Franz Joseph Haydn's career was definitely a plane he built in the air. The Austrian composer started out as a chorister at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where he developed a reputation for his clear and wonderful singing voice as a child. Records conflict if he was dismissed from the Kapellhaus because he – ahem  – "aged out" of the desirable singing age or because he allegedly snipped off an entire pigtail of a fellow chorister. Either way, in 1749, teenage Haydn was forced to figure his life out on his own. 

 

From then, Haydn floundered a bit professionally. He was lucky to have wealthy friends who would take him in (much preferred to couch surfing), but his lack of theoretical music training at the Cathedral proved to limit his career. Eventually he was hired as a valet-accompanist for the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, who identified his compositional potential and trained him in the basics. By 1753, he had premiered his first opera. That same month, his first opera was closed due to "offensive remarks."

 

Despite this minor setback, Haydn was able to secure aristocratic patronage, and his career was aloft. He composed for piano, voice, and string quartet in the beginning, and soon had a whole orchestra at his baton to write for. His appointment as Kappelmeister for Count Morzin's court gave him the artistic and financial freedom to compose what he liked, and what he liked was the full orchestra. His voicing, form, and overall style would be replicated for decades to come, deeming him "the Father of the Symphony."

 

It was believed for centuries Haydn wrote his first cello concerto in 1783, around the time he met the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In 1961, musicologists found the first movement in a draft catalog from 1765, and were able to piece together the other two from other fragments believed to be abandoned ideas from nearly two centuries prior.

 

All three movements are in sonata form: made up three major sections, the exposition (often repeated), development, and recapitulation. This early work is less inventive in form than his later concertos, written during a time he was studying the work of C.P.E. Bach closely as part of his training. Haydn's influence from the Baroque era is heard in pedal tones used throughout the work – usually given to the lowest voice in the ensemble, but in this case, used as the primary texture of the soloist. Each movement is separated by a cadenza.