Joseph Haydn was thrown out of his choir when his voice broke, spent years sleeping in attics and busking on the streets of Vienna, and became a servant in the Esterhazy household — where he spent three decades composing in near-isolation and, in the process, invented the symphony and the string quartet as we know them. The Father of the Symphony was literally a servant who wore livery and ate with the household staff.

This episode traces Haydn from his wheelwright father’s cottage through the years of poverty, the Esterhazy servitude that became his creative laboratory, and the London triumphs that finally gave him the freedom and fame his music deserved.

• Haydn’s impoverished childhood, the Vienna choirboy years, and the street musician period that followed
• Thirty years as an Esterhazy household servant composing in productive isolation
• The invention of the classical symphony and string quartet forms that every composer inherited
• The London visits, the celebrity, and the late masterpieces composed by a free man at last