The last accident was the arrival of one Frankh, a distant
relative. This was long before the magical feats of the baby Mozart had
set every grasping parent staring for signs of musical precocity in his
children. But Mathias undoubtedly wanted to do his best for his boy, and
Joseph himself must have had ambition of a sort--witness his endeavours
to play the fiddle without a fiddle to play--and when Frankh undertook
to place the boy in a choir and teach him music, the offer was joyfully
accepted. So he went to Hainburg, never to return to Rohrau until he was
an old and celebrated man.
Nothing need be recorded of his life in Hainburg save that Frankh worked
him hard. Indeed, much later Haydn declared himself thankful to Frankh
for forming in him the habit of working hard. He sang, played the fiddle
and harpsichord, and went to school; and suddenly one George Reutter
came on the scene. He came, heard, and was conquered by Haydn's voice.
He was Hofcompositor and Kapellmeister at St. Stephen's Church in
Vienna, and he took the boy on the same terms as those on which Frankh
had brought him away from Rohrau. To Vienna Haydn went, was entered in
the Cantorei of St. Stephen's, and there for some years he sang in the
choir. In return he was taught reading, writing and arithmetic, religion
and Latin.
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