One night Haydn and some other youths serenaded Kurz, a prominent comedian. Kurz, pleased by the music below his window, called to the lads: “Whose music is that?” “Joseph Haydn’s,” called back Haydn. “Who is he and where?” asked Kurz. “Down here, I am Haydn,” said Joseph. Kurz invited him upstairs and Haydn, at the age of seventeen, received a commission for a comic opera, which had two special performances. All this time he mixed with the poor and laboring people, and their songs became his songs, and his heart was full of their frolics and their pains. He was of the people and was so filled with their humor that later he was called the father of humor in music. Soon, in order to be alone, and to work in peace, he took a room in another attic, and bade good-bye to his very good friends. His room was cold in winter and let in the rains and snows, but it did have a spinet on which Haydn was allowed to play, and fortunately Metastasio the librettist lived in this house. Here Haydn studied the works of Karl Philip Emanuel Bach, Fuchs’ _Gradus ad Parnassum_ (Steps to Parnassus, Parnassus meaning the mountain upon which the Greek Muses lived and so comes to mean the home of learning). He practised too, during this time, on any instrument he could find and learned so much that he became the founder of the modern orchestra. When Metastasio discovered that there was a hard working musician in his house he met him and then introduced him to Porpora the greatest Italian singing teacher in Vienna. Not long after meeting him, Porpora entrusted to his care Marianne Van Martines, his ten year old pupil, the future musical celebrity. At seventeen Marianne wrote a mass which was used at St. Michael’s Church and she became the favorite singer and player of Empress Maria Theresa. You see women even in those days composed and performed! So began Haydn’s successes. Porpora engaged him as accompanist, and treated him half way between a valet and a musician, but Haydn’s sweet nature carried him through all unpleasantnesses and he was so anxious to learn and to earn his six ducats that he did not care if he did have to eat with the servants. In 1751–2, he wrote his first mass, his first string quartet, and his first comic opera for Kurz, _The Crooked Devil_, the music of which has been lost. Soon after he met Gluck at the concerts of the Prince of Hildburghausen, where Haydn acted as accompanist; at the prince’s house too, he met Ditter von Dittersdorf, the violinist. The princes and nobles of these days did much for music for it was usually at their homes and under their guidance that the composers received opportunities to work. Nevertheless, we see Haydn during these days slaving to make his daily bread, but with the money he made he bought books on music theory and held himself sternly down to hard work, morning, noon, and night.