It is also true that this high-principled Count used the most opportune moment to introduce a Volksgesang,{{efn|German: "people's song"}} and thus he called to life those beautiful thoughts which will delight connoisseurs and amateurs here and abroad.

He immediately ordered the poet Lorenz Haschka to draft the poetry and then requested our Haydn to set it to music.

In January 1797, this double task was resolved, and the first performance of the Song was ordered for the birthday of the Monarch.|sign=|source=}}

Saurau himself later wrote:

I had a text fashioned by the worthy poet Haschka; and to have it set to music, I turned to our immortal compatriot Haydn, who, I felt, was the only man capable of creating something that could be placed at the side of ... "God Save the King".{{cite book|last=Landon|first=Howard Chandler Robbins|author-link=H. C. Robbins Landon|title=Haydn: Chronicle and Works|url=https://archive.org/details/haydnchroniclewo0000land|url-access=registration|year=1977|publisher=Thames and Hudson|page=[https://archive.org/details/haydnchroniclewo0000land/page/241 241]|isbn=9780500011645}}

"Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" was first performed on the Emperor's birthday, 12 February 1797. It proved popular, and came to serve unofficially as Austria's first national anthem.

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.

File:Haydn Kaiserlied Skizze.jpg

Irrespective of the original source, Haydn's own compositional efforts went through multiple drafts, discussed by Rosemary Hughes in her biography of the composer.{{sfn|Hughes|1970|p=124}} 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."

File:DraftVersionOfGottErhalteFranzDenKaiser.PNG

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 David Wyn Jones calls "an unevenness of keyboard sonority".{{harvnb|Jones|2009|p=120}} 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:

File:HaydnGottErhalteFranzDenKaiserQuartetVersionPianoReduction.ogg

• 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.{{sfn|Gerlach|1996|p=iv}} The publisher printed it with the original cruder piano version of the theme, though a modern edition corrects this error.{{harvnb|Gerlach|1996|p=v}}. Gerlach's edition of the work includes a facsimile of the original piano version.

Joseph Haydn seems to have been particularly fond of his creation. During his frail and sickly old age (1802–1809), the composer often would struggle to the piano to play his song, often with great feeling, as a form of consolation; and as his servant Johann Elssler narrated, it was the last music Haydn ever played:

The Kaiser Lied was still played three times a day, though, but on 26 May [1809] at half-past midday the Song was played for the last time and that 3 times over, with such expression and taste, well! that our good Papa was astonished about it himself and said he hadn't played the Song like that for a long time and was very pleased about it and felt well altogether till evening at 5 o'clock then our good Papa began to lament that he didn't feel well...{{sfn|Robbins Landon|Jones|1988|p=314}}

Elssler goes on to narrate the composer's final decline and death, which occurred on 31 May.

Later composers in the Western classical canon have repeatedly quoted or otherwise employed Haydn's tune, as is demonstrated by the following chronological list. As the tune was widely known, the uses by other composers were heard as quotations and served as an emblem of Austria, of Austrian patriotism, or of the Austrian monarchy.

• Philipp Jakob Riotte quotes the tune at the end of his battle piece Die Schlacht bei Leipzig (ca. 1814) in order to illustrate the joy after Napoleon's defeat in the Battle of Leipzig.
• Ludwig van Beethoven quotes the last four bars in "Es ist vollbracht", WoO 97, the finale of Georg Friedrich Treitschke's singspiel Die Ehrenpforten (1815). The work celebrates the end of the Napoleonic Wars, essentially the same conflict that gave rise to Haydn's original hymn. It is seldom performed today.For discussion see {{harvnb|Mathew|2013|p=103}}
• Carl Czerny wrote Variations on "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" for piano and orchestra or piano and string quartet, his Op. 73 (1824).[http://www.aeiou.at/aeiou.music.9.1/090112.htm;internal&action=_setlanguage.action?LANGUAGE=en "Carl Czerny: Variations op. 73 on Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser"], Aeiou Encyclopedia
• Gioachino Rossini used the tune in the banquet scene of his 1825 opera Il viaggio a Reims for the German Baron Trombonok.
• Niccolò Paganini wrote a set of variations on this tune for violin and orchestra in 1828, under the title Maestosa Sonata Sentimentale.{{cite journal|last=Barker|first=Andrew|title=Setting the Tone: Austria's National Anthems from Haydn to Haider|journal=Austrian Studies|date=2009|volume=17|pages=12–28|doi=10.1353/aus.2009.0019|jstor=27944906|s2cid=245841267}}
• Gaetano Donizetti used the tune in his opera Maria Stuarda (1835), at act 3, scene 8, "Deh! Tu di un'umile preghiera ..."
• Clara Schumann used the tune as the basis for her "Souvenir de Vienne", Op. 9 (1838) for solo piano.{{IMSLP|work=Souvenir de Vienne, Op.9 (Schumann, Clara)|cname="Souvenir de Vienne", Op. 9 (Clara Schumann)}}
• Bedřich Smetana used the tune in his Festive Symphony (1853), which the composer intended to dedicate to the Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.
• Henryk Wieniawski wrote a set of variations on the tune for unaccompanied violin (Variations on the Austrian National Anthem, from L'école Moderne, Op. 10; 1853).
• John Knowles Paine wrote a set of concert variations on this tune for organ as his Op. 3 (1860) .
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky arranged the work for orchestra in 1874, apparently in connection with a visit to Russia by the Austrian Emperor. The arrangement was published only in 1970.
• Anton Bruckner wrote his Improvisationskizze Ischl 1890 to be played on the organ during the wedding of Archduchess Marie Valerie of Austria.
• Béla Bartók employed the theme in his symphonic poem Kossuth (1903); in this patriotic work about the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1848 the theme serves as an emblem for the Austrian enemy.{{cite journal|last=Mikusi|first=Balázs|title=Review: Reviving Haydn: New Appreciations in the Twentieth Century (Eastman Studies in Music, vol. 124) by Bryan Proksch|journal=Notes|volume=74|number=1|date=September 2016|pages=86–88|doi=10.1353/not.2016.0114|s2cid=163899829}}

{{Infobox anthem

| title = Kaiserhymne

| transcription =

| english_title = Emperor's Hymn

| prefix = Imperial

| country = {{nowrap|the Habsburg monarchy}}

| alt_title = Gott erhalte, Gott beschütze

| en_alt_title = God preserve, God protect

| alt_title_2 = Volkshymne

| en_alt_title_2 = People's Hymn

| author = Johann Gabriel Seidl

| lyrics_date = 1854

| composer = Joseph Haydn

| music_date = 1797

| adopted = {{plainlist|

• 1854 (as Austria)
• 1867 (as Austria-Hungary)

}}

| until = 1918

| successor = "Deutschösterreich, du herrliches Land" (Austria)
"Himnusz" (Hungary)

| sound =

| sound_title =

}}

After the death of Francis in 1835, the tune was given new lyrics that praised his successor, Ferdinand: "Segen Öst'reichs hohem Sohne / Unserm Kaiser Ferdinand!" ("Blessings to Austria's high son / Our Emperor Ferdinand!"). After Ferdinand's abdication in 1848, the original lyrics were used again because his successor (Francis Joseph) was also named Francis. However, in 1854, yet again new lyrics were selected: "Gott erhalte, Gott beschütze / Unsern Kaiser, unser Land!" ("God preserve, God protect / Our Emperor, our country!").

There were versions of the hymn in several languages of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (e.g., Czech,

Croatian, Slovene, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Polish, Italian).

At the end of the First World War in 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was abolished and divided into multiple states, one of them being the residual state of Austria, which was a republic and had no emperor. The tune ceased to be used for official purposes. When the last Emperor, Charles I, died in 1922, monarchists created an original stanza for his son Otto von Habsburg. Since the emperor was in fact never restored, this version never attained official standing.

The hymn was revived in 1929 with completely new lyrics, known as "Sei gesegnet ohne Ende", which remained the national anthem of Austria until the Anschluss. The first stanza of the hymn's 1854 version was sung in 1989 during the funeral of Empress Zita of Austria{{YouTube|KLEsV8wLB90|Kaiserhymne 01.04.1989 Begräbnis Zita}} and again in 2011 during the funeral of her son Otto von Habsburg.{{YouTube|pMMhfR5i9wA|Kaiserhymne – Requiem für Otto von Habsburg, Trauergottesdienst in Wien, 16. Juli 2011}}

Long after Haydn's death, his melody was used as the tune for Hoffmann von Fallersleben's poem Das Lied der Deutschen (1841). The third stanza (which begins with "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit") is sung to the same melody, and is presently the national anthem of Germany.

In the ordinary nomenclature of hymn tunes, the melody of "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" is classified as 87.87D trochaic metre. When employed in a hymn it is sometimes known as "Austria", or "Austrian Hymn". It has been paired with various lyrics.

• Lyrics by John Newton which begin "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken/Zion, city of our God"First published in Olney Hymns (1779).
• Lyrics by Samuel Longfellow which begin "Light of ages and of nations"{{cite web |title=Light of ages and of nations |url=http://www.hymnary.org/text/light_of_ages_and_of_nations |website=Hymnary.org |language=en}}
• Lyrics by an unknown author which begin "Praise the Lord, Ye Heavens Adore Him"{{Cite web|title=Praise the Lord! Ye Heavens Adore Him|url=https://hymnary.org/text/praise_the_lord_ye_heavens_adore_him|access-date=2021-10-21|website=Hymnary.org|language=en}}

• The alma mater of Columbia University, "Stand, Columbia"{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t7MQAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA16|title=Columbia University Songs|date=1904|publisher=Oliver Ditson Company|language=en}}
• The alma mater of the University of Pittsburgh{{Cite journal|last=Spaeth|first=Sigmund|date=1936|title=The Tune Detective Goes Collegiate|journal=The American Scholar|volume=5|issue=1|pages=23–26|issn=0003-0937|jstor=41206409}}
• The alma mater of Western Reserve University (merged into Case Western Reserve University)
• The school song of Kwun Tong Government Secondary School{{cite web |title=School Song of Kwun Tong Government Secondary School |url=https://www.ktgss.edu.hk/CP/pG/6/4/17 |website=ktgss.edu.hk |language=en}}
• The alma mater of Illinois State University

In addition to the German lyrics, the song has been translated into many other languages spoken in the Holy Roman Empire.

During Haydn's lifetime, his friend the musicologist Charles Burney, made an English translation of the first verse which is more poetical albeit less literal than the one given above:

God preserve the Emp'ror Francis

Sov'reign ever good and great;

Save, o save him from mischances

In Prosperity and State!

May his Laurels ever blooming

Be by Patriot Virtue fed;

May his worth the world illumine

And bring back the Sheep misled!

God preserve our Emp'ror Francis!

Sov'reign ever good and great.

Burney's penultimate couplet about sheep has no counterpart in the original German and appears to be Burney's own contribution.

• Heil dir im Siegerkranz

{{notelist}}

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book|last=Gerlach|first=Sonja|year=1996|title=Haydn: Variationen über die Hymne "Gott erhalte"; authentische Fassung für Klavier|location=Munich|publisher=G. Henle}}
• {{cite book|last=Hughes|first=Rosemary|year=1970|title=Haydn|location=London|publisher=Dent}}
• {{cite book|last=Jones|first=David Wyn|author-link=David Wyn Jones|year=2009|title=Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn|location=Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press}}
• {{cite book|last=Mathew|first=Nicholas|year=2013|title=Political Beethoven|location=Cambridge|publisher=Cambridge University Press}}
• {{cite book|last1=Robbins Landon|first1=H. C.|author1-link=H. C. Robbins Landon|last2=Jones|first2=David Wyn|author2-link=David Wyn Jones|year=1988|title=Haydn: His Life and Music|location=Bloomington and Indianapolis|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=0-253-37265-8|url=https://archive.org/details/haydnhislifemusi00land/}}

• {{Commons category-inline}}

{{Former anthems of Europe}}

{{Joseph Haydn}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:1797 compositions

Category:Compositions by Joseph Haydn

Category:Compositions in E-flat major

Category:Historical national anthems

Category:Royal anthems

Category:National symbols of Austria-Hungary

Category:European anthems

Category:Songs in German

Category:Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor