y to practise in the
garret in the Kohlmarkt, where he lived. A pitiable description is
given of the lodging he then occupied. It was on the sixth story, in a
room without stove or window. In winter his breath froze on his thin
coverlet, and the water, that in the morning he had to fetch himself
from the spring for washing, was frequently changed into a lump of ice
before his arrival in that elevated region. Life was indeed hard; but
he was constantly at work, and, having made a precious "find" on an
old bookstall one day of Fux's "Gradus ad Parnassum," in a very
dilapidated condition, but very cheap, he was ardently preparing
himself for the life--he now vowed should be his--of a composer.

About this time Haydn received a commission from Felix Kurz, a comic
actor of the Stadt-Theatre, to put a farce of his, "Der neue krumme
Teufel," to music. This farce, of which the words still remain, though
the music has been lost, was very successful, and was played in
Vienna, Prague, Berlin, and a number of other towns. The well-known
story of Haydn's "Tempest Music" is connected with this. In one part
of this piece a terrible storm was supposed to be raging, and the
accompanying music must of course be suitably descriptive; but the
difficulty was that Haydn had never seen the sea: therefore had not
the slightest notion of what a storm at sea was like. Kurz tries to
describe the waves running mountains high, the pitching and tossing,
the roll of thunder, and the howling of the wind; and Haydn produces
all sorts of ugly, jerky, and noisy music, but none of it is in the
remotest degree like a storm at sea, or anywhere else. At last, after
Kurz had become hoarse with his nautical disquisitions, and Haydn's
fingers were tired of scrambling all over the piano, the little
musician in a rage crashed his hands down on the two extremes of the
instrument, exclaiming: "Let's have done with this tempest!"

"Why, that's it; that's the very thing!" shouted the clown, jumping up
and embracing him; and with this crash and a run of semitones to the
centre of the piano this troublesome tempest was most satisfactorily
represented.

When, many years afterward, Haydn was crossing the Straits of Dover to
England, amid his sufferings he could not help laughing at the
ludicrous recollections of this early experience of his.

Things still went on improving, and Haydn, who was always lucky in the
patrons he secured (at least according to the notion ab