The 1848 musical novella The Poor Fiddler transports the reader to 19th-century Vienna. The Austrian dramatist Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872) tells of an encounter with an old man who plays the violin for visitors to a fair. Woven into the musician’s heartfelt performance is a bittersweet love story, whose progress we soon hear in the fiddler’s own words. This partly autobiographical story, is an “integral part of classical storytelling” and was revered as a masterpiece by such prestigious authors as Adalbert Stifter and Franz Kafka.