Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1919 — Learning to Drum. [ARTICLE]

Learning to Drum.

How Haydn learned to beat a drum and the preservation of the flrat one he played make an amusing story. There was to be a great church festival, Including a procession through the streets in which the choristers were as a matter of course to take part, but the drummer falling ill, no one could be found to take his place until the director called for Joseph Haydn, showed him how to make the stroke and left him alone. Joseph found a meal tub, stretched a cloth over the top, set It on a stool and began to drum away with such vigor that the stool was soon overturned and him* self covered with ‘ meal. But the stroke was learned and the spectators of the procession found their gravity unduly taxed by the sight of a little fellow of six years beating a big drum carried before him by a hunch-back, since a bearer of ordinary stature would have raised the Instrument far out of the drummer’s reach. The drum used on that occasion by Haydn is still preserved in the choir of the church at Hamburg.