This definitive study of the life and works of Joseph Haydn represents half a century of research. As curator of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, Dr. Geiringer was in charge of one of the world's leading Haydn collections. His scholarly investigations took him to various monasteries, to libraries in Eisenstadt, Prague, Berlin, Paris, London, and Washington, D.C., and, as guest of the Hungarian government, to the previously almost inaccessible archives of the Princes of Esterhazy in Budapest.