He died in 1791 at the early age of thirty-five, and his last work was the magnificent _Requiem_, which had a strange origin, for it had been commissioned by a man who appeared incognito, offering to pay for the work in advance. Mozart firmly believed that this stranger was a messenger from the other world sent to warn him of his own death. He accepted the commission and began to carry it out, but in the meantime undertook other work which occupied his time. The stranger called again and urged him on, and he made further headway, but when the stranger came a third time the great composer was dead. The _Requiem_ was completed by Süssmayer, and the stranger who had commissioned it turned out to be Count Walsegg. It is almost incredible to relate that this genius, whose work has given his country an imperishable name, was buried in a pauper’s grave, and that even the three “friends” who had set out to follow the coffin turned back because it rained, and so the body was taken to its resting-place unhonoured and alone. During the lifetime of Mozart there was living also in Austria another of the first-class stars whose appearance in the firmament of music is so rare. Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 and was thus already a man of twenty-four when little Wolfgang came into the world. Haydn was born at Rohrau in Lower Austria, and was the second of the twelve children of a wheelwright. The boy had a beautiful voice and evidently much musical talent, so that a relation rescued him from a life of drudgery and sent him to school, and he afterwards obtained an appointment among the choir boys of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna--a very different beginning from that of Mozart, who was accustomed to be familiarly petted by crowned heads almost from his infancy. When his voice broke Haydn kept himself by giving music lessons, and after following this profession for some time, he brought out his first compositions. He was fortunate enough to find several patrons who recognised his talent, and chief among them the head of the great family of Esterhazy, who made him chapel-master with an independent salary. He never broke his connection with the Esterhazys, even to the day of his death.