the instrument of which we have a record, and it
still is the main dependence for information concerning the method of
Bach's playing, and the way in which he intended the embellishments in
his works to be performed.

II.

In the little village of Rohrau, in Austria, was born to a master
wheelwright's wife, in 1732, a little son, dark-skinned, not large of
frame, nor handsome, but gifted with that most imperishable of
endowments, a genius for melody and tonal symmetry. The baby was named
Francis Joseph, and he grew to the age of about six in the family of
his parents, in a little house which although twice somewhat rebuilt,
still stands in its original form. Hither people come from many lands
in order to see the birthplace of the great composer Haydn, the
indefatigable and simple-hearted tone poet of many symphonies,
sonatas, and the two favorite cantatas or oratorios, the "Creation"
and the "Seasons." In his earliest childhood the boy showed a talent
for music, which, as his parents both sang and played a little, he had
often an opportunity of hearing. Before he was quite six years old he
was able to stand up in the choir of the village church and lead in
solos, with his sweet and true, if not strong, voice. This was his
delight. At length George Reutter, the director of the music in the
cathedral of St. Stephen at Vienna, heard him, and offered the boy a
place in his choir. Now indeed his fortune seemed made, and he
embraced the offer with gratitude. As a choir boy he ought to have
been taught music in a thorough manner, but as Reutter was rather a
careless man this did not happen in Haydn's case, but the boy grew up
in his own devices. He composed constantly, without having had the
slightest regular training. One day Reutter saw one of his pieces, a
mass movement for twelve parts. He offered the passing advice, that
the composer would have done better to have taken two voices, and that
the best exercise for him would be to write "divisions" (variations)
upon the airs he sang in the service--but no instruction. At length
the boy's voice began to break, and at the age of fourteen or fifteen,
he was turned out to shift for himself. He found an asylum in the
house of a wig maker, Keller, with whom he lived for several years,
earning small sums by lessons, playing the organ at one of the
churches, the violin at another, singing at another and so on, in all
managing to place himself upon the road to fortune--that of in