Our interest in defining Haydn’s general artistic function as that of a pioneer, a systematizer and law-giver, must not blind our eyes, however, to his strokes of originality. In an occasional daring modulation, happy irregularity, or nicely-calculated blurring of outline, Haydn anticipates some of Beethoven’s most characteristic effects. In the Minuet of his Ninth Symphony,[32] for example, there are some charming instances of “shifted rhythm”; and in that of the Eighth he revels in odd rhythmical surprises with a truly Beethoven-like elfishness. As for the matter of harmonic ingenuity, the instances are bewilderingly numerous. Two or three of the most striking may, however, be mentioned, and the rest left to the reader’s own research. In the introduction of the Third Symphony, in E-flat, Haydn makes a most interesting enharmonic change from C-flat to B-natural, quite in the Beethoven manner, plunging the hearer into a mystification that clears up only with the return, after a few measures, to the key of C-minor, the relative of the original key. The Introduction of the Fifth Symphony contains similar ingenious modulations. But the most Beethovenish trick of all is perhaps the modulation back to the last entrance of the main theme of the Finale of this same symphony. The key of the movement is D-major; Haydn, however, getting himself well established in F-sharp minor, harps on C-sharp as the dominant of this distant key; many C-sharps are heard, in a persistent rhythm of two shorts and a long, until one has forgotten all about the original key of the piece; the C-sharps fade away to piano, then to pianissimo, then to silence; when suddenly, in the same rhythm, three loud D’s bring the piece emphatically back to the home key, and forthwith it proceeds merrily upon its way. This device is surprisingly unlike Haydn in his usual jog-trot mood; it is amazingly like the daring strokes of his great successor. The C-sharp is drummed into us until we take it for granted, and conceive it wholly as the dominant of F-sharp-minor; and then by his sudden blast of D’s the composer shows us that he had after all decided to consider it the leading-note of the home key--and therewith, home we are!