The Story that Christoph Willibald Gluck was of Czech extraction is an old one and goes back to Gluck himself. The learned librarian of the Premonstratensian Monastery on Strahov hill in Prague, Bohumír Jan Dlabacz, in his Lexicon of Bohemian Artists, which is based for the most part on reliable information, says that Gluck, “the famous reformer of French music,” was born on July 4, 1714, in Weydenwang, Upper Palatinate, not far from the Bohemian frontier; and that “in Bohemia, especially in Prague, he laid the foundations of his musical education. Excelling in his ability to play different instruments, he found, in aristocratic Czech circles, some benefactors who supported him — as he often mentioned — in a lavish way. For this reason everywhere and through all his life he called the Czechs his compatriots and benefactors.” The first biographer of Mozart, František Xaver Nêmeček (Niemetschek) mentions in 1798 that Mozart met Gluck, “a Bohemian by birth” in Vienna. Also in Italy, Gluck was called, like Mysliveček, “il divino Boemo” — “the divine Czech.”