o the world, it can
easily be understood that his lot was not a very luxurious one. His
parents were simple, honest people of the laboring class, very
ignorant, but, like most German peasants, with a certain love for and
facility in music, not quite so common in this country. Haydn's father
had a good voice, and could sing well, accompanying himself on the
harp, though he did not know a single note of written music. Then
there was the village schoolmaster, who could actually play the
violin, and whom little Joseph watched with wondering eyes, extracting
those marvellously sweet sounds from his wooden instrument, until,
with the child's spirit of imitation, as his parents sang their
"Volkslieder," the little fellow, perched on a stone bench, gravely
handled two pieces of wood of his own as if they were bow and fiddle,
keeping exact time, and flourishing the bow in the approved fashion of
the schoolmaster. From this very little incident came an important
change in his life; for a relation, Johann Mathias Frankh, of
Hainburg, happened to be present on one occasion, and, thinking he saw
an aptitude for music in the boy, offered to take him into his own
school at Hainburg, where accordingly young Haydn went at the age of
six years.

There he remained for two years, making rapid progress in singing and
in playing all sorts of instruments, among others the clavier, violin,
organ, and drum. He said afterward, with the unaffected piety, far
removed from cant, that was characteristic of him: "Almighty God, to
whom I render thanks for all his unnumbered mercies, gave me such
facility in music that, by the time I was six years old, I stood up
like a man and sang masses in the church choir, and could play a
little on the clavier and violin." Of Frankh, a very strict, but
thorough and most painstaking teacher, he also said afterward: "I
shall be grateful to that man as long as I live for keeping me so hard
at work, though I used to get more flogging than food;" and in Haydn's
will he remembered Frankh's family, leaving his daughter a sum of
money and a portrait of Frankh himself, "my first instructor in
music."

For some years he seems to have lived a miserable, struggling life,
giving lessons, playing the organ in churches, and studying when and
where he could. He had a few pupils at the moderate remuneration of
two florins a month, and he had contrived to obtain possession of an
old worm-eaten clavier, on which he used diligentl