His formal musical education was less propitious. At the age of six he began the study of the violin, the harpsichord, and singing, under one Frankh, a distant relative, in the town of Hamburg; but was so neglected and abused that in later years he was wont to say: “From Frankh I got more cuffs than gingerbread.” He was probably glad enough when, two years later, he was able to go to Vienna as a choirboy in St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Here he stayed ten years, half-starved, insufficiently clothed, and carelessly taught. Only his own indomitable energy enabled him to learn anything at all. He worked while the other choir-boys were at play; he practiced indefatigably on his little clavier, which was so small and light that he could take it under his arm to a quiet place; he covered reams of music paper with his compositions, thinking that “it must be all right if the paper was nice and full;” he expended six of his father’s hard-earned florins on ponderous text books of counterpoint and thoroughbass, and spent wakeful nights poring over them. Meanwhile his relations with the musical director in authority became more and more strained, until finally, in November, 1749, there was open rupture, and Haydn, seventeen years old, friendless, and without money, was turned into the street. It would be difficult to exaggerate the hardships he now had to endure. By playing his violin at balls and weddings, by making arrangements of the compositions of amateurs for a pittance, by teaching--in a word, by any drudgery that anyone would pay for, he managed to keep himself from starving. And through it all, in his dimly-lighted, unheated attic, with roof so out of repair that snow and rain fell on the bed, and the water, of a winter morning, froze in the pitcher, he continued, as best he could, his own studies in composition. Years afterward he wrote of this period of his life, with his usual quaint piety: “I was forced for eight whole years to gain a scanty livelihood by giving lessons; many a genius is ruined by this miserable mode of earning daily bread, as it leaves no time for study. I could never have accomplished even what I did if, in my zeal for composition, I had not pursued my studies through the night.... I offer up to Almighty God all eulogiums, for to Him alone do I owe them. My sole wish is neither to offend against my neighbor nor my gracious Prince, but above all our merciful God.”