Now we come to the next genius, Christoph Gluck (1714–1787) born when George Frederick Handel was twenty-nine years old. He also attacked the frivolous drift of his time, but in another field from Handel and Bach, and gave the fashionable, aimless Italian opera its death blow for all time. Gluck’s life is different from Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven as you will see later when you have read about all of these. For, until he was almost forty years old, Gluck did nothing to make him great, whereas these other men showed from their earliest years that they were unusual. Gluck belongs to two periods for his life bridges Bach’s and Haydn’s. You will see how he first belonged to the frivolous fashion-loving composers like Hasse, Jomelli and Piccinni, and how later he blossomed into the great renewer and constructor of opera and escapes into a class of his own! His is the most remarkable instance of a man who starts with an ordinary talent, and later in life grasps a vision that never came to him in his early youth and which was not caught by others in his day. Furthermore he was able to carry his point and not merely see the vision and let it go by. But first let us see how his life unfolded, for a man’s life helps us to understand his works. Christoph Willibald Gluck, born July 2nd, 1714, at Weidenwang, near Nüremberg, was the son of a gamekeeper, who moved from estate to estate in the service of princes and nobles, and at the time of Christoph’s birth, was ranger to Eugene, Prince of Savoy. So, this little boy destined to become the great Chevalier von Gluck, was a child of the people even as was Haydn and others. GLUCK STARTS TRAVELING When he was three years old he was taken to Bohemia, (now Czecho-Slovakia), for his father entered the service of Prince Lobkowitz, a great music lover, of whom you will hear again. His parents were quite poor, yet it is remarkable that above everything else they gave Christoph a good education and at twelve he went to a Jesuit school near Eisenberg, the home of Prince Lobkowitz. Here he learned to sing and to play the organ, the violin, the ’cello and the clavier. He was diligent and became most proficient and was loved and admired by the school fathers. But little did they dream that some day he was to write classic operas, based not on Christian stories but the pagan dramas of the Greeks! When nearly nineteen, he left the seminary and said good-bye to the Church of St. Ignatius and went to Prague. To support himself and to carry on his scientific and musical studies he gave lessons, played for rustic festivals and earned money the best way he could, until Prince Lobkowitz became interested in him and introduced him to the musical circle at court. Here he met Count Melzi who took him to Milan, where he was taught by Giovanni Battista Sammartini, a celebrated organist and teacher of counterpoint. After four years of study he completed his musical education.