It seems hard for us to realize that one family could play the compositions of one man continually, but we have rarely had so great a man to listen to! HAYDN IN ENGLAND In 1790 Haydn’s fame had spread abroad, especially to England. Salomon, a violinist and concert manager begged him to come to conduct twenty concerts with a new composition for each concert, for which he was to receive a fabulous sum. He gave his first concert February 25th, 1791. He was now about sixty years old and his popularity was so great that the Prince of Wales engaged him for twenty-six court concerts. He forgot to pay him, but later Parliament sent him one hundred guineas (about $500). Money at that time bought four or five times what it buys now, so Haydn went back to Austria, rich and famous and with a degree from Oxford. The English asked him many times to return and finally in 1794 he went again and was greeted with even more enthusiasm. Few composers in all the world have lived to see such triumphs as did the jovial, charming “Papa Haydn,” as his warm friend and pupil Mozart called him. But withal, Haydn was modest and unassuming and never hesitated to give his services in concerts for the poor or to give money to the sick. Besides all the money he must have received, he had a generous pension from his friends, the Esterhazys, who demanded very little of his time. So now, with leisure, he could do his greatest works and at this period he wrote two oratorios, _The Creation_ and _The Seasons_. They were more than successful. Emil Naumann says this of _The Seasons_: “It is not until we come to Haydn that we witness the joys and sorrows of men and women of our own time and dwellers in our own land, the tiller of the soil, the wine-presser and shepherd, or homely figures like Simon the farmer, his daughter Anna and the peasant Lucas, in _The Seasons_.” Then he says of _The Creation_: “We move with him through the German spinning room, where the girls relate stories to the accompaniment of the musical hum of the spinning wheel, or we rove through woods to follow the chase. His whole heart is in nature. He loves to depict her in her many varying aspects, and at all seasons, and all is touched with a light, tender hand. His types are of home.... His delineation of nature is ever the same, fresh and loving, whether we look at _The Seasons_ or at _The Creation_.” Haydn said of his English experience, “It is England which has made me famous in Germany.” In 1797 he wrote _God Preserve the Emperor_ which became the Austrian National Hymn, and later put it in his quartet called the Kaiser Quartet. From this time on, nearly every nation honored him,—Russia, France, Sweden, England, Austria, Germany. And as Haydn was leaving for England, when Mozart said to him, “Papa, you are scarcely fitted for such an undertaking, mixing with the big world without the gift of language,” he replied, “Aye, but _my_ language is understood by the whole world.”