I yesterday evening received with much pleasure your last letter of 5 April, with the extract from the newspaper, extolling my poor talents to the Viennese. I must confess that I have gained considerable credit with the English in vocal music, by this little chorus, [The "Storm Chorus,"

see p. 91.] my first attempt with English words. It is only to be regretted that, during my stay here, I have not been able to write more pieces of a similar nature, but we could not find any boys to sing at our concerts, they having been already engaged for a year past to sing at other concerts, of which there are a vast number. In spite of the great opposition of my musical enemies, who are so bitter against me, more especially leaving nothing undone with my pupil Pleyel this winter to humble me, still, thank G.o.d! I may say that I have kept the upper hand. I must, however, admit that I am quite wearied and worn out with so much work, and look forward with eager longing to the repose which will soon take pity on me. I thank you, dear lady, for your kind solicitude about me. Just as you thought, I do not require to go to Paris at present, from a variety of reasons, which I will tell you when we meet. I am in daily expectation of an order from my Prince, to whom I wrote lately, to tell me where I am to go. It is possible that he may summon me to Frankfort; if not, I intend (entre nous) to go by Holland to the King of Prussia at Berlin, thence to Leipzig, Dresden, Prague, and last of all to Vienna, where I hope to embrace all my friends.

Ever, with high esteem, etc.,

HAYDN.

INFORMATION ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION

The preceding is the text of "Haydn," a biography of the composer Franz Joseph Haydn, from the Master Musicians series. The book itself was auth.o.r.ed by J. Cuthbert Hadden, while the Master Musicians series itself was edited by Frederick J. Crowest. "Haydn" was published in 1902 by J.M. Dent & Co. (LONDON), represented at the time in New York by E.P.

Dutton & Co. Each page was cut out of the original book with an X-acto knife and fed into an Automatic Doc.u.ment Feeder Scanner to make this e-text, so the original book was, well, ruined in order to save it.

Some adaptations from the original text were made while formatting it for an e-text. Italics in the original book were ignored in making this e-text, unless they referred to proper nouns, in which case they are put in quotes in the e-text. Italics are problematic because they are not easily rendered in ASCII text.

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Version 11 of this text prepared by Andrew Sly. Numerous changes and corrections made by comparison with the original book.