2-720-411 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'The tantalising pigtail', (1907). The 17-year-old Haydn cuts off a fellow chorister's pigtail at the cathedral choir school in Vienna. As he was no longer able to sing high choral parts, the director of music was looking for an excuse to dismiss him: 'It was the fashion in those days for boys to wear pigtails, and Haydn's gaze was one day riveted upon the movements of a pigtail belonging to the chorister seated immediately in front of him. The pigtail was twitched to and fro, or jerked up and down...with a vivacity which was at once fascinating and exasperating to behold...the itching to cut something was too strong to be resisted - the tantalising pigtail was twitching under his very nose...' 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]