The Budapest Museum of Applied Arts evokes the figure of Haydn, who also composed a melody for musical clocks, through the material culture of his age, among others with the characteristic clock types of distinctive shape and structure.

Haydn’s career spanned a very wide space and time; he travelled to many countries of Europe, visiting places from simply country homes to the most splendid royal courts. The long period extending from his birth to his death – with artistic styles ranging from Rococo, to neo-Classicism and Empire – is also known as the Age of Enlightenment.

The exhibition invites visitors on an imaginary journey to the 18th century, an age of inventions and discoveries. Besides the Encyclopaedia edited by Diderot that summed up the world picture of the time, many treasures selected from the museum’s collection evoke the period. An emblematic object of the century was the clock combining several different genres: it is a complex masterpiece in itself and as an instrument for measuring time is also a philosophical concept. The many different types presented in the exhibition – including a number of rarities – are arranged in territorial groups. Linked to the exhibition is a selection of exclusive contemporary timepieces from the collection of the IWC company of Schaffhausen titled “Luxury watches from Switzerland”.

A series of music programmes will accompany the visual experience of the applied art masterpieces. Visitors to the exhibition can enjoy chamber concerts of music by Haydn and his contemporaries.

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