The following year, in September, Gluck finished a new opera, “Echo et Narcisse,” and with this work decided to close his career, feeling he was too old to write longer for the lyric stage.  He was then nearly seventy years old, and retired to Vienna, to rest and enjoy the fruits of all his years of incessant toil.  He was now rich, as he had earned nearly thirty thousand pounds.  Kings and princes came to do him honor, and to tell him what pleasure his music had always given them.

Gluck passed away on November 15, 1787, honored and beloved by all.  The simple beauty and purity of his music are as moving and expressive to-day as when it was written, and the “Michael of Music” speaks to us still in his operas, whenever they are adequately performed.

V

JOSEF HAYDN

In Josef Haydn we have one of the classic composers, a sweet, gentle spirit, who suffered many privations in early life, and through his own industrious efforts rose to positions of respect and honor, the result of unremitting toil and devotion to a noble ideal.  Like many of the other great musicians, through hardship and sorrow he won his place among the elect.

Fifteen leagues south of Vienna, amid marshy flats along the river Leitha, lies the small village of Rehrau.  At the end of the straggling street which constitutes the village, stood a low thatched cottage and next to it a wheelwright’s shop, with a small patch of greensward before it.  The master wheelwright, Mathias Haydn, was sexton, too, of the little church on the hill.  He was a worthy man and very religious.  A deep love for music was part of the man’s nature, and it was shared to a large extent by his wife Maria.  Every Sunday evening he would bring out his harp, on which he had taught himself to play, and he and his wife would sing songs and hymns, accompanied by the harp.  The children, too, would add their voices to the concert.  The little boy Josef, sat near his father and watched his playing with rapt attention.  Sometimes he would take two sticks and make believe play the violin, just as he had seen the village schoolmaster do.  And when he sang hymns with the others, his voice was sweet and true.  The father watched the child with interest, and a new hope rose within him.  His own life had been a bitter disappointment, for he had been unable to satisfy his longing for a knowledge of the art he loved.  Perhaps Josef might one day become a musician—­indeed he might even rise to be Capellmeister.

Little Josef was born March 31, 1732.  The mother had a secret desire that the boy should join the priesthood, but the father, as we have seen, hoped he would make a musical career, and determined, though poor in this world’s goods, to aid him in every possible way.

About this time a distant relative, one Johann Mathias Frankh by name, arrived at the Haydn cottage on a visit.  He was a schoolmaster at Hainburg, a little town four leagues away.  During the regular evening concert he took particular notice of Josef and his toy violin.  The child’s sweet voice indicated that he had the makings of a good musician.  At last he said:  “If you will let me take Sepperl, I will see he is properly taught; I can see he promises well.”