He took some lessons on the clavier, but was lacking in patience; his master was an organist with a somewhat archaic style. Little Telemann had no respect for the past. "The most joyful music" he says, "was already running in my head. After a fortnight's martyrdom I left my master, and since then I have learned nothing as regards music." (He means, of course, that he learned nothing from a teacher, for he learned a great deal by himself, from books).
He was not yet twelve years of age when he began to compose. The Cantor, whom he assisted, wrote music. The child did not fail to read his scores in secret; and he used to think how glorious it was to make up such beautiful things. He too began to write music, without confiding the fact to anyone; he had his compositions submitted to the Cantor under a pseudonym, and had the joy of hearing them praised—and better still, sung—in church, and even in the streets. He grew bolder. An operatic libretto came his way; he set it to music. O, happiness! The opera was performed in a theatre and the young author even filled one of the parts!
"Ah! but what a storm I drew upon my head with my opera!" he writes. "The enemies of music came in a host to see my mother and represented to her that I should become a charlatan, a tight-rope walker, a mummer, a trainer of monkeys, etc. … if music were not prohibited! No sooner said than done; they took from me my notes, my instruments, and with them half my life."
To punish him farther he was sent to a distant school in the Harz mountains, at Zellerfeld. There he did extremely well in geometry. But the devil did not abandon his rights over him. It happened
