Haydn gave his young pupil daily lessons on the clavier, and for his services he obtained free board for some three years. This pupil took singing lessons from Porpora, and it was Haydn's good fortune to be called to go with her to the master's house to play her accompaniments. In order to win the good will of the surly and cynical old master, Haydn performed various menial offices for him, even brushed his clothes and cleaned his shoes. The result was that the young man received some valuable instruction in composition, from time to time, together with much cursing and more insults. Porpora had among his pupils the mistress of the Venetian Ambassador, to whom he took Haydn in the office of accompanist. The Italian, not over generous with his own money, induced the Ambassador to give Haydn a pension, and the consequences were that the struggling composer was made richer by fifty francs a month, and was enabled to add to the books he loved so well and studied so constantly.
Haydn was now about twenty years of age, had suffered great privations and had not been able to rise much above the position of a lackey; but he never relaxed in his devotion to his art. He submitted to degradations, kicks and curses because it was not in his power to resent them. The wonder of it all is that his misfortunes and his humiliations did not sour his temper irremediably, and that he should have remained buoyant and amiable to the end of his long life. His existence in his attic was gloomy and poverty-stricken, but in his old age he told Carpani that he was never happier than he was in that bare and lowly room with his worm-eaten clavier and his books.
From the original pastel portrait by Anton Graff. The original is half life-size.]
At this period he had composed his first Mass in F, a work which, though crude and faulty, is remarkable as the effort of a self-taught genius. By this time, also, he had finished his first opera, "Der Neue Krumme Teufel," for which he was paid twenty-four ducats, but of which only the libretto is extant. It was produced at the Stadttheatre in 1752, and as it was also given in Prague, Berlin and other cities, it would appear that it was successful. Judging by those operas by Haydn that have come down to us, the disappearance of the score of his first work in that class is not to be greatly lamented. His muse was essentially undramatic, yet with that peculiar blindness to the true bent of his talents, a blindness far from uncommon among men of genius, he entertained a firm faith that it was his mission to write operas. Fortunately his opportunities to indulge his idiosyncrasy were not of a nature to enable him to turn from the path in which he was to win fame, although he composed in addition to the opera named, thirteen Italian and five Marionette operas, of which nothing has survived or has deserved to survive. Haydn was destined to revolutionize instrumental music; but the man who was to revolutionize the opera was yet to come and was to be called Mozart.