Haydn | Page 5

no interest in him, and when the voice went Haydn had to
go too. That happened in 1745. His brother Michael came, with a voice
superior to Joseph's; Joseph's broke, and the Empress said his singing
was like a cock's crowing. Michael sang a solo so beautifully as to win
a present of 24 ducats, and since it was evident that the services of St.
Stephen's could go on without Joseph, Reutter waited for a chance of
getting rid of Joseph. So Joseph, though far from wishing to oblige,
must needs play a practical joke, and was ignominiously spanked and
turned out into the streets.
With both Frankh and Reutter he had had a hard enough time--plenty of
work, not too much food, and no petting--but now he learnt what hard
times really meant. He faced them with plenty of courage. A chorister
of St. Michael's gave him shelter; some warmhearted person--to whom
be all praise--lent him the vast sum of 140 florins--say £7; he got a few
pupils who paid him two florins a month. He must have toiled like a
slave, in a wet, cold garret, and often without sufficient to eat. Yet, as
in everything he undertook, dogged did it. He never became a splendid
executant, like Bach and Handel before him, and Mozart and
Beethoven immediately after, but he must have been head and
shoulders above the ordinary musical practitioner.
His first opportunity came when he made the acquaintance of one Felix
Kurz, a well-known comic actor, for whom he wrote the comic opera,
Der Neue Krumme Teufel. This, judging from the places it was played
at, seems to have had quite a vogue. The music is lost; I have never
seen the words. But through this operetta or pantomime with songs he
appears to have been introduced to Metastasio, who was, of course, a
mighty great man at that epoch--a kind of Scribe. Anyhow, Metastasio
was superintending the education of the two daughters of a Spanish
family, the de Martines, and Haydn was engaged to teach the elder
music. Metastasio brought him to the notice of Porpora--then quite as
important a person as Metastasio himself--and Porpora made Haydn an
offer. Haydn was to clean the boots and do other household jobs, and

he was to accompany when Porpora gave lessons. In return, he was to
have lessons from Porpora and to be fed and clothed. He accepted, and
went off with his new master to Mannersdorf.
His service with Porpora brought him innumerable advantages. If he
had lowly duties to attend to, that amounted to nothing. He lived in the
eighteenth century, not in the nineteenth or twentieth. He was not
regarded as a clever musician forced to do lackey's work; he was a
lackey--or, at least, a peasant--given a chance of making himself a
clever musician. In those days birth and breeding counted for
much--everything. If a man could not boast of these, then he must have
money; and even money would not always fetch him everything. The
Court musicians were classed lower than domestic servants, and
generally paid less. Now and again a triumphant, assertive personality
like Handel would break through all the rules of etiquette; but even
Handel could have done little without his marvellous finger-skill--for
he was reckoned finest amongst the European players of his time--and
with his fingers Haydn--we have his own confession for it--was never
extraordinary. He could not extemporise as Handel, and Bach in more
restricted circles, had done, nor as Mozart and Beethoven were soon to
do. Beethoven won social status for the musician tribe, but Beethoven,
while as brilliant an executant as Handel, also had the advantage of
reaching manhood just when the upset of the French Revolution was
destroying all old-world notions. Even in old-fashioned Germany the
Rights of Man were asserting themselves. In England, for many a long
day afterwards, the musician had no higher standing than Haydn had.
The few who mixed with the Great were mainly charlatans of the type
of Sir George Smart, and they took mighty pains to be of humble
behaviour in the presence of their betters.
Haydn did remarkably well in the petty pigtail courts of Austria. He
probably considered himself lucky, and he was lucky--he was always
lucky. He got invaluable experience with Porpora, and was presented to
many personages in the gay world. He met Gluck, who a little later was
quite inaccessible to the most pushful of young men; also Dittersdorf
and Wagenseil, who, whatever we may think of them, were very high
and unapproachable musicians in their time. He worked with

unflagging diligence, and the natural instinct of his genius drove him to
the works of Emanuel Bach, which he now possessed. He also bought
theoretical books, prizing chiefly the Gradus of old Fux. So he