Think about how you get to know a composer’s music. It might be by playing it yourself. You may hear it on the radio, or on a mixtape a friend made you. Maybe you downloaded gigs of albums off a torrent. (Ahem.)
HAYDN107 offers another way. Dr. Walter Reichert organized a site housing all of Haydn’s symphonies (107ish), and not only can you read about each one, but you can listen to them. In fact, Reichert and his minions arranged for three separate recordings from Antal Doráti, Christopher Hogwood or Adam Fischer, if you have a feeling about such things.
The beauty of the web is our freedom to dump extraordinary amounts of information and arrange it in useful ways. The difference with Haydn is that there are fewer copyright issues than if you were to (for example) put together a fan site featuring all of Julia Wolfe’s recordings. So head to HAYDN100&7 and enjoy a tailor-made site dedicated to the man known as the “Father of the Symphony” and “The Most Virile and Handsome of All Austrian Composers.”
Oh, and while you’re at it, this poor bastard had to listen to all of Haydn’s symphonies (minus a few) and rank them for Classical FM. Hit that link to see how they all stack up. Might help you decide what you want to hear, too.
Classical Dark Arts 