The organist of the Court Chapel was Christian Gottlob Neefe, son of a poor tailor of Chemnitz in Saxony, where he was born February 5, 1748. He is one of the many instances in musical history in which the career of the man is determined by the beauty of his voice in childhood. At a very early age he became a chorister in the principal church, which position gave him the best school and musical instruction that the small city afforded--advantages so wisely improved as to enable him in early youth to gain a living by teaching. At the age of 21, with 20 thalers in his pocket and a stipend of 30 thalers per annum from the magistrates of Chemnitz, he removed to Leipsic to attend the lectures of the university, and at that institution in the course of time he passed his examination in jurisprudence. Upon this occasion he argued the negative of the question: “Has a father the right to disinherit a son for devoting himself to the theatre?” In Chemnitz Neefe’s teachers in music had been men of small talents and very limited acquirements, and even in Leipsic he owed more to his persevering study of the theoretical works of Marpurg and C. P. E. Bach than to any regular instructor. But there he had the very great advantage of forming an intimate acquaintance with, and becoming an object of special interest to, Johann Adam Hiller, the celebrated director of the Gewandhaus Concerts, the then popular and famous composer, the introducer of Handel’s “Messiah” to the German public, the industrious writer upon music, and finally a successor of Johann Sebastian Bach as Cantor of the Thomas School. Hiller gave him every encouragement in his power in his musical career; opened the columns of his musical “Wöchentliche Nachrichten” to his compositions and writings; called him to his assistance in operatic composition; gave him the results of his long experience in friendly advice; criticized his compositions, and at length, in 1777, gave him his own position as music director of Seyler’s theatrical company, then playing at the Linkische Bad in Dresden. Upon the departure of that troupe for Frankfort-on-the-Main, Neefe was persuaded to remain with it in the same capacity. He thus became acquainted with Fräulein Zinck, previously court singer at Gotha but now engaged for Seyler’s opera. The acquaintance ripened into a mutual affection and ended in marriage not long afterward. It is no slight testimony to the high reputation which he enjoyed that at the moment of Seyler’s flight from Frankfort (1779) Bondini, whose success had driven that rival from Dresden, was in correspondence with Neefe and making him proposals to resign his position under Seyler for a similar but better one in his service. Pending the result of these negotiations Neefe, taking his wife with him, temporarily joined Grossmann and Helmuth at Bonn in the same capacity. Those managers, who knew the value of his services from their previous experience as