Michael Haydn

I'd never heard of - let alone heard music by - Michael Haydn before 8:25 a.m. last Friday, when I was driving a snoozy Cleo home, after dropping L. off at work. Under a tentative sun, I turned on the radio and heard the final few minutes of his Concertino aus Sinfonia in B Flat. Very, very pleasant music, it offered something of the delight of a busy, well-ordered town square.

Which, perhaps, makes sense. The younger brother of the much more famous Joseph, Michael was born in 1737, in an Austrian town called Rohrau. Raised by a female cook and a wheelwright who was also a talented folk musician, he followed in his brother's footsteps, earning a post as a chapel master and then marrying a singer named Maria Lipp. And, in 1770, he became a father, to a young girl with the undeniably Hapsburgian name of Aloisia Josefa.

At that time, Haydn was living in the lovely town of Salzburg, where he was employed by the cathedral. It's been 21 years, now, since I was in Salzburg, but I still remember its seductively Baroque tone, and hilly contours. And, yes, its squares: on a summer day, they're full of cafe tables, oversized chess games, and tourists looking for traces of Mozart.

I wonder, then: did Michael ever take Aloisia, when she was 11 months old, out for a walk? And, if so, might they have seen a view something like this?