Page:Anecdotes of Great Musicians.djvu/195

Rh to him; but not so much of his music first saw the light of day there as was the case with Mozart or Schubert, for Beethoven did much of his composition while walking in the country lanes or fields. There is a large gnarled oak tree shown near Vienna in which he frequently sat composing, and utterly oblivious to his surroundings. Many another musician has climbed up to that seat, but to whom has come the inspiration of a Third or Ninth Symphony?

Mozart loved company, wine, and good fellowship, and we read of operatic managers driven to despair by the fact that he would linger in the wine-room or at the billiard table when they were in sad need of perhaps an overture that he had promised, but had put off writing until "to-morrow." But the overture was sure to be forthcoming just at the last moment, for was it not all completed in his head and had it not been for many days or weeks? It was the manual labor of writing out that he shirked. Who that has copied music can blame him?

Schubert lingered much at the tavern. Well, perhaps it was more cheerful than his home. No clatter of plates and glasses or chatter of busy tongues could stay the flow of his beautiful melodies. The fountain must flow even though the world thought naught of the stream. Many of his songs went to the publisher for tenpence apiece, while their author lacked the necessities of life.

Haydn would shut himself up in his sixth story garret and pen the symphonies which paved the way for Mozart and Beethoven. So absorbed in his work would Haydn become that the absence of food or fuel was unknown; the joy of composition was enough to produce oblivion to all minor matters such as food. But a scolding wife may have had somewhat to do with his voluntary isolation. While hunger and music are not incompatible, we find no instances where the muse has been awakened to loftier flights by a scolding wife.