Johann Peter Keller was a well-to-do wigmaker from Vienna. He married a woman named Marie Elisabeth Sailler in 1722. Between 1723 and 1744, the couple had fifteen children.
One of them grew up to become Joseph Haydn’s much-maligned wife.
Today, we’re looking at the story of a woman that everyone in classical music has loved to hate.
The Mistaken Identity of Maria Anna Haydn

Maria Anna Haydn
For years, it was believed that Maria Anna Aloysia Apollonia Keller was born in February 1729 and grew up to become Joseph Haydn’s wife.
The confusion began when Carl Ferdinand Pohl, a nineteenth-century music historian and archivist, published findings about the Keller family.
Unfortunately, these findings weren’t double-checked by others for generations, and they were inaccurate.
Turns out, the Maria Anna Keller who was born in February 1729, died in May 1730.
When Maria Anna died, Mrs. Keller was pregnant. The new baby arrived in September 1730 and was a little girl. She was named Maria Anna Theresia Keller, presumably as a tribute to her older sister who had so recently died.
This second Maria Anna is the one who grew up to become Haydn’s wife.
Embarrassingly, for generations, historians had gotten Haydn’s wife’s name and birthday wrong. The truth wasn’t widely known until the twenty-first century.
How Haydn Met His Wife

Joseph Haydn
For generations it was believed that Johann Keller had a brother named Georg Ignaz Keller who worked at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, where Haydn had also worked as a young musician. According to legend, Georg was the one to introduce Haydn to his brother.
However, modern scholarship has proved that the two Kellers were not related, so today, we don’t know for sure how Haydn met this family.
Haydn and His Love Theresia Keller
While teaching the family, he fell in love with Theresia Helena Keller, the couple’s ninth child, who had been born in 1733.
Unfortunately, for any hopes that Theresia and Haydn might have had, the Kellers were well-off financially, while Haydn had yet to secure a major position.
In addition, her extremely religious parents expected Theresia to enter the St. Nicholas Convent.
It is possible that life in a convent was more appealing to Theresia than the unsettled life of a freelance musician: she wouldn’t need to rely on a husband to support her, and she could avoid the pain and danger of decades of childbearing.
Theresia entered the convent in 1755 and took her vows the following year. Haydn wrote an Organ Concerto in C-major for the ceremony of her profession as Sister Josepha.
She lived there until 1782, when the convent was disbanded. Theresia was 49. She returned to secular life and became known for her social work.
Haydn never forgot her and included her as a beneficiary in his will (although he later struck her name out for unknown reasons).
Meanwhile, in 1757, Haydn got a job working for the court of a nobleman named Count Morzin.
Haydn – Hob XVIII:1 – Organ Concerto in C major
Proposing to Maria Anna
Apparently Johann Keller pressured Haydn to consider marrying Maria Anna. Some records suggest the wigmaker’s suggestions were serious, others joking.
Why did Haydn agree to marry a woman who he never loved? Historians are undecided. It’s possible that he was craving a more settled domestic life, had a limited appetite to spend more time dating, and wanted to settle down with any woman, and Maria Anna was available.
Why did Maria Anna agree? She was in a difficult position. She was out of her twenties, the decade when most women married, and it was unclear what further prospects she’d have. If she didn’t take her own economic security into her hands by marrying, she was looking at an uncertain future spent as a spinster daughter, forced to rely on the charity of her siblings and their spouses. Even if she wasn’t in love with Haydn, he probably was the best of some bad options.
Joseph Haydn and Maria Anna Keller were married in the Eligius Chapel of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna on 26 November 1760. Haydn was twenty-eight, and Maria Anna was thirty.
Their Disaster Marriage

Portrait of Joseph Haydn by Thomas Hardy, 1791
The marriage was not a successful one. The bitterness of Haydn’s complaints has echoed through the generations.
Anna Maria liked spending money and sending money to priests and the church, to Haydn’s great annoyance.
She also was uninterested in Haydn’s career and musical calling. “She doesn’t care a straw whether her husband is an artist or a cobbler,” Haydn once famously complained.
In fact, she cared so little that she apparently used her husband’s scores as linings for her baking and paper to curl her hair.
Haydn’s Unfaithfulness
The marriage may have been a source of misery, but in mid-eighteenth-century Vienna, divorce was not an option available, especially to an extremely religious woman like Maria Anna.
Haydn was blunt. “My wife was unable to bear children,” he wrote, “and for this reason, I was less indifferent towards the attractions of other women than I might have otherwise been.”
In 1761, Haydn took a job with the aristocratic Esterházy family. The position required him to live most of the year at the Esterháza palace in rural Hungary, apart from Maria Anna.
During his marriage, Haydn had relationships with singer Luigia Polzelli, pianist and widow Marianne von Genzinger, and amateur musician Rebecca Schroeter. All of these women were considerably younger than him.
Their Final Years
On New Year’s Day 1791, Haydn arrived in England for a lucrative month-long stay. He reprised the visit between 1794 and 1795. Maria Anna stayed in Vienna. (This was the time when he pursued a romantic relationship with Rebecca Schroeter.)
After his return home in the mid-1790s, Haydn bought a house in a quiet Viennese suburb. He paid to have it remodeled, with a second story added. In 1796, he and his wife moved in. He also rented rooms closer to the winter palace of Prince Schwarzenberg, who he was working with at the time.
Maria Anna didn’t have long to enjoy the new home. She traveled to a spa in Baden to help with her poor health; she suffered from severe arthritis and chronic pain. She died on 20 March 1800 in Baden.
“Haydn is now writing with new zeal since he has had the good luck to lose his nasty wife,” Haydn’s friend Fredrick Silverstolpe reported in a letter dated 5 April 1800.
He may have been writing with more zeal, but Haydn’s health deteriorated rapidly after his wife’s death. He wrote his last major work in 1802. After that, he continued to have as many musical ideas as ever, but he was unable to physically write them down or edit them like he wanted.
Haydn died in 1809 during Napoleon’s bombardment of Vienna.
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