ally different from the Vienna of
to-day. While the composer was still living, one who had made his
acquaintance wrote of the city: "Represent to yourself an assemblage of
palaces and very neat houses, inhabited by the most opulent families of
one of the greatest monarchies in Europe--by the only noblemen to
whom that title may still be with justice applied. The women here are
attractive; a brilliant complexion adorns an elegant form; the natural
but sometimes languishing and tiresome air of the ladies of the north of
Germany is mingled with a little coquetry and address, the effect of the
presence of a numerous Court...In a word, pleasure has taken possession
of every heart." This was written when Haydn was old and famous; it
might have been written when his name was yet unknown.

Vienna was essentially a city of pleasure--a city inhabited by "a proud
and wealthy nobility, a prosperous middle class, and a silent, if not
contented, lower class." In 1768, Leopold Mozart, the father of the
composer, declared that the Viennese public had no love of anything
serious or sensible; "they cannot even understand it, and their theatres
furnish abundant proof that nothing but utter trash, such as dances,
burlesques, harlequinades, ghost tricks, and devils' antics will go down
with them." There is, no doubt, a touch of exaggeration in all this,
but it is sufficiently near the truth to let us understand the kind of
attention which the disgraced chorister of St Stephen's was likely to
receive from the musical world of Vienna. It was Vienna, we may recall,
which dumped Mozart into a pauper's grave, and omitted even to mark the
spot.

The Forlorn Ex-Chorister

Young Haydn, then, was wandering, weary and perplexed, through its
streets, with threadbare clothes on his back and nothing in his purse.
There was absolutely no one to whom he could think of turning. He might,
indeed, have taken the road to Rohrau and been sure of a warm welcome
from his humble parents there. But there were good reasons why he should
not make himself a burden on them; and, moreover, he probably feared
that at home he would run some risk of being tempted to abandon his
cherished profession. Frau Haydn had not yet given up the hope of seeing
her boy made a priest, and though we have no definite information that
Haydn himself felt a decided aversion to taking orders, it is evident
that he was disinclined to hazard the danger of domestic pressure. He
had now fina