nger, Signora Nicolini, whom
Ditters married. In 1773 he was ennobled as Karl von Dittersdorf, and at
the same time was appointed administrator (_Amtshauptmann_) of
Freyenwaldau, an office which he performed by deputy. In the same year
his oratorio _Ester_ was produced in Vienna. During the War of Bavarian
Succession the prince bishop's orchestra was dissolved, and Dittersdorf
employed himself in his office at Freyenwaldau; but after the peace of
Tetschen (1779) he again became conductor of the reconstituted
orchestra. From this time forward his output was enormous. In 1780 ten
months sufficed for the production of his _Giobbe_ (Job) and four
operas, three of which were successful; and besides these he wrote a
large number of "characterized symphonies," founded on the
_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. He was now at the height of his fame, and spent
the fortune which it brought him in much luxury. But after a time his
patron fell on evil days, the famous orchestra had to be reduced, and
when the bishop died in 1795 his successor dismissed the composer with a
small money gift. Poor and broken in health, he accepted the asylum
offered to him by Ignaz Freiherr von Stillfried, on his estate near
Neuhaus in Bohemia, where he spent what strength was left him in a
feverish effort to make money by the composition of operas, symphonies
and pianoforte pieces. He died on the 1st of October 1799, praying
"God's reward" for whoever should save his family from starvation. On
his death-bed he dictated to his son his _Lebensbeschreibung_
(autobiography).

Dittersdorf's chief talent was for comic opera and instrumental music in
the sonata forms. In both of these branches his work still shows signs
of life, and it is of great historical interest, since he was not only
an excellent musician and a friend of Haydn but also a thoroughly
popular writer, with a lively enough musical wit and sense of effect to
embody in an amusing and fairly artistic form exactly what the best
popular intelligence of the times saw in the new artistic developments
of Haydn. Thus, while in the amiable monotony and diffuseness of
Boccherini we may trace Haydn as a force tending to disintegrate the
polyphonic suite-forms of instrumental music, in Dittersdorf on the
other hand we see the popular conception of the modern sonata and
dramatic style. Yet, with all his popularity, the reality of his
progressive outlook may be gauged from the fact that, though he was at
least as f