the formalist.

J.C.H.

EDINBURGH, September 1902.

HAYDN

CHAPTER I. BIRTH--ANCESTRY--EARLY YEARS

Introductory--Rohrau--A Poor Home--Genealogy--Haydn's Parents--His
Birth--His Precocity--Informal Music-making--His First
Teacher--Hainburg--"A Regular Little Urchin"--Attacks the Drum--A Piece
of Good Luck--A Musical Examination--Goes to Vienna--Choir School of
St Stephen's--A House of Suffering--Lessons at the Cathedral--A
Sixteen-Part Mass--Juvenile Escapades--"Sang like a Crow"--Dismissed
from the Choir.

Haydn's position, alike in music and in musical biography, is almost
unique. With the doubtful exception of Sebastian Bach, no composer of
the first rank ever enjoyed a more tranquil career. Bach was not once
outside his native Germany; Haydn left Austria only to make those
visits to England which had so important an influence on the later
manifestations of his genius: His was a long, sane, sound, and on the
whole, fortunate existence. For many years he was poor and obscure, but
if he had his time of trial, he never experienced a time of failure.
With practical wisdom he conquered the Fates and became eminent. A hard,
struggling youth merged into an easy middle-age, and late years found
him in comfortable circumstances, with a solid reputation as an artist,
and a solid retiring-allowance from a princely patron, whose house he
had served for the better part of his working career. Like Goethe and
Wordsworth, he lived out all his life. He was no Marcellus, shown for
one brief moment and "withdrawn before his springtime had brought forth
the fruits of summer." His great contemporary, Mozart, cut off while yet
his light was crescent, is known to posterity only by the products of
his early manhood. Haydn's sun set at the end of a long day, crowning
his career with a golden splendour whose effulgence still brightens the
ever-widening realm of music.

Voltaire once said of Dante that his reputation was becoming greater and
greater because no one ever read him. Haydn's reputation is not of that
kind. It is true that he may not appeal to what has been called the
"fevered modern soul," but there is an old-world charm about him which
is specially grateful in our bustling, nerve-destroying, bilious age. He
is still known as "Papa Haydn," and the name, to use Carlyle's phrase,
is "significant of much." In the history of the art his position is of
the first importance. He was the father of instrumental music. H