In the early eighteenth century there lived in a small village called Rohrau, situated near the Leitha River, which forms the boundary between Lower Austria and Hungary, a certain wheelwright and parish sexton, named Matthias Haydn, and his wife. They were simple peasant people, a little more educated than was usual with their class. Matthias Haydn, besides a smattering of general information, had a talent for harp-playing, though he could not read music. Frau Haydn’s accomplishments ran in the direction of domestic management and religion; and as she eventually found herself the mother of twelve children, she may be supposed to have stood in need of both. Franz Joseph Haydn, born either on March 31 or April 1, 1732, was the second of these children. He was destined to create an epoch in the art of music. How, in spite of his rather commonplace parentage and his heavy burden of poverty, he managed to develop so remarkable an artistic genius, has been a problem most puzzling to students; but much light has been thrown upon the whole matter by the recent investigations of a Croatian scholar, Dr. František Š. Kuhač, made accessible to readers of English by Mr. W. H. Hadow’s “A Croatian Composer.” These researches have shown that the whole region about Rohrau was inhabited by a largely Croatian or South Slavonic population; that Haydn himself was probably of Croatian heredity; and that at the very least his youth was spent among one of the most naturally musical of all races. “One in every three of the Croats,” says Dr. Kuhač, “either sings, plays, or composes.” “The men sing at their plows,” says Mr. Hadow, “the girls sing as they fill their water-pots at the fountain; by every village inn you may hear the jingle of the tambura, and watch the dancers footing it on the green.” Here, then, was an environment precisely suited to develop the qualities we shall observe in the mature Haydn; and it helps to an understanding of almost every phase of his genius if we remember that as a boy he was surrounded, not by stolid German peasants, amiable but inexpressive, nor by a cultivated but unspontaneous aristocracy, but by a race of natural musicians, in whom dance and song were native and necessary modes of expression.