Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Jane Robins, with special credit to Linda Cantoni for the music files, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Note: | | | | Lines surrounding the text like _this_ indicate italics. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ [Illustration: FAMOUS COMPOSERS AND THEIR WORKS VOL. 2] Famous Composers and their Works Edited by John Knowles Paine Theodore Thomas and Karl Klauser Illustrated [Illustration] Boston J. B. Millet Company 1906 Copyright, 1891, by J. B. MILLET COMPANY. [Illustration: FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN _Reproduction of a steel engraving by L. Sichling, after an oil portrait by Röster._] [Illustration: Haydn] [Illustration] FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN On the river Leitha, in Lower Austria, and some fifteen miles south-east from Vienna, is a village so insignificant that it is not set down on the ordinary maps. It is called Rohrau, and there, during the night of March 31, 1732, and descended from a long line of humble hand-toilers, was born Franz Joseph Haydn, who was destined to make the family name immortal. His father, Mathias Haydn, was a master wheelwright, whose father, Thomas Haydn, had followed the same occupation. The mother of Franz, or Joseph, as he is now called, was Maria Koller, daughter of the market inspector of the locality, and a cook in the household of Count Harrach, the lord of the village. The ancestry of the Haydns is undistinguished as far back as it can be traced. This union of the wheelwright and the cook resulted in a family of twelve children, of whom three developed into musicians. They were Franz Joseph, the subject of this sketch, Johann Michael, the church composer, and Johann Evangelist, a singer of no special excellence. There is no record of musical talent on the side of either the Haydns or the Kollers previous to its appearance in the family of Mathias, and its sudden development in three of the offspring of this marriage is inexplicable.