given at a suburban theatre of
Vienna, and it proved so far successful that Artaria, the publisher,
thought it worth while to engrave half a dozen songs and a duet from it.
The opera which beat his at the Court theatre is utterly forgotten; we
know of the other because of the composer's name. Some years later, in
1784, he had another touch of the ways of men in the busy world, sent,
perhaps, to reconcile him to his habitual seclusion. As far back as 1771
he had written his first oratorio--which I am not ashamed to say I have
never looked at--_Il Ritorno di Tobia_. It was performed, apparently
with eclat, by the Vienna Tonkuenstler Societaet, of which body Haydn
wished to become a member. He put down his name, and paid his
subscription, and was not a little surprised to learn that the condition
on which alone he would be elected was that he should compose works for
the society whenever he was asked. Now, those works would have become
the society's property, if only because they alone would have the
scores, and Haydn was a busy man, a man of European reputation, whose
music was worth money, and a shrewd business man, who saw no fun in
throwing money away. His annoyance may be conceived. He withdrew his
subscription--it is a wonder they would let him have it--and would have
nothing to do with the society until after his return from England in
1791, when the feud was ended, and he was triumphantly elected senior
assessor--whatever that may be. What the society was thinking in the
first instance I cannot guess, unless it was that a mere professional
composer and Kapellmeister should pay double, or considerably more than
double, for the honour of belonging to so distinguished a body of
amateurs. Anyhow, in the long run Haydn was so well pleased with them
that he seems to have made over to them _The Creation_ and _The
Seasons_, from which they derived profits that enabled them to keep
their heads above water when darker days came. Long before this date,
however, honours were being thrown at him. His opera, _L'Isolu
Disabilite_, to Metastasio's words, was sung in concert form at Vienna
in 1779, and the Accademia Filarmonica of Modena made him a member;
Haydn sent the score to the King of Spain, who repaid the compliment
with a gold snuff-box. In the same year he got a little relief from the
unbroken routine of his duties, for the theatre at Esterhaz was burnt
to the ground, and Prince Nicolaus, seeing no means of passing his
eve