2-720-410 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'He managed to save sufficient to purchase two volumes', (1907). The young Haydn buys sheet music while studying at the choir school in Vienna: '...by dint of scraping and denying himself he managed to save sufficient to purchase two volumes, upon the outsides of which his eyes had often feasted as the books lay temptingly displayed upon the shelf of the second-hand bookseller. One of these works was Fux's 'Gradus ad Parnassum' (a treatise on composition and counterpoint), and the other Mattheson's 'Vollkommene Capellmeister' (the Complete Chapel-master).' An episode from the life of Austrian composer Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). From "Story-Lives of Great Musicians", by F.J. Rowbotham. [Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. Ltd, London, 1907]