For the rest, the story of Haydn's life is little else than a catalogue of his works. From 1766, the year in which he became, by the death of Werner, the head of the Esterhazy Capelle, to 1790, the year of his first visit to London, nearly a quarter of a century, was the most fruitful period of his musical career. His greatest works, however, were yet to be written. Though he was already famous, he was not permitted to hold his position unassailed, and many and violent were the attacks upon him for his innovations and his disdain for pedagogic rules, by the critics of the older and more conservative school. Honors, nevertheless, began to pour in on him. The Philharmonic Society of Modena elected him a member in 1780. In 1784, Prince Henry of Prussia sent him a gold medal and his portrait in return for six quartets dedicated to him. In 1787, King Frederick William II. gave him a diamond ring as a recognition of his merit as a composer. In the meanwhile, in 1785, he received a commission to compose the "Seven Last Words of Christ" for the Cathedral of Cadiz, a fact which evidences how far his reputation had travelled from the solitude of Esterhaz. In the period named, he had written eight masses including the famous "Mariazell" mass in C, and the great "Cecilia" mass, the largest and most difficult of all his works in this kind, and now only performed in a condensed form. Within the same period he wrote sixty-three symphonies, most of which are in his earlier style, though a steady progress is shown toward the master symphonies he wrote for the London concerts. During his residence at Esterhaz he wrote over forty quartets, and these were, up to the time of his departure for London, his greatest achievements. It was in these that he became the originator of modern chamber music and led the way to both Mozart and Beethoven. His clavier music still was under the influence of Emanuel Bach, though the twenty-eight sonatas that belong to this period, in freedom, melody and clearness are far in advance of anything that had been previously achieved. Seventeen clavier trios are also the product of this period and are still full of charm. He did not begin to write songs until he was nearly fifty years old, and the twenty-four he composed at Esterhaz were by no means of marked value. His part-songs were of a better order, but his canons were best of all, and may be still heard with pleasure.