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It is pathetic to think of the boy assiduously scratching
innumerable notes on scraps of music paper, striving with yet
imperfect knowledge to express himself, and hoping that by some
miracle of inspiration something like music might come out of it.
"I thought it must be all right if the paper was nice and full,"
he said. He even went the length of trying to write a mass in
sixteen parts--an effort which Reutter rewarded with a shrug and
a sneer, and the sarcastic suggestion that for the present two
parts might be deemed sufficient, and that he had better perfect
his copying of music before trying to compose it. But Haydn was
not to be snubbed and snuffed out in this way. He appealed to his
father for money to buy some theory books. There was not too much
money at Rohrau, we may be sure, for the family was always
increasing, and petty economies were necessary. But the
wheelwright managed to send the boy six florins, and that sum was
immediately expended on Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum and Mattheson's
Volkommener Capellmeister--heavy, dry treatises both, which have
long since gone to the musical antiquary's top shelf among the
dust and the cobwebs. These "dull and verbose dampers to
enthusiasm" Haydn made his constant companions, in default of a
living instructor, and, like Longfellow's "great men," toiled
upwards in the night, while less industrious mortals snored.
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