of all his years of incessant toil. He was now rich, as he had earned
nearly thirty thousand pounds. Kings and princes came to do him honor,
and to tell him what pleasure his music had always given them.

Gluck passed away on November 15, 1787, honored and beloved by all.
The simple beauty and purity of his music are as moving and expressive
to-day as when it was written, and the "Michael of Music" speaks to us
still in his operas, whenever they are adequately performed.




V

JOSEF HAYDN


In Josef Haydn we have one of the classic composers, a sweet, gentle
spirit, who suffered many privations in early life, and through his
own industrious efforts rose to positions of respect and honor, the
result of unremitting toil and devotion to a noble ideal. Like many
of the other great musicians, through hardship and sorrow he won his
place among the elect.

Fifteen leagues south of Vienna, amid marshy flats along the river
Leitha, lies the small village of Rehrau. At the end of the straggling
street which constitutes the village, stood a low thatched cottage
and next to it a wheelwright's shop, with a small patch of greensward
before it. The master wheelwright, Mathias Haydn, was sexton, too, of
the little church on the hill. He was a worthy man and very religious.