His relations with Haydn have been a fruitful source of discussion and explanation. On his second arrival in Vienna, 1792, Beethoven became Haydn’s pupil. Feeling, however, that his progress was slow, and finding that errors in counterpoint had been overlooked in his exercises, he quietly placed himself under the instruction of Schenck, a composer well known in Beethoven’s day. There was at the time no rupture with Haydn, and he did not actually withdraw from his tutorship until the older master’s second visit to London, in 1794. Beethoven then took up work with Albrechtsberger, but the relationship was mutually unsatisfactory. The pupil felt a lack of sympathy and Albrechtsberger expressed himself in regard to Beethoven with something like contempt. ‘Have nothing to do with him,’ he advises another pupil. ‘He has learned nothing and will never do anything in decent style.’ Although in later years Beethoven would not call himself a pupil of Haydn, yet there were many occasions when he showed a genuine and cordial appreciation for the chapel master of Esterhàzy. The natures of the two men, however, were fundamentally different, and could scarcely fail to be antagonistic. Haydn was by nature and court discipline schooled to habits of good temper and self-control; he was pious, submissive to the control of church and state, kindly and cheerful in disposition. Beethoven, on the contrary, was individualistic to the core, rough often to the point of rudeness in manner, deeply affected by the revolutionary spirit of the times, scornful of ritual and priest, melancholy and passionate in temperament. Is it strange that two such diverse natures found no common ground of meeting?
Beethoven, however, aside from his formal instruction, found nourishment for his genius, as all great men do, in the work of the masters of his own and other arts. He probably learned more from an independent study of Haydn’s works than from all the stated lessons; for his early compositions begin precisely where those of Haydn and Mozart leave off. They show, also, that he knew the worth of the earlier masters. Concerning Emanuel Bach he writes: ‘Of his pianoforte works I have only a few things, yet a few by that true artist serve not only for high enjoyment but also for study.’ In 1803 he writes to his publishers, Breitkopf and Härtel: ‘I thank you heartily for the beautiful things of Sebastian Bach. I will keep and study them.’ Elsewhere he calls Sebastian Bach ‘the forefather of harmony,’ and in his characteristic vein said that his name should be Meer (Sea), instead of Bach (Brook). According to Wagner, this great master was Beethoven’s guide in his artistic self-development.