Haydn | Page 5

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 mastered the groundwork of his art. Gluck advised him to go to Italy, but it is hard to imagine what he could have learnt there. He did not fail to profit by an